History – Page 147 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)

Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.

In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.

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

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

About Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch, PhD is a writer, producer and university professor with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel and ABC NEWS/Nightline. Other books include Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture (McFarland, 2017) and Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection (ABC-CLIO, 2017), named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. Welch has also published chapters in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color (Lexington Books, 2018) and essays in Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology and Outside In Makes it So, and Outside in Boldly Goes (both edited by Robert Smith). By day she teaches courses on the history of screenwriting and on television writing for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting programs. Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP is available on YouTube.

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From The Research Vault: Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter Hardcover by Alyn Shipton

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Quote from “America’s Forgotten Founding Father” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 11 in a series – Traveling

“You say you want to see the world, see how government works in other places, when do you plan to start?” Salinas asked.

Silva added, “Travel enriches the soul – and can only be done when one has no family to leave behind, no wife, no children, free — as you are today, Filippo.”

“But, truth be told, I am fascinated with the English colonies in the Americas,” Filippo admitted. “Of late, my thoughts have been to witness this for myself.”

From America’s Forgotten Founding Father — Get Your Copy Today!

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Today I Became a Citation: Little Women, Feminism and Me!

I usually use Google Alerts to find mentions of The Monkees but this weekend something interesting happened. Google Alerts found my name in an essay on the JSTOR Daily about the new BBC miniseries version of Little Women, adapted by Heidi Thomas of “Call the Midwife”) from a novel by a female writer (Louisa May Alcott, as if you didn’t know) and directed by a woman (Vanessa Caswill).

My Summer of Watching Little Women by Benjamin Winterhalter

The writer of the essay was a male, JSTOR Daily’s features editor Benjamin Winterhalter and he was reminiscing about a summer in his elementary years when his mother and friends dissected all the filmed adaptations of the novel in preparation for writing an article — “A Feminist Romance: Adapting Little Women to the Screen” for Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature.

Read the Journal Article

Winterhalter’s article came up because along his research way he came across an Op-Ed I had written for the Los Angeles Times, “What ‘Little Women’ Is Really About” about the 1995 Robin Schiff adaptation (starring Winona Ryder) which I had framed as both a more deeply feminist interpretation but, more importantly, accessible to all as the story of a writer finding their voice.

How fun to be reminded of that Op-Ed and to see how accessible my earlier work can be with archives going digital. It’s also good timing as I often recommend to screenwriting students that they write for various local publications in order to get their names out there and to fill out their writing CVs. Here’s an example of a piece I wrote when I had a passionate idea ( the one about how this is more the story of a writer finding their voice than merely a bunch of sisters surviving the Civil War). Since I did not see that idea represented in the mainstream press, I brought it to their attention and they noticed it and presented it to their readers.

Quote from “America’s Forgotten Founding Father” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 10 in a series – Government and Religion

At his cousin’s apothecary and during dinners with newfound friends from all over the world, Filippo learned much about the workings of government and how it handled religion differently in different places. He found himself more and more fascinated by the idea that so many different ideas took precedence all over the world, even to the point of deciding what day it was.

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Quotes from “Why The Monkees Matter” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 99 in a series – The End

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Clearly, The Monkees made contributions across culture, both nationally and internationally, in their 50 years of existence. Their continued clout comes from their having had feet in both the television and music industries at key changing points in each.

from Why The Monkees Matter by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Buy your Copy today!

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

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

From The Research Vault: Film Genre for the Screenwriter by June Selbo

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

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Quote from “America’s Forgotten Founding Father” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 9 in a series – Livorno, The British and Learning English

Filippo enjoyed watching the unloading of products from distant lands onto his shores, wondering often about the people and places where the products originated. As the major port city on the coast, Livorno boasted visitors from all over the world. The British had reestablished trade in the last fifty years, though they called the town Leghorn. In order to work and socialize with the British philosophers and writers who formed the expatriate community, Filippo learned English and found he had a facility with language, which would prove valuable later in life.

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Quotes from “Why The Monkees Matter” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 98 in a series – Boyce, Hart and Let Us Vote (LUV)

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On a side branch of Monkee influence, songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart lead a protest called LUV = Let Us Vote. The protest urged the United States Congress to pass a 26th amendment to the U.S. Constitution moving the legal age for voting from 21 to 18.

from Why The Monkees Matter by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Buy your Copy today!

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

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

A History of Screenwriting 60 – The General Starring Buster Keaton

Screenplay by Al Boasberg, Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton, Charles Henry Smith, Paul Girard Smith
Based on The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger

The General is a 1926 American silent comedy film released by United Artists. It was inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase, a true story of an event that occurred during the American Civil War. The story was adapted from the memoir The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger. The film stars Buster Keaton who co-directed it with Clyde Bruckman.

At the time of its initial release, The General, an action-adventure-comedy made toward the end of the silent era, was not well received by critics and audiences, resulting in mediocre box office returns (about half a million dollars domestically, and approximately one million worldwide). Because of its then-huge budget ($750,000 supplied by Metro chief Joseph Schenck) and failure to turn a significant profit, Keaton lost his independence as a filmmaker and was forced into a restrictive deal with MGM. In 1954 the film entered the public domain (in the USA), owing to the claimant’s failure to renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.[2]

The General has since been reevaluated, and is now often ranked among the greatest American films ever made.[3] — Wikipedia

Learn more about Buster Keaton with these books

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