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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Robert McKee
Read between
October 23, 2018 - May 18, 2022
Pascal once wrote a long, drawn-out letter to a friend, then apologized in the postscript that he didn’t have time to write a short one.
But today who reads Hegel or Kant without an exam to pass?
[Sips tea.]
On occasion we read or see works of excellence, but for the most part we weary of searching newspaper ads, video shops, and TV listings for something of quality, of putting down novels half-read, of slipping out of plays at the intermission, of walking out of films soothing our disappointment with “But it was beautifully photographed …”
For writers who can tell a quality story, it’s a seller’s market—always has been, always will be.
Today’s would-be writers rush to the typewriter without first learning their craft.
SAY IT AGAIN FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK.
But the haphazard groping toward or revolt against the sum of unconsciously ingrained repetitions is not, in any sense, technique, and leads to screenplays clogged with clichés of either the commercial or the art house variety.
Reminds me of high school. Good ideas... terribly executed.
This erosion of values has brought with it a corresponding erosion of story. Unlike writers in the past, we can assume nothing. First we must dig deeply into life to uncover new insights, new refinements of value and meaning, then create a story vehicle that expresses our interpretation to an increasingly agnostic world. No small task.
Yet form does not mean “formula.” There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise. Story is far too rich in mystery, complexity, and flexibility to be reduced to a formula. Only a fool would try. Rather, a writer must grasp story form. This is inescapable.
The love of story—the belief that your vision can be expressed only through story, that characters can be more “real” than people, that the fictional world is more profound than the concrete. The love of the dramatic—a fascination with the sudden surprises and revelations that bring sea-changes in life. The love of truth—the belief that lies cripple the artist, that every truth in life must be questioned, down to one’s own secret motives. The love of humanity—a willingness to empathize with suffering souls, to crawl inside their skins and see the world through their eyes. The love of
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Your goal must be a good story well told.
Mastery of craft frees the subconscious.
For talent without craft is like fuel without an engine. It burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.
No scene that doesn’t turn. This is our ideal.
As my mother used to say, “Not a sparrow falls that God does not know.”
life knows a thousand paths to hopelessness.
there is no necessary contradiction between art and popular success, nor a necessary connection between art and Art Film.
Minor roles may or may not need hidden dimensions, but principals must be written in depth—they cannot be at heart what they seem to be at face.
Gene Fowler once said that writing is easy, just a matter of staring at the blank page until your forehead bleeds.
From outline to last draft, he fills the screen with stomach-turning images, making certain that each and every scene says loud and clear: “War is a scourge, but it can be cured by pacifism… war is a scourge cured by pacifism… war is a scourge cured by pacifism…” until you want to pick up a gun.
Storytellers, Plato insisted, are dangerous people. He was right.
No civilization, including Plato’s, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much truth.
This is why when tyrants seize power, their firing squads aim at the heart of the writer.
in a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
Hundreds of strangers sit in a blackened room, elbow to elbow, for two or more hours. They don’t go to the toilet or get a smoke. Instead, they stare wide-eyed at a screen, investing more uninterrupted concentration than they give to work, paying money to suffer emotions they’d do anything to avoid in life.
An audience may, if so moved, empathize with every character in your film, but it must empathize with your protagonist. If not, the audience/story bond is broken.
I pick up the phone, call Jack, and say: “Sorry to bother you, but I can’t find Dolores’s phone number. Could you—” and he shouts: “Dolores? Dolores! How dare you ask me for her number?” and slams down the phone. Suddenly, life is interesting.
The measure of the value of a character’s desire is in direct proportion to the risk he’s willing to take to achieve it; the greater the value, the greater the risk.
Nothing in a work of art is there by accident.
And the effect of writing with authority is authenticity.
If the two notations are the same, the activity between them is a nonevent. Nothing has changed, therefore nothing has happened.
