Education – Page 161 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

06 : From Soap Operas to Primetime : “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview [Video] (0:51)

Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power

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Jean Powergirl takes the host reigns and welcomes her guest Rosanne Welch, PhD to the show! They’ll be discussing Roseanne’s book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.”

Transcript:

Jean:Your saying that part of thing was that this was just this era was the dawn of trying to show people more real life situations as opposed to fantasy like, for example, you cited in your book, the “Look Who’s Coming to Dinner” film about an interracial couple, which is this huge production back then and this was already happening in film, but not so much in TV, right?

Rosanne: Now, TV is interesting. I have to give credit, of all things, afternoon soap operas are some of the places where controversial stuff happened first. AIDS stories were first done. Gay characters were first introduced. People didn’t take the soaps seriously because they were just for housewives to watch.

Jean: Right.

Rosanne: … bit as those things seeped into daytime TV then they slowly can seep into nighttime television and usually in the hipper, younger, new programming.

Get your copy today!

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.

Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.

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A History of Screenwriting – 24 in a series – What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting by Marc Norman

Screenwriters have always been viewed as Hollywood’s stepchildren. Silent-film comedy pioneer Mack Sennett forbade his screenwriters from writing anything down, for fear they’d get inflated ideas about themselves as creative artists. The great midcentury director John Ford was known to answer studio executives’ complaints that he was behind schedule by tearing a handful of random pages from his script and tossing them over his shoulder. And Ken Russell was so contemptuous of Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for Altered States that Chayefsky insisted on having his name removed from the credits.

Of course, popular impressions aside, screenwriters have been central to moviemaking since the first motion picture audiences got past the sheer novelty of seeing pictures that moved at all. Soon they wanted to know: What happens next? In this truly fresh perspective on the movies, veteran Oscar-winning screenwriter Marc Norman gives us the first comprehensive history of the men and women who have answered that question, from Anita Loos, the highest-paid screenwriter of her day, to Robert Towne, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Kaufman, and other paradigm-busting talents reimagining movies for the new century.

* 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 teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch

Treva Silverman and Women Characters from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (0:28)

This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne

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Transcript:

And she won Emmys for writing the episode where Lou Grant wife asks him for a divorce, which was huge in the early 70’s. That was a crazy idea and James Burrows, who was the producer of The Mary Tyler More Show in several book son the show has said that Treva was the feminist heart of that show. So, she had that idea on Mary Tyler More or course she had that on The Monkees, too. So in those rooms when they talked about the girl friends, she made sure they were 3-dimensional, interesting women.

Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today!

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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05 : Girls, The Beach House and The Monkees: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power

Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

Transcript:

Jean: So they had this beach house and this was cool and there are these single boys now, but they did kind of keep it kind of wholesome. Now did they have girls spending the night over at the beach house or anything like that?

Rosanne: They did not. When I came to study the show because I loved it as a kid and when I decided to study it I thought, “Oh, well a show about rock-and-rollers. It’s going to be every week about who’s have sex with which girl and maybe as a kid, I didn’t remember that. And then I watched all 58 episodes in an era when I’m also watching The Big Bang Theory because that’s the number one comedy of our day and that’s of course about 4 scientists who spend their days discussing who they’re going to have sex with and it turned out, of course, because of the rules of what you could and couldn’t do on television at the time that The Monkees couldn’t do that. So when they had girlfriends we always saw that the girls left before the boys had time in their beach house. They never spent the night.

Jean: So it wouldn’t offend the sensibilities of the parents that are watching this television show with their teenagers and things like that.

Get your copy today!

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.

Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.

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A History of Screenwriting – 23 in a series – The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916)

This movie is insane, and I love it. Coke Ennyday, a cocaine-shooting detective parody of Sherlock Holmes injects himself with opium from a bandolier of syringes worn across his chest and liberally helps himself to the contents of a hatbox-sized round container of white powder labeled “COCAINE” on his desk. A clock-like sign on the wall divides time between EAT, DRINK, SLEEP, and DOPE. He observes visitors at his door on what appears to be a closed-circuit television called a “scientific periscope”. The super-sleuth helps the police and discovers a contraband of opium (which he eagerly tastes) transported with “Leaping Fishes”, and the blackmail of a mysterious man who wants to marry the “fish blower” girl.

It stars the acrobatic Douglas Fairbanks as the odd action hero and Bessie Love as The Little Fish Blower, was directed by Christy Cabanne and John Emerson, and was written by Anita Loos, Tod Browning, and D. W. Griffith. — Change Before Going Productions

* 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!

Women Writers and The Monkees from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (0:54)

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Transcript:

And my theory is, watching those women as a child made me want to grow up to be somebody of value because that’s how you caught yourself a Monkee, not by being a dizzy-headed cheerleader. All right? But who knows if that what’s your looking at when your six, seven or eight, that’s when you’re deciding who you want to be. So, I think that’s a really important message that the show carried and might not have known they were carrying it except if you credit writers, which is what Ido a lot of in the book. I interviewed all the writers on the show and to me, that was really interesting. One of them is Treva Silverman. She was the first female writer in television to write alone on a comedy. Other women had male partners. So the fact that she came onto the show and had these ideas about being a feminist. She was from New York. She had come out to LA to be a TV writer. That’s a crazy idea even back then and it’s a crazy idea today and she left The Monkees when the show went off the air. She joined The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today!

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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04 – Monkee Metatexutality: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (1:02)

Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

Transcript:

Rosanne: These techniques weren’t necessarily being used by shows like George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. They would eventually be in things like Dream On and many other shows later would use those kinds of old footage, but now that I bring up George and Gracie. What they did is that they spoke to the audience, which is another thing these guys did.They broke the 4th wall of theater by speaking to the audience and admitting to the audience that we know we’re a show and you’re watching us, which is meta-narrative if you want to get all professorial about it, but it made them — it gave them a chance to get closer to the audience and it connected the kids to them.

Jean: So, by doing that there’s a lot of current shows — and I’m going to kind of nerd out with you on this — like The Office for example or these mockumentary type things where they say they’re aware that we’re going to be watching them the Monkees had already been doing that.

Rosanne: They’d already been doing that. Exactly and it made them very hip and cute to the children watching because they were the generation who hadn’t been paid much attention to yet and now these boys were paying attention to them.

Get your copy today!

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.

Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.

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A History of Screenwriting – 22 in a series – The New York Hat – 1912 – Anita Loos

Short directed by D. W. Griffith, written by Anita Loos, starring Mary Pickford (in her final role for Biograph Studios) and Lionel Barrymore, with an appearance by Lillian Gish.

From Wikipedia…

The New York Hat is one of the most notable of the Biograph Studios short films and is perhaps the best known example of Pickford’s early work, and an example of Anita Loos‘s witty writing. The film was made by Biograph when it and many other early U.S. movie studios were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey at the beginning of the 20th century.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Mollie Goodhue leads a cheerless, impoverished life, largely because of her stern, miserly father. Mrs. Goodhue is mortally ill, but before dying, she gives the minister, Preacher Bolton, some money with which to buy her daughter the “finery” her father always forbade her.

Mollie is delighted when the minister presents her with a fashionable New York hat she has been longing for, but village gossips misinterpret the minister’s intentions and spread malicious rumors. Mollie becomes a social pariah, and her father tears up the beloved hat in a rage.

All ends well, however, after the minister produces a letter from Mollie’s mother about the money she left the minister to spend on Mollie. Soon afterwards, he proposes to Mollie, who accepts his offer of marriage.

* 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!

Women of Purpose and The Monkees from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (1:00)

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Transcript:

I would like to get more people to focus on The Monkees because when I look at textbooks about this time, they don’t talk about them at all. People thought they were this bubble gum group and they think only about that aspect and they don’t think about the messages that came from the program. When I think about that I think about episodes that had to do with feminism and that sounds odd for a show about 4 kids who were playing rock and roll, but in fact if you look at all 58 episodes — which I obviously did, you will find that never do they date the girl who didn’t have her own job and was taking care of herself in the world. She was either a student who was worried about her grades or she was a woman with a job. They were journalists. They were girls that worked at record companies or record stores. Yes, they were princesses, but the princesses rather than them wanting to wear pretty dresses and marry Davy Jones — which everyone in the audience wanted to do — the princesses gave that up in order to go back to their countries and life out there obligations to their people. They were women of purpose.

Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today!

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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03 – Monkee Emmys and “Romps”: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (0:55)

Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

Transcript:

Rosanne: The adults that did take it seriously are the adults who were in the business because they won an Emmy for best Comedy Series in their first season.

Jean: They won 2 Emmys, right?

Rosanne: Yes. They won one for Best Directing as well, And James Frawley who won that had begun his directing career on The Monkees and he grew up to direct The Muppet Movie.

Jean: Awesome. And we love our Muppets. So, in terms of the production and everything The Monkees did some interesting things that — and these are the things that I remember. I remember a lot of little chase scenes that were so cute. Kind of zany. Kind of Groucho Marx-y kind of things, but also they employed the use of what, flashbacks and things like that. Let’s talk about the tools that they used.

Rosanne: They used flashbacks. They would use a lot of old footage whenever they would say something funny, they’d cut to — if I’d say, “The Sky’s falling” they’d cut to a building being dynamited down and that sort of thing and that helps because it saved them money, because they’re using old footage, but it also gave a very frenetic, energetic feel to the show.

Get your copy today!

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.

Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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