It’s the Seminar that all in Hollywood, bar Spielberg, have attended. It made such an impression on John Cleese that he went back for more. And then it was famously immortalized by Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, albeit in a somewhat disparaging way. It’s where all screenwriters must go, so we’re told.

Actually, for the first two days, McKee doesn’t really cover any more than he covers in the accompanying book - that giant of screenwriting bibles, Story.  (Unless, that is, you count the sprinkling of smooth witticisms, the impeccably delivered anecdotes and the occasional torrent of unbridled, unapologetic xenophobia.) Indeed, McKee has committed vast chunks of the book to memory, but so would you if you’d reiterated it just about every month in the last twenty five years.  Again calling Kaufman to mind, MacKee says that there are two portals to the brain when it comes to learning: the eye and the ear. He argues that the impact of a combination of both is far greater than that of either alone. Which is a great way for him to justify charging all that money for this three-day lecture. And a lecture is exactly what it is, in the Victorian shut-up-and-listen sense of the word.

What you get on the third day however, which you can’t get in any book as far as I’m aware, is an incredibly detailed scene-by-scene breakdown of Casablanca. Now I for one was dreading this. I hate that damn film with a passion. But I must admit, there was a lot that I missed in the film the first time around, and McKee’s insight was fascinating. Don’t get me wrong: I still hate the damn film with a passion, but I learned a lot on that day.

It’s easy to think of McKee as a kind of gung-ho American who just doesn’t get non-Hollywood screenwriting. But the truth is, there’s no such thing as Hollywood story design and non-Hollywood story design; there’s just good storytelling and bad storytelling. And if you don’t get that, then you need to get yourself on Robert McKee’s Story Seminar. Or at least read the book.