'The cult of Story is destroying our culture from within. It's time to start fighting back'

Mark Ravenhill
The Guardian

Funny old things, internal reports. After months of deliberation and a storm of fact-finding, the BBC last week discovered it had a liberal bias, a comfort zone of liberal thought in which its staff operated. The response from the BBC to its own report has been swift. "Of course we have a liberal bias. Now can we carry on being the nice, comfy, multicultural people that we were before you came along, thank you very much?"

I'd welcome the end of liberal bias as much as any whingeing old rightwinger of the Melanie Phillips school. But at the moment, there's another bias that is bothering me more. It's a sinister conspiracy no one's talking about - one bigger than the BBC. It's spreading through movies, television drama, fiction writing for adults and children. It's beginning to creep into the theatre. It's a cult with thousands of glassy-eyed members. It's poisoning more and more of our culture. It's called Story. And I want you to help me put an end to it.

An early warning about Story came in Charlie Kaufman's 2002 film Adaptation. In the film, Kaufman creates a fictional version of himself, a "Charlie Kaufman" who is given a book about orchid hunting to adapt into a film. Wrestling with the book, Charlie is constantly interrupted by his extrovert twin brother. Donald Kaufman is writing a formulaic serial killer movie, for which he eventually earns a huge sum. He is following the principles of Story, as learned in the screen-writing seminars of a guru called Robert McKee. As Charlie's material proves more and more intractable, he seeks McKee's advice and turns the orchid book into a Hollywood genre film.

Viewers may not have realised that McKee - so brilliantly played by Brian Cox in the film - is a very real person. His Story seminars are real. And Donald Kaufman's manic devotion to the "principles" of Story is shared by hundreds of thousands of real-life disciples around the world.

Story could only have come out of America, birthplace of Fordism. By assembling cars on a production line, a cheap, reliable product was made available to millions of consumers. A few decades later, the same principles were applied to McDonald's. Individuality was sacrificed, but in exchange the customer got a cheap meal and a brand that was recognisable and reliable anywhere in the world.

It was only a matter of time before the same principles were applied to Hollywood films. By the 1980s, the studios had created a blueprint for the perfect film, a tool by which any script could be analysed and "improved". The aim was to produce a product that was as reliable as a McDonald's burger.

McKee has fought his way to the front of the pack of story experts. His public seminars attract thousands; studios seek his advice on scripts. Fair enough. McKee's book, Story, is good. It's the best of its kind. I've read it several times and learned some valuable things from it. But there's a problem. It's hard to write a script. In many ways, it's harder to respond to a script, but that's your job as a director, producer or editor. Ideally, you should have taste and a good gut instinct.

But now? Writer delivers script, goes in for meeting. "I'm missing the initiating incident on page 23," is a note that you're very likely to hear in our Story-centred world. Rarely, "Why are we making this?" and certainly not, "Are we challenging any ideas about form?" Recently, a playwright told me that he was advised by one major theatre to read McKee's Story. This is a book about writing a Hollywood movie! It's frustrating for us writers. But it's disastrous for you as an audience member or reader. Gradually, our culture is turning into the equivalent of the McFlurry. And that's got to be bad.

So here's the solution. A book burning. It's not something I'd normally advocate and not something the Guardian would, I imagine, endorse. But I think we have to do it. Writers, producers, editors, if you have a copy of Story - get in touch. We can make a lovely bonfire in my back garden. We'll imagine a richer, more exciting culture. And that's good for everyone, isn't it?

· This article was amended on Monday June 25 2007. In this article we mispelled Charlie and Donald Kaufman's surname as Kaufmann. This has been corrected.