Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
I think particularly this quote is an important one to think about — “what science fiction can do for us…”, right, “What we don’t see , we assume we can’t be.” So it’s very important to her to put African Americans into the future to see that they exist in the future. That meant something to her. Just like the other female writers were putting women in powerful positions in the future because they wanted girls to see role models like that. So that’s the quote I think that should stick with us because it’s an important thought and a lot of the media that we consume — what are we giving our money – what are we supporting what do we want to see more of right?
* 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!
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter and Women writers matter s– o women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
* 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
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
This lady I wish people knew more. They know her in literature and poetry classes but they don’t know her as a screenwriter. Guesses? Dorothy Parker. Dorothy Parker right who happily said , “You can lead a whore of culture but you can’t make her think.” Yeah Exactly. Dorothy was nominated for two Oscars. She was from New York. She was of that world the Algonquin Round Table. She came out here because there was lots of money to be made. She was married to an actor who was about 12 years her junior and everyone thought that was a crazy marriage. There were a few women doing that back in the day. He wanted to write in Hollywood because there was more money out here. So they came out here. They wrote several movies. These movies she did — they ended up divorcing — so she got the Oscars when she wasn’t working with him. She had the nominations. What she did with him is “A Star Is Born”, the original “A Star Is Born” which I must tell you, in my class one day I was having people name their favorite movies and of course some would name “A Star is Born” and I said “Which version?” and she said “There’s more than one?” Yeah that was really sad.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
This is a quote by Peter obviously. Who knows who’s sitting behind him? Janis Joplin. These guys were friends. So there’s also this ridiculous myth that nobody in music like The Monkees back then. That’s all not true. They lived in Laurel Canyon which is an area right above Hollywood. They had houses next to Mama Cass Elliot, Eric Clapton lived in the neighborhood and Frank Zappa buy a house there eventually. John Lennon would visit Mickey Dolenz’ home all the time because Mickey had married a woman from England and Lennon and Ringo, of The Beatles obviously, made the joke that that was the house they could go to where somebody knew how to serve tea at four o’clock. So you know they were just English guys hanging out in America. So but Peter, very much against the character he was asked to play which of course was the dummy, he was a very intellectual very smart gentleman and saw right from start that their message would actually have more power than The Beatles.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement 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 Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
The Morning Telegraph (NY) report April 17, 1921: “Sarah Y. Mason has returned to Hollywood after a year in New York as a leading lady in the Selznick scenario department. She has just completed an original story for screen purposes and has orders for several continuities. However, Mason contrives to divide her time equally between screen and society.”
The Six Degrees of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman by Pamela L. Scott
* 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
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
…and we had a marvelous presentation about two weeks ago on Octavia Butler right? So moving now moving further and further into the 90s. Octavia Butler the first African-American female to be successful writing science fiction. We had a presentation here from the curator of her papers at the Huntington Library because she lived in Pasadena. So she’s a local to California and a lot of her stuff was infused with sort of the attitudes and the progressive ideas that we tend to be surrounded by here. She won a MacArthur Fellowship again the first science fiction writer — not a person of color and not even a woman — the very first science fiction writer ever to get a MacArthur grant which is a huge piece of support to creative people and artistic people so I think that’s really cool.
* 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!
Renowned artist Leonardo da Vinci was the greatest genius to ever conquer the worlds of art, science, and philosophy. Writing backwards to protect his knowledge, da Vinci epitomized creativity and eccentricity.
Despite being plagued with frustrations and failures, da Vinci was spurred to create, invent, research, and write no matter the cost. By exploring his sorrows and joys, da Vinci’s world is uncovered. And with it a five-hundred-year-old secret is released: the hidden truth of Leonardo da Vinci.
About the Author
Myers has sold, written for hire, or optioned ten theatrical feature scripts and has done a number of rewrites for indie film and TV producers. Two short films, a stage play, and numerous TV public service announcements have been produced from his scripts.
His produced projects include nine Chapters in Black American History, the drama/comedy The Pickup, his half-hour suspense drama, Double Cross, as well as Speak To The World, a pilot for an interview show.
One of Myers’ comedy feature scripts won an Honorable Mention at the Thunderbird International Film Festival Script Competition.
He has judged scripts for UCLA’s Master of Fine Arts Screenwriting Showcase and has been a regular panelist at the West Coast Writers Conference. His advice to screenwriters is part of Tarcher/Penguin’s anthology, NOW WRITE! Screenwriting: Exercises by Today’s Best Screenwriters, Teachers and Consultants.
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
Of course, most people know her. Mae West. Again, she made herself a brand, long before Madonna and long before Lady Gaga this lady knew that sex sells and I’m going to make myself as sexy as I can and I’m going to tell innuendos and I am going to do all of that so that she actually got arrested a few times. People remember Mae West as an actress and forget that she wrote almost everything she performed in. Broadway plays. Movies. Stage shows. She was her own writer. She would talk about how easy it was to write but people who did her autobiography discovered that she had journals and journals and journals of every joke she could ever write — that she could ever find. She wrote all day long waiting to get that one or two really good pieces to use in her next production. She was consummately a writer before she was a performer. All she had to do to perform was throw on the fancy clothes and smile, right, but the writing was the hard work that she engaged in. She was pretty cool. These are all her movies. She did sex before Madonna released a book called “Sex.” This is way back in the day when it was actually against the law. So she’s pretty amazing.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
This is a particular moment in the show that shocks me that got on to network television at that time. They’re playing dominoes as you can see and at one point when all the dominoes fall down Davy says to Peter “What do you call this game?” and Peter says “Southeast Asia.” which if you know about Domino Theory of Communism is it — I mean — and the censors didn’t cut that and a lot of times it’s because Trevor Silverman said that Network people didn’t understand the joke. They didn’t get it because they were an older generation of men — all men — and they didn’t see what was going on. So that to me is an amazing thing who got away with what they did. Television mattered to The Monkees — both the writers and, of course, the performers. They understood that it was this giant place — this giant podium from which to send out a message to everybody and they they knew that was important.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement 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 Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
During [the 1930’s], women gained a unique opportunity to participate both as stronger characters within these stories and, perhaps more importantly, behind the scenes. “Hollywood’s ‘red meat’ hard-boiled crime cycle during the war, seemingly targeted a masculine gendered audience. Yet, these films included surprisingly strong female femme fatale ‘love interest’ characters who redefined ‘femininity’.
Joan Harrison: Redefining Femininity in Film Noir and Hollywood by Chelsea Andes
* 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
![25 Dorothy Parker from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 6 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/csuf-rmw-w3h-25.jpeg)
![10 More On TV As Platform And Podium from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (52 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/monkees-popcon-2019-10.jpeg)
![22 Octavia Butler from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (46 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/scifi-rmw-cpp-22.jpeg)
![24 Mae West from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 5 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/csuf-rmw-w3h-24.jpeg)
![09 TV As Platform And Podium from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (51 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/monkees-popcon-2019-09.jpeg)
