Category: History

A Woman Wrote That – 26 in a series – Fleabag (2016), Writer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 26 in a series - Fleabag (2016), Writer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge

CLAIRE

The only person I’d run through an airport for is you.

Related posts:

  1. A Woman Wrote That – 25 in a series – Thelma and Louise (1991), Writer, Callie Khouri
  2. A Woman Wrote That – 23 in a series – Brave (2012), Writer, Brenda Chapman
  3. A Woman Wrote That – 19 in a series – You’ve Got Mail (1998), Writer: Nora Ephron
  4. A Woman Wrote That – 20 in a series – Dirty Dancing (1987), Writer, Eleanor Bergstein
  5. A Woman Wrote That – 17 in a series – Father of the Bride (1991), Writer: Nancy Meyers

Where’s Her Movie? Activist, Mary Church Terrell – 19 in a series

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film.  This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history.  — Rosanne

Where's Her Movie? Activist, Mary Church Terrell - 19 in a series

Mary Church Terrell (born Mary Eliza Church; September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage.[1] She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street school (now known as Paul Laurence Dunbar High School)—the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1896, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women’s League of Washington (1894). She helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1910) — Wikipedia

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  1. Where’s Her Movie? Activist, Dolores Huerta – 17 in a series
  2. Where’s Her Movie? Activist, Claudette Colvin – 16 in a series
  3. Where’s Her Movie? Sculptor, Selma Burke – 15 in a series
  4. Where’s Her Movie? Civil Rights Activist, Elizabeth Peratrovich – 5 in a series
  5. Where’s Her Movie? Labor Activist, Anna LoPizzo – 8 in a series

21 Buffy The Vampire Slayer from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

21 Buffy The Vampire Slayer from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.

Transcript:

Now. Lack of women. Ta-Da. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Thank god, although we’ve discovered in the states that Joss Whedon, who ran the show and got all kinds of points for being a feminist was, in fact, having sex with every other girl he could meet so apparently not such a feminist. His wife has now left him — ta-da — but I academically am going to interpret to you that the reason the program maintained its level of feminist theory was because of all the women who he hired in his writer’s room. So perhaps subconsciously he knew he was a jerk and he wasn’t going to interpret this right and he wanted to get a room full of people who could give him a real interpretation of what it was like to be a girl in high school who was othered — who was different in this way. So Buffy is a pretty breakthrough and I highly recommend that show

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  1. 06 Inside The Writers Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (43 seconds)
  2. 18 Where Are The Women? from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (40 seconds)
  3. 07 The Monkees Writers Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (44 seconds)
  4. 17 The Bionic Woman from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (56 seconds)
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“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 34 in a series

“I am guilty of no crime save that of being an Italian like yourself,” Bassi said in his defense. “I have risked my life for Italy, and your duty is to do good to those who have suffered for her.” The Austrians convicted both men of bearing arms against the State, sentenced them to death and on August 8, 1849, executed Father Bassi and Count Livraghi by firing squad.

Get your copy of A Man Of Action Saving Liberty Today!

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  1. “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 4 in a series
  2. “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 8 in a series
  3. Quotes from “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 3 in a series
  4. Quotes from “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 1 in a series
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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 3: Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman by Leah Panos

Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman by Leah Panos
 
The single plays of American ex-pat playwright Howard Schuman produced for British television between 1973 and 1983 have received little critical attention. Written in a distinctly un-British madcap, non-naturalistic and often pulpy ‘B movie’ style, they centre around caricatured, hysterical and/or camp characters and make frequent references to popular culture. This article provides a general survey of Schuman’s plays and analyses his sensibility as a screenwriter, drawing extensively on material from interviews with the writer. The article’s particular focus is how and why different cultural forms including music, film and theatre are used and referred to in Schuman’s plays, and how this conditions the plays’ narrative content and visual and aural form. It also considers the reception of Schuman’s plays and their status as non-naturalistic dramas that engage heavily with American pop culture, within the context of British drama. Finally, it explores the writer’s relationship to style and aesthetics, and considers how his written works have been enhanced through creative design decisions, comparing his directions (in one of his scripts) with the realized play to reflect on the use of key devices.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 3: Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman by Leah Panos

Journal of Screenwriting Cover

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice. 

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  1. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Female fantasy and postfeminist politics in Nora Ephron’s screenplays by Roberta Garrett
  2. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 3: And the beat goes on: The continuing influence of The Singing Detective by Glen Creeber
  3. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: Who Writes British Films: A Summary on the UKFC Report and a Call for Further Research by Susan Rogers
  4. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Some attitudes and trajectories in screenwriting research by Steven Maras
  5. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Lost and gone for ever? The search for early British screenplays by Jacob U. U. Jacob

The Civil War On Film – 29 in a series – “…his attitude about the futility and ridiculousness of war comes from his own experiences as a child during World War II.”

The Civil War On Film - 29 in a series -

Many film historians attribute anti-Vietnam war sentiment to Sergio Leone personally, but this is not particularly accurate. Leone is Italian and he wasn’t making films for the American market, at least not until United Artists approached his producer with a film deal, at which point the first two films in the trilogy had already been made. Leone’s attitude about the futility and ridiculousness of war comes from his own experiences as a child during World War II.

Movies profiled in this book:

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  1. The Civil War On Film – 25 in a series – “Not surprisingly, few Civil War movies explore the prisoner of war experience…”
  2. The Civil War On Film – 23 in a series – “Many historians and critics consider Glory the best American Civil War movie ever made.”
  3. The Civil War On Film – 5 in a series – “In our Civil War we didn’t fight outsiders…”
  4. The Civil War On Film – 28 in a series – “…except for them it was a conflict of beliefs.”
  5. The Civil War On Film – 27 in a series – “Nativists in New York City showed particular disdain for being conscripted into the army to fight a war that would free yet another minority group…”

10 Steven Bochco from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

10 Steven Bocbco from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

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When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

Transcript

Then, of course , we have Steven Bochco, who gave us — he, as was said in the keynote, the multi-level story, many characters with different goals. He brought that to television in a way that hadn’t existed before. Adam-12 is a very basic, two guys do cop things all day. This was now groups of people. Here we had the policemen with their own personal lives at home. Later will have LA Law. The lawyers with their own personal lives and NYPD Lue. So that was what Bochco brought to television.

For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit

Screenwriting Research Network Conference, Porto, Portugal, All Sessions

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Related posts:

  1. 03 Managed Chaos from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]
  2. 01 Introduction from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]
  3. 09 More on Stephen J. Cannell from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]
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A Woman Wrote That – 25 in a series – Thelma and Louise (1991), Writer, Callie Khouri

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 25 in a series - Thelma and Louise (1991), Writer, Callie Khouri

THELMA

I don’t ever remember feeling this awake..

Related posts:

  1. A Woman Wrote That – 4 in a series – Thelma and Louise by Callie Khouri (1991)
  2. A Woman Wrote That – 17 in a series – Father of the Bride (1991), Writer: Nancy Meyers
  3. A Woman Wrote That – 23 in a series – Brave (2012), Writer, Brenda Chapman
  4. A Woman Wrote That – 22 in a series – Bring It On! (2000), Writer, Jessica Bendinger
  5. A Woman Wrote That – 24 in a series – National Treasure (2004), Writer, Marianne Wibberley

Where’s Her Movie? Actress, Maria Félix – 18 in a series

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film.  This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history.  — Rosanne

Where's Her Movie? Actress, Maria Félix - 18 in a series

María de los Ángeles Félix Güereña, known as María Félix (Spanish: [maˈɾi.a ˈfeliks]; 8 April 1914 – 8 April 2002), was a Mexican film actress and singer. Along with Pedro Armendáriz and Dolores del Río, she was one of the most successful figures of Latin American cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. Considered one of the most beautiful actresses of Mexican cinema, her taste for the finesse and strong personality garnered her the title of diva early in her career.[3] She was known as La Doña, a name derived from her character in the film Doña Bárbara (1943), and María Bonita, thanks to the anthem composed exclusively for her, as a wedding gift by her second husband, the Mexican composer Agustín Lara. She completed a film career that included 47 films made in Mexico, Spain, France, Italy and Argentina.[4] She was also considered one of the most important female figures in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. — Wikipedia

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  1. Where’s Her Movie? Actress, Maria Montez – 12 in a series
  2. Where’s Her Movie? US Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Maria Sotomayor – 14 in a series
  3. Where’s Her Movie? Activist, Dolores Huerta – 17 in a series
  4. Where’s Her Movie? Astronomer, Margaret Harwood – 4 in a series
  5. Where’s Her Movie? Sculptor, Selma Burke – 15 in a series

20 More On Russell T Davies from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

20 More On Russell T Davies from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.

Transcript:

This book here, I highly recommend if you like Doctor Who, but if you like writing, Benjamin Cook, the writer, the journalist asked Russell Davies in the last season of David Tennant’s era, could I email you across this year and just ask you questions like — what are you thinking of today and Russell was like sure and so it’s this it’s the collection of their emails as he wrote the last season. So you’ll start with something like well today I’m thinking what if water was deadly? I don’t know what to do with that but that’s on my brain today and a few weeks later it was — what if some astronauts were on Mars and Martian water was deadly and by the time you’re done we have an episode called Waters of Mars right? So he watched the progress and development of a story through these emails with Russell Davies.

Watch this entire presentation

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* 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

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Related posts:

  1. 19 Russell T Davies and Doctor Who from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (40 seconds)
  2. 17 The Bionic Woman from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (56 seconds)
  3. 18 Where Are The Women? from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (40 seconds)
  4. 10 The Writer’s Voice from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)
  5. 05 Women Writers Matter from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (27 seconds)