Cussler’s writing is taken to task

In the film “Adaptation,” a screenwriting instructor named Robert McKee humiliates a struggling scribe played by actor Nicolas Cage.

Launching into an obscenity-laced tirade, the McKee character screams, “You, my friend, don’t know crap about life! And why are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don’t have any bloody use for it!”

The real-life McKee turned in an equally dramatic performance last week in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. This time, he berated the work of bestselling author Clive Cussler.

“I mean, I cannot overstate how terrible the writing is,” McKee testified. “It is flawed in every way writing can be flawed.”

McKee appeared as an expert witness in a Hollywood breach-of-contract case that pits Cussler against Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz. Both sides are fighting over who is to blame for the financial failure of the movie “Sahara,” which was financed by Anschutz’s production company.

The jury trial, which began in late January, is expected to continue until early May.

Anschutz’s attorneys hired McKee to evaluate a draft of the “Sahara” screenplay that was written by Cussler.

McKee said he did not accept the consulting work with the intent of assailing a fellow writer. “To find myself in a situation where I have to take a side against a writer is very upsetting to me,” he said.

But McKee was well-compensated. At a rate of $500 per hour, he has received more than $60,000 as one of Anschutz’s experts, McKee said.

Cussler declined to comment Tuesday about McKee’s testimony. He referred questions to his lawyer.

Attorney Bertram Fields said McKee’s verbal attacks were “totally irrelevant” to the case. “He is a very good actor and he uses colorful language,” Fields said. “I think he was all wet.”

McKee is perhaps best known for the intensive screenwriting classes that he has taught for the last 25 years. Each “Robert McKee’s Story Seminar” generates between $60,000 and $90,000 in revenue.

McKee said that 75,000 people had taken his three-day seminar (current fee: $545). Among his star pupils are writers Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich”), John Cleese (“A Fish Called Wanda”) and Akiva Goldman (“A Beautiful Mind”), director Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings”) and actors Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan, Rob Lowe and Faye Dunaway.

When he was approached about his character appearing in “Adaptation,” McKee was torn.

“I have a reputation in the world,” he said. “I cannot be a character in a bad movie.”

“Adaptation” is loosely based on Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief.” It stars Cage as Kaufman, Meryl Streep as Orlean, Chris Cooper as a crazed botanist and Brian Cox as McKee.

While teaching one of his seminars in New York, the celluloid McKee is seen lashing into Cage, who has a severe case of writer’s block. The verbal assault may have seemed inconsistent with the real McKee.

“I champion against all the forces that would cause writers to write badly against their will,” McKee testified. “I am on the writers’ side. Always have been. Always will be.”

After three days on the witness stand, however, McKee left little doubt what side he was on.

Asked his appraisal of Cussler’s bestselling book, McKee said, “The writing of the novel is bad, no question about it.” When told that “Sahara,” the book, was a huge commercial success, McKee replied, “Bad writing often makes a lot of money.”

McKee saved his harshest invectives for the July 2002 screenplay turned in by Cussler.

“The writing is very bad,” he testified. “How bad? I have thought of phrases like ‘seriously flawed’ [or] ‘fatally flawed.’ But it is beyond all of that, because when something is flawed there is an implication that something else about it is good.”

McKee said he counted more than 50 examples of coincidences, poor logic, out-of-character moments and improbabilities in Cussler’s script.

“On average, there is something unbelievable happening every two minutes,” he said.

The screenplay treated the audience like “dimwits that need everything explained to them three times over.”

On cross-examination, Fields sought to undermine McKee’s indictment of his client’s work by noting other screenplays he found abhorrent.

McKee acknowledged that he felt “Titanic” was “poorly written,” “The Da Vinci Code” was a “flawed” work, and the classic “Citizen Kane” was “heartless,” “emotionally empty” and “cold.”

Fields zeroed in on McKee’s own screenwriting career. “Mr. McKee has been trying for 20 years to get a dozen screenplays made into a motion picture and he has never been successful,” Fields said in an interview.

The attorney also pointed out that much of the Cussler script was based on the earlier drafts of Academy Award-winning screenwriter David S. Ward.

“It is understandable why McKee wants to pile on Cussler, but not Ward,” he said.

At the end of his testimony, McKee explained to the jury why he occasionally became heated while denouncing Cussler.

“Bad writing offends me,” he said.

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glenn.bunting@latimes.com