Robert McKee vs. Richard Walter

“I wasn’t a character in the play, but that was my childhood.”
Alfred Uhry 
Speaking at a Master Workshop on his play Driving Miss Daisy 

Robert McKee vs. Richard Walter is not the latest MMA match-up. Just my way of showing how two well-respected screenwriting teachers can disagree on a fundamental point.

In light of several posts on emotional autobiography I think it’s a good time to address two different schools of thought. What Tennessee Williams called ’emotional autobiography’, I believe Richard Walter, chairman of the UCLA screenwriting program,  calls “identity” and “self-revelation.”

Walter believes strongly that writers “should tell their own personal story.” On the other hand, screenwriting instructor Robert McKee in his book STORY says that’s exactly what writers shouldn’t do. Screenwriting wars!

Mckee writes, “The ‘personal story’ is unstructured, slice-of-life portraiture that mistakes verisimilitude for truth. This writer believes that the more precise his observation of day-to-day facts, the more accurate his reportage of what actually happens, the more truth he tells. But fact, no matter how minutely observed, is truth with a small ‘t.”

This is how Walter, in his book Essentials of Screenwriting, explains his view:

“Decades spent writing and teaching have taught me that writers’ own personal stories are the only story they should write.

Even if a writer attempts vigorously to do otherwise, even if he works on an assignment writing a script for hire based on someone else’s idea, even an idea totally alien to his own experience, he will nonetheless end up telling nothing other that his own personal tale. Whatever the original concept, however specific, however narrow, in all instances is filtered through the peculiar sensibilities of the specific writer. In the end, despite himself, the writer will create a tale that is personal.
Why fight it?
My advice: Surrender.
It is one battle in which defeat actually amounts to victory.
Self-revelation lies, after all, at the center of not screenwriting alone but all creative expression.”

Interesting. Two well-respected teachers, and two totally different views. One calling the personal story where every writer should start and the other saying it’s the first typical mistake of the failed screenplay.

So who’s right? If you got the two instructors together, you could probably have a three-day conference discussing the topic. Is there any way, they could both be right?

I have seen many films (usually shorts) and read quite a few scripts that I would call small personal stories. Little or nothing happens in these stories and to use the words of  director/film teacher Alexander Mackendrick they tend to fall under the description, “Long, too long, much too long.” They’re personal, but they’re boring.

I think McKee is talking about literal personal stories. We cook, we iron, we type and so on. Personal everyday stuff. Perhaps all McKee means by “personal story” is what Hitchcock meant when he said,  “What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.”

Walter in using “personal story” to address the big picture. We are writing about ourselves in terms of our deepest fears and desires. We are tapping into the core of our existence. It has nothing to do with ironing and typing,  but of a hunger for significance.

Rocky is a personal film, not because Stallone was once a club boxer whose day job was collecting money for loan sharks. But Rocky is a personal story because Stallone was once a struggling actor/writer who knew if he got a shot he could do something special.

If you read the backstories of screenwriters and directors time after time you will find that in the movies they’ve made they were telling an aspect of their own personal story. Hitchcock, Spielberg, and Scorsese are all personal storytellers.

The script I just finished is about a young, inexperienced cop in a small town in Iowa who is faced with solving the first murder in the town’s history. I’ve never been a cop in a small town in Iowa, but I am aware that the theme of the story deals with my own personal story. The power of theme in movies is what’s on screen interacts with the personal stories of those in the audiences.

McKee understands universal themes, so maybe at the end of the day maybe he and Walter can shake hands just say it’s a matter of semantics over what is meant by “personal story.”

Perhaps that’s why I  like about the phrase ’emotional autobiography.’ It’s less ambiguous. The King’s Speech and Toy Story 3 are recent examples that I’d consider emotional autobiography. In fact, I think the definition of Pixar is emotional autobiography.

The great thing about this film (Up) and any film we work on is that it contains truths taken from our lives. Pixar lets the directors create an ‘autobiography.’ In other words, things that are important to us make it into the film.
Director Bob Peterson (Up)

I’ve learned a lot from both McKee and Walter over the years. And, in screenwriting, like most creative disciplines you will find many different ways to approach your writing.  Find what works for you. And the best way to do that is keep cranking out the pages.

At the end of last year I was fortunate to interview Walter and over the next several days I will be posting several of his comments from that interview as well as pulling quotes from his various books. If you are unfamiliar with his work check out his website RichardWalter.com.

This is what one of his former students had to say about him;

“Richard Walter is the best screenwriting teacher in the business.”
Screenwriter  David Koepp
Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way, Spider-Man

Scott W. Smith