SEMINAR - ROBERT McKEE

The idea that everyone's got a story to tell is a fast track to the end of civilisation, according to Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee. Michael Dwyer reports.

ROBERT McKee opens his bible to the title page and writes his supplicant's name. He muses for a second over the dedication, then commits in bold black strokes: "Write the truth."

It might seem a strange foreword to a tome called Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. But he didn't write his book - THE book for aspiring and professional screenwriters in Hollywood and beyond - as some easy cheat's guide to silver screen dreams. It was always about excellence, he insists, and there's no short cut for that.

"There are always cultural differences, wherever I teach - Hollywood, London, Santiago, Melbourne," he says. "But once you get past that, you discover that all writers are human beings, in the same miserable boat that's probably going to sink, trying to express some metaphor for life in their work - to say, comically or tragically, 'Life is like THIS'. When they reach a certain depth of truth, then it becomes readable, or watchable, and deeply involving everywhere in the world."

The gaze beneath McKee's snowy brow is intense, almost unnerving. When you meet him, it's hard to forget the ferocious depiction of him in Spike Jonze's 2002 film, Adaptation, where he was played by Scottish actor Brian Cox. In the movie, Nicolas Cage plays a blocked writer who attends McKee's three-day Story seminar, the one he'll teach in Melbourne this weekend.

Cox's McKee is a portrait of the iron fist of Hollywood, pummelling Cage's free-spirited artist with black-and-white principles. "God help you if you use voiceover in your work, my friends," he booms from the stage. "You cannot have a protagonist without desire, it doesn't make any sense," he adds fiercely. Finally, Cage receives his own personal mauling. "Why the f--- are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie?" the guru thunders. "I don't have any use for it!"

The real McKee chuckles when reminded of the portrayal. Before allowing his likeness to be used in the film, he insisted on Cox in the role, and on changes to what he considered a flawed third act. Most tellingly, he demanded his own "redemptive scene", in which we learn that he is not just some curmudgeonly control freak but a man who cherishes the dying art of story as a means to uplift the human spirit.

His seminars have influenced (according to the publicity material) more than 30 Oscar winners and 180 Emmy winners. Australian attendees include the writers of Lantana, The Castle, Finding Nemo, Saw and Mary and Max. But the principles of his book - "principles, not rules", he stresses at the top of page one - are as old as Aristotle. In the words of the ancient Greek philosopher we find the moral core of McKee's crusade: "When storytelling goes bad, the result is decadence."

"It is no accident, if you go back and survey history, that in those periods of enlightenment when people were more civilised than in other periods, the quality of the storytelling was very high," McKee says. "Is there a relationship between empty, banal, false, happy-ending storytelling and crass, uncivil behaviour? Absolutely."

McKee laments the loss of former staples such as Aesop's Fables and the Brothers Grimm from the family home. He believes their hard truths comprised crucial designs for life that have been largely shelved in favour of rose-coloured nonsense and empty spectacle.

"We live in a world that is far less civilised than it was in the 1950s," he argues. "People's behaviour towards one another is unbelievably brutal and part of the reason is because of the banality and the falsity of the stories we tell."

Among the countless banalities of the modern age, the Hollywood dream itself is desperate for a redraft. In Los Angeles today, it's sometimes said that the screenwriting seminar industry is bigger than the movie business itself. Its promise is encapsulated in veteran Syd Field's Screenwriting Workshop DVD: "Do you have an idea that would make a great movie? What are you waiting for?"

McKee rolls his eyes. "My approach would be, 'If you think you have a great idea for a movie, you're in over your f---ing head!'," he barks. He maintains that the popular, inclusive idea that everybody has a story to tell is nonsense. "It's part of the culture that we live in that says that works of art, whether they be painting or writing or music . . . are simple and easy and it's all just a game you play, with success or not. Whatever you've got to say is really irrelevant as long as you play.

"I'm trying to turn the tide of that attitude and make people fear and respect art. Because it's the difference between a civilised and an uncivilised society."

"There is a temptation to despair, except I know that the pendulum will swing back, so it never gets to the extent of nihilism. You know that the human spirit will somehow struggle through."

Now that sounds like a good movie.

Robert McKee's Story Seminar at the Kino from tomorrow to Sunday is sold out. Places are available for the Sydney seminar, June 26-28. epiphany.com.au

Robert McKee: The true story

Born Detroit, 1941. Began stage career aged nine, acted and directed while studying English at University of Michigan. Theatre career included master's degree in theatre arts, artist-in-residency at London's National Theatre. Early short films won awards at home and Europe. Began screenwriting LA, 1979. Began teaching Story seminar 1983. His book, Story, published 1998, now in 23rd printing. Story seminar now attended by more than 50,000 students worldwide. Remains in demand as Hollywood "script doctor".