On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Class of 2020 – Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting in Television
Our latest class is in Los Angeles for their first workshop session so we took the opportunity to grab our first group photo.
They’ll be back in August for another 10-day session and two more workshops in their second year.
Always great to welcome a new set of MFA students each year!
eBook Editions Now Available – When Women Wrote Hollywood
Get a copy for your favorite eReader Today!
This collection of 23 new essays focuses on the lives of female screenwriters of Golden Age Hollywood, whose work helped create those unforgettable stories and characters beloved by audiences–but whose names have been left out of most film histories. The contributors trace the careers of such writers as Anita Loos, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Lillian Hellman, Gene Gauntier, Eve Unsell and Ida May Park, and explore themes of their writing in classics like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ben Hur, and It’s a Wonderful Life.
![When Women Wrote Hollywood Book Launch Event - August 11, 2018 [Photos]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/stephens-w3h-presentation.jpg)
See the entire collection of photos
In honor of the launch of our book of essays – When Women Wrote Hollywood – Jake Flynn, Communications Director for Councilmember Bob Blumenfield presented us this Certificate of Recognition from the Los Angeles City Council for “bringing students from throughout the country to Los Angeles and pairing them with mentors in the heart of the entertainment business…
The flexibility of the program allows for a diverse student body which in turn promotes the telling of stories that have not been heard before.” One certificate will return home to Stephens College with Dean Gail Humphries Mardirosian, who flew out to attend the launch, and the other two will stay with Ken and I here in Los Angeles.
Many thanks to the essay contributors who joined us and spoke so eloquently about the women writers they had researched: Toni Anita Hull, Laura Kirk, Amelia Phillips, Sarah Phillips, Julie Berkobien, Khanisha Foster, Lauren Smith, and to Cari Beauchamp, who wrote the Forward to the collection.
Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood
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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library
What a treat – reading the review of my book America’s Forgotten Founding Father in Angelus, the weekly Catholic magazine of Los Angeles. I enjoyed the way the magazine’s reviewer, Robert Brennan, compared Mazzei to Forest Gump in that he met so many other, far more well known Founding Fathers. Since it is a novel, Mr. Brennan had called me to ask about the historical accuracy of some of those meetings and I was happy to have been able to say that Mazzei led such an interesting life I didn’t need to make any of that up – even much of his dialogue comes from his own prolific correspondence with everyone from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams.
My favorite part of the review is the ending when Brennan shows how history teaches us how to handle our current lives.
“Although men like Jefferson, Washington and Adams represented a homogeneous group of white, English, Protestant, landed gentry, they all welcomed a new immigrant from a non-English speaking, predominantly Catholic country. And Filippo Mazzei showed that a Catholic could, in good conscience, be fully integrated into that great American experiment at its birth, and help christen it with a little holy water.”
Read the entire review – Not born of the 4th of July — but should have been by Robert Brennan
Order an autographed copy of America’s Forgotten Founding Father
Print Edition | Kindle Edition | Apple iBooks Edition | Nook Edition
Also from the Mentoris Project
Want to use these books in your classroom? Contact the Mentoris Project!`
I’m happy to share this review for my book on Filippo Mazzei, America’s Forgotten Founding Father, from the Kirkus Review website.
I imagine all authors are nervous when hearing there is a professional review of their work available to view. But I fell in love with Filippo while researching this novel and figured other folks would, too.
I’m especially happy they noted all the “intriguing historical tidbits” as those were so much fun to include. It fuels my desire to get as many of those ‘intriguing historical tidbits’ into my new book on Garibaldi – but I admit that’s harder as these facts aren’t on the tip of my tongue the way American history is (after teaching it for the last 10 years) so the digging has taken me much longer.
Read the review yourself! And then (hopefully) order the book. Filippo did so much for our country, the least we can do is know his story.
Read the Kirkus Review – America’s Forgotten Founding Father
Order an autographed copy of America’s Forgotten Founding Father
Print Edition | Kindle Edition | Apple iBooks Edition | Nook Edition
Want to use this book in your classroom? Contact the Mentoris Project!
I am very excited to be moderating another panel at the Writers Guild Foundation on…
“It’s a Funny Story: A Conversation with Women TV Comedy Writers” on Friday, August 10, 2018
with these fascinating female writer-creator-artists:
This is going to be FUN! Hope you can join us!
From the Writers Guild Foundation
“We could all use a good laugh. Fortunately, we can all unwind with an abundance of outstanding television comedy shows that are available at the click of a button. But comedy isn’t just for the jokes anymore: an increasing number of shows tackle universal problems and surprisingly navigate us through our challenging world. And as writers rooms continue investing in diverse talent, the voices you hear from your television take on fresh perspectives.
Join The Writers Guild Foundation in partnership with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting for a discussion surrounding how women television comedy writers got their start, how they use their experiences to inform their work, and the challenges they face in the writers room.”
Check out comedian (and friend to the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program) Paula Poundstone’s new podcast Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone. She’ll be holding entertaining and engaging conversations as she interviews experts in various interesting fields.
GUESTS
Mario Soto- Sports Psychologist
@mariosportsdoc
Melissa Brandzel – Grammarian
@MediaChickEdits
John Grab – Trombone
John doesn’t have a large social media footprint, but he often plays with The Orchestre Surreal
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
During this inaugural episode at 19:45 you’ll hear a great add for our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – between funny conversations first with sports psychiatrist Mario Soto followed by grammarian Melissa Brandzel. In Paula’s typical style she’s funny off the cuff, finding different comic ways to interpret the helpful tips offered by her experts.
I also noticed this fun request on their website…
“We need a theme song! We launched this show without a theme song, and are turning to YOU, dear listener, to find one. If you have a tune in your head that you think should kick off our show each week, please reach out to us via our website.” So if you’re a local musician, check it out – and leave them a comment if you happen to be an expert in some fun field. Maybe they’ll have you on the show!
Visit the Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone Web Site to subcribe via iTunes or your favorite Podcast program
Find out more about the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting
Thanks for Ken Mills for asking me to record this fun piece of commentary about how important the Mr. Rogers documentary is to our understanding of the power of television and the importance of early childhood education in empathy.
My segment starts at the 15 minute mark in the show.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
My segment starts at the 15 minute mark in the show.
Transcript
I can’t recommend the new Mr. Rogers documentary strongly enough.
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is about so much more than the man behind one children’s program. It’s about the way you can dedicate your life to a cause. It’s about the obvious point that if we teach children they are loved and give them security in their early years, we can avoid so much of the issues in their later lives. It’s about standing up for what you believe in. It’s about how hard it is to fight our society’s glorification of toxic masculinity. And, to me, most importantly, it’s about the power of television – a topic we all need to consider.
The two quotes I can’t forget – from a set of interviews with Fred Rogers that contained many worthwhile quotes (which is why you need to see the film so I don’t have to replicate them all here) — are:
“What we see and hear on television molds our lives”
and
“Television has the capability of being a neighborhood for the whole country.”
People far too often ignore television but because it comes into our homes effortlessly and is ever present, it does have the ability to shape ideas and opinions and it has always had the ability to educate. I don’t mean it only has to teach us multiplication and fractions, but like any good genre of storytelling, it teaches us empathy and understanding of others. Mr. Rogers did that gently and quietly because he was addressing children as they formed their identities, and for that we ought to be grateful.
On top of all that, when he says “The greatest thing you can teach someone is that they are loved, and are capable of loving,“ he validates a frequent comment I make to writing students – that every story, in the end, is a love story. And this one is one you should not miss.
It almost makes me sad that children today on their iPads are watching the animated adventures of Daniel Tiger. While I’m happy they are being exposed to Mr. Rogers’ stories and lessons, I hope they don’t forget to show this new generation the actual episodes starring Mr. Rogers because seeing a gentle man in real life is probably more instructive than all the messages an animated tiger can give.
I was so proud to receive a request from Susan La Tempa, editor of the new Paperback L.A about reprinting my first article, Hey, Hey, They Wrote The Monkees!, on the writers of The Monkees, which I had done for Written By magazine in 2012.
Her new anthology covers life in LA and she found both the lives of writers AND, of course, the existence of The Monkees to be iconic to Los Angeles.
Check out her first book in the series: Book 1, A Casual Anthology: Clothes. Coffee. Crushes. Crimes
And look out for the announcement when the issue containing “Hey, Hey, They Wrote The Monkees!” publishes!
Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
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
If you’re in Melbourne – or have friends and family there – check out the invitation and GO to this exhibit centered solely on The Monkees in honor of the 50th anniversary of their Australian tour.
In another wonderful example of how The Monkees bring people together I’m happy to help announce an exhibit open to all our Australian Monkees fans. I met Derham Groves, professor architecture at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne because he wrote a review of Why The Monkees Matter for The Journal of American Culture and was kind enough to send me a link. Then he happened to be in Los Angeles for a conference so we met for a marvelous dinner of pasta and Monkees conversation in Hollywood.
Derham’s special interest is the influence of popular culture on architecture and design, but he’s written quite a lot about the history of television in Australia, including a book called TV Houses: Television’s Influence on the Australian Home (2004). Last year he curated an exhibition at the Baillieu Library to celebrate the 60th anniversary of television in Australia.
For fun – here are some great clips on Youtube – their arrival and conference:
And the newsreel (though the footage jumps a lot) about their arrival with the funny line “the only thing to rival man’s descent from the apes is their descent from an airplane”:
It’s certainly an event worth celebrating!
Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
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
