This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
I would like to get more people to focus on The Monkees because when I look at textbooks about this time, they don’t talk about them at all. People thought they were this bubble gum group and they think only about that aspect and they don’t think about the messages that came from the program. When I think about that I think about episodes that had to do with feminism and that sounds odd for a show about 4 kids who were playing rock and roll, but in fact if you look at all 58 episodes — which I obviously did, you will find that never do they date the girl who didn’t have her own job and was taking care of herself in the world. She was either a student who was worried about her grades or she was a woman with a job. They were journalists. They were girls that worked at record companies or record stores. Yes, they were princesses, but the princesses rather than them wanting to wear pretty dresses and marry Davy Jones — which everyone in the audience wanted to do — the princesses gave that up in order to go back to their countries and life out there obligations to their people. They were women of purpose.
Jean Powergirl takes the host reigns and welcomes her guest Rosanne Welch, PhD to the show! They’ll be discussing Roseanne’s book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.”
Transcript:
Rosanne: The adults that did take it seriously are the adults who were in the business because they won an Emmy for best Comedy Series in their first season.
Jean: They won 2 Emmys, right?
Rosanne: Yes. They won one for Best Directing as well, And James Frawley who won that had begun his directing career on The Monkees and he grew up to direct The Muppet Movie.
Jean: Awesome. And we love our Muppets. So, in terms of the production and everything The Monkees did some interesting things that — and these are the things that I remember. I remember a lot of little chase scenes that were so cute. Kind of zany. Kind of Groucho Marx-y kind of things, but also they employed the use of what, flashbacks and things like that. Let’s talk about the tools that they used.
Rosanne: They used flashbacks. They would use a lot of old footage whenever they would say something funny, they’d cut to — if I’d say, “The Sky’s falling” they’d cut to a building being dynamited down and that sort of thing and that helps because it saved them money, because they’re using old footage, but it also gave a very frenetic, energetic feel to the show.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.
Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.
This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
I think when we think about the intimacy of what we get from television we learn a lot about why isn’t important and why we should pay attention to the kind of television we’re watching and supporting. For me, obviously, that’s going backward to The Monkees and showing that to students today, so that they can think about what ideas were prevalent in the 60s. I think all the things that we credit to All in the Family and the whole Norman Lear empire, those things appeared on The Monkees long before it happened on those programs. Studying The Monkees, for me, illustrates the history and the evolution of the medium of television and it provides a time capsule of American society at that moment when youth culture was becoming everything and if you think about it, we still look at it that way. Everyone’s still trying to pretend with the botox and whatever that they are still 22. It’s an interesting point. But it was the beginning of teenagers in America in many ways and the films and the television were showing us what teenagers were all about.
Jean Powergirl takes the host reigns and welcomes her guest Rosanne Welch, PhD to the show! They’ll be discussing Roseanne’s book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.”
Transcript:
Jean: Why The Monkees Matter. Cute kids. Mop Tops. Allowed to talk about controversial things that adults didn’t like talking about back in the 50’s, right? Rosanne is a busy woman. She does it all and actually one of the exciting things about me living here in Los Angeles — I’m a Texan if up can’t tell – is I love people like Rosanne. It’s a different world and it’s a fascinating one that’s I’ve always been interested in. So here we have The Monkees/They introduce touchy subjects like the Vietnam War just by playing a domino game. Things like that. They don’t put it in your face like that. So, The Monkees start to be a popular show among teenagers obviously. Now, Were adults starting to like it, as well?
Rosanne: A little bit, I mean, you know. it did all right but it never made the top 10 for lots of reasons, including that it didn’t air all over the country because there were some southern stations that didn’t take because their long hair — which we would laugh at today, because we wouldn’t consider it long — was so strange and anti-establishment that they immediately dismissed the show for their purposes.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.
Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.
Many Thanks to Sarah Clark for inviting me along on this book group discussion of Mike Nesmith’s new “Infinite Tuesday” – which due to his eclectic writing style and his honest look at his life’s successes and failures, turns out to be an interesting testament to how to survive having been young and famous in the 1960s.
Sarah Clark is joined by Rosanne Welch, Ghosty Tmrs, and Music Biographer Andrew Vaughan to dig deep into Infinite Tuesday: an Autobiographical Riff! Hear the panel’s thoughts, some of Sarah’s favorite Nez Songs (not featured on the Infinite Tuesday soundtrack), Then Melanie Mitchell talks Peter Tork “SSB” Pics surface, Monkees News & More!
This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
The thing that I think is special about TV is that if you go to a film, you’ve chosen to pay your money for that message. So, you’re not likely to learn anything new. You’re not likely to believe you’re going to pay for something you don’t wan to be told, but television is intimate. It sneaks into your house when you’re not thinking. When you kid switches the channel and suddenly new messages come to them that you might never have wanted them to hear and that’s what The Monkees were doing. They were embedding some new political ideas into the 13 and 14-year-olds who were watching the show at that time and if you think about it, we’re in 1966, give those kids 5 or 6 years and they’re the ones protesting the Vietnam War in the 70’s. That’s when the big protests hit. So, this is a period that The Monkees falls into.
Jean Powergirl takes the host reigns and welcomes her guest Rosanne Welch, PhD to the show! They’ll be discussing Roseanne’s book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.”
Transcript:
Hello again, I’m here with Dr. Rosanne Welch. She’s a professor She’s a screenwriter. She’s a producer. She’s this Hollywood lady and she has lots of interesting things to tell us about and I am fascinated. Here’s her book we’re going to talk about today — “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.” You can go to Amazon.com to get this book and yea, we have lift off now. Let me go ahead and tell you er credentials again because I’m going to have this memorized. I know all about my friend, Rosanne. Alright, she’s a professor at Cal State Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College, and Cal Poly Pomona. She has a Ph.D. in 20th Century United States Film History from Claremont Graduate University and she has a Master of Arts in 20th Century US History from California State University Northridge in 2004. She’s a writer. She’s a producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210, CBS’ Emmy-winning Picket Fences and Touched by and Angel.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.
Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.
This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
…and The Monkees were part of the childish period where they were playing around with what they could do. I think that makes them very special. We think about where we were in 1966. it was only two decades after World War II. People were still holding on to memories of rationing– whether you’re in England or here in the United States — you remembered that period and the United States was still trying to figure out where it fit in the world. we were becoming a super power, but we didn’t know what that meant and so here come these four kids with the long hair breaking all the rules showing up on television and when you’re supposed to be the nice kids on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet or Leave it to Beaver and that made people sit up and take notice.
You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!
Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library
Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.
The latest latest is the Martian which is a really interesting book on several levels. You guys know it was self-published and he would put chapters online one chapter at a time and he would take input from people and then he would add that to the stuff he was writing as he went further and he had so much of a following online he was able to take it to publishing companies. They said “well so many people care about what’s happening we’ll try publishing it.” It became a best-seller now of course it’s become a movie with Matt Damon hugely successful the last two three weeks at the box office. It’s been the number one movie. What have they changed? Well happily not too much. In the book they jump right into him being there you know in the movie they have to show you how stuff exploded so it’s big and exciting. That’s why we know he’s stuck at Mars. That’s a small change no one’s too upset. What bothers me is we have another Argo situation. There’s a character in the book named Mindy Park and she is his connection down at NASA right. If I say the last name Park to you does any ethnicity come to mind? Korean-American that’s who she is in the book. In the movie can’t get much blonder than that. Absolutely every bit of ethnicity has been washed out of that character which is amazing because clearly it’s a very successful and popular character inside the novel. Why they didn’t think that they could allow a Korean-American actress to portray here kind of fascinating but also kind of sad because if you don’t read the book you don’t really get the story. and so frankly the moral of the story which I thought was hilarious is actually a book called the moral of the story. The Morel of the Story, you got to read the books. You can’t just see the movies.You have to read the book so you’re not really having the experience that the person wanted you to have and I think that’s the coolest thing because it lets a movie continue to live with you. If you liked it that much you’re going to love the extra details you get inside the book. That’s it. Thank you very much.
Yea!
About this talk
Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
About Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
…but it’s not just 50 years that makes the show special. That’s not the only reason that people were paying attention to it. I think it’s the ability to analyze the artistic achievements of the writers, the actors, the directors on the program. Many of these people had earned awards later in their career with Emmys, Grammys. Oscars across the whole time and the book wants to critically study who The Monkees were as a television program. Something that challenged the new rules of a new medium and the show itself paved the way for future innovation on television. Now television itself took nearly the same 50 years to climb out of the shadow of film. People have not wanted to respect television for a long time. We didn’t have television studies. We had film studies. That’s what important people went for, but in this time period, think about the shows that had been winning Emmys — in fact, last night we had the Emmys — so we had all the new stuff. In the last few years we’ve had Breaking Bad and Mad Men and now we have Game of Thrones and happily, Master of None won for best writing last night, so television has grown up.
![03 – Monkee Emmys and “Romps”: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (0:55)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/rmw-power-03-emmys-romps.jpeg)
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![The 60’s Culture and The Monkees from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (0:43)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/wtmm-reading-06-60s-culture.jpeg)
![Adapting The Martian and Conclusion from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (2:06)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/adapt-46-martian-conclusion.jpeg)
![The Monkees and Critical Studies in TV from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (1:04)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/wtmm-reading-05-critical-studies.jpeg)