Part 2: Interview with Robert McKee

WRITERS:  

1. Read the post below.

2. Now read it again.

3. Make some warm cocoa, cause you’re gonna be up all night thinking about it…

(Part 2 in my 4-Part series of interviews with Robert McKee, originally posted on  Writing.ie )

Robert McKee on CHARACTER

Kristi: Is it necessary to know your character so well that you know where they were last Tuesday at 12:23 am?

Robert McKee, the man, the legend: You do all that research as just imagining, to pour it out. Then you research from the real world of the subject. You do all this to give yourself choices.

You don’t pour it all into the book, especially if it has nothing to do with the plot. Don’t be so obsessed and proud of your research that you don’t make choices, not everything is relevant to the story line.

I like work that is in depth. I don’t think humans are shallow. I think they have a public persona, in fact all varieties of public personas. We create various styles of behaviour when we interact. We have a whole set of social masks, then we go home and have a whole set of social relationships.

We have our private self, who is conscious of everything we do, then we realize our body is not us, we are not our moods, nor our feelings. I am not even my own mind.

I can watch my mind think. As I’m going through the day my mind and I become merged. I know there is an unconscious mind that gives me things I don’t want. It gives me fears.

All these things are not me. We live inside a complex of various selves. Most of them are tools that we use to get through the day. The society we live in is a whole pyramid of power, multilayered. Nature is multilayered.  The evolution of living things is a pyramid, with humans at top, and bacteria at bottom.

My life is layered, so I want a writer who can shed light on this huge, layered complex that is the life of a character, and shed light on the things needed for his story.

When someone wants to write in a way that is knowingly flat, in order to express just some of those levels of complexity, that is fine.

But if the novelist just starts writing without knowing his characters, who they are, what they want, where they are, you may get something good, or you may not.

© Kristi Thompson, December 2011

Robert McKee, a Fulbright Scholar, is the author of the international bestseller STORY. STORY won the International Moving Image Book Award and has been translated into 20 languages. STORY is a required reading in the creative writing courses at Harvard, Yale and major universities around the world. McKee’s UK Television programs have been twice nominated for the BAFTA, winning it for J’accuse Citizen Kane.  McKee lectures world-wide on the art of writing for page, stage and screen and is the most sought after story consultant in Hollywood, NY and all other film making centres of the world. McKee was portrayed by Emmy Award winning actor Brian Cox in the Colombia Pictures, 4 time Oscar nominated film ADAPTATION.  McKee alumni have won 35 Academy Awards, 164 Nominations, Emmys, Pulitzer & Whitebread Awards. In 2011 alone, McKee Alumni won 7 Oscar Nominations & 2 Oscar wins (Toy Story 3 & Inside Job).

Interview with Robin Cavanaugh

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Robin!!!!

Here’s a woman whose career has enabled her to meet everyone from Beyonce to Sheryl Crow, Sammy Davis Jr. and even Frank Sinatra.

You’re a Sports Fan?

She’s thrown the first pitch at a Houston Astros game, and showed Greg Louganis and the US Olympic diving team around for a week. Oo-la-la!

OK, you’re right, I’m name dropping. I sense your interests run to the eclectic.

So tell me, have you ever been to Transylvania for Halloween, or stayed up all night monitoring the birth of a baby elephant? No? A baby giraffe? I didn’t think so.

What the feck does someone have to do to get all that on their resume? I’m glad you asked!

Kristi: Welcome to How Did You Get There, Robin. Please tell our readers what in blue blazes you do for a living.

Robin: (smiles) Thanks, Kristi. I am a Marketing / PR / Special Events consultant.

Kristi:              How long have you been doing this?

Robin: Essentially since high school, but professionally for 28 years. I worked as a sales rep throughout college, for a Lone Star Beer and Canada Dry distributor in Texas. Later, I joined Canada Dry USA but I was very unhappy. It wasn’t my joy. When Canada Dry sponsored the US Olympic divers at a prelim meet in Austin, I volunteered to go. That week showed me that the entertainment and promotional aspect of marketing was my real talent.

Kristi: (totally impressed) Amazing what hard, glistening bodies will do for a girl.

Robin: (chokes on her water) Sorry!?

Kristi: (totally serious) What do you like most about your work? The half nekkid men?

Robin:  (can’t believe Kristi’s serious) Um, well, I enjoy being part of something special that touches many lives. But I’m an anonymous producer of sorts.  I am a sampler-plate girl. I’d rather be good at several things, than be the best at just one.

Kristi:      (makes air quotes)  Did you get to “sample” any of those Olympic divers?

Robin:             What?

Kristi:             (more air quotes) They sure are “something special”! Were they some of the “lives you touched”?

Robin:             No!!  I mean–sort of– but not in that way!

Kristi:   (totally bummed)   Guess the job doesn’t have as many “perks” as I thought.

Robin:    (has never seen a “real person” make this many air quotes)    Look, if your questions aren’t more professional I’m going to have to—

Kristi:   (insulted Robin referred to Kristi in air quotes her last thought bubble)  What quality, skill, or both do you feel makes you particularly suited to Marketing / PR / Special Events?

Robin:             I learned that I do not think in a linear fashion, so producing complicated projects with many moving parts is one of my specialties.  It’s like cooking a fabulous meal for friends.   You have a lot of pots on the stove at once, but everything is completed and served hot at the right time.  Major projects take a big picture approach, and just like a meal plan, they have different ingredients for each recipe.

Kristi:           Wow. I burn everything.

Robin:             I can tell.

Kristi:              Is this Producing Major Events like a 5 Star Chef philosophy something you have developed on the job or is it innate?

Robin:             The initial instinct is innate, but each experience has prepped me for the next one. For example, one job taught me how to write copy for radio spots; another how to produce TV commercials and even a TV show.   Having learned multiple skills over the years, as well as developing a huge network of friends and resources, has enabled me to raise the money for, produce, market and publicize a new Earth Day Festival in Houston w/in 3 ½ months.  I could not have done this successfully without my prior experiences and the resources gained from those experiences.  Each leads to the next.  I never stop learning.

Kristi:              Where have you worked?

Robin:             I spent 10 years in the beer and soft drink business, plus stints running the marketing for the Houston Zoo, the Houston Public Library’s communication division, and Academy Sports + Outdoors, a major regional sporting goods retailer.  In between these positions I consult—which is what gets me in trouble. I enjoy being self-employed but my clients always try to hire me fulltime.

Kristi: Which of your previous positions particularly stands out?

Robin:             I loved my job heading up advertising and PR for Houston’s Budweiser distributor during my 20s. I made a huge impact on, and even initiated many of Houston’s entertainment events, some of which are traditions still going today.   I’m very proud of that contribution, and gained confidence from the experience, not to mention I was a great date with access tickets to anything and everything! It was fun to be plugged in to “what’s happening” in Houston.

Kristi:              For example?

Robin:             I still have my original demo cassette tape of a then unknown Country and Western performer. It was part of my job to make sure this new guy, whom we at Budweiser had hired for our big July 4^th Concert, got some air play during the 2-3 months before the concert. So I dropped off his tape at one of our biggest C&W radio stations, KIKK. He ended up being so popular nationally that in six months’ time he won Country Music’s Horizon Award, for the year’s best newcomer. His star continued to shine and our Budweiser distributor could no longer touch him locally.  He’s Clint Black.

Kristi:              Clint Black?! Now that’s what I call “something special”! Did you get to “touch—“

Robin:             NO!!

Kristi:              Just asking…

Robin: Another really keen role was working for the Houston Zoo in my 40s. I loved being close to animals, feeding and touching these exotic beauties. I was truly happy. Even though work was a labour of love, I was around nature every day. People enjoyed the zoo.  It was a happy product to promote.

Kristi: And finally, Robin, any life experiences you’d like to share?

Robin:             Use your common sense.  Marketing is not brain surgery.  Most parts of it should come naturally.  Like my PR mentor once explained to me, “PR is just stamps and envelopes.  It is a formula like any other, when you have the right instinct.  How you do anything is how you do everything.  Just do the work.”

Kristi:              Great advice, Robin, and as always, thank you for playing!

© Kristi Thompson 2009

(originally posted September 2009)

Part 1: Interview with the legendary Robert McKee

(My 4-part McKee interview series was originally published on Writing.ie . Warning: this is actually a serious interview, unlike my usual comedic fare. The MAN deserves nothing less!)

“Everything I know about Story Structure, I learned it from Robert McKee. End of Story”  Two time Oscar winning Writer/ Director Paul Haggis  (Crash, Million Dollar Baby… )

  “McKee’s teachings are the law of the land at Pixar”  The Pixar Touch

.

.

We have all had blow your mind experiences – some hilarious, some *awesome*, some take your breath away, and others so profound it’s hard to express in words. My opportunity to sit one-on-one with the legendary Robert McKee was all. Strike that. It was more.

My brain had to create new pathways in order to absorb even one fully loaded sentence during our two-hour interview. Like tasting a rich spoonful of a 5 Michelin star chef’s finest French bullion, perfected after days of reducing, and decades of learning, hearing McKee speak about the craft of writing shocks the palette with his flavour and subtlety. His broth has been reducing over a lifetime of research and thought. It will explode your senses.

I have broken up the interview into four parts, to be published separately: ‘Subtext vs. Description’, ‘Characters’, ‘Unfolding the Story’ and a surprising angle on ‘The Man behind the Legend’.

I sat on an elegant cream sofa in McKee’s London flat, across a low coffee table from The Man, listening. To interrupt with my paltry questions felt akin to questioning Homer mid-Odyssey.

I’m confident it’s wisdom ye seek, dear reader, thus will pardon my lack of personal descriptions such as, He grabbed a handful of salted nuts from a small ceramic bowl and munched while he talked; that he wore tan slacks; or that his elegant wife Mia sat at their glass dining table at her laptop, preparing the business end of an unending series of lectures 32-hour one-man-shows McKee conducts worldwide, to filled lecture halls everywhere from LA to London to Bejing to Moscow. ( Story Seminar, London: Nov 3-6, Genre Seminar Nov. 19-21)

Enjoy!  Kristi

PART 1: Robert McKee on Subtext vs. Description

What would you say to a novelist who is certain the gods have dictated to them their story, they’ve written it, edited out 10%, but cannot get it published?

McKee: ”Never accept the 1^st idea off the top of your head. Improvise. Create ten or twenty times more material. Every book, film, and TV show are sitting on the top of your head waiting for you to write every cliché you’ve seen.

Novelists work in a medium where they are allowed to describe too much. Playwrights can’t do this. They know that dialogue is the distillation of conflicts essential between people. There is almost no description in a play. It is all dialogue. No audience is going to sit and watch actors talk about nothing.

Novelists believe their words, all these descriptions, are literary. If the novelist had to write the entire novel in dialogue they’d be scared to death.

If a novelist could lift the images to a poetic level, fine, as long as the writer knows what’s going on underneath this flow of descriptive work. When novelists get in trouble is when that flow of imagery is literal, there’s no subtext, no secrets, no depth. It’s shallow. Nothing going on underneath.

For example: The English Patient has a 3-page description of shadows on walls. It won a Booker Prize. What does this make young writers think? There’s no need to create in depth if describing the surface wins prizes.

On the other side of the coin is Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. As Mrs. Dalloway is preparing for a dinner party, her whole life is going through her mind. Underneath this ordinary preparation is the depth of this woman’s life, it’s meaningful without Woolf ever telling you. What’s ultimately important is what Woolf does NOT say. The reader arrives at this through the workings of the woman’s mind.

In comedy the essence of the comic character is their blind obsession. There’s something they want obsessively. This is immediate subtext. You know Archie Bunker is a bigot, but he doesn’t. You know Inspector Clouseau is a clutz, but he doesn’t.

Always have the subtext–that deeper force or context–that the reader discovers, even if the novelist doesn’t say it.

Over reliance on descriptive talent, on language itself with nothing left unexpressed, unsaid, believing that the language itself is sufficient to draw the reader, is a fault that young writers have. As a result they write a glitter text devoid of subtext and I’m asleep.

It annoys me when a novelist thinks complicated language is complex. A story isn’t complex just because the language is complicated.

No subtext, and your prose will be flat, boring.”

For more McKee wisdom check out the next part of this interview ‘Character’ appearing on writing.ie very soon.

© Kristi Thompson 2011

Robert McKee, a Fulbright Scholar, is the author of the international bestseller STORY. STORY won the International Moving Image Book Award and has been translated into 20 languages. STORY is a required reading in the creative writing courses at Harvard, Yale and major universities around the world. McKee’s UK Television programs have been twice nominated for the BAFTA, winning it for J’accuse Citizen Kane.  McKee lectures world-wide on the art of writing for page, stage and screen and is the most sought after story consultant in Hollywood, NY and all other film making centers of the world. McKee was portrayed by Emmy Award winning actor Brian Cox in the Colombia Pictures, 4 time Oscar nominated film ADAPTATION.

McKee alumni have won 35 Academy Awards, 164 Nominations, Emmys,  Pulitzer & Whitebread Awards

In 2011 alone, McKee Alumni won 7 Oscar Nominations & 2 Oscar wins (Toy Story 3 & Inside Job)

For over 25 years, Robert McKee’s Story Seminar has been the world’s ultimate writing class for over 50,000 screenwriters, filmmakers, TV writers, novelists, industry executives, actors, producers, directors and playwrights.