Story

Published by bryan | Filed under journal entries

13 Mar 07

This week my friend Jordan and I attended Robert McKee’s “Story” seminar in Los Angeles. McKee is the guy best known as having been portrayed in the movie “Adaptation” as a true-life seminar instructor teaching screenwriters how best to tell story through film. In the film, as in real life, McKee is an onry, older man whose foul language and temper keep his class on edge and attentive for no less than twelve hours of lecture each day, three days running. McKee never wants to be interrupted while he is lecturing, but he occasionally asks for “movie examples” from his students. I dared Jordan to yell out “The Passion of the Christ!” each time he asked for an example, but Jordan wouldn’t do it. I also dared him to raise his hand and ask McKee if it would be possible to have a movie without characters, but Jordan wouldn’t do that either.

But even though Jordan would not entertain me by causing Robert McKee to go into a rage and tantrum, the seminar itself was worth the time. I confess I did not realize how much screenwriters have to work to come up with a good screenplay. The first three to four months can be spent outlining the story alone, and that is before dialogue or color and texture are imagined. McKee diagnosed good movies and bad movies, explaining why some work and others don’t work. The reactionary side of me wanted to believe that there was no need for formulas in movies, but I quickly realized nearly all the movies I enjoy adhere to specific principles. Even movies like Lost in Translation are remarkably mannered.

It did not escape me, as I listenend to 36 hours of story deconstruction, how powerful story is. The overwhelming majority of the Bible, in fact, is story. We often think of the Bible as creeds and precepts, but it is anything but. Instead, the stories of the Bible work to create an internal map, a guide and compass, teaching us what is worth pursuing and what is worthless, what is meaningful and what is not. Right and wrong, then, are not often taught by lists (truth without meaningful context) but rather through the tools of story. The seminar made me wonder why religious institutions who aim to teach ancient texts don’t have story departments alongside their systematic pursuits. It seems that one might benefit from the other. If scripture, in fact, were an indication of priority, the systematic methodology might be relegated to a small room at the back of campus within which we might find a professor with a calculator and an overhead projector. And this makes me wonder if our focus on creedal reductions were not an attempt to validate ourselvs to the age of reason rather than an attempt to understand what God has spoken.

*note: things I did not say. 1. Creeds are not important. 2. Systematic theology is not a valuable tool in understanding who God is. 3. The Last Temptation of Christ was not a good movie. 4. Seminaries are bad. 5. Calvinists are not capable of passionate love making. Though one-and-a-half items on this list are actually true.

Don

Is Don planning on writing a movie script? Did he and Jordan go down to L.A. just to watch some Pac-10 tournament games? Will Don cry like a girl when his #3 see Oregon ducks fail to make it to the Final Four? I don’t have the answer to any of these questions.

What i do have an answer to is questions folks have about “A Map of Eden”, Don’s next book. Word from Don is that the initial draft of the book has been written and that he has begun the editing process (also known as the rewrite). I think he intends to share some of that rewrite with the folks here at the fan site, but whether or not it actually happens…we shall see. I don’t want to get your hopes up. But rest assured, the book will be out before Christmas 2008. Maybe sooner.