With the conference theme “A Conversation Beyond Script,” I decided to use my presentation time to “Celebrate the Daring Dialogue of Women Writers,” which allowed me to introduce the audience to the work of famous female screenwriters, from Anita Loos to Mae West to Lillian Hellman.
Then I delved into some names lesser-known to our international SRN members because they came from the TV world before the great sharing that streaming has offered us. From Gertrude Berg of The Goldbergs in the 1950s to Susan Harris (Soap, Golden Girls) and Linda Bloodworth Thomason (Designing Women) we covered the progressive (and often controversial) topics they brought to mainstream Americans.
I started out last week bright and early Monday morning (6 am LA time/ 1500 Paris time) giving a Zoom lecture to the Masters students of the Professeure au département Cinéma et Audiovisuel at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – yep, the Sorbonne.
Department Directrice Kira Kitsopanidou had a Ph.D. student who was using the book I edited – When Women Wrote Hollywood – so they looked me up online and found all those marvelous lecture clips that Doug posts for me and decided to ask me to deliver a lecture on Early Women Writers and Writers Rooms in the U.S.
They wanted an international focus for their students who already know some of the great French female screenwriters in history so they ask academics from other countries to speak about their industries. It was lovely and will result in having an article I wrote for them translated into French, which will be a new experience for me.
Then I capped the week off as an online guest panelist for one of the Kopenhaver Center Conversations along with my friend, colleague, and MFA mentor Rashaan Dozier-Escalante as we discussed Writing as Activism: Creating for Inclusion on the Screen. Moderated by Dr. Bethanie Irons of Stephens College we discussed the lack of representation for writers of different genders, races, ethnicities, and abilities and how writers can make the needed changes because we all recognize that Representation Matters.
The Sorbonne lecture was a private event but you can find the Kopenhaver Center Conversation here. It will be hard to top a week like that BUT then again this weekend I’ll be at the BEA (Broadcast Education Association) conference in Las Vegas on a panel about Writing as a Career and 2 weeks later I’ll be mentoring new writers at this year’s Cinestory weekend workshop in Idyllwild, California – followed by our MFA commencement at Stephens College and a weekend at the SeriesFest in Denver where I’ll have the honor of introducing this year’s Jan Marino Scholarship recipient at their annual Women Creatives Brunch.
…and I think it takes it all back globally because, of course, he’s going to become the judge. He’s going to bring all his movies to Cannes and so he’s going to get international fame from doing this and of course then he’s going to become the first African-American judge in the Cannes Film Festival and I think just seeing that circle to me is – it fills in this whole global idea and while he’s judge, we’re going to see an award go to a Japanese film right? Something that had – I can’t even remember if that had happened in the past – and then to a female, only the second female to come up with a Palme D’Or and that’s because – partially because he was on the judging team and I think it’s important to think that Jeannie and Cecil and all these women in the past to be proud and look at the judging group that year. It’s split 50/50 women and men. So we’re getting to a place where we’re getting all the perspectives in the room. So I think that’s it. There you go. That’s it. Thank you. Thank you very much.
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At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”
In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.
Then we get “Daughters of the Dust” by Julie Dash. So now a female coming into that rebellious you know LA rebellion was largely a male thing but now Julie Dash comes to it and tries to give the real story of the Gullah family – using their language and their conversation, which is really quite beautiful and we move over to Spike Lee. I would argue that “Do The Right Thing” is kind of the ultimate American – African-American – neo-realist film. Looking at the trouble in his area again due to poverty and then the heat and all of that that goes on and I think it’s important to look at Spike in the new Museum to the academy that they built in Los Angeles – which we finally got to visit after the pandemic – they have a room for directors and I would call this writer’s inspiration. I’m really tired when they call it director’s inspiration and he’s the director but you know what he got his only Oscar for – writing. Let’s just remember that. They gave a couple of writers writers yes writer/directors rooms to show their Inspirations and you’ll see right here “8 1/2” and “Rome Open City.” The man’s whole career is built around what he studied at New York Film Academy.
Watch this entire presentation
At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”
In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.
Charles Burnett is then gonna write but not direct “Bless Their Little Hearts” and again – so his style I think is one of the most examples of that. Likewise, instead of the bombed-out cities due to war, he’s showing us the destructed cities where all the factories have died and the jobs have gone and now there’s nothing. So in a strange way again it’s a different kind of War that’s being imagined in his films. He also like “The Bicycle Thief” – his main character comes up with an idea about selling fish and making money out of the trunk of his car which is already a fail when you think of it but he’s trying so hard and he does fail because nobody wants to buy fish that hasn’t been on ice. So it’s exactly the same ending we get in “The Bicycle Thief”, that it’s this futility but yet he’s going to wake up tomorrow and try something else which I think is really cool.
Watch this entire presentation
At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”
In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.
…and then we get you know Marty gets into the Italian films and he starts kind of mimicking it but he never quite gets there I would say. I would say of all his films “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” gets there because it’s a bleak story about a woman who is hoping to be a singer and but as she’s driving across the country to get to her singing career she has no money. So she has to get a job as a waitress. Many people know there was a TV show in the 70s. It’s based on this film but it was much more comedic and didn’t go into the sort of sadness and essentially the melodrama of her life. In the end, she meets Kris Kristofferson. They fall in love. Do you give up your dream for the love because she has a son who needs a house and security and so she’s going to make a choice. I won’t tell you what. You have to see the movie but it has the bleakness to it. Again now we’re in the non-African-American world. So I think Marty’s doing that but it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t take off. There’s too many other styles in the quote-unquote, you know, white Cinema if you want to call it that.
Watch this entire presentation
At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”
In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.
Charles Burnett who wrote”Killer of Sheep”. There you go and this is kind of an amazing really good example of taking neo-realism and bringing into the African-American storytelling. This is in many ways– people who now look at it say this is truly a perfect example of transmitting from one culture to another a style of film and you can see very similar not just – and this is in the scripts, by the way not just the visuals– Always written down but the idea of having children deal with the rubble. The trash The leftovers of society, not a beautiful lovely playground as we’ve seen walking through town here. So completely mimicking what we see in “Rome Open City” and also there’s this idea that there’s got to be some beauty in that. One of the things that is considered brought into black Cinema is that you still have to say that there’s struggle but you have to have hope. Otherwise, what’s the point of just showing the struggle. So I think it’s really beautiful. There are moments where the couple is dancing in their home. It’s a very barely furnished home but you can still see that there’s love involved. So that’s an element that black filmmaking brings into this neo-realistic feeling.
Watch this entire presentation
At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”
In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.
…and then “Claudine.” I always have to credit my students. I have a list of films they watch in every of the four semesters we do the history of screenwriting – all chronological from science to modern day – and people come to me and say how come this film wasn’t on the list and sometimes it’s a film I’ve never seen. “Claudine” was a film like that. I’d not seen it. It’s a lovely story about a woman with several children who’s on welfare – so again we’re seeing what happens in the cycles of poverty and when you’re not allowed to get a decent job to move out of that – and she falls in love with James Earl Jones. Early James Earl Jones. So pre-star Wars and he has to decide. He’s a man with a job. Does he want to take on a family and this much obligation and that’s going to get in the way of their love story. So it’s a beautiful love story that has to deal with the issues of poverty but that – just like “Marty” – ugly people can be in love. In this case, people who are so like why can’t you have love if you’re a poor person and how come the issues you face every day are in the way. So this is a beautiful film that I have to credit my students for bringing to you. Written by a male husband and wife team, Tina and Lester Pine but she died young so we don’t see a lot more work from her. Which again is how women fall out of this the history. Many of the women of the early days died in their 40s and the men went on to live to their 80s and did the oral histories and talked about their own world. So the same thing. We lose Tina early on.
Watch this entire presentation
At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”
In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.
“Nothing But A Man” deals with this really in a way we hadn’t seen before. Then we get into “The Cool World” and this is now the first time we’ve seen sort of gang life and it’s not glorified and it’s not beautiful. This is a very sad version of this is all I have to make money. This is all I can do to survive. Which is very post-war and Italy except there’s no war here. Except the constant war that had been fought against African Americans from the very beginning right? So thinking about the trauma of it and all those things being reflected and always there’s youth in these movies to see how that trauma affects yet the Next Generation and again and again. Which I think I see a lot in “Rome Open City.” Then we get Melvin Van Peebles coming along with “Sweet Sweetbacks Badassssss Song” and suddenly we have auteurs in the black theater rebellion and that’s kind of a fascinating new idea. He breaks out into more mainstream. People know who he is. He’s the beginning of a kind of a dynasty because his son Mario also becomes a filmmaker and that’s the first time that we’ve seen that opportunity.
Watch this entire presentation
At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”
In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.
![15 Conclusion From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/rmw-srn-vienna-2022-15.jpg)
![14 Julie Dash and Spike Lee From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/rmw-srn-vienna-2022-14.jpg)
![13 Bless Their Little Hearts From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/rmw-srn-vienna-2022-13.jpg)
![12 Martin Scorcese From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/rmw-srn-vienna-2022-12.jpg)
![11 Charlie Burnett and "Killer of Sheep" From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/rmw-srn-vienna-2022-11.jpg)
![10 Claudine From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/rmw-srn-vienna-2022-10.jpg)
![Rosanne at Shakespeare and Company Booksellers in Vienna, Austria [Photography]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Shakespeare-and-Co.-Bookstore.jpg)
![09 More On Neo-realism and Black Cinema From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/rmw-srn-vienna-2022-09.jpg)