Film & TV / Literature / Theatre & dance
Robert McKee
born 1941 · screenwriting teacher, author, story consultant
Detroit-born story guru whose Story Seminar and book Story have trained generations of screenwriters; he started as a young actor on Detroit stages.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 85- Detroit years
- 1941–1960s
- Field
- Film & TV, Literature, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Robert McKee was born in Detroit on January 30, 1941, and grew up acting: as a teenager he performed in theater productions in his hometown. An Evans Scholarship, the golf caddie scholarship, sent him to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned a bachelor's degree in English literature. He returned to Ann Arbor on a Professional Theater Fellowship for a master's degree in theatre arts and later, after deciding to move into film, attended the university's cinema school; his famous seminar grew out of a doctoral project he began there but did not finish. Developed further while he taught at the University of Southern California, the three-day Story Seminar has since been held around the world, and his 1997 book Story became a standard text for screenwriters. He was even played on screen, by Brian Cox in Adaptation.
Highlights
- Creator of the Story Seminar, taught worldwide
- Author of Story (1997), a standard screenwriting text
- Portrayed by Brian Cox in Adaptation (2002)
- Teenage actor on Detroit stages; three degrees' worth of study at Michigan
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · late 1950s–1970s
University of Michigan
McKee earned a BA in English and an MA in theatre arts here, attended its cinema school and began the doctoral project that became his seminar.