Robert
McKee began his show business career at age
nine playing the title role in a community
theatre production of MARTIN THE SHOEMAKER. He
continued acting as a teenager in theatre
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. While an undergraduate, he
acted in and directed over thirty productions.
McKee's creative writing professor was the
noted Kenneth Rowe whose former students
include Arthur Miller and Lawrence Kasdan.
After completing his B.A., McKee toured with
the APA (Association of Producing Artists)
Repertory Company, appearing on Broadway with
such luminaries as Helen Hayes, Rosemary
Harris and Will Geer. He then received the
Professional Theatre Fellowship and returned
to Ann Arbor, Michigan to earn his Master's
Degree in Theatre Arts.
Upon graduating, McKee directed the Toledo
Repertory Company, acted with the American
Drama Festival, and became Artistic Director
of the Aaron Deroy Theatre. From there he
traveled to London to accept the position of
Artist-In-Residence at the National Theatre
where he studied Shakespearean production at
the Old Vic. He then returned to New York and
spent the next seven years as an
actor/director in various Off-Broadway,
repertory and stock companies.
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
various prizes at the Delta, Rochester,
Chicago and Baltimore Film Festivals.
In 1979, McKee moved to Los Angeles,
California 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 over eight feature film screenplays
purchased or optioned, including the feature
film script TROPHY for Warner Bros. In
addition to his screenplays, McKee has had a
number of scripts produced for such critically
acclaimed dramatic television series as
QUINCY, M.D. (starring Jack Klugman),
COLUMBO
(starring Peter Falk), SPENSER: FOR HIRE and
KOJAK (starring Telly Savalas).
In 1983, McKee, a Fulbright Scholar, joined
the faculty of the School of Cinema and
Television at the University of Southern
California (USC), where he began offering his
now famous STORY SEMINAR class. A year later,
McKee opened the course to the public and he
now teaches the 3-day, 30-hour STORY
SEMINAR
to sold-out audiences around the world. From
Los Angeles (where his course is only taught
two times a year) to New York (two times a
year) to Paris, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, San
Francisco, Helsinki, Oslo, Munich, Singapore,
Barcelona and 12 other film capitals around
the world, more than 50,000 students have
taken the course over the last 15+ years.
Through it all, McKee continues to be a
project consultant to major film and
television production companies, as well major
software firms (Microsoft, etc.), news
departments (ABC, etc.) and more. In addition,
several companies such as ABC, Disney,
Miramax, PBS, Nickelodeon and Paramount
regularly send their entire creative and
writing staffs to his lectures.
In 2000, McKee won the prestigious 1999
International Moving Image Book Award for
his best-selling book STORY (Regan
Books/HarperCollins). The book, currently in
its 32nd printing in the U.S. and its 19th
printing in the U.K., has become required
reading for film and cinema schools at such
top Universities as Harvard, Yale, UCLA, and USC, and was on the LOS ANGELES TIMES
best-seller list for 20 weeks.
McKee's other credits include writing and
presenting the BBC series FILMWORKS, the
Channel Four series REEL SECRETS, the BAFTA
Award-winning special J'ACCUSE CITIZEN KANE
(which won Britain's equivalent of the Oscar
for Best Arts Programme), and writing ABRAHAM,
the four-hour mini-series on Turner Network
Television (TNT) which starred Richard Harris,
Barbara Hershey and Maximillian Shell.
In Fall 2002, McKee was portrayed by Emmy
Award-winning actor Brian Cox in Columbia
Pictures' 4-time Oscar nominated "Adaptation."
The film follows the life of screenwriter
Charlie Kaufman (played by Oscar-winning actor
Nicolas Cage) trying to adapt the novel "The
Orchid Thief" into a screenplay. Under
deadline from the film company to hand in his
script, Cage turns to Robert McKee and the
Story Seminar for inspiration to complete his
screenplay. The film also stars Oscar-winning
actress Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper, who won
an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for
"Adaptation."
Additionally, McKee was featured in Vanity
Fair's "Hollywood Issue" (2004), profiled by
"60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon for the
CBS Sunday Morning "Academy Awards" special
(2005), and his seminar was given high praise
by CNN during their 2004
review of the Story Seminar.
McKee is the most widely known and respected
screenwriting lecturer in the world today. His
former students' accomplishments are
unmatched: They have won 27 Academy Awards,
141+ Emmy Awards, 21 Writers Guild of America
Awards, and 17 Directors Guild of America
Awards and even the Pulitzer Prize for Feature
Writing. Some recent notable former students
to win or be nominated for Oscars include Akiva Goldsman (Winner - Best Writing: Adapted
Screenplay) for his screenplay "A Beautiful
Mind," Peter Jackson (writer/director of "Lord
of the Rings I, II and III", Nominated - Best
Picture) and many others.
In 2007, in addition to
his full schedule of seminars, McKee will
release his newest publication
THE WRITERS
QUARTERLY, a publication written entirely by
McKee and featuring new, advance lessons on
the art and craft of writing.
As THE NEW YORK TIMES boasted, "About the only
Hollywood notable not to have taken the STORY
SEMINAR is Steven Spielberg."
