Dr. Rosanne Welch – Page 20 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

14 Obituaries Are Unreliable Narrators from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Nearly two years ago I had the pleasure of being invited to join a panel at the then upcoming SCMS (Society of Cinema and Media Studies) conference set for Seattle. As you know that was canceled due to Covid with the hopes of reconvening in Colorado in 2021. That became a virtual conference but our group decided to reapply our panel and we four were able to ‘meet’ on Zoom on Sunday and present: Writing Between the Lines: Feminist Strategies for Historical Absences, Cliché, and the Unreliable Narrator.

Here you can watch a clip from my part of the presentation,

“When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”

Transcript:

To be fair, it does happen to male screenwriters sometimes. Nunally Johnson is the one who adapted ‘The Grapes of Wrath” and John Ford, who directed actually wrote in a book that he said, “You know people are credit this particular shot with my genius but you wrote it down in the scripts.” Right? And Nunally was like, ‘I don’t know who’s going get the attribution but I know I wrote it and that’s all that matters.” So, he didn’t particularly care but his name disappears so badly that obituary writers are terribly unreliable narrators. When Nunally Johnson’s wife died – she was the actress Dorris Bowden who played Rose O’Sharon in The Grapes of Wrath – they called it John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath and they said that she left acting after she married that film’s screenwriter. They took his name out of his wife’s obituary. Who’s more important in her death? Her husband or the guy who directed a movie she did fifty years ago? Clearly think about that and she herself was very proud of how John Steinbeck had talked about Nunally Johnson’s writing because he was so brilliant. So to erase him out of her obituary is ridiculous.

Watch this entire presentation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Vintage Film Cameras, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram [Photography]

Follow me on Instagram

Visit The Hollywood Heritage Museum

23 The Voice of the Character from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.

It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!

Transcript:

So it was a real like getting to know the voice of a character and a character that has had similar but slightly different voices across all 50 years. They all have had their own way of doing things and their own sort of idioms. I think that’s really delicate but that line really stuck out to me and you just can’t imagine thinking your way through it so long and then I think this is really important because it keeps us with the theme – the overarching theme – of the series which is really about pacifism and about really attempting to bring peace to the universe, not war. Even though of course David comes back from the time war and all that stuff but I think keeping that in mind and allowing a female character to bring forward that idea. In a funny way I’m a huge fan of Robert Redford and all that sort of thing and “The Way We Were” is one of my favorite romances and the idea that there was the Barbra Streisand character – ban the bomb, pushing for pacifism. It’s a woman is always trying to say let’s not go to war first let’s get to the solution because I don’t want to see all the people I know get hurt. So I think that’s very true not just that she’s a female character but it’s Doctor Who. That’s the job right? So we try to do it without a gun. Sometimes they show up but they really don’t belong there. They really don’t belong there.

Watch this entire presentation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

14 Owen Harper from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch, San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I recently presented a talk on Torchwood (Why Torchwood Still Matters) where I highlighted a few ways in which the show (airing from 2006 to 2011) came up with progressive and innovative ideas that are being used by other franchises today.

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

…and then Owen was an interesting character. I mean he could be your bland white guy except he wasn’t a nice guy necessarily and they had to put up with him because of his talent and he had to learn and grow. So I think he was an interesting character. He’s not the most interesting of all of them. The fact that he had a relationship with Tosh says a little bit about him right? So it’s not the best character but he was you know i mean if he had to have a second white guy he was okay but here’s where i start thinking about the writing makes the show stand out.

Watch this entire presentation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

New History Book: Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life in American History by Keri F. Dearborn, Edited by Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier.

Buy at Your Local Bookstore | Bookshop.org | Amazon | ABC-CLIO

It’s time to celebrate the latest book in our series to be published – Keri Dearborn’s Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life in American History landed on my doorstep yesterday and I couldn’t be more excited to read it (even though I’ve already read it to edit it). It comes on the tail of my having watched The First Lady series on Showtime which we hope has interested a new generation in the life and times of this amazing woman.

As with all of our authors in the series, Keri’s research was fascinating to follow – my favorite new fact was learning (thanks to the release of new primary documents) that the scientists who talked to FDR about the Manhattan Project weren’t able to make an appointment with the president – but one of them was in a social club with Mrs. Roosevelt and used that connection to talk to her first. She’s the one who told FDR he had to meet with them.

Those are the great details all of our authors have found (or are still finding in the books that are being completed in the next year or so). We thank the authors whose books have been published (covering Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria Steinem, Hilary Clinton, and Helen Keller) – and look forward to the ones yet to come which cover the lives of Wilma Mankiller, Ida B. Wells, Sally Ride, and Delores Huerta.

Women Making History Series Description

Women Making History is a series of single-volume books that examine the lives and historical impact of the most iconic figures in American Women’s history.

Books in the Women Making History series explore the lives and contributions of important women in American history. Each volume goes beyond biographical details to consider historical context and explicitly discuss the world in which the individual lived and worked, the challenges she faced, and her lasting contributions. This approach allows readers to explore not just the life of a particular woman but also her various political, social, cultural, and historical contexts. In addition to chronological chapters, sidebars, a timeline, document excerpts, and a bibliography, an introductory chapter explores the cultural and historical significance of the individual and places her in the overall historical context, as well as how her actions, beliefs, or positions influenced not only women’s history but history as a whole.

See the entire series on the ABC-CLIO Web Site

04 More On Unreliable Narrators from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

…and then this unreliable narrator thing is a new thing I learned when I got involved in academia and that’s when you look at the interviews that happen with the men who founded Hollywood, they forget to mention the women who did it with them or they mention women without mentioning their names. One of my favorite sad examples is a woman named Jeanie MacPherson – who wrote several westerns under Cecil B DeMille – and you know if students study film history they’ve all heard of Cecil B. DeMille and they rarely hear of Jeanie MacPherson but on almost any movie he made that made money, she wrote it but she died young and he lived on another 30 years and he did an oral history and when they asked him about working with her he said she wasn’t a great writer. I kept her around because she needed a job but I did most of the work and that’s what goes down in the history books because she didn’t get to tell her side and so to me that’s the saddest part of this, is they disappeared and nobody – they didn’t even know they were going to disappear

Host: I think that will be familiar to a lot of people from a lot of different perspectives those types of those types of stories.

The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting is building a relationship with the Autry Museum of the American West since both organizations are devoted to bringing out more diverse and untold stories. Last year we were able to take our cohort of graduating MFA candidates to the museum’s theatre for a showing of Michael Wilson’s Salt of the Earth and we had plans to present a film of our choice this year – but of course the pandemic changed all that. Instead, Autry Curator Josh Garrett-Davis asked me if I would sit for an interview about female screenwriters in the western genre and so “When Women Wrote Westerns” came to be a part of their “What Is a Western? Interview Series”.

I had a great time discussing so many wonderful women writers – from Jeanne MacPherson to D.C. Fontana to Edna Ferber to Emily Andras. If you love westerns I suggest you watch Josh’s other interviews covering everything from the work of Native Americans in Western movies to films in the western-horror hybrid. —

What this entire presentation

As part of a series exploring the significance of the Western genre and the ways in which the movies shape our understanding of the American West, Autry Curator Josh Garrett-Davis interviews Professor Rosanne Welch about the women screenwriters of Hollywood and their contributions to the Western genre.

Find more information at the Autry Museum of the American West

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

19 More Favorite Films from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

Host: Is that your is that your favorite period of filmmaking or are you you know are you all over the place with what you watch when it comes to cinema.

Rosanne: I am all over the place because it depends on the story and and the stories that stick with me you know. I love that movie. I love a lot of movies from that period but I also love a lot of movies like “Bonnie and Clyde.” How could you not love “Bonnie and Clyde?” Warren Beatty films are wonderful and but on the – and there I am two gangster movies – but I also love “Heaven Can Wait” another Warren Beatty. Written by Elaine May who’s wonderful and gets lost in the history books but yeah that’s a beautiful film. So I like that period. You know it’s funny.

Host: Is that the new Hollywood period kind of thing?

Rosanne: The New Hollywood Period but also the movies that then I grew up with when they were new. I mean I think when you think about scripts “Back to the Future” is the absolute most tightest best-written movie I can think of. You can watch that movie in every single bit. There’s a great bit in the beginning you know he’s got to have that piece of paper that tells him that when the clock is going to strike – when the lightning’s gonna strike and it’s because his girlfriend comes to him – he gets the paper from a lady. Just oh we’re saving the clock tower you know here’s a fundraising flyer but a teenage boy would throw that away. So you know they had to sit there and go why would he keep it? Well, his girlfriend comes up and says I’m staying at my grandmother’s house this weekend. Here’s her number so you can call me. so it’s his girlfriend’s phone number that’s important and of course, you couldn’t do that in the modern day because he’d have a smartphone and he wouldn’t need the piece of paper but just every detail is so perfectly covered in that movie that you cannot love it.

One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.

We chatted about my work with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, and then my work with co-editor Rose Ferrell on the Journal of Screenwriting’s special issue on Women in Screenwriting (Volume 11, Number 3) that came out recently and which featured articles about an international set of female screenwriters from Syria, Argentina, China and Canada (to name a few).

We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Watch this entire presentation

With Intellect Books Editor James Campbell (@IntellectBooks)

Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

13 Women Writers To Remember from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Here you can watch a clip from my part of the presentation,

“When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”

Transcript:

Selma Diamond. Brilliant writer back in the day. We know her more from being an actress on “Night Court” and being on many of the talk shows and Lucille Kallan found a way to stay in the history books because she became a novelist after she stopped writing television and I think she’s pretty brilliant. You can see this lovely picture of her. So pictures from back in the day do include the women but that’s not the one Vanity Fair chose to publish. She was memorialized a little bit in Neil Simon’s play although he took the two women and turned them into one female character. There are seven boys in this play and one girl. They couldn’t do two girls and six boys. Just thinking about how they could have arranged that right? They thought they were all the same. Even though almost any female tv writer that you meet will tell you that it was the existence of Sally Rogers that turned them into a tv writer and Sally Rogers is patterned after Selma and Lucille right because “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was the Sid Caesar Show. So the importance of those women disappears in history.

Watch this entire presentation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

22 On Costumes and Sonic Screwdrivers from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

So costume is a huge and this is what a showrunner does. You sit with every single department and you decide and you get the final say. So of course you get the final hit if people don’t like what you decided but that’s your job to make decisions right and to be able to go this is why I did that and maybe I’ll change my mind if it isn’t as appealing as it could be. So costume is important but for me the most important thing that a writer brings, of course, is dialogue and he had to really think about how can this person talk like The Doctor but reference and accept the fact that you don’t look like all the previous Doctors and other people aren’t going to treat you immediately the same way they would treat a male walking into many of these situations and so that was to me a very delicate dance and I like this particular – you know very beginning right she’s like I lost my sonic screwdriver. I could build one. I’m good at building things probably and we’re all giggling right because The Doctor has to be funny but then there was this but but he she has to be competent. So you don’t want the woman to not be competent but any Doctor would have said that.

Watch this entire presentation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

STOP FORGETTING TO NAME THE WRITERS! by Dr. Rosanne Welch

STOP FORGETTING TO NAME THE WRITERS!

Once again I’ve had to email a film screening program about the blurb they posted about an upcoming screening and Q&A with the creators of a new film. Here’s the post I read:

When single father Max (John Cho) discovers he has a terminal disease, he decides to try and cram all the years of love and support he will miss with his teenage daughter Wally (Mia Isaac) into the time he has left with her. With the promise of long-awaited driving lessons, he convinces Wally to accompany him on a road trip from California to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion, where he secretly hopes to reunite her with her mother who left them long ago. A wholly original, emotional and surprising journey, Don’t Make Me Go explores the unbreakable, eternal bond between a father and daughter from both sides of the generational divide with heart and humor along for the ride. From Amazon Studios, #DontMakeMeGo will begin streaming July 15 globally only on Prime Video.

Why We Love It: Don’t Make Me Go is an emotional and beautiful exploration of the struggle between chasing your dreams or settling on the safe choices. Mia Isaac and John Cho’s chemistry is captivating in this one of a kind father-daughter road trip film. Bring tissues.

Here’s the email I had to send to the programmer:

I saw your announcement and wondered if Don’t Make Me Go is “A wholly original, emotional and surprising journey, Don’t Make Me Go explores the unbreakable, eternal bond between a father and daughter from both sides of the generational divide with heart and humor along for the ride” then WHY wasn’t the writer, Vera Herbert, invited to this live discussion? Or even mentioned in your post, which makes the reader assume that the director is a writer-director, giving them all the credit for what sounds like a film based on characters, situation, theme, and dialogue – none of which are under the auspices of a director.

As the Executive Director of an MFA in TV and Screenwriting, I subscribe to all your posts to see what events I might want to bring my MFA candidates to – but I only attend events that include writers. It’s an insult to not even name the writer. The auteur theory was invented years ago by French film reviewers who found it simpler to list directors since many were writer-directors and sometimes a film is written by 2 people which was unwieldy in a review. That’s why it exists and it’s a shame for film experts/programmers/educators to continue that practice. More women have written films than directed them (the Joan Harrison/Hitchcock team is an example) so it was another way to erase the creative work of women when we only mention directors. I would say “Please stop” but I’m tired of saying “Please”.

Dr. Rosanne Welch