History – Page 175 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

New Book: OUTSIDE IN BOLDLY GOES: 117 New Perspectives on 117 Classic Star Trek Stories by 117 Writers with essay by Dr. Rosanne Welch

So excited to see the publication of my latest essay in this fun collection on the original Star Trek series – the Outside In book series invited 117 writers to contribute essays to the book.

They assigned each of us an original episode of the show on which to write a 1500 word essay. My episode is This Side of Paradise where the crew lands on a planet and Spock falls in love with a woman who spouts Walden and Thoreau – written by the brilliant D.C. Fontana, who I note inspired many more women to write television.

OUTSIDE IN BOLDLY GOES will be 352 pages, paperback, $19.95, available in late October 2016.

Pre-Order Directly from the Publisher Today

See the sidebar for more books and essays from Dr. Rosanne Welch

Who Wrote The Monkees? from1960’s TV Censorship and The Monkees with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (0:48)

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“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…

Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references.
Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016

Transcript:

…And I wanted to meet Micky Dolenz because, when I was a kid, I had a crush on him. So, I, (laughter), but Written By is not a celebrity magazine. It’s a magazine of writers. So, I pitched, what if I interview all the writers of The Monkees? All the people who are in their 80’s who once wrote for The Monkees who are still alive. And their like “Oooo, what a cool idea.” So I met wth the writers of the show and it was fascinating. They had also written for many other things — Get Smart, Laugh-In. They’d won Emys for The Mary Tyler Moore Show later in their career. They were all very accomplished people and then I wrote this article and I used the article as the proposal for the book and, obviously, that’s how it all happened. So, I think it is really interesting, the process, but to create something for this conference, the conference theme is censorship. So, I thought “Ok, let me adjust to this.”

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

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.

Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”

Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space are two books she has written. Los Angeles Times and the Journal of Screenwriting hold some of her published articles.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

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More Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (0:52)

You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!

Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library

Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.

Watch this entire presentation

Transcript:

It takes Time Burton to come back and finally use the real story in the book and make a film that is much more honest and loyally covering the story. The problem is, it’s not as popular because we fell in love with the softer, milder, gentler version of it and the people who liked that film didn’t find themselves liking the film that is actually much more based on the real book. So that’s a trap. If you allow your book to be adapted, it’s going to grow and change and you might not appreciate where it goes, if you’re Truman Capote or Roald Dahl. I always think that’s very interesting. I didn’t like this version. I like Johnny Depp. I saw it. My kid saw it. I have a copy of the Gene Wilder DVD and we keep playing that one. That works for me. So, this is — a piece becomes a new thing when it becomes a film and writers have to be able to let it go.

About this talk

Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.

Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Her upcoming book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture” will be published in Fall 2016

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Everyone should watch “Friendly Persuasion” [Film History]

In the course of writing a chapter surveying the portrayal of women in Civil War films (for a book called Blue And Gray In Black And White And Color) I’ve had the fascinating opportunity to watch two films I had never seen – one brilliant, one awful. Funny how that goes.

The brilliant one is so good I may add it to my film list for next year’s History of Screenwriting III (from 1950-1980) because of how well done it is and because it was written by Michael Wilson, one of the lesser known, blacklisted writers of the era though he also wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai, A Place in the Sun and Planet of the Apes (not a bad CV for a screenwriter).

In fact, the Wilson film that I loved didn’t even have his name – or the name of any screenwriter – or the Screenplay By credit on the opening credits at all. Because the studio wouldn’t put out a film by a blacklisted writer, director William Wyler wanted to put his brother’s name on the film – but the WGA said no. And Wilson didn’t want to use a pseudonym, so the film has no screenwriting credit. What it does have, that was built into the structure by the author of the novel on which it is based, Jessamyn West, is a wonderful chance for all the major and minor characters to do the most dramatic thing of all – to choose how to behave when the world’s activity doesn’t match your personal beliefs.

The film (and novel) is Friendly Persuasion, about an Indiana Quaker family in the path of Morgan’s Raiders during the Civil War. The mother is the local Quaker minister, her husband supports her to the best of his ability (though he’d like to buy an organ for their home because he doesn’t understand why music is wrong), and her son (played by Anthony Perkins in an Oscar nominated role) is the one who struggles with whether or not to pick up a guy and fight the Confederates as they have begun burning the barns on their friends’ local farms. It’s such a beautiful piece of drama because every character has to make a decision – and a tough one – about what they believe in – and then live with the consequences of that decision. While the opening of the film was a bit slow (as films from the 1950s tended to be – they gave you time to know the ‘world’ of the film that was about to be overturned by the events of the story) it all culminated beautifully.

On the other hand, for this research, I also watched a 1971 gothic horror film (also written by a formerly blacklisted writer, Albert Maltz) and also based on a novel (written by Thomas P. Cullinan) called The Beguiled. A lousier, more annoying piece of claptrap I have never watched. I wanted to turn it off several times but since I was studying how Civil War women were portrayed in films, I couldn’t, since the story is of a wounded Union soldier being cared for by the residents of a Southern girls boarding school. I get that gothic plus horror doesn’t equal true – and yet, horror is all the more horrific if it is based in some, small reality. This film is nothing more than a collection of sex kittens clamoring to lose their virginity to this representative of the enemy, the guy who was shooting at their loved ones yesterday is not my idea of the perfect man and yet these women fall into awful displays of coquettishness which I could never bring myself to believe.

I’ve read that Sofia Coppola is writing a remake. Part of me considers seeing it in hopes that she will find the reality that will make the story more palatable – but the other part of me never wants to wallow in that stupidity again. Despite how nice Clint Eastwood looked with his shirt off in those days, watching 12 year old girls try to have sex with him was far too icky for me. Then, again, perhaps that’s what classified the film as a horror film in the first place?

So if you want to take my advice, never rent The Beguiled but do make time in your viewing life for Friendly Persuasion.

Introduction from 1960’s TV Censorship and The Monkees with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1:00)

Transcript:

I’m going to talk a little about the process of creating the book and going to publication. This is the book and it was really funny the things I learned along the way. The people who work at the publishing company must be all in their twenties which is a lovely beautiful thing. When they searched for a picture to put on the front cover and they sent me the picture to approve, they sent me a picture with 3 of the members of the band in it. They cut out Peter Tork and I had to send back a thing and they clearly Googled images that they wanted and found a cute image and they didn’t know the difference. At one point the bad was only three members. He did quit at some point and they must have thought that was normal and so I had to call back and say “You’ll cut out one quarter of the people who will purchase this by insulting them by not putting it in” so they found another picture that included all of them. So I thought that was pretty funny. And the whole thing actually began because I am on the editorial board for Written By Magazine and I like to write about people I’d like to meet. So I met Russell T Davies from Doctor Who by interviewing him for Written By Magazine and I wanted to meet Micky Dolenz because when I was a kid I had a crush on him.

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

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Her upcoming book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture” will be published in Fall 2016

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Psychobabble reviews “Why The Monkees Matter”

As an author, it is both exciting and frightening to begin reading the review of a book you have spent several years of your life researching and writing. But you also appreciate when a reviewer sees both the good and the perhaps not so perfect points of your work. That’s how I feel about Mike Segretto’s coverage. He doesn’t completely agree with my feminist bent on the show, but does agree with my glass-half-empty/glass-half-full take on the way the show handled ethnicity in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. I smiled when he rated the book “a fine piece of cultural analysis” and an “atypically readable and fun one”. That was my goal all along – to make some cultural points about The Monkees and their impact while entertaining the fans who have known they mattered all these years. — Rosanne

Review: ‘Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television, and American Pop Culture’
by Mike Segretto from Psychobabble, July 17, 2016

The question of whether or not some artifact of the twentieth century still “matters” has become a trendy question among pop-culture writers. The annoying implication is that the writer’s judgment holds some sort of weight, and if it is decided that, say, The Beatles get the thumbs down, they no longer “matter”—whatever that means. Instead of asking questions, Rosanne Welch’s new book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television, and American Pop Culture makes an emphatic statement, and unlike a lot of these other “does this matter?” pieces, there is a special point behind her statement since The Monkees spent so much of their fifty-year career having critics tell them they most certainly do not matter.

As Welch points out, that attitude really began to change in the wake of Davy Jones’s death in 2012, as critical consensus started moving toward the judgment that The Monkees were actually really great. The point of Why The Monkees Matter is to articulate that judgment, and she does so by focusing exclusively on their TV show, which she notes was artistically, narratively, and politically progressive.

Welch organizes her book as a series of stand-alone topical essays. She deals with the state of the teenager on American TV prior to The Monkees arrival; how The Monkees contemporized depictions of young people by voicing anti-war, anti-consumerist philosophies (some scripted, some not); the radical inventiveness of the series’ design and writing (“The Monkees” was that rare sixties show that went out of its way to hire young writers); it’s pop-cultural legacy; etc.

Welch also deals with how women and non-American ethnicities were handled on the show. This is where “The Monkees” didn’t always live up to its Aquarian ideals, though the author cuts the series a lot of slack regarding its treatment of women. Yes, we do see an unusual number of female characters in respectable positions on the show—judges, royalty, PH.D. students, rock musicians—but some of Welch’s arguments that the series was generally feminist are weak. She contends that Davy’s weekly girlfriends weren’t sex objects because they never actually spend the night at The Monkees’ pad. Well, how many women on sixties sitcoms spent the night at a man’s pad? Zero? She suggests that Micky values intelligence more than sexuality because he describes Brenda from “99 ½ Pound Weakling” as “brilliant and intelligent” when this is clearly a joke on her stoned inarticulateness. While Welch notes the demotion of the all-female band The Westminster Abbeys to go-go dancers at the end of “Some Like It Lukewarm”, she unconvincingly suggests that other elements in the episode balance out the sexist way the writers chose to end it.

Welch is less forgiving when analyzing how non-American ethnicities are handled on “The Monkees”, focusing on how Asians, Italians, Gypsies, and Russians are stereotyped on the series. She misses a great opportunity to discuss the character of Thursday in “Monkees Marooned”, who very effectively sends up the “black native” stereotype with his eloquence, intelligence, ability to take control of situations, and hipness.

Aside from the weaknesses in these two chapters, Why The Monkees Matter is not only a fine piece of cultural analysis overall but also an atypically readable and fun one. It’s filled with historical tidbits about the series’ filming and writing and Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter, so even if you need no convincing that The Monkees matter, you may still find much to interest you on its pages.

A Lesson in the Power of One Line – Leigh Brackett [Essay]

Watching a rerun of The Rockford Files the other day I noted 2 interesting things – things that came up in conversations with writers, producers and development execs who gave guest lectures at our Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting over our last workshop session. Particularly, what came up was the idea of what execs and showrunners look for when they read a spec script. Several producers and show runners said they look for solid scenes and one or two spectacular lines of dialogue – lines that stood out as well-written and never strayed away from character.

So watching a first season Rockford episode called “The Four Pound Brick” I noted a line of dialogue that stuck with me over a few days. An older woman was walking away from the cemetery plot for her 26 year old son. She was commenting on the (then new) policy of not allowing headstones in favor of flat stones that allowed lawnmowers to ride over and therefore keep the whole area neater. She said, “I think cemeteries ought to be a bit messy. Like lives.” A very nice line that struck me as something that would make me want to read more of that writer.

Then I used IMDB to get the writer’s name: Leigh Brackett. You might (or so I say you should) recognize her name from a number of successful hard-boiled, manly-man detective and western films such as The Big Sleep, El Dorado, and Rio Bravo. She also wrote a slew of science-fiction/fantasy books and often collaborated with Ray Bradbury.

I don’t like the fact that this is a compliment, but it was then and still is: Director Howard Hawks thought Leigh Brackett was a good writer because – according to him – she wrote “like a man”.

For my fellow Star Wars fans, you will recognize Brackett for her co-screenwriting credit (shared with Lawrence Kasdan) for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Long-time fan of her writing, George Lucas, wanted her and only her to write the sequel to his blockbuster film once he’d figured out he liked directing and world-building more than the nuts and bolts of executing those big dreams on the big screen. He wanted Han Solo to be a combination of Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne – a manly man with a sensitive side – and hired the woman who could do that. But she died of cancer after writing the first version of the script so Lucas did some work on her draft before asking Lawrence Kasdan to finish the screenplay. Both men respected and admired Brackett so much – and kept so much of her characterizations and structure – that her name remains on the final script. Apparently, there was only one copy of her version at an archive but eventually it made its way onto the internet where you can read it:

The Empire Strikes Back – Brackett Draft (PDF)

I like Han Solo’s line about Hoth: “I doubt if God even remembers where he hung this star.” I wonder how many rewrite drafts it survived until either Lucas or Kasdan decided not to mention gods of any kind in their alternate universe…

But it was interesting to see that the advice of current showrunners helped me pick out a quality writer in the midst of her career. I haven’t researched how she came to write a Rockford episode but many screenwriters of the 40s and 50s turned to television for a while since it was such a lucrative market.

As a final note, the IMDB trivia page tells us that the character “Sheriff Leigh Brackett” in John Carpenter’s independent horror film Halloween (1978) was named after her. It’s a nice tribute, but a nicer one would be that more of us recognize her name more often.

Leigh Brackett on Wikipedia

Leigh Brackett on IMDB

Books by Leigh Brackett at Amazon.com

1960’s TV Censorship and The Monkees with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (21:34)

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

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Her upcoming book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture” will be published in Fall 2016

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

More on Breakfast at Tiffany’s from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (1:03)

You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!

Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library

Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.

Watch this entire presentation

Transcript:

But more importantly, change wise, we have George Peppard — who some of you will remember in childhood as part of the A-Team — but he’s a huge movie star in this period. He’s a leading man and he’s a write in this piece. He rally stands in for Truman Capote. This is really a story about Truman Capote’s first time in New York getting his first novel sold. So, George Peppard in the movies, this is a love story and they fall in lovd with each other in the end even though she’s a free spirit. She’s never going to fall in love with anybody. She doesn’t want to be tied down by a man. Becomes a lovely romance. By the time we’re done, the cat is a symbol of how she won’t commit, because she never names her cata and at the very end of the movie — to prove she doesn’t need anybody — she dumps the cat out of a taxi int eh rain and it goes sauntering off and gets all soaking wet and the proof that she’s changed and grown is that she jumps out of the taxi and chases down the cat and she saves it. Then she names that cat and we’re like “Ok. She’s grown. She’s changed. What a beautiful love story.” There’s a small problem with that adaptation. even Truman Capote himself said “The only thing they took from my book was the title.”

About this talk

Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Her upcoming book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture” will be published in Fall 2016

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Hey, Hey, It’s the Monkees at 50! Part I via Emmys.com [Article]

This is one of the best articles celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Monkees as a television show (my particular interest) written for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences by Herbie J. Pilato, author of (among others) Dashing, Daring and Debonair: TV’s Top Male Icons from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Hey, Hey, It’s the Monkees at 50! Part I
It’s The Monkees’ 50th Anniversary! The sixth in our series of golden television anniversaries.

When happy music met happy television. That’s The Monkees TV show in a nutshell.

Originally airing Monday nights on NBC from 1966 to 1968, later added to the ABC and CBS Saturday daytime schedule, and created by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, this ground-breaking, Emmy-winning mosaic of a “musical comedy” was an uncommon weekly half-hour hybrid of all-things media that coincided with the popularity the Beatles.

Monkee members Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones (who died February 29, 2012 of a heart attack at 66) became nearly as popular as the Beatles.

While the British-born Beatles forever altered mainstream music history, the Monkees managed not only to change the vast TV and lyrical landscape, but added enough sparkle and delight to its horizon to cross all generations, timelines, and hemispheres. The dynamic of each Monkee’s personality also synergistically combined as one unit for the television series, as well as for the band.

Read the entire article