i'm guessing that your brain sent the national secretary well to wrong threatens to cancel the show and supply ever did respond. on the conflict in syria takes a new twist as arab league observers say the regime has pulled its forces bottled launch point opposition strongholds as demands into peace one of the united nations boys that's my business to try to protest it's going to get at least a hundred and fifty people since trees day. and those the headlines up next will collide with. welcome to spotlight on our feet. and today my guest is robert mckee.

the filmmaker professionals' treat screen as something safe at least. and though the writers names may not even appear in the credits their work is essential for each and every film or t.v. show and sometimes way higher than the act so what does it take to become a really good how does this sacred process look from the inside to asking the man who knows it best the world famous screenwriter and writing lecturer robert mckee. when the american writers guild went on strike in two thousand and seven it was a disaster for the entertainment industry it lost about one point five billion dollars in just a few months proving screenwriters are sometimes even more important than directors and actors this idea is something robert mckee has always tried to promote his screenwriting consultant to major films and t.v.

studios like paramount twentieth century fox and disney and he's also one of the most sought after lecturers on rioting in the world mr mchugh his former students include thirty five academy award winners and almost one hundred seventy award winners many hollywood screenwriters regard him as their mentor and inspiration. mr mckeon welcome to the show it's my great pleasure thank you very much for being with us it's a privilege and first of all i decided to talk to you when i when i read in one of your interviews you said i am starving for great movies well me to this day let's talk of that. i've already why are we so angry with you know what went wrong what makes us angry and the absence of food and all we get used to good food and then we do we think we need something more what is it really. you know i think we do

least growing up and our generation of mine we were i was used to say every two weeks. twenty five times a year i would go to a film i'd see many more than that i see two or three films week but every two weeks some of them to a casablanca early as every every story that come out of a film whether it's hollywood or from europe or asia going wow wow right and i'm lucky i think we're all lucky if that happens once or twice a year now where you just come out well fantastic. and so there's good stories and there's satisfying stories certainly being told but that that sense of something so deep and so beautiful and so brilliant is rare very rare now you know my latest impression of modern cinema i watched woody allen's midnight in paris i'm going to fad of woody allen and myself never being but this what is it about the pound or.

had the the kind of festival so i went to watch it and it's not worth half of the backs of the few ships people because back to the future is better i mean it's for kids but it is better why is it happening what do you know that he is a classic what is the story what do we what does it woody allen was in his day one of the great iron ists. and certainly great social and. personal. masters of well the difference between appearance and reality and his films are very complex and fascinating and even if i were in the seventies yeah it was you know those days are past and tell you lost it yeah he's lost. but he's woody allen and he makes films are very low money less than ten million dollars and they always make money because of the momentum of his reputation and so he's struggling and has for years that i think the last.

satisfying woody allen i saw was bullets over broadway you know that was thirty years ago maybe twenty twenty years ago yeah and so. but you know so it's just business just as it is this is sad isn't this it wasn't for me for me personally only if it's movies are very personally i think you're great it all started with a movie called the war of world by kevin costner i watched it in london and i was i was down on the sea side and somebody called me said i could take his place just quoting the premier you must make it the most friday the traffic jam switchable so i made it and i watched it and now was i mean it was a shock no dialogues no stories only go but very beautiful everything very beautiful and and very sexy kevin costner well then it went all the way down this is happening all the way down to avatar to turn town no story at all but technology

business and i would i would agree one hundred percent with that ten ten i understand i have a seat at but i think we're probably agreed we should not see it. but avatar yeah in terms of i think a very well told story the problem with avatar is that it is yet another rendition of the fascist myth you know good times and bad guys mean yes and that society is weak and it has to be rescued by lone heroes we've been telling that story since forever and so and so it's a recycling of cliches as if the if you were ten years old are going to avatar it would be new and very exciting for you and the story telling would be very memorable but we've seen all this stuff oh yes yes i saw it maybe this person maybe that yeah it may be that they're making films but not for us but for but for a much much younger to two or three generations ago. we're now the generation

that's making we want stuff is so i don't exactly know right love and we don't see that all the i've seen other so is it true that today people prefer to similate to harm it it effects. yes but it's never been different but the idea i think it's an overstatement to think that there was a time when hamlet was actually popular culture maybe it elizabeth in england when changing your wrote it ok but there's always been a certain cultural elite that has enjoyed works of that kind and then there's always it for example in the nineteenth century was the century of the novel and great russian novels great french novels great english language almost german german certainly. even ignored and even occasionally american it might not be big melville and so. there was an outpouring of novels i would think there was one hundred years i would think at least a thousand novels a year that's

a hundred thousand novels in that century you can put the best of them on one shelf . and so it's always been like this there's always this little spectrum of greatness and then the great tsunami of mediocrity you are called the most influential theorist of writing skills since our wrists. don't know how to really tell the press has anything changed. in the sense that it's what we knew under we understand story. a greater depth or with a greater precision that aristotle did but he was looking at the very first works in the get homer and he had escalus and sophocles repartees to guide him but we now understand the difference between conscious and unconscious desires we understand the mechanisms of turning points and the rush of insight we understand set ups and pay offs i mean the world is achieved much more supply. rich technical

understanding of story but the essence has not deepened sincerest it will be he understood it in its essence as well as you know as well or better than anyone since and so there's more technical understanding but it doesn't mean that we've actually got a depth of understanding i think i suspect that people are discussing movies today he says seriously because movies are really cinema is really replacing literature i mean in the culture is it true or more than that i mean there was a time when the society had for great wisdoms there was a time when we used to read philosophy to answer aristotle's great question how should a human being lead their life but today who is waiting for a loss of feed that doesn't have an exam to pass we used to we used to study

theology. but today in many places religion has become an even jellicoe joke we thought that science would solve all of our problems but now as we realize science creates more talk city then. and and we had art. but since these other ways of understanding life are interest in disrepute where do people go to get an answer to that great question do they go to the movies god help them so there's nothing bad about it well in the case that the movies are good that they really have to say they are saying something not only showing pictures telling stories that this is what you teach and what i teach is to write the truth to tell a story and then step back from what you've written presuming that it moves you as a writer and ask yourself is this an honest expression of what it is to be a human being and if the answer is yes then passionately do everything you can to

get this story into the world but if the answer is no if you don't actually believe in the meaning of what you've written then this is why god gave us the delete key. you know if it but in their own control i mean i can see. but in in a world of lies and liars. it writers unfortunately keep adding to the to the to the lives and so i've always been on a campaign to above all master the craft so you could express yourself beautifully but believe in the truth of what you do but i get an impression that today in times of big business when produces run run the show when so much technology is so millions are pumped into cinema screenwriters authors have to fight their way into it into the movies because nobody invades that reality and they they they often use the expression have to break into hollywood as if you were committing

a burglary. but that's nonsense because in fact if you write with a real superior quality if you write of a work of surpassing quality it will be recognized in hollywood. or anywhere they make films in the world and it's not as if people are just really that say well it's brilliant and then throwing it aside may i just because it's true says robert mckee the well famous screenwriting teacher spotlighted will be back shortly after we take a break so we'll continue this interview goes they way you. cut sure is that so much a lot of people at my area will dance it all worth telling the friends what just me

your tree house and twelfth hole for the world will be destroyed you look at the year before you'll set the trends who will stay in power and who will. try to clean a ghost town. squandered money. abandon mine. what is. your new sixty square kilometers or the mom of a miss nation and those who are still surprising new lives i'm finding are just there it's getting bad out here. but not saying hardly any birds squirrels you know. ducks you know i don't know what's going on here. on screen on our kids.

welcome back to spotlight i'm al gore now in just a reminder that my guest on the show today is robert mckee the world famous screenwriter and screenwriting teacher professor who is lecturing now in moscow and we have an opportunity to interview him here in this studio well robert your book your screenwriters bible as they call it is called story substance structure style and the principles of screenwriting in russian and it was published and translated as story worth a million do i think this translation is it really what you teach just didn't seem to make big bucks but oh well i will bet a million was a measure of quality money but you know something i can't promise that nobody can promise a thing like that. do you think that somebody may become well it's not great but a decent screenwriter after. reading and really learning your book will

presuming they have talent ok and there are geniuses and then there are people with great talent and they're people with modest and only manual so by presuming they have some talent all right. i certainly think that understanding and mastering the craft maximizes whatever talent you were born with and so you can't you can't. succeed without talent but but talent without a mastery of the craft is paralyzed if you have great talent great imagination but you don't really understand story then what will you do you copy unconsciously you imitate other writers that you know because you're not free to to take the elements of story and play with them and improvise and experiment and do brilliant things with them and so what i try to teach people is that how to understand these elements their relationships and then give you the freedom to do with them as you

will because if you don't have. that understanding and you haven't mastered these pieces then then you will be a slave to to every cliche that comes along looking at movies like movies like are the times of one extreme and women sixty really extremely expensive and really really great show something to see the other extreme is what they sometimes call the the art house movies like the low budget movies where the self-expression of the director is the really what matters nothing else matters photography the story what's your attitude to these and there are degrees of we just said take for example the film that starred george clooney called up in the air. you know there are no it's a very beautiful film and it's a it's very beautifully written and it's not about a director trying to express their vision but instead it's about the writing

of a story about a man who comes to realize that his life is meaningless and over the course of the story tries to find meaning and ultimately fails but at least he now understands that what he thought was a wonderful life is meaningless and so there are there are all kinds of very beautiful films. that are not art movie difference for the sake of difference nor are they slavish really following commercial imperative but there's a great middle ground where people come together to collaborate the writer the director the actors the designers the camera they all come together to produce a work and the work becomes the important thing not their egos not their. vanity but the work and they devote themselves to achieving excellence in the film itself a couple of words about a shirt well they call you the guru but when talking about gurus he lets you like

speaking that check off. did russian letter. checa for example he who you say was a genius did they really somehow influence you as always or mislead really enormous what why the russians well because. first came stanislaw ski but he wasn't a writer he was directing it so let's acting he taught acting and he went when you understand what what what what stance was he was teaching primarily was that there's a whole inner life that exists inside of a character underneath what they're saying and doing the sceptics the subtext so once you understand that you can do shakespeare better than you it ever do it it isn't just reading the law it's beautifully but bringing a character to life from underneath and once you understand the concept and you the the end can execute subtext everything gets much better and check off of course

absolutely demands subtext so you think he was an impressionist like an electrician yes yeah he was a minimalist and an impressionist and the stories are very powerful and very beautifully told but it's all in the subtext and at the actors don't bring the subtext to life then check off seems better now when they bring it to life if it's overpowering and the differences and subtext is so stanislaus through checkoff because stanislaw ski learned this because he was directing checkable and he was trying to find a way to make check off work well will check up didn't only do the short stories but he also did he plays more to do you think he would make make a good writer fulfill for modern movies even live today oh yes baby yeah absolutely but he would write a film like on the air like company he'd write a film like up in the air where a character is going through their day. and dealing with some problems on the

surface and we see through that surface to realise my god this man is. leading a meaningless life. why don't contend for the russian movies. some of which i do like why don't they get the international screen well they do i mean i think i saw. i saw house of pools three times i saw it in los angeles i saw it elsewhere in the world and so there are many russian films that do reach the world. but the when you say the world i just had this discussion just the moment that it was what you mean is north america europe no you don't mean that because he is if if russian filmmakers were really concerned about getting their films to italy to spain to germany's current president sally in the end date and and they would be played in these and these cinemas all over europe or asia or australia but when people

talk about getting films into the world they don't mean that they mean having critical success in their own country and they get into north america where the money is and so the question is can we get films to north america because i don't think europeans care that much about watching other european films well it's not like with ice hockey everyone everywhere you go there you better than the n.h.l. didn't care because even sally is already i mean they want to be they want to well want to be the atlanta braves and that's unfortunate and condemnable you know and i like your all over the world been lecturing a great deal in south america these people love us they go to films constantly why aren't russians trying to get their films into the south america is an interesting thing when the russians including me sometimes what's contemporary movies they say the soviet movies would bet ten give us back the old seven and something like my dad they say there was censorship in communist times they would do wouldn't let the

directive do whatever you want and they they watched. what he did and the movies are better do you think this without you think peter long distances should sometimes do better things than when they absolutely free it's not a question you hear exactly the same thing about hollywood the films of the thirty's and forty's and fifty's were better because there was censorship it was called the hays office and there was censorship and so writers had to figure out ingenious ways to imply subtext subject and they had to use allegory. and so under the pressure of censorship they had to be more creative now i don't think tyranny and censorship are good things that all. what should happen is that the artists should impose creative limitations on themselves they should not allow themselves to do it the easy way they should say i'm going to do this story in a way that really forces me to be creative and to solve creative problems

ingeniously and there's for example there was never any censorship on ingmar bergman. and yet he is the greatest screenwriter who ever lived and created almost forty films that are the worst of them the least of them are better than most what we watch today but there was no censorship except by baird he forced himself to demand the highest standards of himself and so if artists become indulgent when there's no censorship whatever then they produce pablum but when something when they set standards when someone sets standards then they have to be creative you talking about stories about the necessity of stories only your life but. sometimes i see that interpretation for cinema of classical literature doesn't always become

a success now the stories may be great what is that well be for for a lot of reasons not the least of which had the power in the beauty of a novel is the drama does ation of inner conflict. but you cannot photograph thought. so it's not a mad every novel can become a great movie no. because. crime and punishment is all taking place and work around where it's going to head there has never been. a crime and punishment how could there be because the whole story takes place in his mind and and so it's perfect that way. and to try to adapt that discreet i people have done film adaptations of james joyce's ulysses some people in france are yeah right so. great literature cannot be adapted it has to be reinvented and when when somebody like james i agree with his great writer route. when they take

classics they don't adapt they reinvent to keep the spirit of the work and if they can manage to do that if they if it feels like e.m. forster and yet is a reinvention nobody complains well i'll try to guess i think your favorite movie of all time says alice in wonderland. michael had done that that's a great story and they made a great movie and great but my favorite of my favorite films than the. star is the one difference i don't know about the fulfilled makes every kid who writes terrifying thank you very much thanks very much for being with us and just to remind that my guest today was robert mckee the world famous screenwriting teacher pastor and screenwriter in south and that's it for now from on i. will be back until then take care thank you you thank

. the close up team has been to new stuff birthplace to the most ambitious football club in the world. now our g. goes to the far east where the timber industry affects the legendary siberian tigers where the ancient native community loses its weight in the modern world. and where the country's mineral wealth starts its way across the ocean. and well come to the camara screecher russia blows up.

i hate. obama also rises a little giving the military more power to detain people indefinitely without charge or trial classed as terror suspects critics cried foul claiming the new bill violates place of democrats applied to us seeks to trump and elsewhere around the world. warning to the west as a brand success going to test fire as long range missiles during naval exercises in the persian gulf because the mc republic sets of prepares to head back to the times this comes as the u.s. imposes father sanctions targeting the rainy and central bank. while tehran threatens to all supply routes in response. to the conflict in syria takes a new twist.