Learn more about the American Revolution through the eyes of an important, Italian Immigrant, Filippo Mazzei. Read his story today!
“Filippo said sadly, “I have seen many Assemblies, but none so lax as this one in France.”
Madame Lavoisier, spoke in their defense. “Dear Mr. Mazzei, you are doubtless referring to some other Assembly than the one on which my husband sits.”
She was not to be taken lightly. But as a woman she was not a member of the Assembly and so had her information second hand, through her husband and his particular bias.”
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.
* 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
If you have friends who were interested in reading but low on cash, tell them to check it out.
And this is a reminder that if you want your local library to carry a copy, you need to ask a librarian. They have a form you can fill out that requests what books you’d like in their stacks. You can also send or give them this flyer with all the pertinent information!
* 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
* 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
Who doesn’t love men who love their Moms – and have this extraordinary opportunity to celebrate their lives through the use of their own art – and position – in life? — Rosanne
* 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
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?
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.
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:
So Frankenstein is fascinating but tell me, what you notice about these two copies of this book? What’s different? The covers are different in what way? {Audience: The font is a little more sinister.) True. True. The font is a little more sinister. There’s also a big difference. (Audience: Her name isn’t on it) In 1818 they’re not gonna publish a book written by a woman because not only were women not supposed to write novels — they weren’t supposed to read novels because they’ll rot your brain and damage your interior organs such that you can’t have children. Yes. Which is kind of what we say about video games these days. So every new piece of media is going to rot your brain and destroy you. Now we say destroys the boys as well as the girls but still there was this idea that women should not dabble in that business of novels. They were very bad for you, which is kind of hilarious cuz now I’m telling you to read a novel over the summer. It will be good for you.
* 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!
KPFK’s Andrew Tonkovitch interviewed Paperback L.A. Editor Susan La Tempa for Bibliocracy Radio last weekend and they had nice things to say about how fun my piece on the writers of The Monkees and how much he had misunderstood the band until he read my article.
They discuss the whole anthology in this interview, and touch on The Monkees around the 20:20 mark.
Host Andrew Tonkovitch interviews editor Susan LaTempa, June 16, 2019 about the Paperback L.A. Book 3, A Casual Anthology: Secrets. SigAlerts. Ravines. Records.
He says, “This one is titled, joyfully, ‘Secrets, Sigalerts, Ravines, Records.’ Once again, this compendium-meets-literary/artistic collage includes both new discoveries and reminders, with a multi-media collection including fiction, nonfiction, photography, lists– a free-form provocation which, after reading, will inspire readers to pursue recommended or featured writers, topics, historical moments, artists and places. It’s a little hard to describe but you will know it — and love it! — when you see it.”
Editor Susan La Tempa hosted all the local contributors at the event space in the Helms Bakery district, which gave us a chance to check out that lovely landmark. Then I had the chance to meet Lisa See – author of On Gold Mountain, which tells the story of 4 generations of her Chinese-American family living in Los Angeles and running a factory, an antique shop and a restaurant popular with the Hollywood crowd of the 1930s and 40s. We had first heard of her book when Doug and I were docents at the Autry Western Heritage Museum in Griffith Park and they had a whole exhibit dedicated to telling the story of the book (which it turns out Lisa curated!) It was so popular an exhibit that it hung around long enough for Joseph to be born and to become old enough to play in the little mini restaurant they set up with pots and plates and menus. So it was wonderful to hear Lisa read an excerpt from the book and then to talk to her during the book signing segment of the afternoon.
I was also deeply impressed by the way Susan opened the event with a native Tongva greeting – something I had only seen done at the public events we attended in New Zealand where everyone began events with the traditional Maori greeting where you introduce yourself in terms of what is your mountain, your river, and your ancestry. Beautiful! So hearing it in Los Angeles was a lovely idea we all ought to emulate.
Then the super cool thing was that several friends made the trip down to Culver City – thanks Duke and Dena Jackels and Dan and Liz Forer – and Euphemia – for coming to the reading, and for buying books!
While we at Screenwriting Research Network strive to force a focus on screenwriters, we need allies in the non-academic world to properly credit them.
In that vein, I recently wrote to the Guardian’s film critic about a moment in his review of ‘Gangs of New York’ where he credited the director for a visual moment that occurred, clearly and firstly, in the original script — something that happens far too frequently. Often, such letters yield nothing outside of getting the issue off my chest, but today I received this response:
“Dear Dr Welch: many thanks for your email, which has been passed on to me. Your comment is entirely fair: I should have credited this moment to the screenwriters: Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan. With all good wishes,”
I received this response after sending this email to The Guardian’s film desk:
“As a professor of Screenwriting History for an MFA program in the U.S. I greatly enjoy sharing your reviews of American films with my students, so I hope you don’t mind my noting a small mistake I found while researching your review of Gangs of New York – but again, being a professor of Screenwriting History (not film history because film history is the history of directors) I found you fell victim to one of the age-old issues of the old auteur theory. You credited a visual moment to the director when, in fact, it had existed in the original script, therefore the credit ought to have gone to the writer(s) and their imaginations and use of quality research.”
“The streets erupt in a saturnalia of lawlessness, to which the director adds an inspired touch: an escaped elephant from Barnum’s circus trumpeting down the rubble-strewn streets.”
Yet that elephant was in the script (which I researched at the WGA Library in Los Angeles) all along, as you can see:
“116 EXT. CANAL STREET DAWN
The first thing we see is an ELEPHANT, who trumpets fearfully at the sudden sound of the shattered door. The gang stops, wary of this huge refugee from Barnum’s Museum, but the animal is more frightened of them. It hurries on down the street…”
I only make this point because those kinds of errors lead to the continued idea that directors are the only authors of a film – an idea most film programs are debunking by the day. I hope critics (since they are also writers) will remember screenwriters more prominently in their work in the future. I have taken to reminding people that, when you speak of your favorite films you rarely recount memorable camera angles, but in fact you recount your favorite dialogue and that is the realm of the writer. Often, as in this instance, many of the visuals credited to directors were first imagined by writers as well.
![08 Nora Ephron from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/csuf-rmw-w3h-08.jpeg)
![Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Denver Pop Culture Con 2019 [Video] (48 Minutes)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/monkees-denverpcc-2019.png)
![05 Mary Shelley and The Evil Novel from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/scifi-rmw-cpp-05.jpeg)
![Rosanne Reads at Paperback LA 3 Launch Party [Photos]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DSC09388.jpg)
![Rosanne Reads at Paperback LA 3 Launch Party [Photos]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_4246.jpg)
![Rosanne Reads at Paperback LA 3 Launch Party [Photos]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_4385.jpg)
![Rosanne Reads at Paperback LA 3 Launch Party [Photos]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_4388.jpg)
