than an amalgam of hack clichés on the subject of screen writing, Charlie's slacker brother Donald (also played by Cage) uses the knowledge obtained attending the seminar to write a spec script he then sells for a large amount of money through his brother's agent. The film then concludes with the very ending which McKee had ridiculed (Deus ex machina), as well as a voice-over epilogue in which – by means of voice-over narration – Cage's Kaufman character admonishes himself for disobeying a cardinal rule of McKee's to avoid voice-over narration. McKee appeared on the Simpsons episode "Caper Chase" as himself. Anecdotes McKee claims in his seminars that he does not say not to use voice-over narration. There is some truth to the scene in Adaptation however, as he vehemently teaches that using voice-over to substitute for telling the story via action and dialogue is weak, whereas he teaches that voice-over used to counterpoint and enrich the story can be wonderful. McKee is known to object to the French-originated "auteur theory", which states that the director is the de facto author of a movie. McKee states otherwise, that the writer/screenwriter is in fact the most important creator of the movie. In a Haaretz article, McKee was quoted as saying in front of a Tel Aviv audience that Israelis have a rough sense of humor, completely different from the known worldwide Jewish one, since Israelis are living in a harsh reality which leads them to lose their sense of humor. Books Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997) Dialogue: the Art of Verbal Action for Stage, Page and Screen (2016) Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World (2018) with Thomas Gerace Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen (2021) Action: The Art of Excitement for Screen, Page, and Game (2022) with Bassem El-Wakil References External links Robert McKee's Story Seminar — Official Web site Interview with Robert McKee by The New Yorker Advice for the aspiring CNN A writing guru's very own 'Story' CNN McKee's visit to Israel — Video article by Ynet News — in this words association-style interview, McKee relates to the following terms in the following order (in the video, the words are composed in Hebrew letter cubes): 1) Blank page, 2) Art of storytelling, 3) Inspiration, 4) Disappointment, 5) Thrill, 6) Mind control, 7) America, 8) Time. Screenwriting