Story – Robert McKee's Creative Storytelling Magazine Issue 005 – Drew Carey | Page 38

MCKEE
INTERVIEWS
MARK WHITNEY
to see the way people seem to
have abandoned their ideals and
let a bad act on a single day redefine our society. I would be upset
at how willing people seem to be
at the notion that an entire free
system should be reversed engineered on the altar of something
bad that happened one day that
defies any sort of statistical measurement. So I would be upset
by that, but I wouldn’t be able
to articulate in any great detail
why I was upset. It would just be
a visceral feeling as an artist, as
an entrepreneur.
RM: If you hadn’t gone through
the judicial system the way
you did, would you think you
would have still found your
way to wanting to do standup?
MW: Absolutely. We moved to
Southern California from New
England in the summer of 2000.
If you watch my show, you know
that there are a lot of things that
we were moving away from, but
there were also a bunch of things
that we were moving to, and one
of the things that were moving
to was being in an environment
that had a comedy club and show
business. When I was 18, the day
I got out of high school I was going to get in the car and drive to
New York City and I was going
to be an actor. I had an aunt who
was a lead actress in the soap
opera Another World. I had con-

nections down there. She lived
in Westport, Connecticut and
commuted down to New York.
I fell in love with a valedictorian
in the last week of school, and
then we had kids, and you give
them one meal and they want
another. You know how they
are, so it’s a 20-year timeout. To
sort of flex my creative juices, I
ran an advertising agency for a
few years and I built these little
companies, but it was all creative. Everything I created was
due to my ability to write, and
it’s only the last couple of years
that I identified myself first and
foremost as a writer. I look back
over my career of 30 years as an
entrepreneur and as a guy that
did advertising for years, worked
in TV and radio and for a while
did seminars across the country and it’s all related to writing;
it’s all about the writing. Without the writing, I wouldn’t have
had anything. When we came to
Southern California, the whole
idea was that when my kids were
grown, I was going to pursue a
career as a performer.

Story Magazine // Issue 005