Robert McKee Quotes

we secretly enjoy rush hour; drive-time is the only time most of us are ever alone.

We often see films with a cast of excellent characters...except one, who's dreadful. We wonder why until we realize that the writer hates this character. He's trivializing and insulting this role at every opportunity. And I'll never understand this. How can a writer hate his own character? It's his baby. How can he hate what he gave life? Embrace all your creations, especially the bad people. They deserve love like everyone else.

The audience wants to be taken to the limit, to where all questions are answered, all emotion satisfied — the end of the line.

We shape the telling to fit the substance, rework the substance to support the design.

Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.

When talented people write badly it’s generally for one of two reasons: Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove or they’re driven by an emotion they must express.

There is no such thing as a portable story.

Do I bludgeon my brains against this wall or do I find some way to get through my days with value?

For most writers, the knowledge they gain from reading and study equals or outweighs experience, especially if that experience goes unexamined.

Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart.

An honest story is at home in one, and only one, place and time.

If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.

As we gather in all the scenes that satirize Hollywood aristocracy, we realize that commercial films that presume to instruct society on how to solve its shortcomings are certain to be false. For, with few exceptions, most filmmakers, like Sullivan, are not interested in the suffering poor as much as the picturesque poor.

An archetypal story creates settings and characters so rare that our eyes feast on every detail, while its telling illuminates conflicts so true to humankind that it journeys from culture to culture.

Posicionar o público não é algo novo. Shakespeare não chamou sua peça de Hamlet, chamou-a de A Tragédia de Hamlet, Príncipe da Dinamarca. Ele deu a comédias títulos como Muito Barulho Por Nada e A Comédia dos Erros, de modo que, a cada tarde no Teatro Globe, o público elisabetano estava psicologicamente preparado para chorar ou rir.