Robert McKee, Screenwriting's Revered Guru, Says *Interstellar* Isn't a Good Story

Robert McKee, the celebrated "father of screenwriting," told QDaily some things that may surprise you: the future of movie theaters, the future of stories, and which films are well made and which are dreadful.

Robert McKee, 73, is in China again. He has just finished a four-day lecture series in Shanghai, where more than 200 people paid 3,500 yuan for a student seat, 7,000 yuan for a standard seat, or as much as 28,000 yuan for a VIP seat to hear him explain what thrillers, comedies, romances and action films should look like.

McKee has trained 59 Academy Award winners, including John Lasseter and Peter Jackson, and wrote Story, a book screenwriters treat as a classic. His Shanghai schedule was packed, running from nine in the morning to eight at night each day. He began teaching people how to write screenplays in 1983 and built a company on that business. So he travels to Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro and other cities around the world, passing on the secrets of screenwriting to anyone willing to pay to hear them.

Two days before McKee arrived in Shanghai, QDaily interviewed him. What follows is his account in his own words, covering last month's new release Interstellar, spectacle films, and what will become of movie theaters.

"The future of stories is service. Movie theaters won't be around forever. People won't watch films on television either. Stories should live on the internet, so people can watch whenever they want," he said.

Interstellar gets a three; the people in it are always crying

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give Interstellar a 3. The story is told very badly. It is contrived and sentimental. Everyone in the film is crying all the time: McConaughey cries, Matt Damon cries. If a director has his actors play scene after scene by crying, it means he can't think of anything else. He doesn't know how a person should behave when facing certain things, so he says, let's have some tears, and the audience will be moved.

The acting is bad too. We don't expect a science fiction film to tell its story all that well. But whatever black holes and wormholes you put in, storytelling in a science fiction film still has rules. This film had no storytelling rules right up to its final minute. This is also why people assume that films full of spectacle can't have good stories: there are always writers like Christopher Nolan who want to look as though they have spiritual aspirations. He may hold some spiritual ideas, but that doesn't mean he has insight into the soul, or that he understands the true value of life or the relationships between people.

Avatar is a good story; Jurassic Park is a bad one

I found Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park tiresome. The opening is fine, but Spielberg used a lot of coincidences, bypassed the characters themselves, and let coincidence carry the film all the way to the end. That is very bad writing, a fatal mistake. So I consider it a failure. Jurassic Park III, though, is quite well written. Avatar is a good story. The difference between it and Jurassic Park is that the characters themselves make the most critical decisions and drive the story to its climax.

When the climax is driven by choices the protagonist makes, it is usually a good story. If the climax is determined by a string of coincidences, it is usually a bad one.

Hollywood had a terrible 2014

This year is one of Hollywood's worst, and everyone lost a lot of money. Two films did fairly well, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie, because they told their stories well. Apart from those two, it has been a hard year for Hollywood. So Hollywood is frightened now. They worry the trend will continue. Producers are reconsidering what visually driven spectacle films are really good for.

When I say a film is successful, I don't mean at the box office, I mean in profit. Successful films tend to have good stories. In the end, if films can't turn a profit, the art form will disappear. So what a film costs and what it earns decide who gets to keep making films. By profit, I don't mean a film earning tens of millions. I mean only that it doesn't lose money. Look at successful filmmakers like Woody Allen and the Coen brothers. They have never had a huge hit, and their films don't make a lot of money, but they don't lose money. They always earn it back, so people keep funding them.

3D is disappearing fast, and it isn't a money-making business

3D is disappearing quickly. Fewer and fewer people make 3D films, and it will keep losing audience. People spend a lot of money and the results disappoint. For viewers, 3D is just a distracting technology. It costs a lot, and the producers seldom earn the money back. So 3D is not a money-making business, and people have gradually lost interest in it. It doesn't make the picture more real, and when you watch a 3D film, you can't get emotionally involved.

A film that chases only cinematography is no different from one that relies only on visual effects

"Spectacle" isn't found only in Hollywood. Outside Hollywood, in China and elsewhere, there is a kind of art film that is very beautiful, with very good cinematography. But it has no substance, so "very good cinematography" is just another, cheaper kind of "spectacle." These films emphasize the image rather than the characters.

Yet people assume that beautiful cinematography is art while effects-driven spectacle is not, and that isn't a very smart way to look at it. Any time you emphasize visual effects more than people, whether through good effects or good cinematography, you are still chasing spectacle. An art film is not necessarily artful; so-called art films can be very boring. They aren't art, they are merely pretentious. On the other hand, films that use a lot of special effects can be very beautiful and artistic.

Film or digital, it makes no difference if you can't tell a good story

Spectacle is rarely worth much, no doubt about it. When you watch an IMAX film, the real "spectacle" lives in your imagination; you enter the world of the story. The wonderful scenes IMAX creates can't replace a good story, so given the choice, people will use their own imagination rather than put up with inconvenience. In my country, nobody wants to go see IMAX. Teenagers go, and little kids go. There is also a format that started in Korea called 4D, where the seats move and so on. It is a very stupid idea. People go once, feel the seats move, and never go again. That is another form of spectacle. A great deal of money is being poured into all kinds of theater formats to cash in on this sensation of spectacle.

Nolan still shoots on film, doesn't he? He likes the texture, I suppose. But if he keeps telling bad stories, it won't do him any good. IMAX, film stock, special effects or none: it is all the same. The point is that before it becomes a film, the story exists on the storyboard, then it is acted out, and only after that comes the question of how to record the images. So none of this matters. What matters is the story you want to tell.

Someone told me Hollywood has only six scripts...

Everyone in Hollywood knows that a film is never better than its script. Everyone is trying hard to write very good stories. Story has never been neglected. The media emphasize actors and directors, but filmmakers never neglect screenwriters.

There are at least 25 different genres of film, and each genre has its own subtypes. On Saturday in Shanghai I taught romance, which covers six different types of romance films. On Sunday I taught action films, which include action-adventure, political action, science fiction action and so on. Someone told me "Hollywood has only six kinds of scripts." In fact the number changes every time: six, seven, twelve, three. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Aristotle said there were four. Nobody has agreed on an answer. Over the coming year I will publish several books, one of them about dialogue. Then I will write a book about genre, in which I will settle this question and tell everyone how many different kinds of stories there are, because it is a very complicated matter. It isn't a simple number. If it were true, no one would go to the cinema.

By 2030, most American movie theaters will close

Technology is changing the times, yes, but it is no longer visual-effects technology doing the work. It is the technology of distribution and presentation. The computer has become the cinema, and audiences can open it at any time. Artists and audiences will grow closer and deal with each other more directly. Artists will speak straight to the audience, and the middlemen will disappear.

In places like China, India and South Africa, large parts of the population are still poor, so movie theaters will carry on. But when those people escape poverty, get iPhones and can watch video on their phones, the theaters will disappear. It is already like this in the United States. People rarely go to the cinema, so total box office shrinks every year. To make money, theaters raise prices, but I think in about 15 years, perhaps by 2030, most American movie theaters will close. Theaters outside the United States will go on existing. But in Europe, nobody goes to the cinema. Italy has fewer screens than Los Angeles County. Italians don't go to the cinema, they watch at home. This is happening all over the world. It is the trend.

People don't want inconvenience. If I'm going to watch a mediocre film, I'll stay home. If the film is really good, I might be willing to see it on a big screen. But people talk in the audience. People today are very rude, in cinemas and in theaters alike. So even when it's a very good film, I would still rather watch it at home.

In the future people won't go to the cinema, and they won't turn on the television either

I think the real turning point is that people are moving from watching two-hour feature films to watching 100-hour stories, that is, television series. In the future, people will watch stories on their phones or computers. They won't go to the cinema, and they won't watch films on a television set. Stories will all be on the internet, on devices you can carry. You can take them out and open them at any time. The future of stories is service. I don't think movie theaters will exist forever.

People want 100-hour television stories, not two-hour features

If I can take a device straight out of my pocket, why would I travel all that way, buy a ticket, and watch a film among a crowd of people who are talking? So the future of film will be very long stories, stored on a portable device, which you watch for as long as you like. Those devices will replace movie theaters.

I don't know how long theaters will last, but I know they will be gone well before this century ends. Audiences want more complex characters. Two hours is too confining; it can't hold that much complexity of human nature. A 100-hour story, though, can hold more complex human nature and more complex family relationships. So I think things are changing: the characters are changing, and the relationships between them are changing.

Good screenwriters no longer write feature films

Today, good stories have moved from film to television. Good screenwriters no longer write feature films; they write 100-hour television series. The future of movie theaters is under threat, and television is taking over the film market. In the future, screens will be small, so technology-driven spectacle films will not mean much. Technology is temporary. In the end, only story remains. Writing is the only thing that matters.

In the United States, writers have a great deal of say in television. TV writers become producers. Look at American TV series: the co-producers are in fact all writers. It has always been this way. They have creative freedom; they hire the directors and find the actors. So television is very different. Writers have power in television because, compared with writing, directing is relatively simple. American television has very good editors, very good cinematographers, very good directors and decent actors, but good writers are hard to find. Film is different. There the director is the person the producer relies on, and the director's interpretation and expression are crucial to whether the film succeeds.

Now actors like Kevin Spacey are making television series, with David Fincher and Martin Scorsese directing. They aren't stupid. They know their careers rest on good writers. The future of story belongs to television series. That is already very clear.

My students are getting younger

My students today seem ready for my lectures earlier than students used to be. Now they come before they turn 25 or 30, but twenty years ago most of my students were middle-aged. They had already been writing scripts for fifteen or twenty years, and they came to learn more and to find fresh inspiration. People used to decide to become screenwriters only after 30; now they want to be screenwriters in their teens.

So what is a story, exactly?

Who your characters are, what they want, why they want it, what set them wanting it, and what comes of wanting it: the answers to these questions make up the story. That is what matters. How it was shot, where it was shot, how much it cost, who the stars are: in the long run, none of these matter as much as the story.

Cover image from Wikimedia