Robert McKee

The three-day seminar teaches writers McKee's principles of storytelling. McKee's one-day Genre Seminars teach writers McKee's take on the conventions of different styles of storytelling.

Robert McKee studied at University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and University of Michigan. Stefan Rogall is recorded as having studied under Robert McKee. Employment is recorded with University of Southern California. Distinctions recorded are Fulbright Scholarship.

• Name — Robert McKee • Birth Name — Robert Mckee • Born — 30 January 1941 • Birthplace — Detroit, Michigan, U.S. • Education — University of Michigan • Occupation — * Author • lecturer • story consultant • Website — mckeestory.com

Robert McKee began his theater career at the age of nine, playing the title role in a community theater production of Martin the Shoemaker. He continued acting as a teenager in theater productions in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Upon receiving the Evans Scholarship, he attended the University of Michigan and earned a bachelor's degree in English Literature. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree, McKee toured with the APA (Association of Producing Artists) Repertory Company, appearing on Broadway alongside Helen Hayes, Rosemary Harris and Will Geer. He then received the Professional Theater Fellowship and returned to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to earn his master's degree in Theater Arts.

After deciding to move his career to film, McKee attended Cinema School at the University of Michigan. While there, he directed two short films: A Day Off, which he also wrote, and Talk To Me Like The Rain, adapted from a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. These two films won the Cine Eagle Award, awards at the Brussels and Grenoble Film Festivals, and prizes at the Delta, Rochester, Chicago and Baltimore Film Festivals. In 1979, McKee moved to Los Angeles, where he began to write screenplays and work as a story analyst for United Artists and NBC. He sold his first screenplay Dead Files to AVCO/Embassy Films, after which he joined the WGA (Writers Guild of America). His next screenplay, Hard Knocks, won the National Screenwriting Contest, and since then McKee has had eight feature film screenplays purchased or optioned, including the feature film script Trophy for Warner Bros. (Only one of these films, however, was produced). In addition to his screenplays, McKee has had a number of scripts produced for television series such as Quincy, M.E., Mrs. Columbo, Spenser: For Hire and Kojak. McKee was also an early instructor at the Los Angeles film school, Sherwood Oaks Experimental College.

In 1983, as Fulbright Scholar, McKee joined the faculty of the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California (USC), where he began offering his STORY Seminar class. A year later, McKee opened the course to the public, giving a three-day, 30-hour intensive class to sold-out audiences around the world. Since 1984, more than 50,000 students have taken McKee's course in cities around the world: Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Helsinki, Oslo, Munich, Tel Aviv, Auckland, Singapore, Barcelona, Stockholm, São Paulo and more. In March 2011 and again in 2012, he taught a four-day seminar in Bogotá, Colombia. In February 2012, he taught another four-day seminar in the Ramoji film city of Hyderabad in India. He did the same in Amsterdam, March 2014. McKee's current lecture series includes the three-day "Story Seminar", one-day "Genre Seminars" (teaching the conventions of love story, thriller, comedy, horror, action and writing for television) and the one-day "Storynomics Seminar", teaching the application of storytelling principles in the business and marketing world (co-lectured with CEO of Skyword Tom Gerace). McKee continues to be a project consultant to major film and television production companies, corporations and governments around the world, as well as major software firms such as Microsoft. In addition, several companies such as ABC, Disney, Miramax, PBS, Nickelodeon, and Paramount regularly send their creative and writing staffs to his lectures.

Writers and actors such as Geoffrey Rush, Paul Haggis, Akiva Goldsman, William Goldman, Joan Rivers, David Bowie, Kirk Douglas, John Cleese, Tony Kaye, and Steven Pressfield, have taken his seminar. In 2000, McKee won the 1999 International Moving Image Book Award for his book Story (Regan Books/HarperCollins). The book has become required reading for film and cinema schools at Harvard, Yale, UCLA, USC and Tulane universities. The book was on the Los Angeles Times best-seller list for 20 weeks. It is translated into more than 20 languages. In 2017, McKee was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Final Draft Awards, an honor that recognizes professionals who have had a "profound influence on the industry" joining peers such as Lawrence Kasdan and Steven Zaillian. McKee's other credits include writing and presenting the BBC series Filmworks, the Channel 4 series Reel Secrets, the BAFTA Award-winning J'accuse Citizen Kane television program which he wrote and presented, and the writing of Abraham, the four-hour mini-series on Turner Network Television (TNT) that starred Richard Harris, Barbara Hershey and Maximilian Schell.

• McKee claims in his seminars that he does not say not to use voice-over narration. There is some truth to the scene in Adaptation, however, as he vehemently teaches that using voice-over to substitute for telling the story via action and dialogue is weak, whereas he teaches that voice-over used to counterpoint and enrich the story can be wonderful. • In a Haaretz article, McKee was quoted as saying in front of a Tel Aviv audience that Israelis have a rough sense of humor, completely different from the known worldwide Jewish one, since Israelis are living in a harsh reality which leads them to lose their sense of humor.