Academic – Page 25 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch at Broadcast Educators Association (BEA) 2022

I attended my first Broadcast Educators Association (BEA) conference last weekend on the invite of Dr. Ed Fink, my former department chair, and greatly enjoyed hosting a pitchathon for graduation bachelor students interested in creating their own television shows.

My co-panelists included two fun colleagues who have become good friends – Jon Vandergriff (Stephens College) and David Morgassen (CSUF). We gave feedback on 9 different pitches and followed it up with a Q&A about the world of being a professional writer. The audience was so interested and engaged that after our session ended, we all grabbed a table together and kept talking until we closed the venue down for the night.

Meeting potential MFA candidates is one reason to attend events like this one – but mostly it’s to make new friends in the academic world and strengthen the friendships you’ve already created; to learn how they approach the teaching of screenwriting or media history and bring those ideas back to my own classrooms.

On this trip, I met professors from Illinois and Michigan and reconnected with folks I’ve worked with at CSUF and elsewhere. Having lunch and hashing over which films or television shows to teach and how to best help students learn to analyze these in order to improve their writing is the heart of such a conference. Meeting the students and hearing their ideas is the icing on the cake.

04 Other Interests 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.

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Transcript:

One of my other fandoms is The Monkees and I have a whole book on The Monkees and about the fact that when I was a kid watching them as a child I would assume, looking back at it as a grown-up, that like all the women on the show must have been bimbos and cheerleaders and all the boys would hang out with them and when I looked at as an adult I discovered that every single girl they ever dated had a job and she was a girl who took care of herself and I thought, Is that a message that seeped into my brain when I was a kid? That if I wanted to marry a Monkee I had to be a woman of some substance of something. All right, so really I think messages do come to us. So, I think Torchwood had a lot of really good messages.

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08 More On Dorothy Parker and A Star Is Born from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch and Intellect Books [Video]

Transcript:

So she was writing what she knew, right? So, I think you can look into every version of that movie – and there have been four now – including the most recent, right, and see the ghost of her voice existing because the raw honesty of that experience – of feeling like how can I be with a man who the world was making feel less than me when I feel like we are equals but it’s going to eventually erode this relationship. That’s just really – and there are some lines from the first film – from 1937 – it was remade with Judy Garland in 1954 by Moss Hart who’s a famous Broadway playwright – but he, in his memoirs says that he used a lot of scenes verbatim because they were just so good there was no point to rewrite them. So, it’s wonderful to look for that sort of thing. So, if I was going to write about that movie, I don’t care that George Cukor directed the Judy Garland version. I care what voice – what writer’s voice do I see trace through that.

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.

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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.

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02 How Do We Get Forgotten? 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: My teaching philosophy is Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter and we need to pay more attention to them. So we’re back to what I’m originally talking about. How do we get forgotten in the books? Well, this is a lovely example not from screenwriting but from art. When this painting sold – the painting of David And Goliath – it was assumed to belong to Giovanni Francesco but in fact, it belonged to Artemisia and Artemisia Gentileschi is just now coming out as someone that we’re going to learn more about in the art world. So this happens to us all the time – it happens to women all the time.

(technical issues)

She painted that. Artemisia that’s her self-portrait. she painted David and Goliath. We’re doing this in all the different worlds and I think we need to pay attention to how we’re doing it in Hollywood.

Our intrepid panel leader, Christina Lane (author of Phantom Lady – the new biography of writer-producer Joan Harrison) kept us connected across the time. Other panel participants included Philana Payton (UCLA) who is researching the memoirs of Eartha Kitt and Vicki Callahan (USC) who covered the career of Mabel Normand. I was happy to highlight the many female screenwriters whose histories were left on the cutting room floor thanks to the unreliable narrators of their work who included directors, film reviewers, and husbands – all who left the female writers out of their own memories.

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12 Her Companions 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:

If we look here, obviously, we have, again, female leadership. The police person is Yasmin, right? It’s a woman police officer who’s gonna come and join. So now we’re gonna have two relatively powerful women running things and that’s different for us. I mean I like Tegan too. She was fun but you know a little screamy goofy right and Nyssa was a doctor. So Nyssa, I really enjoyed Nyssa. So finding two strong women in stories is very interesting.

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03 Representation in Torchwood from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch, San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

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:

So I think what was interesting is we got a chance to go to this academic conference which was Investigating Torchwood and I heard all kinds of interesting things – some of which helped me put this together – ideas about the show that I didn’t think of and so then we published the piece. So this is why I’m interested in thinking about Torchwood and why I think it should have gone longer than four seasons although miracle day killed it which is all another conversation – but it was a show that was a work in progress with a lot of new ideas and some of those ideas have slowly seeded into the regular tv that we’re watching now and so I think it’s really interesting to look at these original ideas. They were being very innovative and I like that and I want to see more of that and I just happen to like this meme because it’s true one of the things that of course Jack – Captain Jack – brought to us was looking at the world in a bigger way right and then all the ideas of who he could be and who could love and who the other characters could be with. They were relatively new if you think about it and it’s the thing that we teach in my program – representation matters. We have to pay attention to the things we’re seeing because TV is the thing that comes into your home for free or pay the cable bill if your parents pay it right – but we’re getting to see things that you wouldn’t see if you didn’t want to pay the money at a movie theater right? So the tv is really like so interesting because who knows what we’re learning from it.

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Screenwriter Clara Beranger – From Silents to Talkies to Teaching – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, April 2022

As with several silent film screenwriters, earlier careers in journalism and playwriting during the 1910s brought Clara Beranger to Hollywood. She would amass 85 credits between 1913 and 1934, bridging the worlds of silent and sound films.

Born Clara Strouse in Baltimore, Maryland on January 14, 1886, to a department store dynasty, she graduated in 1907 as a Phi Beta Kappa at Goucher College. She gained her professional surname when she married Albert Berwanger and kept it (except for the ‘w’) after their divorce. They had one child, a daughter named Frances, in 1909.

Read Screenwriter Clara Beranger – From Silents to Talkies to Teaching

Read about more women from early Hollywood

46 Screenwriting Mistakes: Write Something New… from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

Rosanne:…and then the second-biggest – and many people will tell you this – and it’s not just in classes and what you read – doing readership all over town – never write something that looks like I’ve seen it before, because why do I need you? I need to see something that’s different and that’s where you – your personal. perspective comes from, right? I need to see something I haven’t seen before and that doesn’t mean it has to be edgier and worse and mean and nasty, but there’s just – there’s an honesty to it that I didn’t expect. That’s what I want to see.

Host: ..and that’s perspective that gives you that.

Rosanne: Exactly.

Host: I feel like I’ve learned so much today.

It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.

Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).

We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.

Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

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07 Dorothy Parker and A Star Is Born from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch and Intellect Books [Video]

Transcript:

Host: Why don’t you tell us more about the Journal of Screenwriting in general and then your special issue specifically.

Rosanne: Sure. Well, obviously it’s in the title. It’s about Screenwriting. So, anyone who sends some material in, we don’t want to hear about how the director affected the movie. We want to hear about what research you’ve done to prove deeper things. Like, for instance, I’m doing a presentation tomorrow on A Star Is Born. The original A Star is Born. That was written – people largely don’t know – by Dorothy Parker – who they do know as a famous female from New York who wrote essays and poetry and her husband, Alan Campbell and you don’t know his name, do you? No one’s ever heard of Alan Campbell. They got married when she was already famous. He was an actor on Broadway. He wanted to work in Hollywood. So that’s why they moved here. She didn’t want to come to LA. There was that whole New York is better than LA kind of feeling,. but they wrote this movie and I would contend that it’s her voice in this movie because they lived a life where she was always more famous than her husband and it destroyed their marriage. They ended up getting divorced. Later on, he died of a drug overdose.

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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.

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01 Introduction 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: That was marvelous and I’m so excited about this panel because we’re all talking a little bit about everything which is really nice. Yes, love men. Don’t want to pick on men. Married to a man. Have a son but there you go. We’re going to talk about how men forget women in the archives. First, I would like to acknowledge that I am speaking from the traditional lands of the Tongva people and I want to respect their elders and their people that came before us. This was the ground of Los Angeles all the way out to the Catalina islands and I think it’s something worth people studying. Very briefly about me. I was a television writer for 20 years. So I wrote on 90210 and Picket Fences and Touched by an Angel. Currently, I’m kind of using words from my book When Women Wrote Hollywood which is about the early silent screenwriters – female screenwriters – and how they have been forgotten. I also am the book review editor for the Journal of Screenwriting. So if you ever want to write a review or have a book that needs reviewing, let me know because I’d love to do that and I’m on the editorial board for Written By magazine which I always suggest people read. It is free digitally online about every six weeks the Writer’s Guild comes out with it and there are some wonderful interviews with movie star – movie writers and tv writers. So that’s kind of the world I’m in. I am the executive director of the Stephens College TV and Screenwriting MFA and our mantra is Write, Reach and Represent because I think that’s what writing is all about. The school is actually in Missouri but it’s a low residency program so people come to LA and we work at the Jim Henson Studios. So talk about Mabel Normand who worked at Charlie Chaplin studios with him. This was originally Charlie Chaplin Studios before A&M Records and Jim Henson. So it’s a beautiful piece of Hollywood memorabilia.

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