Podcast – Page 61 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

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.

Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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.

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

21 Even More On Leigh Brackett from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (29 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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:

She did that, however, she wrote the first draft of the script. There’s proof and she passed away. So a script has to go through several incarnations before it’s eventually filmed. So they brought in Lawrence Kasdan who is a marvelous and wonderful writer and in the end he then writes the next movie and he writes the first draft of Return of the Jedi that you know and all that sort of thing. So he’s become the person we credit for a lot of Star Wars but she did all this groundwork and wrote this original script. So I think Leigh Brackett is a really cool name for paying attention to.

* 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!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

23 Even More On Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (37 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

Transcript:

She is still known though because she was smart and wrote her own book about her own life. She wrote her own autobiography, which is when I learned about her when I was about 10 years old at my local library in Bedford Ohio. All right, I’d go down there and want to read everything about Hollywood and there she was and I thought “Oh, who is this cool lady?” and she was still alive. She was doing talk shows like Merv Griffin and stuff like that. She wrote her own stuff. This is one of her funny, witty, check it out sort of quotes right? You get a sense of who she was. You start to go hey what’s wrong with her and then you’re like oh yeah. Very witty. Very smart lady. Really cool lady. She’s very worth reading about.

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

08 Politics, War, And The Monkees from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)

Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

Transcript

In this case obviously you’ve read the lyrics. It’s some pretty amazing stuff to be on mainstream television in the middle of what was the beginning I should say of the Vietnam War and how it was affecting everybody. That’s very bold thing for anybody have to say which i think is amazing. Then there was actually a movement to not draft Davy Jones. So Girls wrote letters and that sort of thing which I think is adorable. He was an Englishman but he was here in the country working and so therefore could have been drafted and so that was interesting. Micky received a draft notice. Mike had been in the military. So they couldn’t draft him back and Peter, as well, also received one. Peter pretended to be crazy when he went to his interview and they believed it. So this is the line from one of the episodes that was written by Coslough Johnson about politics and the idea that you know what was going on with teenagers — “They’re the ones doing all the fighting” but we didn’t say where they would fight, right? We were sending them to fight. So there’s a lot happening about politics in this early day.

Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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.

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television, Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (22 Minutes)

A full recording of my presentation at this year’s Screenwriting Research Network conference (at the lovely Universidade Católica Portuguesa) in Porto, Portugal.

“How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

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.

For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit

Follow me on Instagram

* 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!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

20 More On Leigh Brackett from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (46 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

Transcript:

George Lucas writes Star Wars himself and directs it and decides he doesn’t like writing so much. He’s not sure of it. That doesn’t work for him, right? He likes the directing part and the casting, all that fun stuff. So he gets somebody else to write the sequel to his big hit movie that nobody expected to be hit and he hires Leigh Brackett because he wants what she can bring to the table, both in science fiction and in strong male characters oddly enough. She is contribute she is credited for contributing a lot to the creation of who Han Solo became because the first movie he’s kind of just swagger really cool. It’s just Harrison Ford wearing a cute uniform right? He gets much more developed in the second film and she wrote a lot of cowboys and if you think about the Han Solo we know in the second and continuing films he’s pretty much a space cowboy, but you know 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!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

22 More On Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minutes)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

Transcript:

And when The Great Gatsby came out it was a flop. The book fails. It survived because there were so many extra copies in a warehouse that weren’t sold that when they started sending packages –care packages — to soldiers in World War I they threw in these books nobody wanted and all the soldiers ended up reading it and coming home thinking that was the greatest novel they’d ever read and it became this centerpiece of American literature while her books never gone out of print right and yet we don’t teach it to kids in high school which I can’t fathom. It’s the same era. It’s the same attitude. Anyway she’s very famous for many many films, San Francisco, The Women, which was remade about six years ago by Diane English from the Murphy Brown show and Anita’s version is better. It is really quite lovely and it has a classic line in it. They’re watching two dogs fight and somebody says “What do you call them?” and she says “Witches, with a different letter.” So you know exactly. So Anita Loos deserves to be more famous.

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

07 Timothy Leary and the Counterculture from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (54 seconds)

Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

Transcript

If you think about it, we know that Dr. Timothy Leary — who was famous for dropping a little acid back in the day — he already was watching the program and saying, there is a whole lot going on here that no one else is paying attention to. So this isn’t information that I invented years later. People already we’re saying these things but the network television guys weren’t really listening. They thought it was a show about four guys who wanted to be a band and there was a good way to sell music. It was synergy, right? It was the big mood of the day. So that’s what they thought, but when you think about what they were talking about on the show — this particular song Randy Scouse Git is a song that Mickey wrote. It hit number one on the charts in the UK and made it to like number three in charts in the United States. Came in the second season also in the second season their clothing began to change. They went from JCPenney matching band uniforms to the poncho, the more hippie attire, looking more like they looked in their real lives. .

Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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.

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Mentoris Project Podcast: The Divine Proportions of Luca Pacioli with Author, W.A.W. (Adam) Parker [Audio]

The latest podcast is about my Mentoris book and is now available on the Mentoris Web Site. Give it a listen and Subscribe for More! — Rosanne

Read The Divine Proportions of Luca Pacioli with Author, W.A.W. (Adam) Parker

Listen Now

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Subscribe Via iTunes | Google Play | TuneIn | RSS

Luca Pacioli stood beside the great Leonardo da Vinci and gazed at The Last Supper. He saw immediately that something was terribly wrong.

An orphan from a small town in Italy, Pacioli came of age during the Renaissance seemingly destined for a life of struggle and obscurity. But Pacioli had the good fortune of meeting mentors who recognized his uncanny ability with numbers and introduced him to renowned artists and philosophers, royalty, and popes. At a time when many still used Roman numerals and colleges didn’t even teach mathematics, Pacioli was determined to share his passion and make it accessible and understandable. Apprentice to an artist, but a terrible artist himself, he became a master at calculating mathematical perspective in paintings. Tasked with teaching mathematics with no textbook, he wrote his own—followed by books on double-entry bookkeeping, chess, and the divine proportion. In this way, Luca Pacioli, “the father of accounting,” still has something to teach us—not just about mathematics—but about how we account for setbacks in our lives and how we determine what our legacy will be.

About the Author

W. A.W. Parker grew up Adam Parker, not knowing until he was twelve years old that his full name was William Adam Washburne Parker. Since this was a mouthful for a kid growing up in northeastern Montana, an area The Washington Post has dubbed “the middle of nowhere,” he remained Adam Parker until he earned his first film credit, found out he would have been the nineteenth Adam Parker on IMDb, and was thus in need of a pen name.

Adam discovered a lot of himself in Luca Pacioli. Moving around as a kid, Adam always made sure the first friend he made in every town was his local library. He studied at Harvard primarily because it is home to the oldest library system in the United States. As Luca does, Adam found that he could travel the world by roaming the stacks.

The Divine Proportions of Luca Pacioli is Adam’s first novel, but you’ll be able to read his second novel soon—about 20th-century architect Pietro Belluschi.

Follow @mentorisproject on Instagram

Visit the Mentoris Project for more!

Also from the Mentoris Project

Want to use these books in your classroom? Contact the Mentoris Project!`

21 Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (57 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

Transcript:

This lady people should know more. You might recognize from the title of her book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. This is Anita Loos. Anita Loos is probably the most prolific female writer of the silent era and she made the transition into talkies. Many, many writers did not. She did because she could write really witty dialogue but Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a novel that fascinates me. She wrote it because she was on a train with M Somerset Maugham who she loved as an intellectual and a blonde chick got on the train and he started to fawn all over her after they were having this lovely intellectual conversation and it made her mad. So she wrote a book about how blonds aren’t stupid. They’re actually working it and getting out of men exactly what they want. Yeah. So they pretend to be dumb. It’s really Legally Blonde long before there was Legally Blonde and it’s never gone out of publication but it is not taught in American literature class where The Great Gatsby is always taught.

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

Category: Podcast

09 TV As Platform And Podium from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (51 seconds)

21 Even More On Leigh Brackett from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (29 seconds)

23 Even More On Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (37 seconds)

08 Politics, War, And The Monkees from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)

How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television, Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (22 Minutes)

20 More On Leigh Brackett from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (46 seconds)

22 More On Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minutes)

07 Timothy Leary and the Counterculture from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (54 seconds)

Mentoris Project Podcast: The Divine Proportions of Luca Pacioli with Author, W.A.W. (Adam) Parker [Audio]

21 Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (57 seconds)