Charlie Kaufman on the real world

 Adaptation - Robert Mckee vs Charlie Kaufman scene (YouTube) 4'34"
(Outstanding Screenplays) 19 May 2021

ADAPTATION. (2002/Jonze/USA)

Nicolas Cage (playing Charlie Kaufman) question to screenwriting guru Robert McKee at a seminar

Charlie Kaufman: Sir, What if a writer is attempting to write a story where nothing much happens? Where people don’t change, they don’t have any epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated, and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world.

Robert McKee: The real world?

Charlie Kaufman: Yes sir.

Robert McKee: The real fucking world. First of all, you write a screenplay without a conflict or crisis, you’ll bore your audience to tears. Secondly, nothing happens in the world? are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There is genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world someone sacrifice his life to save somebody else. every fucking day, someone somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love. People lose it. For Christ sake, a child watches his mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don’t know crap about life! And why the fuck are your wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don’t have any use for it! I don’t have any bloody use for it! 

Charlie Kaufman: OK, thanks.