"Tell us a story!"

The car windows are open and hot air is blowing across the back seat in waves coming off the brown hills of the Central Valley.   Laptops are closed, the radio is off.  Little brown heads lean forward on the long drive from San Francisco to LA,  "Tell us a story! Tell us a story!" the girls beg over and over again.

​Mom is squinting into the setting sun over the Grapevine while she adjusts the rear view mirror, having just taken over driving.  Dad turns a bit in his seat so the girls can hear him better, and starts on a long 3 hour rambling tale of a little cook and his traveling stove, pushing his cook cart up and down the hills of San Francisco making cookies, pastries, curry, pancakes and candy for the kids who hear the tinkling of his cart bells.  His twin brother, also a cook with competing cook cart works in the East Bay. 

Thus began the story of the Cook Cook brothers, competing mobile cooks whose fame spread far and wide, starting in the hills of San Francisco, spreading to the White House, Paris, London and beyond.  The story of the brothers, their escapades, cooking disasters, arguments and collaboration started in 2001 and lasted well into 2008.  Whenever the kids were tired or bored, the Cook Cook brothers would jump into service and we would pick up their story at some newly imagined location, serving up a frothy dish of fantasy that never failed to entertain.

The art of story telling can seem daunting when push comes to shove and a toddler is demanding fresh material in order to not go to bed or fall asleep.  The power of story telling to delay bedtime is powerful!  The stories we hear as children frame our experiences, victim, victor, compassionate friend, evil wizard...characters fly in and out of our minds pulling us into their motives, their troubles and their achievements.

As a story telling professional, tasked with either managing or supervising creative teams, it's vital to have a strong understanding of both story structure and the ways and methods that new stories are created.  

One of the best places to gain a deep understanding of story is through the Robert McKee story seminars.

I attended about three of these multi-day seminars back in the day, and remain connected to this community of story tellers and educators.

For film and media professionals, writers and directors, managers and new hires, The Robert McKee story seminars remain the most potent source of story telling education for the film community available in Los Angeles.

Attendees comes from all over the world and they are a great place to network and re-energize your story telling chops and understanding of story in general.

http://mckeestory.com/

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From his website:

THE ARISTOTLE OF OUR TIME

Robert McKee, A Fulbright Scholar, is the most sought after screenwriting lecturer around the globe. He has dedicated the last 30 years to educating and mentoring screenwriters, novelists, playwrights, poets, documentary makers, producers, and directors internationally. Those who have learned from McKee have called him “the Aristotle of our time” because of his insight into the substance, structure, style, and principles of the grand art of story.

Peter Jackson (writer/director THE LORD OF THE RINGS Trilogy, THE HOBBIT) has lauded him as “The Guru of Gurus.” For the writers of Pixar (creators of TOY STORY 1, 2, & 3, FINDING NEMO), McKee’s STORY Seminar is a rite of passage. Emmy Award-Winner Brian Cox also portrayed McKee in the Oscar-nominated film ADAPTATION.
McKee’s former students include over 60 Academy Award Winners, 200 Academy Award Nominees, 200 Emmy Award Winners, 1000 Emmy Award Nominees, 100 WGA (Writers Guild of America) Award Winners, 250 WGA Award Nominees, and 50 DGA (Directors Guild of America) Award Winners, 100 DGA Award Nominees.  A winner and nominee of BAFTA for his popular Channel Four series REEL SECRETS, McKee also wrote and hosted 12 episodes of BBC’s FILMWORKS series.He was profiled by Bob Simon of 60 Minutes for CBS news.

McKee’s articles on Story have also appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world including Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker Magazine, Swiss Business Magazine, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, CBS Morning News, BBC, Channel 4 in UK, RAI (Italy), CBN Weekly News & Morning Glory (China), MBC TV, KBS & Arirang TV, Korea Times (South Korea), Kiev Weekly, Kultura Moscow, all major TV, Radio and/or newspapers of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, France, India, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland and given seminars in all of the above countries.

Since 1984, more than 100,000 students have taken McKee’s courses at various cities around the world: Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco, Helsinki, Oslo, Munich, Tel Aviv, Auckland, Singapore, Madrid, Beijing, Shanghai, Barcelona, Lisbon, Malaga, Hamburg, Berlin, Johannesburg, Rome, Stockholm, São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Beijing, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Seoul, Istanbul, Hyderabad, Mexico City and many cities regularly.

Some notable writers, directors, and actors such as Peter Jackson, Jane Campion, Andrew Stanton, Geoffrey Rush, Paul Haggis, Akiva Goldsman, William Goldman, Joan Rivers, Meg Ryan, Rob Row, David Bowie, Kirk Douglas, John Cleese, Steve Pressfield, Russell Brand, and the writers of Pixar to name a few, have taken his seminar.

McKee continues to be a project consultant to major film and television production companies such as 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, & MTV. In addition, Pixar, ABC, BBC, Disney, Miramax, PBS, Nickelodeon, Paramount, GLOBOSAT, MNET and other international TV and Film companies regularly send their entire creative and writing staffs to his lectures.

​Later this year we will be interviewing Jay Golden, a story telling master located in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Jay will be discussing the power of story, personal narrative and corporate perspectives.  

​I'm really looking forward to speaking with Jay and hearing his story!

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