Academic – Page 28 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch Guests on Women in Film & Video DC Oscar Panel Podcast [Audio]

As a warm-up to the upcoming Oscar ceremony, the Women in Film DC podcast invited me in my position as Executive Director of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting to a panel discussion about the women who have won Oscars from the beginning of the famed award ceremony. Having watched most of the ceremonies from the time I sat in front of the TV in my grandparents’ house cross-legged and begged to stay up past 11pm on a Sunday/school night, I had plenty of information. Then, as editor of When Women Wrote Hollywood I had the chance to talk about the many female screenwriters whose names aren’t well known, but who wrote or otherwise contributed to films from Queen Christina (Salka Viertel) to It’s a Wonderful Life (Frances Hackett) to The Piano (Jane Campion).

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From Media & Monuments…

Topics that come up include women’s writers penchant for using their art for social justice, how the rise of the studio-as-factory system affected female employment, and how will streaming services change what films can be made – and can be nominated. I hope you enjoy the listen:

Ahead of the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, board member Sandra Abrams sits down with two amazing women to discuss Oscar’s history on nominations of women in non-actor categories. Our guests are Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director of the MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program at Stephens College, and Leslie Combemale, a syndicated film critic known as Cinema Siren, and the creator and host of WomenRockingHollywood – an annual panel at Comic Con in San Diego which highlights female filmmakers. The women reflect on female representation throughout Hollywood’s and the awards show’s history, how it has changed, and what they see for the future.

For more Oscar information

Dr. Rosanne Welch

Leslie Combemale: https://cinemasiren.com/ and https://lesliecombemale.com/ and https://womenrockinghollywood.com/

16 More On Treva Silverman From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

Transcript:

She moved on from that show, as I said, to win two Emmys for writing this beloved show — The Mary Tyler Moore Show. When James Brooks put that show together and James again a very respectable Executive Producer in television. Love all of what he’s done. He was a very progressive thinking man and he knew that if the show was about a single woman they ought to have a female on staff and so he asked Treva if she would join the show. The Emmys she won twofold. She won this Emmy for writing an episode about Lou Grant. she had single female friends who thought Ed Asner was appealing but his character on the show, Lou, was married and they felt guilty for liking a man who had a wife because it meant that they might be you know stealing a man from another woman. So she came up with the idea that Lou’s wife and he should get a divorce but the progressive new thought was not because Lou did anything bad. He’s not a gambler. He’s not cheating on her. It was that Edie Grant had decided that she wasn’t fulfilled — that she hadn’t done in her life what she wanted to do. She had only ever served him and it was her turn before she got too old and that was such a wildly innovative idea and it was so poignant and so sad because the audience loved him but we liked her as well and we understood that this was such a problem and she had to take this chance. So it was a brilliant episode. It won her an Emmy.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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07 Chibnall’s Earlier Writing…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:

I think we have to look at his early work to see that he was capable of doing this right? When I think about the early episodes that he wrote obviously before he became the Executive Producer almost every episode had an important leader who was a female and that just sort of glosses over you when you’re looking at it but when you put it all together like every single time he was trying to find a way to show us a woman in charge. So he was really building up to be the guy, the showrunner, who would be able to do a full female character but if you think about this right Hungry Earth we’ve got Dr. Chaudry. That’s a really cool thing. Could have been a boy doctor. Was a girl doctor right? Writers make those choices all the time. Captain Kath in 42 right has to go through that terrible experience. She could have been a male captain of the ship right. It wouldn’t have hurt and then I just adore Kate Lethbridge Stewart. I think she’s marvelous. There’s actually another tv show in the UK called Grantchester. It’s about a vicar. Now his mother is played by the actress who played Kate. So it’s kind of fun to see her in different roles but so he did this — so Chibnalll did this in his early work and now both outside of Doctor Who, I’m really impressed with some of the stuff he’s done again involving strong female characters.

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41 Theme and Character…from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

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

Transcript:

Host: Like what do you think are like the principles of good television writing that you try to teach your students? Like what’s the things you want them to get from your classes.

Rosanne: Well I want them to think that whatever they’re writing is a message. So I think they should start with a theme. What is the message you want to put out in the world and what’s a story that’s like the metaphor or that’s the parable that will tell that idea? Plant that idea in people’s minds? I think you always — you have your own life philosophy. I don’t care how old you are. You don’t have to be old or young to have it right? You have some ideas and those make everything stronger. The stuff you really like is because you really agreed with what was being said about how to live or how to treat other people right and so you really have to think about those things and that’s going to make whatever you do richer. So I like to start from a place of theme and of course then tv is all about characters because I need someone I’m going to want to come and meet over and over again either 20 hours in a row or 20 weeks in a row however I choose to do that. So I need to find someone that I can connect with and I think that’s something that in the movies you know you could do a lot of explosions, fun stuff, tent poll movies and all that. Although I suppose my son would say Transformers were characters he really cared to watch right but they’re a little different than you know the kind of people you’d see let’s say on Grey’s Anatomy speaking of Shonda Rhimes.

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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33 More on How To Change How We Teach History from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.

Then I found Tammy Rose’s podcast on the Transcendentalists – Concord Days – and was delighted when she asked me to guest for a discussion of Fuller’s work in Italy as both a journalist – and a nurse. — Rosanne

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: I have this fantasy of doing some kind of like virtual reality thing or some kind of relationship map where yeah you can and as you’re saying like maybe it starts in second grade or maybe it starts young or it can even be something that people can do throughout their lives because there are people who continue to learn beyond you know what actually after they leave college. Believe it or not you know and but just travel from sort of one lesson or one person or one event to the other and be immersed in it because I agree. I feel like this artificial framing of history is this it’s done a little bit like it’s done to be facile. It’s done to be you know these chapters that we can easily finish and I remember not getting past World War II for most of high school because we would always run out of time. So we never got to be right and I was always like wait a minute what about the 60s you know?

Rosanne: …and of course, that was probably because when we were younger that was still too controversial to cover in school. So better that you finished with the Greatest Generation. We saved the world from Hitler. We’re all great and we don’t have to get to the murkier thing where we’re not sure what that was all about.

Tammy: Exactly. End of story. Let’s not even talk about Korea yeah just right yeah yeah just watch Smash and watch like shows from the 60s and that’ll be close enough.

Rosanne: Yeah right. Bewitched will tell you everything you need to know about the 60s.

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02 On The Importance of Screenwriters from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch and Intellect Books [Video]

Transcript:

So I mostly am interested in that and screenwriting because in Hollywood the issue has always been — we have that “Auteur Theory” which has been fought about and we’ve argued about. We’re getting there but you still read in the newspapers the review of a film and they’ll say it belongs to the director. They’ll name you know so and so such and such film and maybe four paragraphs in you’ll find oh that person also wrote it. So they’re a writer-director. Why didn’t you say that right or five paragraphs in they’ll now mention who wrote the thing and you’re like well that’s what I want to know. That’s where the idea came from. I get it. Directors do cool things and they run the set and whatever but the theme and the characters and the dialogue — which is what we quote all the time — came from the writer and that’s the person that I feel like we should be — I don’t say they have to be higher than the director. Let’s get equal again, right, which again we were in the Silent Era. So that stuff interests me a lot.

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

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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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15 Treva Silverman From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Transcript:

Moving into the 1960s one of my favorite people is Treva Silverman. She is one of the first female writers to win an Emmy. In fact, she won two in the same year for writing without a male partner. All the previous women who had won had had a male partner. Treva was a solo writer. She originally wrote for The Monkees. One show that I have written an entire book about that I’m very interested in and I will credit her with the fact that in 58 episodes of a show about rock and roll singers, every girl they met had a job and a career. They did not ever date bimbos. They dated girls who were journalists and who were worked at record stores or there was one who was a princess and a princess is a job right? So I think Treva was the feminist voice on that show.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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Failing to Credit Screenwriters Once Again…

A funny thing happened to me on the way to making my own list of 25 Films Written By Women to counter the “52 Films by Women” put out by the WIF (Women In Film).

Their list only included films directed by women and didn’t even bother listing the names of the writers (some of whom were also women).

So I Googled ’20 Films Written by Women’ to see what someone else may have collected and found this list of “128 Best Movies Written by Women of All Time”.

Can you find the flaw in the way they list the movies?

I can and it’s driving me CRAZY…

…and then I found that even though they list the writers in the opening paragraphs, they omit the screenwriter’s name from the movie’s details.

WTF?

06 More On “She is wise and unafraid…” from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

…but this line I really like. I also think it’s an example of how he promised to sort of give the show a bit of a female gaze right and I love all the dudes who’ve ever been on Doctor Who — well maybe not Colin Baker so much — but you know in general do love them all but he made a promise and I think he kept it. I think he didn’t just sort of gloss over and pretend and I think we’ll see that in the choice of guest characters, the choice of people we get to meet, right down to the fact that we met Ada Lovelace, who we’ve kind of heard about but I’ll still mention her in some classes and people don’t know who she is. So the fact that he’s giving a moment here for people to go oh oh that’s an interesting woman I need to know some more about and I think he scattered the show with those types of characters — those types of historical people we would not have met had he not kept in mind, I’ve promised to give this a kind of a different spin right? So that really impresses me.

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40 Artist-Scholars 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: Lots of people in town actually teach at some of the various schools because of course we’re in LA so there’s tons of schools that have film programs and screenwriting programs and all that stuff. So you get a lot of that blend. Now I really love the fact that in Europe they’re more structured around what I would call a scholar-artist because they get grants to make their films. So a lot of filmmakers are teachers at major universities and then they make movies and they get the money from the government to make the movies. We don’t quite do that here, but we’re seeing a little more of that. Certainly on the film festival circuit and stuff like that or you know for instance Kevin Wilmot, who got the oscar for co-writing Black Klansmen with Spike Lee, he’s a full-time professor at Kansas University. That’s what he does, He doesn’t want to live in LA or New York. He wants to write movies and he met Spike Lee at a film festival and they each had a movie up at the film festival early on in both their careers and they decided they liked each other. Speaking of networking, they started to collaborate and you know two years ago he won an Oscar and he went back — he flew back to Kansas the next day and put his Oscar on the lectern in front of his classroom and started talking.

Host: That’s so funny.

Rosanne: Yes to both worlds. That’s my idea of the best of both worlds.

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.

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

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