Sixty-three of the movies that Alice Guy Blaché made while working for Gaumont are collected on the DVD Gaumont Treasures. Disk 1 is dedicated entirely to Blaché. While just a drop in the bucket of the work she did when she was there, it is a fascinating exploration of how quickly her work and voice grew.
The Nature and Genius of Alice Guy Blaché by Khanisha Foster
* 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
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:
(Audience Question) I’m really curious of how she felt then if she had a miscarriage at the time and she read books. Welch: That’s a fascinating point of view. Sadly or not sadly– interestingly — rich women did engage in the art of reading. So it’s interesting how we like to tell poor women how to behave. Rich women can do whatever they please right? So he’s acceptable in her world because you were supposed to read things and be a good reader so you could teach your children — your sons — to be good leaders in the world. So it was acceptable — that’s an excellent question though that’s like whoa. That’s a critical thinking kind of question going on right there because you’re right and but they felt that it was not proper to put out the novel with her name on it. So they didn’t right? In 1818, it doesn’t say Mary Shelley’s just here’s a book. Read it if you want to. Whatever. You can’t even tell from the cover — you’re right — what it’s about right?
* 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!
I was pleased to be asked to attend the first Italian Stories Day hosted by the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers and the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and Italian Audiovisual Producers Association at Mr. C in Beverly Hills. The three groups share the mission of helping more Italian authors see their work produced for the international film and television markets.
I had the pleasure of hearing about new books that we Americans will be able to read once their English translations are complete (within the next year) from authors like Tiziana Triana, author of Luna Nera – Le Città Perdute (Vol I) (Black Moon – The Lost Cities, Vol 1) which deals with witch hunters of 17th century Italy and how that affected women who yearned to gather knowledge; Stefania Auci, a Sicilian teacher and author of the historical novel Florence, published in 2015 by Baldini e Castoldi; and Edoardo Albinati, author of La Scuola Cattolica (The Catholic School).
I also had the chance to reconnect with Leonilde Callocchia, the Attaché at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura who hosted our Mentoris Book Launch last year, and a few producers I was able to invite to come to our Stephens College MFA workshops this August while we all munched on some marvelous brunch.
Check out the new book trailer for the Mentoris series of novels on lives of influential Italian and Italian Americans that Douglas and I produced for the publisher. I wrote (and recorded) the narration and Douglas did all the production and editing. On the main page the trailer appears below the fold, as it were — MentrorisProject.org.
All the Mentoris authors are proud of the work we’re doing in telling the stories of the men and women who mentored western civilization. From Cicero to Mancini (with my books on Filippo Mazzei and Giuseppe Garibaldi somewhere in the midst!). If you need a good summer read, here’s a set of books to pick from – they come in paperback or ebook form. It would be deeply appreciated if you bought a book – and shared the trailer on your socials!
My Second-year MFA candidate Randi Barros and I spent the morning on set at the Manhattan Beach Studios watching a filmed table read of Barros’ script “Springtime in September.” A winner of this year’s ‘She Called Action’ 35 Pilot Table Read Contest, the script concerns a suddenly single mother dealing with dating in the new era.
This “She Called Action” event was created by Cheryl Rodes of the women-owned production company Rodes Unpaved, dedicated to putting women as the heroes of the story.
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
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.
![06 A Nameless Author from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (52 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/scifi-rmw-cpp-06.jpeg)
![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)
