The Day Robert McKee Became Mythology
The first call came through the regular Robert McKee office line.
At the time, I was still relatively early into working with Bob—maybe two years in—but things were already accelerating. The seminars were growing fast. We had rebuilt the website, sharpened the marketing, expanded internationally, and audiences were getting bigger everywhere. New York was selling out. London had become a major event. Story wasn’t just a niche anymore. For a certain kind of writer, Robert McKee had become essential.
Then one afternoon the phone rang.
It was Edward Saxon, producer of The Silence of the Lambs—a movie Bob quoted in class with Hannibal Lecter flair.
I still remember the strange hesitation in his voice. He was trying to explain something that probably sounded absurd even as he was saying it.
A writer named Charlie Kaufman had written a screenplay where Robert McKee appeared as a character.
Not inspired by him.
Not based on him.
Actually in the script.
I remember calling Bob afterward and saying something like:
“Ed Saxon called. Apparently this writer Charlie Kaufman wrote a screenplay where you’re a character, and they want to send it over.”
Even then, before reading a single page, I remember having the distinct feeling that this was going to become something significant. I didn’t know exactly why. But instinctively, it felt different.
At that point, my world was story, screenwriting, and trying to show the world why they needed Robert McKee.
I loved everything that came with it — airports, airplanes, hotels, theaters, setting up productions, and being around writers. My life revolved around those three-day seminars.
And Bob was at the center of it all.
We had just come off a run through Chicago—where we held the seminar in the Sears Tower—followed by a huge sold-out crowd in New York at FIT on 27th and 7th.
Then came Boston.
Or technically, Cambridge — the home of Harvard University.
One thing about Bob: context mattered.
I loved him for that.
You couldn’t just throw Robert McKee into some random corporate ballroom and call it a day. The environment mattered. The feeling mattered. The history mattered.
And it mattered deeply to me too, because from the moment I took over, Bob placed enormous trust in me. He never questioned a venue I booked, a city I chose, or the way I wanted to position an event. He knew that in my hands, he would be taken care of and protected. I wanted to present Bob like the rock star I believed he was. That trust meant everything to me.
From the stage at seminars, Bob would sometimes joke with the audience about how “easy” the events had become for him.
“Derek just tells me where to go and I show up,” he’d say.
What he meant was: he could fully focus on teaching because he knew he didn’t have to worry about anything else.
That meant a lot to me.
So for Boston, I had an idea I loved:
“Robert McKee — Live at Harvard.”
Granted, the seminar wasn’t entirely at Harvard. But close enough.
The first challenge was logistical. The Harvard venue I wanted wasn’t available Friday morning, and the seminar itself was a three-day event. So I had to split the seminar between two locations that could still feel cohesive.
That led me to one of my favorite venues we ever used: Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.
The place had history and gravitas.
Originally founded through the Cambridge Social Union in the 1800s, the theater carried the kind of layered intellectual and artistic history Bob appreciated. The Reverend Samuel Longfellow—brother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—was involved in its origins. The building itself was designed by Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. It had survived political controversies, attempted censorship, and decades of cultural shifts. Paul Robeson had performed there in Othello during a time when that still carried enormous social weight.
It felt perfect for McKee.
Friday morning would be at the Brattle. Then after lunch, the audience would walk a block over into residency at a theater on the Harvard campus for the next two and a half days.
I loved every second of putting that together.
The day before the seminar, after I had finished my venue walkthroughs and tech checks at both the Brattle and Harvard, I found myself sitting in Bob’s hotel room at the Sheraton in Cambridge.
We were talking about the script.
It was called Adaptation.
The premise alone was strange enough to immediately become legendary in story circles.
Twin brothers. Both writers. Both played by Nicolas Cage.
Charlie was the tortured artist—serious, intellectual, convinced writing was something deeply personal and impossible to teach.
Donald was the enthusiastic opposite. Optimistic. Commercial. The guy who believed maybe a screenplay seminar actually could help you write a hit movie.
Honestly, from my perspective, the truth probably lived somewhere between the two of them.
But what fascinated me most was the McKee material.
When Bob read the script—and later when I did too—something immediately jumped out.
The McKee character wasn’t just recognizable.
It was accurate.
Ridiculously accurate.
The rhythms. The cadences. The intensity. Even portions of the seminar dialogue itself felt lifted directly from class. It genuinely felt like someone had attended the seminar with a tape recorder.
But...
Bob had concerns.
Not about appearing in the film itself.
He understood he was fair game.
Once you become culturally recognizable enough to appear as a character in a Hollywood screenplay, satire comes with the territory. Bob knew that.
But what bothered him was something else.
He didn’t want the film ridiculing the people who came to his seminars.
These were aspiring writers who spent thousands of dollars and devoted three straight days of their lives trying to become better storytellers. Some were talented. Some weren’t. Some would make it. Most wouldn’t. But Bob genuinely cared about them.
He didn’t want them reduced to desperate caricatures looking for magic answers from some screenplay guru.
That’s why the third act bothered him.
“I need a redeeming scene,” he said.
Now there we sat in his hotel room in Cambridge, not knowing whether any of that was actually going to happen.
Then the phone rang.
I can still see the moment clearly.
Bob standing beside the bed near the nightstand as he picked up the phone.
It was Ed Saxon again.
Bob listened quietly at first.
Charlie and Spike, Ed explained, didn’t want to sit down and rework the third act or collaborate on the McKee character. Instead, they were considering rewriting him into a different character merely “inspired” by McKee.
And that’s when it happened.
One of the great joys of being around Robert McKee was watching him shift gears in real time.
Nobody I’ve ever known could escalate with more theatrical precision.
His posture changed instantly.
His shoulders rose.
The temperature in the room changed.
And suddenly I was reminded of watching old footage of Luciano Pavarotti in concert—those moments right before he hit the note the audience had come to hear. There would be this subtle physical expansion, almost like he was gathering oxygen and certainty at the same time.
That’s what this felt like.
Bob puffed up slightly, and in that split second you could sense something unmistakable:
Oh, he knows exactly what he’s about to do.
Then he leaned into it.
“If you use me in your script,” he said, his voice rising, “or any version remotely resembling me, I will sue.”
Then he leaned harder into it.
“You took dialogue directly from my class. That material is copyrighted. If you use my likeness, my material, or anything even close, I WILL sue.”
He was absolutely unloading on Ed Saxon through the hotel phone.
I just sat there staring at him.
Eyes wide.
Watching the master at work.
It felt like being a kid watching rockets on the 4th of July.
Then—just as suddenly as it started—it ended.
Bob slammed the phone down.
Silence.
And then came the transformation.
The shoulders relaxed.
The tension disappeared.
A sly little smile spread across his face.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Maybe that’ll get their attention.”
Holy shit.
What a performance.
Two weeks later, Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze were sitting inside Robert McKee’s Bel Air home reworking Act Three together.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it—without any of us fully realizing it yet—Robert McKee stopped being just a teacher.
He became mythology.
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I’m currently working on a long-form piece about the golden age of story seminars (roughly 1999–2020)—a time when hundreds of writers would gather simply to learn how story works.
(C) Derek Christopher - All Rights Reserved. Please contact for permission to reprint.
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