On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Watch This TEDx Talk by Dr. Rosanne Welch
Next up, a #Recap of our #writercrushes of June 2019:
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#wcw #writercrush #WriterCrushWednesday #writercrusheveryday #RosanneWelch #ShondaRhimes #NatashaLyonne #2019 #Goodbye2019 #thewodc #thewriteordiechicks
Photos: PolyCentric; via Twitter @shondarhimes; via Twitter @THR
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This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
Because of him talking to her at that event, she stayed on the show and as we know, she went through the movies– as an older woman, which is also a big deal an — older woman doing empowering things very cool. She influenced Whoopi Goldberg who at that point was an Academy award-winning actress. She did the TV show, The Next Generation, for the very same reason. She said I grew up watching Nichelle Nichols. I want to give that same message to children in the next generation. So she would guest frequently on Next Generation and while we’re busy thinking about people who got very very influenced, you may not know this lady? Anybody? She’s the first African American female astronaut. Her name is Mae Jemison, all right, so she’s an American woman who saw Star Trek as a kid and said I’m gonna get that job and she did which is pretty amazing. So much so that she guest-starred on the show to say thanks for what influence you gave me in my childhood and I want other young girls to see me in the future. That’s an amazing piece of powerful message coming from one character, right, one character being invented in a show. So it’s fascinating to me what we can learn from that.
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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
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I’m always happy to announce the latest issues of the Journal of Screenwriting and 10.3 — a Special Issue discussing ‘Historiographic Research in Screenwriting’ — is now available!
For me, as Book Reviews editor it’s especially nice to note that 2 alums of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program, one current student and Friend of the Program Anna Weinstein are among the reviewers of books this month, with current MFA candidate CJ Ehrlich having reviewed a text used in our History of Screenwriting courses – Tom Stempel’s Framework.
Does your college library have a subscription? Order one today to read all these reviews PLUS the articles noted below:
Crash! Boom! Bang! How to Write Action Movies, Michael Lucker (2017)
JENNIFER ANNE MARTIN
Words in Action: Forms and Techniques of Film Dialogue, Paolo Braga (2015)
JACKIE PEREZ
ANNA WEINSTEIN
FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film, 3rd ed., Tom Stempel (2000)
C. J. EHRLICH
For more information about the special issue and journal, click here >> https://www.intellectbooks.
Issue 10.3 Included:
STEVEN PRICE AND CLAUS TIEBER
Articles
JAN HENSCHEN
ALEXANDRA KSENOFONTOVA
Walter Reisch: The musical writer
CLAUS TIEBER
Network television writers and the ‘race problems’ of 1968
CARYN MURPHY
From dialogue writer to screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini at work for Federico Fellini
CLAUDIA ROMANELLI
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!
Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK
* 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!
The Top 25 Pages for 2019. Check Them Out!
Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
Colonizing, decolonizing: Bad-faith liberalism and African space colonialism in Doris Lessing’s screenplay The White Princess
By James Arnett
Although Doris Lessing frequently wrote about Africa over the course of her career, and her relationship to colonialism is undeniably critical, changing theoretical paradigms have complicated readings of her anticolonial critique. From a treasure trove of unpublished African material contained in her papers at the Harry Ransom Center Archives at the University of Texas, this article looks at one of her unpublished screenplays, The White Princess, as a complex and fraught attempt to generate an ethos of decolonization well in advance of its contemporary, post-postcolonial preeminence in twenty-first-century theoretical discourse. Lessing’s positing of a speculative future African recolonization of Britain would have emerged into a smattering of British speculative fictions of the late 1960s and 1970s that likewise imagined African colonialism, but did so, this article argues, hampered by a bad-faith liberalism. Despite the subversive potential of exploring inverted colonial dynamics, this article argues that Lessing ultimately cannot break free of generic conventions, political and theoretical limitations, or colonial discursive structures to achieve real decolonization work in The White Princess – although she may succeed elsewhere in her oeuvre.
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!
Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK
* 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!
Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
Watch this entire presentation
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Transcript:
Directors are lovely people but when you talk about a movie to your friends rarely do you discuss camera angles. You discuss dialogue and that’s what the writer wrote.It should be the writer’s movie or nobodies. I have a big fight with publishers now. I refuse to do things like Spielberg’s Lincoln. No. Tony Kushner wrote Lincoln and he’s got a Pulitzer Prize. it’s either his movie or it’s just Lincoln. Let’s leave it at that all right? It does not belong to Steven Spielberg cuz he didn’t write any of it but these guys are wonderful. Their work was great. They were invited — they did Thin Man. They did It’s A Wonderful LIfe — they were invited to work on the play the Diary of Anne Frank. A couple other people were offered at first. This was at a time when everything was crazy after the war. There were some thoughts that maybe it was a fake diary right but these guys believed in i.t They met Otto Frank — Anne’s father — and worked with him and created the play which won them a Pulitzer Prize and then they adapted their own play into a film. So Francis and Albert Hackett — they were considered the most beloved couple in Hollywood. They were friends with Dorothy and Alan and all these other couples that work together and they were apparently the nicest people you could ever meet, 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.
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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 from the LA Public Library
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Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
Their popular culture travels through the decades. This is where people start going “why is anyone still talking about them. The show is canceled? The show is over. It’s done” but it’s not, right? In the seventies, the show was rerun on Saturday mornings so a lot of another level of fandom came to them as children watching the Saturday morning TV. So, of course, Davy is still a big name. So he comes on to The Brady Bunch because Marcia has written a letter asking him to come and perform at her prom and he doesn’t get it on time. He doesn’t get it fast enough and eventually, he gets told about it and then he decides to be her date which is adorable and is apparently the most has been rerun more than any other. Which means — which means that Davy was also then voted the number one teen idol of all time at a certain point, so that’s a big deal.
Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.
Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.
This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.
Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?
Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland
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Watch this entire presentation
![31 Characters: Nyota Uhura, Star Trek from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction - Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 20 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/scifi-rmw-cpp-31.jpeg)
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This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
In terms of characters that we need to pay some attention to, if you don’t know the original Star Trek you should but you’ve seen some of these characters and memes all over the internet right? Nyota Uhura. It was a big deal. They’re putting an African-American woman in the future. Now there was some chit chat about the sexism going on because she was just answering the phone. She’s running the radio on the ship but she’s still on the ship on the main place and she often was involved in stories, but what’s really important about her character and why these two are connected in these pictures is that after the first season on the show, she was kind of like “I’m just answering the damn phone like I don’t really feel like I’m empowered very much I don’t really want to do this show anymore” and she was a big band singer, she could go back out on the road , sing, tour America, make money. I don’t need to do this cheesy science fiction show and then she met him at some event– I forget — some fundraising event and she said she kind of apologized for kind of how stupid her role was in the show and told him she was quitting so she’s proud of I want you to know I’m not gonna do this anymore and he was like “Oh no no no no. You have to stay. You are the only African-American who is seen in the future. You do not understand the power of little children looking up and saying okay we survive. She made it. I’ll make it. This is a big, big deal.
* 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!
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Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
Watch this entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
These guys are somebody that everybody should know and, of course, each of these people that I’m talking about now, they have a chapter in this book which is what the books all about. Francis and Albert Hackett. They were married for 54 years and wrote films together for about 50 of those. They started in New York as playwrights they came out here and again you’ve probably never heard their names but you have seen these movies, have you not? Every year how many times do we watch It’s a Wonderful Life and what does everybody tell you whose movie is that? Frank Capra’s movie because Frank Capra forced himself on the writing credits. He wrote some scenes and had his name added to the writing credits and when they edited the movie they cut out all the scenes he wrote. The movie is Francis and Albert Hackett’s script. He kept adding more to prove he was a writer and none of it was any good. So it kills me that we call that Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
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.
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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 from the LA Public Library
Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
They were their own comic book. I’m sure somewhere in this place this weekend at one of the big comic cage upstairs might have a copy. I don’t know. It’s probably pretty rare. They were drawn by who knows who the drawer — the artist — Hirschfeld — thank you very much. That’s a huge thing that he would choose them right? This was for a piece in TV Guide at the time but he did all the great Broadway stars. So and I just think that’s beautiful (Audience: Is his daughter’s name in there somewhere?) You know it should be and I think it’s in Peter’s hair I think or it might be at the end of Mike’s hair. It’s got to be in this hair somewhere. He always had the name Nina — his daughter’s name. That’s a fun fact of Hirschfeld and if you go online you can google Hirschfeld Nina and it will show all the photos where her name appears. So I’m guessing if we looked hard enough it would be in there. So they’re making it all over popular culture. Obviously, there’s other Hirschfeld’s where you can see more of them and look at all the famous people that he’s covered but there in that world. Nina’s definitely in her Marilyn Monroe’s skirt.
Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.
Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.
This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.
Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?
Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
