On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Major Congratulations to Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alum Ilona Rossman Ho (Class of 2019) who’s screenplay “Indivisible Mom” has been named a 2019 summer edition BAFF (Big Apple Film Festival) Screenplay Award Winner!
Ilona worked on the script with mentors Niceole Levy and Lisanne Sartor while in the MFA program.
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Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
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Transcript:
Sarah Mason had a similar thing happen to her. Sarah Mason worked together with her husband Victor Hermann, They got the first Oscar for adaptation. It was for Little Women which of course has been done and done and done over again. They also worked on Stella Dallas and many films in the early period. Again, Victor Herrmann left writing to become a director and he ended up directing the Marx Brothers so he’s a little he appears in a few more film histories. She disappears out of the film histories though she’s got an Oscar to her name and Victor, who outlived his wife, gave an oral history where he said he did most of the writing when they were a team. The problem is if you look at her IMDB list of movies she wrote before marrying him and after he left the team to become a director, she has about 64 films. He alone has written four. So who’s the writer in that team right? it’s not who he says it was unless that’s all you ever read. So Sarah disappears from history, right? I’ve actually met her grandson and interviewed him. He had no idea that that’s what his grandmother did. All he remembers is she really liked Shakespeare and she made him remember whole quotes from Shakespeare before he could go out and play. He had to recite sections of Shakespeare. So don’t tell me she doesn’t have the heart of a writer right? .
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.
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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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On Wednesday the 2nd year Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting candidates were treated to a tour of the backlot of Warner Bros. Studios courtesy of Emmy-winning Sound Supervisor Michael Lawshe…
…which culminated with a one-hour Q&A with Supernatural Executive Producer Bob Berens, discussing the crafting of their final season.
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It was a double-header for the 2nd year MFA candidates when they were visited by two writers from The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon on consecutive nights this week. On the first night, Eric Kaplan (also a former David Letterman staff writer) came at the invitation of student CJ Ehrlich.
On the second night, producer Tara Hernandez sat for an interview with Khanisha Foster for our How I Wrote That podcast.
We thank them both for sharing their expertise (and their humor) with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.
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Watch this entire presentation
![13 Alice Sheldon and Alice Mary Norton from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction - Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/scifi-rmw-cpp-13.jpeg)
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:
So she’s James, right? There there’s your buddy James. This is a marvelous new book about her life. So really gets into the story of what she was doing and why. I really like autobiographies or biographies because it’s fun. You learn so much about a historical period when you read someone’s individual story and how they worked in the world and society as it was allowing them at the time. So this is actually a book about Alice Sheldon. This lady, Alice Mary Norton, had to be Andre because the boy’s name right? Andre is writing all of these books and look at her again, not the face you imagine when you think of a science fiction writer. She looks like somebody’s great aunt. But why shouldn’t your great-aunt write a really good book, right? Why did we not allow those two things to live in our brain at the same time? So I think it’s really interesting and her stuff is really fascinating. You know we’re all into swords and all that sort of thing. She’s doing the whole Game Of Thrones thing long before we get involved in that right? So we need to give her a little more credit.
* 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!
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Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
Watch this entire presentation
Transcript:
Sadly she died early in 1948. He lived another 15 years and when he did an oral history and did interviews about his work, when they brought her up, because the good a good historian would look at the names on the things and ask him — he would say “Oh Jeanne. She wasn’t such a good writer but you know I kept her around because she needed that money. — immediately writing her out of the history of the business she had helped to found right? So this is what happens. This is how women fall out of history so easily. We interview the guys and the guys want you to remember how brilliant they are right and that’s really sad. “Who lives? Who dies?” It matters who tells your story. You have to be in charge of your own story.
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.
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
On Saturday both Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting cohorts had the chance to work in teams on the concept of rebooting a show from the 1970s that involved the Egyptian goddess.
As any writer does, we invited a technical consultant – Dr. Marissa Stevens – to give the teams some historical background in the culture of ancient Egypt before they broke into groups to brainstorm their new ideas.
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Producer/Screenwriter Cindy Chupack on the “How I Wrote That” Podcast from the Stephens MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program [Podcast]
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Cindy Chupack has won two Emmys and three Golden Globes as TV writer/producer whose credits include “Sex and the City,” “Better Things,” “Divorce,” “Modern Family,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and most recently Showtime’s darkly comic hour “I’m Dying Up Here.” She is the author of two comic memoirs: the New York Times bestseller The Between Boyfriends Book: A Collection of Cautiously Hopeful Essays, and The Longest Date: Life as a Wife. Last year she directed her first episode of television for “I’m Dying Up Here,” and her first feature, OTHERHOOD, starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette, and Felicity Huffman. OTHERHOOD is a comedy Chupack co-wrote that premiered this week in select theaters and on Netflix.
It feels very paint by numbers so it seems so easy – but it’s not.
As soon as I get good and comfortable I want to take a risk. To challenge myself.-Cindy Chupack
On Friday, August 9th, I had the great pleasure of moderating a panel on working mom screenwriters for the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting and hosted by Writers Guild Foundation.
I thank them for being so honest and real about describing the way they balance the lives they love and the work they love. It’s never easy for any of us and sometimes that’s the best lesson of all. Though each of the writers talked about how the skills of being a mother are so perfectly attuned to the nurturing and multitasking required of showrunners in television.
We also learned about offices that have nurseries provided for their writing staff and the fact that, as with all things in life, moms have to make tough decisions between being on set when your pilot is filming or catching your 2nd grader’s talent show… But we also all admitted that it’s a privilege to make the stories that are watched by other people’s children – and to share stories with your own children all their lives. — Rosanne
From the Writers Guild Foundation…
Talking TV writing and motherhood with writers/producers and working moms Julia Brownell (THIS IS US), @jamiedenbo (AMERICAN PRINCESS), Valentina Garza @totalvaligirl (JANE THE VIRGIN), and moderator @RosanneWelch.
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A field trip to the writers room of The Simpsons served as yesterday’s highlight for the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Class of 2021.
Thanks to producer/writer Rob Lazebnik for showing our students around and explaining what makes a good Simpsons script – a story that involves the whole family, which is hard to come by after being on the air so many wonderful years…
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