Women Rock! First Female Doctor Who premiere hist 10 year ratings high!
Folks (mostly male critics) predicted 5 million in the overnights – she it 8 million+
Category: News/opinion
New Essay in Outside In: OUTSIDE IN TAKES A STAB: 139 New Perspectives on 139 Buffy Stories by 139 Writers – Pre-Order – Available Nov 2, 2018
I was given the grand job of writing about HUSH for this collection – so I published my Buffy 4-act structure lecture, which they found unique and which I continue to use as an opening lecture to each of my one-hour drama classes every semester. — Rosanne
OUTSIDE IN TAKES A STAB: 139 New Perspectives on 139 Buffy Stories by 139 Writers
This item will be released on November 2, 2018.Celebrating over 25 years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, OUTSIDE IN TAKES A STAB is a collection of 139 reviews, one for every story of the television series, plus the movie and a couple extras. Featuring contributions from Susanne Lambdin, Jill Sherwin, Rosanne Welch, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Robert Greenberger, Rich Handley, David A. McIntee, and over a hundred more!
New Podcast: Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone – Check it out!
Check out comedian (and friend to the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program) Paula Poundstone’s new podcast Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone. She’ll be holding entertaining and engaging conversations as she interviews experts in various interesting fields.
GUESTS
Mario Soto- Sports Psychologist
@mariosportsdoc
Melissa Brandzel – Grammarian
@MediaChickEdits
John Grab – Trombone
John doesn’t have a large social media footprint, but he often plays with The Orchestre Surreal
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
During this inaugural episode at 19:45 you’ll hear a great add for our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – between funny conversations first with sports psychiatrist Mario Soto followed by grammarian Melissa Brandzel. In Paula’s typical style she’s funny off the cuff, finding different comic ways to interpret the helpful tips offered by her experts.
I also noticed this fun request on their website…
“We need a theme song! We launched this show without a theme song, and are turning to YOU, dear listener, to find one. If you have a tune in your head that you think should kick off our show each week, please reach out to us via our website.” So if you’re a local musician, check it out – and leave them a comment if you happen to be an expert in some fun field. Maybe they’ll have you on the show!
Visit the Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone Web Site to subcribe via iTunes or your favorite Podcast program
Find out more about the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting
Josh Greenfield: A Writer’s Life
A beautifully written remembrance from one writer to another – a good read to understand the breadth and depth of a writer’s full life – Josh Greenfield wrote ‘Harry and Tonto’ (with Paul Mazursky, who was one of the co-writers of The Monkees pilot -small world indeed!). Harry and Tonto is a worthwhile character study film to watch over the summer. Art Carney won an Oscar for it and if you don’t know who Art Carney is……. 🙁 But as you’ll learn when you read this, Greenfield also wrote reviews and books about his autistic son — and was friends with other writers we should already know – from Joan Didion to Mario Puzo to Arthur Miller.
Oddly enough, I have a novel based on the movie in my bookshelf – but nowhere does it say it is based on a movie – and nowhere does the movie identify itself as an adaptation. That makes me wonder if, in 1974, it was still thought that a novel based on a movie wouldn’t be worth reading… I’ll have to do more research on that! The one (sadly bad) review of the book on Amazon says it is written like a bad dictation from the film. The movie was released August 12th 1974; the book came out earlier, in January of that year. Again, an odd way of doing things. Maybe the film was held up in post production???
Either way, the movie is GREAT! And Greenfield seems to have lived a fascinating life as a writer – and as a human.
Film critic Kenneth Turan remembers Josh Greenfeld, a screenwriter who taught him about life
I always knew I’d write about my friend Josh Greenfeld. I even started to take notes, long lost, about the piercingly acute things he’d say about Hollywood and the movie business, but I never thought it would be this hard.
Best known in the business as the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “Harry and Tonto,” the film that won a best acting Oscar for Art Carney in 1974, Josh (who died last month at age 90) was an under-the-radar insider and consummate professional, deft, gifted and successful in a wide range of writing disciplines.
A Star is Born – Yet another new version of an old classic
Dorothy Parker’s story is such a classic it keeps being made and remade across the decades – first adapted by Moss Hart, then by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne – this time by Eric Roth (Oscar winner for Forest Gump), Bradley Cooper and Will Fetters. THAT is a successful piece of writing. The trailer already has me teared up- that’s how powerful the story still is.
- A Star is Born (1937) on IMDB
- A Star is Born (1954) on IMDB
- A Star is Born (1976) on IMDB
- A Star is Born (2018) on IMDB
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† Available from the LA Public Library
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.
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.
Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier highlighted in Special Collections Library Display at Cal Poly Pomona
I was visiting — along with my IGE class — the fine folks at the Special Collections Room at the Cal Poly Pomona Library today.
They were happy to show me —in preparation for a Women in Leadership conference coming to the university this quarter — that they’ve filled their display cases with samples of the work of female professors across the history of CPP.
This means, of course, that my and Peg Lamphier’s encyclopedia (Women in American History) is on display along with photos of us from a campus newspaper interview about that project.
There is also a photo taken when Peg was voted a Top 5 Koofer Professor.
Nice to see them recognizing women and their part of the school’s history.
5 Lessons from the Doctor Who Season Finale
Even if you don’t watch Doctor Who, watch this 5 minute clip of the regeneration of Peter Capaldi into Jodie Whitaker for a few reasons:
- It’s a popular culture breakthrough moment where an iconic hero character will now be a female
- It’s a writer saying goodbye to probably the coolest job he will ever have – in the form of the monologue he gives the character of The Doctor to perform as he regenerates – so when the character says things like “It’s a treadmill” and “Yes, yes I know, they’ll get it all wrong without me” he is, of course, speaking for himself.
- It’s also a writer using his podium to shout out his philosophy of life (which makes a nice New Years Eve kind of message: “Never be cruel. Never be cowardly. Hate is always foolish and love is always wise.” THAT’s why we all want to be writers – to teach empathy whenever we can.
- It’s an actor at the top of his game getting the kind of Shakespearean death few actors have the chance to perform
- It’s the moment the character switches from Capaldi to Whitaker and her first line upon seeing a female face is “Ah, brilliant” – which is one writer (Steven Moffat) complimenting another (Chris Chibnall) who had the creativity and hutzpah to finally make a choice that had been in discussions for 40 years.
Finally, If you follow Moffat’s writing at all, you’ll have noticed that throughout his tenure as the showrunner he continually focused on the importance of fairy tales to a society – even naming this episode “Twice Upon a Time”.
Check it out!
Encyclopedia of Women in American History is a American Book Fest 2017 Award Winner
I, and my co-editor, Peg Lamphier, were happy to receive notice this morning that our 4-volume encyclopedia set, Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection was awarded Best Women’s Issues Book for 2017 at the American Book Fest.
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THE 14TH ANNUAL BEST BOOK AWARDS Mainstream & Independent Titles Score Top Honors Wiley, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, St. Martin’s Press, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Rowman & Littlefield, New American Library, Forge/Tor Books, John Hopkins University Press, MIT Press and hundreds of Independent Houses contribute to this year’s Outstanding Competition! |
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LOS ANGELES – American Book Fest has announced the winners and finalists of The 2017 Best Book Awards on November 9, 2017. Over 400 winners and finalists were announced in over 90 categories. Awards were presented for titles published in 2015-2017. Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of American Book Fest said this year’s contest yielded over 2,000 entries from mainstream and independent publishers, which were then narrowed down to over 400 winners and finalists. Keen says of the awards, now in their fifteenth year, “The 2017 results represent a phenomenal mix of books from a wide array of publishers throughout the United States. With a full publicity and marketing campaign promoting the results of the Best Book Awards, this year’s winners and finalists will gain additional media coverage for the upcoming holiday retail season.” Winners and finalists traversed the publishing landscape: Wiley, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, St. Martin’s Press, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Rowman & Littlefield, New American Library, Forge/Tor Books, John Hopkins University Press, MIT Press and hundreds of independent houses contributed to this year’s outstanding competition! Keen adds, “Our success begins with the enthusiastic participation of authors and publishers and continues with our distinguished panel of industry judges who bring to the table their extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise.” American Book Fest is an online publication providing coverage for books from mainstream and independent publishers to the world online community. American Book Fest has an active social media presence with over 96,000 current Facebook fans. A complete list of the winners and finalists of The 2017 Best Book Awards are available online at American Book Fest. |
See a complete list of nominees and award winners here
News: Archie to Meet The Monkees in Comic Book Crossover via Hollywood Reporter
I know this has been posted elsewhere, but the fact that one TV show’s characters are set to meet the characters from The Monkees over 50 years since they all were staples on TV… that just speaks to the power of pop culture – and fandom. I wanted to highlight this quote:
“Artist Joe Eisma agrees, adding, “From day one, The Monkees have been trailblazers in the entertainment business, and I’m excited and honored for the chance to draw their appearance in The Archies. It’s going to be a wild one!” (I also wanted to use cover art with The Monkees!”
Archie to Meet The Monkees in Comic Book Crossover via Hollywood Reporter
Archie Andrews has met some pretty big names during his comic book career — including Kiss, Marvel’s The Punisher, and even President Barack Obama — but his latest co-stars might beat them all. If nothing else, they get the funniest looks from everyone they meet.
The fourth issue of The Archies, the new comic book series centering around the musical ambitions of Archie and his pals and gals, will bring the band face-to-face with the Prefab Four themselves, as the Monkees guest-star for an issue. The meetings happens as the result of some good old-fashioned time travel, allowing the Riverdale gang to meet Peter, Mickey, Michael and Davy in their 1960s prime.
Alex Segura, co-writer of the series, tells Heat Vision that the two bands are “a perfect pairing, and they resonate in really similar ways — embracing pop sensibilities, crossing over from different mediums and just channeling the most fun parts of whatever they’re doing, be it TV, music, comics and beyond.”
To Segura’s co-writer, it’s also a dream come true.
Read Archie to Meet The Monkees in Comic Book Crossover via Hollywood Reporter