Story Expo l The Pulse of Story Podcast

05/19/2026

BOB NEVER MOVED
The Day a Marine Confronted Robert McKee

“If you want to see true evil,” Robert McKee said calmly from the stage, “look at Oliver North.”

That’s when the Marine stood up.

“F**K YOU, OLD MAN!” he screamed. “HOW DARE YOU DENIGRATE THE MILITARY!”

The room froze.

This was during one of Bob’s sold-out Story Seminars at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Hundreds of writers sat packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the theatre. One second they were taking notes on morality and storytelling… the next, a giant Marine was standing dead center in the middle aisle screaming at Robert McKee like he wanted to tear him in half.

And Bob?

Bob never moved.

He stood his ground onstage staring directly back at him.

You could feel the oxygen leave the room.

Someone came running to the registration desk to get me.

“You need to come in here!” they yelled. “Someone is going to kill Bob!”

I walked into the theatre and saw this Marine standing there in a full rage, locked into a stare-down with McKee while 300+ people sat in absolute silence.

To this day, I have no idea where my courage came from.

“SIR!” I bellowed.

Nothing.

“SIR! You need to leave. NOW.” I was pointing at the exit.

Still nothing.

This guy could have snapped my neck like a twig. Yet somehow I just kept going.

“SIR! You need to leave NOW!”

I must have shouted it three or four times before he finally broke eye contact with Bob and started walking toward me. I escorted him out of the theatre while my heart was pounding through my chest.

The second we got outside, he exploded again.

“He was denigrating the military!”

I put my arms and hands up as if to say, "I understand. Calm down. Tell me what happened."

I asked him what Bob had actually said.

“It was about Oliver North! About evil!”

Then I realized exactly where the misunderstanding had happened.

Bob used to do a recurring section in the seminar about appearances and the true nature of evil in storytelling. His point was always that evil rarely presents itself as a monster. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in charisma, heroism, medals, prestige, or authority.

And oddly enough, part of that same lecture involved a cat.

One day Bob told me a story about his elderly cat who was dying of cancer. The vet had given the cat maybe a week or two to live. Bob was devastated. He loved that cat.

So he decided to give the cat one final thrill.

He went to the pet store and bought a live mouse.

Bob took the old, shaky cat outside, placed him gently in the grass, then released the mouse nearby.

BAM!

The cat exploded to life.

Bob said the old thing pounced on that mouse with shocking speed and violence. Suddenly the cat wasn’t dying anymore. He was alive. Focused. Electric.

The next day Bob bought another mouse.

Same thing.

BAM!

Another pounce.

Bob said this continued for months. The cat started marching around the backyard every day waiting for that mouse. Looking for the hunt. Anticipating the kill.

The cat the vet said had maybe two weeks left? He lived another eight months, because, as Bob put it:

“He had something to live for.”

I still remember sitting in Bob’s Bel Air dining room when he first told me the story. Before he even finished, I said, “You HAVE to put this in the seminar.”

Bob immediately understood exactly where it belonged.

And he added it! It became one of his regular seminar stories.

Bob would finish it by saying:

“Not everything is as it seems. Even your little Fluffy is a KILLER.”

And the story always killed.

That was Bob’s larger point about human nature, storytelling, morality, and the masks people wear.

But standing outside Loyola Marymount, staring at this furious Marine, I suddenly realized something else entirely was happening.

This wasn’t about Oliver North.

This was something deeper.

In an instant, the Marine’s whole demeanor changed. His anger collapsed. His face crumbled. Then he started crying.

I remember thinking, "Ok, what the f**k is happening here?"

This wasn’t movie crying.

This was grief.

He told me his brother had recently been killed in Iraq.

Now MY heart sank.

Immediately, everything made sense.

I told him Bob wasn’t attacking the military. Quite the opposite. Bob had enormous respect for the military. This was about a specific political scandal involving Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair — nothing more.

Then I said, “Listen… I think this is all a misunderstanding. Go outside for a little while. At lunch, I’ll have you talk to Bob.”

At the break, I explained everything to Bob.

Without hesitation, Bob softened. He said he would never insult the military.

He immediately told me he had family in the military and would never intentionally disrespect service members. He said he was specifically talking about Oliver North lying to Congress and the President during the arms-for-hostages scandal.

Then he looked at me and said, “Of course I’ll meet him.”

At lunch, the whole thing transformed.

The Marine apologized.

Bob apologized.

They hugged.

And within twenty minutes, they were talking like old friends.

The tension was gone. The anger evaporated. What could have become a disaster instead became something strangely beautiful and human.

Which should have been the end of the story.

Except on the final day of the seminar, attendees started approaching me with giant smiles on their faces.

“That confrontation with the Marine was AMAZING,” one woman said.

Another leaned in conspiratorially.

“Do you do that at every seminar?”

They thought Bob and I had staged the entire thing for dramatic effect.

Honestly, after enough seminars, I almost understood why they thought that.

Bob and I used to joke about an article we once read claiming a small percentage of the population was psychologically unstable or potentially dangerous. Before sold-out events, we’d sometimes do the math backstage.

“Three hundred attendees this weekend?” Bob would mutter.

“That means at least six people here are completely out of their minds.”

We laughed.

And after so many seminars, we knew there was truth in it.

But when attendees came up afterward praising “the Marine confrontation,” absolutely convinced we’d staged the whole thing for dramatic effect, I had to confess:

“I wish I was smart enough to think of that.”


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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.

More stories at www.StoryExpo.com

05/14/2026

We've added all of the WHEN STORY WAS THE SHOW essays to the Story Expo page. Check it out! www.storyexpo.com

Bonus: You'll also get to read about that Marine who screamed "FU** YOU!" to McKee in the middle of the LA Story Seminar. Bob never moved.

05/11/2026

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 s**t.

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.

05/05/2026

“CUT.”
Dov Simens taught guerrilla filmmaking.

Break the rules.

Don’t wait for permission.

Just shoot something great.

He didn’t just say it. He believed it.

And one morning at Raleigh Studios, we decided to put that to the test.

We were working on something called Movie Cloud—a streaming platform for independent films that couldn’t get distribution. This was before that idea became normal. Back then, it felt like we were trying to build something a little ahead of its time.

We wanted to shoot a video for potential investors. Not just talking heads, but something that actually looked like a real production.

The idea was simple: Shoot it on the backlot at Raleigh Studios, where Dov taught his 2-Day Film School.

We wanted it to be fun. A little over the top.

There was just one problem.

They said no.

We could shoot his class inside the theater, but the actual lot itself?

Totally off limits.

So I said, “Let’s pull an Ed Wood.”

Dov didn’t hesitate.

We told Raleigh we needed to get there early to set up for filming his class.

Then we showed up at 5:30 in the morning with a small crew, actors, and a plan.

Five crew. Cameras, lights, sound. Five or six actors.

The lot was empty. It was quiet in that magical, mystical early-morning studio way.

Honey wagons were lined up.

Massive soundstage doors were closed, holding all the magic inside.

So we just started shooting.

Out in the open.

Exactly where we weren’t supposed to be.

We’d walk up to one of those huge soundstage doors and I’d say:
“Okay, Dov—we’re going to shoot you opening the door. You come out, and an actress runs up asking if you can help her.”

No discussion.

Dov would nod…walk over…open the door…take his position…

Then look back at me and say:

“Say ACTION whenever you’re ready.”

That was it.

We weren’t planning. We weren’t debating.

We were just shooting.

At one point I had him walking out of a honey wagon—we literally just found one with the door unlocked—going full Dov:

“YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR FILM? YOU WANT DISTRIBUTION?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“NO ONE CARES!”

Dov's yelling echoed across the empty lot.

When the scene was done, just like that, he was in position for the next setup.

And here’s the part that still makes me laugh…

Security would drive by.

And every time they did, I’d yell:

“CUT! Everyone move to the side—let him through.”

Like it was completely normal.

Like we were doing them a favor.

And the craziest thing?

They’d just nod. Maybe give a little wave thanks. And keep driving.

We didn’t sneak. We didn’t hide.

Because we looked like we belonged there.

We acted like a real production.

In Dov’s mind and mine, we were.

So to them, we were one too.

We shot for two hours.

We'd do a take or two—“CUT! Moving on!”

No second-guessing. No “one more for safety.” No “let’s try a different motivation.”

Dov was the same guy who’d tell students: “If you want your actor to cry on command… pull a nose hair.”

We were just getting what we needed and moving on, because we had a hard out.

At 9:00am, Dov was teaching his class.

By 8:30am, 150 people would be lining up to check in.

So we wrapped, packed everything up…

And just like that—

I was back at the registration table, signing people in, taking credit cards.

Dov was sitting there, smiling, talking to people…

Like nothing had happened.

Two hours earlier, we were shooting a full production across the Raleigh Studios backlot.

Now?

It was just another seminar.

Dov always said: Don’t wait for permission.

That morning, we didn’t.
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If you want to see what that morning looked like:

https://youtu.be/8t7awVEcfOk

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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.

04/30/2026

Syd Field: "I don't want to be forgotten."

After the Screenwriters’ Summit, I got to know Syd Field really well.

I’d go to his house in Beverly Hills, and every time I arrived, he insisted on making me a cappuccino. He took real pride in it—careful, deliberate—and then stood there watching as I took the first sip, waiting for the reaction. That was Syd. Thoughtful, present, engaged in even the smallest moments. From there we’d head out to the guest house in his backyard and talk—some business, but mostly life.

Syd wasn’t what people expected. He was revered in the industry by major screenwriters, directors, studio heads and more. You’d think he had an ego. He didn’t. He was warm, grounded, almost Zen in the way he moved through the world. He was into meditation, and I used to give him a hard time about it, telling him I couldn’t quiet my mind no matter how hard I tried. He’d just laugh.

“Of course you can. You just need to practice.”

We had that conversation more than once.

And then one day, in the middle of one of those afternoons, the tone shifted.

We were sitting in the guest house like we always did, talking about nothing in particular, when he said something that stopped me cold.

“I don’t want to be forgotten.”

I didn’t know what to say. But I remember thinking in that split second, what the fu** is he talking about? He’s Syd Field—the man who started all of this! The author of Screenplay. The first person to take the idea of teaching screenwriting seriously and bring it out into the world, city by city, weekend by weekend. He made you feel you could write a great screenplay. He made it accessible.

And yet here he was, birds chirping in the background, quietly wondering if he might be forgotten.

When I got to know Syd, it was after more than a decade working with Robert McKee.

The two of them couldn’t have been more different.

McKee was forceful, relentless, completely secure in his intellect and authority. When he walked into a room, there was no question who was in charge. If someone asked a vague or self-important question, he didn’t let it slide—he’d go right at them. Sometimes brutally. I used to watch his body language and know when it was coming. He’d lock in, and that was it—someone was about to get a masterclass whether they wanted one or not.

When Brian Cox played him in Adaptation, people thought it was exaggerated.

Brian Cox wasn’t acting. He was channeling Robert McKee.

McKee knew exactly who he was and where he stood. There was no doubt in him.

Syd was the opposite. No ego. No need to dominate a room. He didn’t push himself forward—he’d teach, then step back and let it land.

McKee projected certainty, Syd created space.

Which is why, when he said, “I don’t want to be forgotten,” it hit the way it did.

I told him there was no way. I reminded him of what he had built, of the writers he had influenced, of the entire industry that had grown up around ideas he helped make accessible. But he didn’t quite see it that way. In his mind, he had been eclipsed.

Maybe he had.

While Syd had stepped back over time to write and stay closer to home, others, particularly McKee, stayed on the road, building momentum and building an audience. The landscape had shifted. Syd felt like he had lost ground.

So I told him I was going to show him he hadn’t. “Let’s do something in Los Angeles,” I said. “Let’s see what happens.”
At the time, Groupon was a big deal and I had a relationship with them, so we came up with a simple idea—a three-hour Syd Field master class. A “greatest hits” version of what he taught: structure, character, dialogue, the fundamentals of story. We’d do it Saturday and Sunday.

I figured if we sold 150 or 175 tickets across the weekend, we’d be in great shape, so I booked a ballroom at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel near LAX that could hold 200 people.

Syd wasn’t sure. His doubt fed into mine, but I didn’t tell him that.

“Syd, we’ll be fine,” I said. “It’ll be great!”

Tickets went on sale a few weeks later in the evening, and that night I made a conscious decision not to look at the numbers. To be honest, I was a little nervous myself. What if I was wrong? What if my respect for Syd—as a teacher and as a human being—was clouding my sense of how well known he still was?

But we had time. Even if we didn’t get huge sales right off the bat, I could promote it. We’d be okay. All I could think was: if we sell 150 tickets, I’ll be thrilled, and Syd will be relieved.

The next morning I woke up, went straight to my laptop, and finally checked.

Almost 650 tickets had sold overnight.

650.

I just sat there staring at the screen for a second, trying to process it. My first thought was there was a glitch. I tested the “Buy” button to make sure it was working.

Then I picked up the phone—not to call Syd, but to call the hotel.

It was like seeing the shark in JAWS for the first time.

And this time it had a name.

Syd Field.

“I need a bigger room.”

After that, I emailed him.

“Syd — 650 tickets sold. Call me.”

He called twenty minutes later, and you could hear it immediately. He was excited, almost in disbelief, but what really came through was how grateful he was.

This wasn’t just another event.

This was Los Angeles. His audience. His peers.

And they had shown up in a way neither of us saw coming.

He wasn’t even close to forgotten.

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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. - Derek

04/22/2026

Late one night in Las Vegas, I found myself driving Faye Dunaway back to her hotel.

A few minutes earlier, she had pulled me aside in pure Hollywood fashion.

“Derek, darling,” she said, “did you drive here today?”

I told her I had.

“Would you mind terribly giving me a ride back to my hotel?”

She had spent the entire day sitting in a 150-seat theater at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, listening to a seminar on story. Not a premiere. Not a screening. A seminar.

Now she was in the passenger seat, relaxed, talking the way people do when they assume you understand the world they come from.

“I was at Warren’s the other week,” she said casually. “And Jack came by…”

By Warren, she meant Warren Beatty.

By Jack, she meant Jack Nicholson.

I remember thinking, this is completely surreal.

A few hours earlier, during a break, she had been standing just outside the theater with Robert McKee, the two of them holding court as they dissected a scene from Chinatown. Writers gathered in a tight circle, three or four deep, listening in silence, as if they had stumbled into something they weren’t supposed to see.

No one was pitching anything. No one was networking.

They were just listening.

And, almost reflexively, I found myself thinking: You could build an entire event around this. Screen the film, then have McKee and Dunaway break it down live. That’s how I always thought—build the event around a moment that can sustain an audience, that can carry the room.

That was the thing about those rooms.

For a stretch of about twenty years—from the late 1990s through 2020—hundreds of writers would gather in spaces like this across the United States—Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Boston and even Las Vegas. They paid hundreds of dollars, flew across the country, and sat for hours at a time, all to hear people talk about story.

Not how to sell it.

Not how to pitch it.

Just… how it worked.

For a while, that was enough.

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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. - Derek

04/22/2026

Are we in a crisis of story? Or just distracted by spectacle? Legendary Hollywood story analyst and bestselling author Dara Marks (Inside Story) joins us for one of her most revealing interviews ever. Dara explores the erosion of meaningful storytelling in today's industry, the rise of spectacle over substance, and why The Odyssey still matters more than IMAX.

28 likes, 7 comments. "Hollywood’s Storytelling Crisis? Inside the Writer’s Soul with Dara Marks | THE PULSE OF STORY"

04/13/2026

What makes a story truly work?

In this deep-dive episode of THE PULSE OF STORY, we sit down with legendary story consultant Dara Marks—author of Inside Story and one of Hollywood’s most sought-after narrative minds—to explore what most writers get wrong about storytelling.

From Aristotle’s foundations to modern screenwriting, Dara reveals the critical difference between structure and meaning—and why so many films today feel visually impressive… but emotionally empty.

Host Derek Christopher and Dara break down:

- The 6 pillars of story (and where they fall short)
- Why theme is the key to the kingdom
- The difference between external plot vs. internal transformation
- How real character development actually happens
- Why great stories come from within—not formulas

If you're a writer, filmmaker, or storyteller—this conversation will change how you see story forever.

What makes a story truly work?In this deep-dive episode of THE PULSE OF STORY, Derek Christopher sits down with legendary story consultant Dara Marks—author ...