Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
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Transcript:
But for her, it started with Heartburn which is the novel she wrote about her own divorce from Carl Bernstein — the Carl Bernstein of All The President’s Men because he had an affair behind her back when she was pregnant. So she dumped him and then she wrote a book about it which became a movie starring Meryl Street and Jack Nicholson. From that, she went on to write Silkwood which is a brilliant film you should check out. Meryl Streep. It’s based on the real-life woman named Karen Silkwood who is about to give secrets to the government about how her nuclear facility was being mismanaged and she ended up crashed on the side of the road dead and nobody knew exactly how that happened. So that’s a brilliant — so she went from drama, drama, to comedy and then, of course, we know the other movies. My Blue Heaven is one of my favorites that got dismissed because didn’t make a lot at the box office but it is quite charming. It’s the witness protection program and it’s Steve Martin as a mafiosi in the program right and Rick Moranis is his his watcher and he doesn’t play by the rules he’s supposed to play and t’s funny as heck. So she’s Nora Ephron. She’s really she’s so brilliant that’s a Nora Ephron Prize you can win if you’re a screenwriter at the Tribeca Film Festival. That’s how important she is to the business right?
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
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