Robert McKee interview: Part 3

Interesting 7-part interview between a young entrepreneur Sramrana Mitra and screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The questions have a business slant to them and yet McKee always pulls through them the commerce side of things and back to his central focus: Story.

Here is an excerpt from Part 3:

RM: You mentioned Indonesia. Do you know the storytelling forms of Indonesia?

SM: Somewhat. I have seen the Balinese folk telling works.

RM: I have done research in that area. I have some sense of it. In the old tradition which goes back thousands of years, you have troops of entertainers who travel around Indonesia to this day. They put up a stage and put on stories for a village. Depending on how much money the village has, they are prepared to put on stories for a year. They do it 24 hours a day. You can get up at 3 a.m. and go down to the stage, and there will be a performance with other people having a drink.

Those performances are on three levels. There are the comics who interrupt and comment on the stories and interact with the audience. They make fun of the stories they are watching, and they get their material from the newspaper each day. The second level is stories of heroes and heroines with their servants. They are generally stories of love and adventure. There is a third level which are stories of the gods and the gods intervening, or not intervening, in the lives of humans on the second level.

The three tiers interact to a point, and as I said they go on 24 hours a day. When I first started to research Southeast Asian storytelling I thought, “My god, this is unique! There is nothing like this anywhere in the world!” That was until I talked to a professor who knows Indonesian culture who said “No, that is not unique. That is television.”

What goes on in Indonesian theater goes on in our TV sets 24 hours a day. We have low comics such as Jon Stewart commenting on the lunacies recounted in the newspaper day in and day out. You have stories of people from the middle ground who are struggling with careers, love and, adventure. Then you have stories at the top from politicians from Obama on down who are running the world. The Indonesian storytelling form is what we know as television.

Human beings, no matter the culture, see reality the way they see it on all levels and in all dimensions of life. What they see and experience takes the form of their particular storytelling. The form, the style in which these things are done, differ from culture to culture. The stories, at the heart, are mirrors of universal human experience. This is why Hollywood is seen everywhere in the world.

Of course, as soon as McKee mentions the universality of stories, it brings to mind Joseph Campbell. In the screenwriting community, Campbell is most well-known for his articulation of The Hero's Journey, what has been called the "monomyth," 17-stages of story that is reflected in all the world's myths. What is less publicized is Campbell's work in getting at why myth and story are so important to human cultures and fundamental to the human experience.

Over the years, I have been working my way through Campbell's 4-volume series called "Masks of God." In them, Campbell elucidates 4 functions of myth. Here is how Campbell scholar Jonathon Young describes them:

First is the metaphysical function. Myth awakens and supports a sense of awe before the mystery of being. It reconciles consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence. Myth induces a realization that behind the surface phenomenology of the world, there is a transcendent mystery source. Through this vitalizing mystical function, the universe becomes a holy picture.

The second is a cosmological dimension deals with the image of the world that is the focus of science. This function shows the shape of the universe, but in such a way that the mystery still comes through. The cosmology should correspond to the actual experience, knowledge, and mentality of the culture. This interpretive function changes radically over time. It presents a map or picture of the order of the cosmos and our relationship to it.

Third is the sociological function. Myth supports and validates the specific moral order of the society out of which it arose. Particular life-customs of this social dimension, such as ethical laws and social roles, evolve dramatically. This function, and the rites by which it is rendered, establishes in members of the group concerned a system of sentiments that can be depended upon to link that person spontaneously to its ends.

The fourth function of myth is psychological. The myths show how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances. It is this pedagogical function of mythology that carries the individual through the various stages and crises of life, from childhood dependency, to the responsibilities of maturity, to the reflection of old age, and finally, to death. It helps people grasp the unfolding of life with integrity. It initiates individuals into the order of realities in their own psyches, guiding them toward enrichment and realization.

It's this last area -- the psychological function -- that should be of specific interest to screenwriters. To be aware of the psychological relationship between written text and the reader is critical. And our ability to tap into and use narrative dynamics that translate into universal experience can make our scripts come alive emotionally for readers.

To read more of Part 3 of the McKee interview, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 1, go here.

Tomorrow in Part 4, McKee discusses cinema in India and China, and how Hollywood succeeds because it is "based upon a lie."