Abstract: GREG MCGEE, ME & ROBERT MCKEE (WELLINGTON, NZ: PLAY PRESS, 2011)Scripts about scriptwriting are inevitably a deeply personal project for the writer. David Williamson explored the politics of television scriptwriting in the semi-autobiographical Emerald City (1987), while Charlie Kaufman adapted his personal experience of writer's block into the award-winning screenplay Adaptation (2002). In State of the Play (1978), Roger Hall represented the playwright Dingwall as a tortured individual, forced to run creative writing classes to make a living as his own career declines. Dingwall characterises the playwright's existence as one of'loneliness, total isolation and despair'. Dingwall's failing career was in striking contrast to Hall's at the time, since Hall had just had two runaway box office successes in New Zealand and overseas with Glide Time and Middle Age Spread, as well as picking up an Olivier Award for best comedy in London's West End for the latter play. Nevertheless, Hall's heartfelt portrayal of the demons facing the writer suggested that such success had not been achieved easily.A similar premise lies beneath Greg McGee's Me & Robert McKee (first performed at Circa Theatre, Wellington in 2010), in which Billy Dolan, a 'dishevelled middle-aged writer' struggles with writer's block as well as a failed marriage and a drinking problem. While this may sound cliched, in McGee's hands it becomes a fascinating fugue on mateship and the writing process. This two-hander pits Billy's depression against the apparent success of his best mate, Paul MacManaman (Mac), a banker. Mac's affluence is the galling contrast with Billy's personal and professional misfortunes, yet all is not as it seems. McGee employs the age-old dramaturgical principle of 'reversal of fortune' to good effect as Mac's secrets are gradually revealed.Greg McGee's Foreskin's Lament (1980) was the electric shock that sparked the expansion and diversification of New Zealand play writing in the 1980s, but since then he has written far less for theatre than he has for television and film. McGee's former careers as a rugby player and lawyer gave the tang of truth to his characters in Foreskin's Lament and Tooth and Claw (1983) respectively, and in Me & Robert McKee he also writes about a profession that he knows intimately. While McGee has received countless accolades for Foreskin, for his television work such as the excellent Erebus: The Aftermath (1988), and for his crime fiction under the pseudonym Alix Bosco, he has had a rougher ride in theatre, including the financial failure of Whitemen (1986), another play about rugby that had to close five days into the season due to the lack of bookings. The highs and lows of McGee's writing career undoubtedly fuel his deep insights into the writing process in Me & Robert McKee.Where most playwrights seek to conceal the techniques by which they gradually unravel a plot, McGee makes dramaturgy itself a central theme through Billy's love-hate relationship with the theories of Robert McKee, the American script guru who has taught scores of Hollywood screenwriters, including sixty-three Oscar winners. McKee's influence spread rapidly through his prestigious scriptwriting seminars, as well as his screenwriting manual, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997). His ability to dissect the mysterious and inexact science of scriptwriting has given him almost mythic status, even being included as a key character in Kaufman's Adaptation. Greg McGee attended McKee's seminar in Auckland in 1990, along with Kiwi film-makers Jane Campion and Peter Jackson. In Me & Robert McKee, Billy has also done McKee's seminar, but in a lecture to his students he tosses McKee's book away, rejecting McKee's principles in a cynical diatribe.The title refers to Kris Kristofferson's song'Me and Bobby McGee', which begins the play.The lyrics 'freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose' reflect ironically on both Billy's and Mac's character trajectories. …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
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