I bow to greatness… Glenn Ford dead at 90.

Glenn Ford

Glen Ford dead at 90

was one of those actors that was good in anything he was in… I especially loved him in with .

Why is it that when some of these great actors die, you feel like you lost a good friend even when you didn’t know them?

Rest in peace, Glenn…

Unk

P.S. Working on 36 Dramatic Situations Part 2…

Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations…

Geez… The emails just keep pouring in… WTF?

Anyway, from a majority of these emails, I see that many of you want to write a screenplay and even seem to have what you THINK is the first act all figured out but it’s the moving on to Acts 2 and 3 or Acts 2, 3, and 4 if you’re a 4 Act Structure screenwriter like me…

I’m sure you’ve seen these before but maybe dismissed them… Or, you looked at them and thought, WTF? And then dismissed them. LOL.

Now let’s revisit…

Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations…

Remember these? No? Well here they are:

1. Supplication

2. Deliverance

3. Crime pursued by vengeance

4. Vengeance taken for kin upon kin

5. Pursuit

6. Disaster

7. Falling prey to cruelty/misfortune

8. Revolt

9. Daring enterprise

10. Abduction

11. The enigma

12. Obtaining

13. Enmity of kin

14. Rivalry of kin

15. Murderous adultery

16. Madness

17. Fatal imprudence

18. Involuntary crimes of love

19. Slaying of kin unrecognized

20. Self-sacrifice for an ideal

21. Self-sacrifice for kin

22. All sacrificed for passion

23. Necessity of sacrificing loved ones

24. Rivalry of superior v. inferior

25. Adultery

26. Crimes of love

27. Discovery of the dishonor of a loved one

28. Obstacles to love

29. An enemy loved

30. Ambition

31. Conflict with a god

32. Mistaken jealousy

33. Erroneous judgment

34. Remorse

35. Recovery of a lost one

36. Loss of loved ones

Thanks Unk… Now what do I do with them?

Glad you asked.

First of all, you must learn to look at each of these 36 Dramatic Situations within the context of YOUR STORY. Hard at first I know but you just have to GUT IT OUT.

There are NO rules here… Don’t worry about acts or structure… Just get out a pen, pencil, paper, or for those of you less manually inclined, whatever computer program you use to write notes with and take a COLD HARD LOOK at every one of these situations to see if it just might fit within the confines of your story.

These 36 Dramatic Situations should simply start making your synapses SNAP, CRACKLE, and POP with brainstorming ideas… FREE ASSOCIATION! No need to worry if LOSS OF A LOVED ONE FITS in your story right now but go with it… Ask yourself, “What if?”

What if your Protagonist lost a loved one? What would happen? Could that drive the main plot? Could it be a subplot? What about other main characters? What if THEY lost a loved one? See where this takes you…

What I like to do is simply get a nice black roller ball pen and take 36 pieces of paper and write out ONE dramatic situation at the top of each page…

Then start brainstorming this situation within the context of your story… Don’t worry about what you come up with!

JUST DO IT!

Okay, okay… Now I’ll get email asking me how to brainstorm…

Let’s cut to the chase… I’m old school… I learned out to outline in high school (I even graduated!) and have since developed my own hybrid way of outlining that might not work for anyone else.

How do YOU take notes? Do you outline? Use that method.

Do you draw little balloons with lines to other little balloons? Cool. Use that method.

Do you just JOT DOWN WORDS? Cool, use THAT method!

Again, there are no rules… The idea is to PURGE your BRAIN of all that fucking STORY ACTIVITY that is going on up there! GET IT OUT AND GET IT DOWN!

Remember… WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF YOUR STORY! Not my story. Not some story you saw at the theater. Not some movie you love. YOUR STORY!

Go through all 36 Dramatic Situations with 36 pieces of paper. I highly recommend putting pen to paper for this exercise because I believe until we are born with a computer to do our coloring at the age of one, this exercise will work out much better for you.

Once you do this for all 36 situations, it’s time to relax! You should be mentally exhausted so put this shit away till tomorrow.

Is it tomorrow yet? Good.

Now some of your 36 situations are going to be a lot heavier than others i.e., MORE INFORMATION. Start browsing through one piece of paper at a time and start organizing all your notes. By now, there should be some very interesting plot developments that should be fucking SCREAMING AT YOU!

Get those down. Don’t worry about order… Just pick the ones you like best! Get them all down on yet another piece of paper or yes… You guessed it… Your favorite word processing program. Don’t worry about how many you like and put down. Don’t worry about order. Just make the list!

*NOTE: Don’t throw any of this stuff away… In fact, why don’t you have a nice folder with the name of your screenplay labeled on it to put all this stuff into?

Back to your list…

Based on pure numbers alone, by the time you’ve completed your list, you should have, AT THE VERY LEAST, 36 notes i.e., one for each dramatic situation. But you’re a writer, RIGHT? If so, you should have MORE.

My average list of notes is usually over a hundred… Remember, a screenplay can have anywhere from 40 to over 65 scenes, hint hint.

You guessed it… Take your list and start narrowing that bugger down to yet another list… By now, you should be real familiar with looking at THIS LIST within the context of YOUR STORY so be sure to have more pen and paper standing by should any new ideas be snap, crackling, and popping at you while you narrow down your list.

Again, don’t worry about order… Just find the situations, plot twists, etc. that you FEEL really will fit within the confines of YOUR STORY.

When I do this, I normally scrounge this list down to somewhere between 40 and 60 different situations. Almost one situation per scene, right?

WRONG.

Now the real work begins… But we’ll discuss that later… LOL.

Unk

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To McKee or not to McKee…

I had intended to post this a few days ago but Blogger wouldn’t let me IN for the last couple of days so maybe is next on the list… LOL.

So I got my yearly brochure in the mail…

Last year when I received the exact same brochure, I read it over… Having never been to a McKee seminar but having been to every other seminar, I figured it was worth the read…

After all, I had spent the money to attend the seminars of…

And, to be honest, I THOUGHT I had left the best for last… The if you will…

Uh… No.

The brochure last year AND this year said for me to be sure to read before attending the seminar so that I would be intimately familiar with the material…

So I did.

Now I already had a copy of STORY that I purchased the first year it actually came out. I remember trying to read through it but holy shit… So much stuff to wade through back then…

On the other hand, I can read STORY today (which I did a year ago) and pull an enormous amount of material from it.

Make no mistake… From reading the book, McKee obviously knows his stuff.

Maybe too well… LOL.

Why do I say that?

Let me take you back to last October (from what I remember) in Los Angeles when I attended McKee’s seminar…

First of all, I was late. I ended up having to take the 405 freeway which I loathe and always try to avoid but a quick glance at my revealed that I had to take the 405 to get to after all!

So after an easy extra hour of driving, needless to say, I arrived LATE.

I walk up and get my complimentary cup of coffee (thanks Bob!) just outside the building where the STORY seminar was being held, go inside to the tables where the assistants were very nice and directed me to the seminar.

While I stroll around the McKee tables toward the entrance to seminar I notice piles of the book, STORY…

Piles of the screenplay, …

Piles of the STORY audiotapes…

Cool.

So I enter through the seminar doors about an hour late and as I walk in I hear that “PHIFFFT” sound of a few hundred people turning pages…

A full house to be sure.

I find a nice little fold-up desk in the extreme upper left-hand corner of the room… Upper left-hand corner to Mr. McKee that is.

I didn’t know this but he had stopped in mid-sentence to wait for me to find a seat… I thought that was pretty nice of him but when I sat down and focused my attention down at him and his table, he didn’t seem that accomodating… LOL.

Oops.

I sat down and smiled at him and when he felt like my entering the seminar was no longer an interruption, he continued…

He went on and I was impressed! It was like watching ’s one man show of

The only thing I kept finding strange was the consistent “PHIFFFT” of hundreds of pages turning every so often…

This captured my attention so I looked around and by golly if there weren’t hundreds of people turning pages as Mr. McKee progressed with his performance… er ah… course outline.

At first I was confused. Then I realized that everyone was following along in their book as he was going through WHAT I THOUGHT WAS HIS OUTLINE…

Was I missing something?

Oh yeah.

I ended up meeting a very nice female actor who was sitting next to me — also reading through the book as McKee did his schtick. When we finally had a break, I made an inquiry…

I asked: “Why is everyone going through the book while he speaks?”

She replied: “Because HE’S going through the book.”

I asked again: “You mean he’s going through the same topics?”

She replied: “No, he’s going through the book.”

I asked again: “You mean he’s looking at the book and expanding on the information?”

She replied: “No! He’s MEMORIZED the book and he’s going through it!”

I asked/stated: “SAY WHAT?”

She replied: “He’s going through the book word for word but he’s memorized it.”

I stated: “No fuckin’ way…”

She replied: “Yup.”

I asked: “And I paid over $500 for this?”

She replied: “We all did.”

Okay, so we went on a little more about it until the seminar started up again… I sat there in disillusionment.

And the rumors you heard about cellphones are in fact true… If you have a cellphone and it rings during his performance, you gotta give the guy $10.00 for interrupting. I actually liked that part of the seminar because I fucking hate cellphones and I hate people that leave their cellphones ON during any kind of seminar… Don’t EVEN ask me what I’ve done when a cellphone goes off in a movie theater… Let’s just say YOU DO NOT WANT ME IN THE THEATER IF YOUR CELLPHONE GOES OFF…

Anyway…

After lunch, McKee’s cellphone goes off… He’s looking around the audience… The audience is looking around the audience… Everybody is looking at each other until finally… He checks his own briefcase… He opens it up and sure enough, the ringing gets immediately LOUDER.

Everybody laughs and he turns off the phone and remarks, “I’ll pay myself later.”

The audience HOWLED for at least a minute… THEY LOVED IT!

I sat there with I know what had to be a stupid look on my face… I swear I was in the midst of mob-mentality… THIS GUY COULD DO NO WRONG!

At one point throughout the weekend, McKee talked about good and evil… When talking about evil, he pressed a button on a remote and a picture of Oliver North went up on the screen… Again, most everyone laughed except for myself and a very large man down in front who just happened to be a former Marine.

He stood up and said, “Fuck you old man!”

I for one was hoping this was going to get good but alas… Everyone in the seminar kept sticking up for McKee and told the guy to eat shit and get the hell out of there if he couldn’t handle it… Yada yada yada… LOL.

And, the former Marine did in fact leave only to show back up later and take on the mob mentality himself, by clapping and laughing at McKee’s every breath…

I had about all I could stand when, on Sunday, we started going through Casablanca… Of course, I didn’t buy his copy of the script so I couldn’t follow along but I have gone through Casablanca on my own many many times so I felt qualified to at least sit there and listen.

It was BRUTAL yet everyone was eating it up… I finally got up and hit the road. Thank fuckin’ God but I did go ahead and purchase Mr. McKee’s STORY audio book on cassette tapes (he didn’t yet have the seminar on CD).

As I eeked my way through the Loyola Marymount University campus on a late Sunday afternoon, I inserted tape number ONE.

And guess what?

He did memorize the book!

The only thing that was different on the tape were the jokes! Nobody laughed at his jokes hence, they were not funny… By the time I got back home, I was listening to him go through his discussion of .

Word for fucking word I listened to the tape and while I cannot say with 100% accuracy that he simply went through the book word for word (but why wouldn’t he?), these audio tapes were exactly what I had just paid over $500 to sit through on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when I could have been at home or my favorite coffee shop, WRITING.

So there you have it… You can get the entire three days on audio for $15.00 — well, that’s what it cost me at the seminar so it might be more if you purchase it elsewhere IF you can purchase it elsewhere…

*NOTE: I see over at Amazon, that he now has the book on CD… Nice. Anybody know how I can convert my cassette tapes over to CD?

Shit…

So now the question… To McKee or not to McKee… Is that the question?

Is it?

If you want to witness the performance, by all means… Pay the $575 and see the one man show.

If you want the material, read the book. That IS the seminar. Better yet… Buy the book, buy the and then follow along in the privacy of your own home, coffee shop, bathroom stall, etc…

My only regret is not actually paying $675 instead of $575.

Why?

For $675, I could have gotten the latest version of instead of paying almost $200 for it about 2 months ago…

I never learn.

Unk

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