L.A. BOOK RIOTS – THE END OF THE STORY
When last you heard from me post the book signing riots that swept across Los Angeles– I had been saved from the antiquated three act structure of Syd Fields, Tiffany and the Redhead were spirited away and I was bagged by thugs.
I awake in what appears to be some kind of huge formal hall. Empty seats. A podium. High class. I had no idea where I was. I apparently was drugged, which under normal circumstances I’d embrace, but forced drugging was even a little too much for me.
“Tom Lazarus.”
I turn to see a grey-haired, heavy-set man sitting in a large chair, which in some other context could be called a throne.
I say, “Yes.”
“Robert McKee.”
The legendary script guru Robert McKee! Totally cool. I smile. “A real pleasure.”
He doesn’t change expression.
I continue, “I haven’t taken your course, Mr. McKee, but I hear really wonderful things about it.”
No reaction. He’s a bit of a sour apple. “My only argument…” I go on, “…is that I don’t believe writers need to know the classic ways of storytelling before writing their screenplay.”
“I don’t care what you think.”
How rude. At least he’s a straight shooter.
He continues, “See, I’ve been asked to introduce you.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. I want to discuss The Hero’s Journey and how he helps screenwriters raise the level of their writing. We’re in the same business. He’s been doing it for what has to be eighty or ninety years. I have a lot to learn from him. I ask him, “What do you mean ‘introduce me’?”
His face looks like he had sucked a lemon. “The Nobel Committee awarded you the first Nobel Prize for Screenwriting Education. I came in second.”
I sympathetically pat him on the shoulder and joke, “An obstacle for the hero, eh?”
Not even a smile. He talks through clenched teeth, “If you were, let’s say, no longer here, I would get the Nobel Prize.”
And he leaps on me.
What an honor. To be assaulted by Robert McKee.
After tussling for a few minutes, my youth and contemporary view of screenwriting win out and I end up sitting on his rather ample stomach. “Your journey is over, McKee.”
As the hall fills with formally dressed dignitaries, I leave the humiliated McKee and accept the Nobel Prize for Screenwriting Education on behalf of screenwriters everywhere.
I party all night inOslowith the Nominating Committee and on my late night bar crawl, I run into none other than Tiffany and the Redhead.
I get a suite at theOslo’s Grand Hotel Rica and Tiffany and the Redhead and I talk Rising Action ‘til the Norse sun rises over the elaborate fountains in the plaza in front of the Grand Rica.
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