The Mentoris Project Book Launch Party And Reading With Dr. Rosanne Welch
I was deeply honored to be asked to read a section of my novel America’s Forgotten Founding Father (on the life of Filippo Mazzei) at the launch party for the entire Mentoris Book Project, which includes over 30 books about famous Italians and Italian Americans. At the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood over a hundred family and friends gathered to celebrate this new publishing venture created by Robert Barbera under the umbrella of his Barbera Foundation. The evening also offered the chance to meet the director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Valeria Rumori and her cultural attache, Leonilde Callocchia.
A selection of Mentoris Project Books Now Available
Dr. Rosanne Welch reads from America’s Forgotten Founding Father
I was deeply honored to be asked to read a section of my novel America’s Forgotten Founding Father (on the life of Filippo Mazzei) at the launch party for the entire Mentoris Book Project, which includes over 30 books about famous Italians and Italian Americans. At the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood over a hundred family and friends gathered to celebrate this new publishing venture created by Robert Barbera under the umbrella of his Barbera Foundation. The evening also offered the chance to meet the director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Valeria Rumori and her cultural attache, Leonilde Callocchia.
Dr. Rosanne Welch and Robert Barbera, Founder of The Barbera Foundation and The Mentoris Project
It was especially nice that my mother Mary was on hand as she is the youngest child of the immigrants who brought our family to America, and my son Joseph, who is their great grandchild — and of course my wonderful husband Douglas, who recorded the event and took all the photos, which means, of course, that he does not appear in any of them.
Dr. Rosanne Welch and Mary Danko
Mary Danko, Joseph “Guiseppe” Welch and Dr. Rosanne Welch
Many thanks to Robert and to Ken LaZebnik, editor of the series who invited me along for the ride and to all the local Stephens MFA students who came out to support their professors in this new venture.
Fellow Mentoris Author, Pamela Winfrey, signs her book, “Marconi and His Muses”
Fellow Mentoris Author (Soldier, Diplomat, Archaeologist: A Novel Based On The Bold Life Of Louis Palma Di Cesnola), Dr. Peg Lamphier and Dr. Rosanne Welch
In the book, she makes all the decisions about her own life as I said, including whether or not to have sex with a really cute surfer. In the movie, her boyfriend makes all the decisions about whether or not they’ll be together and I didn’t even think about that until I watched all the sequels and I kept waiting and it was always him breaking up with her and her waiting for him to come back to her. I thought Oh this is just a disaster and sad and scary in many ways. This really struck me, too. In the book, this is her conclusion. Her definition of who she is. “The summer with Jeff could have been just a dream, but with the board and the sun and the waves it was for real. Maybe I was just a woman in love with a surfboard. It’s a simple as that.” That’s literally the thesis of her own book. In the movie, it was getting pinned by her boyfriend which was the absolute ultimate moment in her life. I mean you can’t water it down any more than that. It fascinates me and yet this is mythology that is known about Gidget and it’s not her true story at all — which really makes me sad.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
Encyclopedia of Women in American History, edited by Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier, has been named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, an annual list selected by experts of the Collection Development and Evaluation Section (CODES) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association.
The Outstanding Reference Sources Committee was established in 1958 to recommend the most outstanding reference publications published the previous year for small and medium-sized public and academic libraries. The selected titles are valuable reference resources and are highly recommended for inclusion in any library’s reference collections.
So I think it’s really important to give voice to these women through teaching this. Representation matters. This is one of my favorite Facebook memes going around right now. For children of today, this is a huge deal, right? When I was a kid Luke was the Jedi. We didn’t know until a later movie that Leia could be and she never got to be. Like, wait a minute. Why isn’t she as good as him? Why didn’t Obi-Wan find her? So, it’s important for kids to see that and finally, I like to teach silent films because I always tell them, as academics. or as writers, we’re standing on the shoulders of the people came before us. We need to credit them with being in the world first and giving us the foundation to build upon. That’s important to me.
The later reputation Nesmith received for rebelling against authority came from his push for the actors to have a say in the music they recorded, which has been nicknamed the ‘palace revolt’ and resulted in the ouster of music supervisor Don Kirshner. Somehow the unrest Nesmith felt over the music situation blended into a common notion that he also detested the character he played. .
Ninotchka is a 1939 American film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.[1] It is written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch,[1] based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. Ninotchka is Greta Garbo’s first full comedy, and her penultimate film. It is one of the first American movies which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray, in this instance comparing it with the free and sunny Parisian society of pre-war years.- Wikipedia
Learn More About Greta Garbo with these books
††
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available at the LA Public Library
It really hurt me to watch these generations of women discuss the business of being a woman and their dismissing her skill entirely.
Audience: Which year is the film? In which year was that a film, sorry?
The film is 1959. Thank you, sorry. Yes, 1959. We’re going to move into the 1960s with the next 2 sequels and the show.
So this is typical when a guy writes it and also the difference between the book and the films. In the book, she has a friend who’s an aspiring playwright. Gidget herself is reading Rachel Carson because Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was about how we were affecting the environment and the environment means everything to her because that’s where the surf is. In the movie, she doesn’t read because that’s a boring thing for a girl to do. Her father’s a professor, in the movie he’s kind of a sitcom goof-off. He’s actually played by Carl Reiner in one of the sequels. She wants to learn to surf. that’s her “character want.” If we scripting this story. In this she want’s a boyfriend. I mean entirely take away the thing that makes her special and different.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
and Follow
![Representation Matters from Giving Voice to Silent Films and the Far From Silent Women Who Wrote Them with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ufva-19-rey-leia.jpeg)
†
†
