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
Now, a deep study into anything can teach us much about everything. it’s why we teach critical studies in television in the first place and that’s why I wrote the book for my students, but I also wrote it in honor of — and to honor — all the fans who have loved the show hoping to see these people in concert again when they grow up and that dream was actually realized in the last so many generations and so that is pretty amazing. What’s interesting about The Monkees to me is anything that reaches the 50-year mark tends to get a little bit more respect finally. The Hula Hoop went from a kids craze to a staple in physical education classes. Today, it’s considered a very important thing. War surplus spam has become hip because people in Hawaii started to eat it and then it was cool because that’s where it came from. Now Spam. you can go eat at restaurants. I don’t know why you would, but people do. This book, it tends to show how the 50-year charm has proven true for The Monkees.
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.
Now, the excellent work adapting Harry Potter was tossed away when they adapted the Rick Riordan series that my son loved — Percy Jackson. Loved these books and in many ways, they are ripoffs of Harry Potter. They just really are. I’m sorry. Kid finds out he’s a Greek god instead of the wizard. What’s the difference? All right, I going to be powerful and save the world. The problem is when they went to make these into movies they didn’t trust the source material. In the film version, this boy is 17. In the book, he’s 12. The thing that a child can say to his parents at 12 sound ridiculous and whiny if a 17-year-old says them. So they destroyed the support for that character by making him older and they only did that so that his best friend — his Hermoine — in the books can actually be the hot chick he wants to have a relationship with in the older books. So we don’t care about 12-year-olds having it we want the 16-year-old to have a girlfriend.
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
What I’m not sure that I should admit — in such an august work of academia — is that I concocted the entire pitch for the original piece in Written By magazine partly for an excuse to interview Micky Dolenz. I’m sorry, but he was the teen idol of my childhood. So, I guess I won’t admit that to anybody. But I can tell you, the mere fact that I, a 50-year-old professional writer and academic, squealed when I hung up the phone that day after the interview and immediately called 3 or 4 of my oldest and best chick friends to say that I had just hung up on Micky Dolenz tells you something about the cultural touchstone that this group was for my generation and interestingly enough, for the next generation and the next generation, thanks to reruns on MTV and today the reruns on Antenna television, which I think is really something special.
Rachel Maddow stated during an interview with Peter Tork that “the teenagers of the 80’s learned what it was like to be a teenager in the 60’s from watching The Monkees reruns on MTV.” And that tells you something important about the show and how it’s resonated across time.
I had a blast as a guest talking head in this Zilch round table discussion of the Top Ten guest acting spots made by the lead’ actors before and after their time on The Monkees. Producers Melanie Mitchell and Sarah Clark invited me, Cindy Large and Richard Woloski to vote on and then discuss (ala Casey Kasem’s American Top 40) a variety of shows such as Micky’s early work on Peyton Place, Peter’s stop off on California Dreamin’ and the all-famous, iconic Davy taking Marcia to the prom on The Brady Bunch.
It’s a double-header! First, The Gang (including Rosanne Welch) rates their favorite Monkees TV Guest Appearances from Ed Sullivan to Portlandia—and beyond. Then, Melanie and Sarah talk with Boy Meets World Writer and Producer Jeffrey Sherman about the Monkees’ guest appearance, his musical heritage, and his amazing Hollywood memories.PS–Stay tuned all the way to the end for an update from Casey Kasem!
I had a blast as a guest talking head in this Zilch round table discussion of the Top Ten guest acting spots made by the lead’ actors before and after their time on The Monkees. Producers Melanie Mitchell and Sarah Clark invited me, Cindy Large and Richard Woloski to vote on and then discuss (ala Casey Kasem’s American Top 40) a variety of shows such as Micky’s early work on Peyton Place, Peter’s stop off on California Dreamin’ and the all-famous, iconic Davy taking Marcia to the prom on The Brady Bunch.
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.
So, when we come around to Harry Potter coming of age, that’s the same book that has all the elf stuff going on with Hermoine and she’s going to unionize the elves and all that stuff. That doesn’t appear in the movie at all. That has nothing to do with Harry Potter and his growing. So that storyline disappears. So, it’s and interesting choice. it’s a difficult choice. it’s why they then chose to split the last book in two, not just to make a lot more money, but because they did, but because they didn’t want to throw too much away and they had gained enough power and enough cache at that point that they could do that. It’s one of the more successful adaptations really of all time and in contrast little tiny things change like, for instance, you have to remember — you have to read the books again — when it’s time to get the gilly weed in the movie it gets given to him by Neville because we have to keep the Neville character alive. In the book, Dobby gives it to him, but Dobby is — we can’t waste time on him. Also, he costs money to put on-screen because he’s all fake, right? Little things like that along the way and generally fans weren’t too upset because they understood the reasons for it.
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.”
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.
This is a huge thing to adapt and what I think is fascinating is This guy over here, Steve Kloves, he did 6 of the 7 Harry Potter movies. He actually quit after the 3rd movie. He’s like “Well I have to go focus on my own work” and his son said — his son was 10-years-old — “Dad, there’s no cachet in being the son of the guy who used to write the Harry Potter movies.” So he took on the next one and he did all the rest of them. He created a great friendship with J. K. Rowling to the point where they could talk often about things she hadn’t released yet. He was privy to new things coming up and books that had yet to be published and it was a very deep secret — you can’t tell anybody, blah, blah, blah. Really kind of fascinating, but to study the work they did — and one of the great things he said in several interviews — was that they had to look at these giant books and think of the theme. Which is what we teach people to do when their writing films. It’s all about theme. Start with a theme and any storyline that is tangential to that theme has to be thrown away. We can’t waste our time on that.
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
I started by writing an article for Written By Magazine which is the magazine of the Writers Guild and I’m on their board and I wanted a chance to meet some people so I recommended this idea and from that article, I then used that as the proposal for the book company and that’s what they chose to let me continue it. So that was what was fun. Here’s the beginning part. I was a fan from the beginning. At the age of 6 when the show debuted on NBC and caused what I often teased was the first great choice of a childhood lived without the benefit of DVR. Should I watch The Monkees or Gilligan’s Island? Both aired at the same non-Bat Time on the same non-Bat Channel. I used that question as the thesis to an essay when many years later I applied to film school and I’m amazed how it still resonates with others of my generation. For my students, that choice harkens back to an unimagined time before VCRs, DVRs or iPads. When one had to choose between two favorite programs and wait for summer reruns to see if the one they hadn’t chosen was going to re-run and you could finally see that story.
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.
Of course, I mentioned that we would talk about Harry Potter briefly. We could be here for a whole hours, 2, 3, 6 talking about all the Harry Potter adaptations. What I think is important to notice is, as you know, the book in England was called “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” When it came to be published in America, they were afraid American children would look at the word philosopher and walk away, because that’s old and boring. That’s for old people. Of course, in America, what did we call it? The Sorcerer’s Stone, because a sorcerer is kind of cool — Mickey with hat — so we like sorcerers. We’re good. I mean that’s and adaptation made our publication people just to sell more books.
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
Transcript:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank everybody for coming out tonight. It’s really coo to talk about The Monkees whenever you get a chance so I appreciate the chance. What I was just going to do was I was going to read a little bit from the Preface and the Introduction — kind of a setup for the purpose of the book and what it’s all about and then just talk about The Monkees for a little bit and see if anybody’s interested in telling stories and what they first remember about the show. So, if that’s good with everybody….I’ll start. The Preface of the book is called “I’m (Still) A Believer” and one of the things I did in writing it was I made all the chapters were the titles of songs — famous Monkee songs and it was really interesting to sit there and try to think of, what was the right song to put on this particular (chapter) and I ended up finding song titles I didn’t even remember because they put out so much music and everyone has their favorites and you just didn’t realize that there were these other titles. So, part of the them, they might have been perfect for that chapter, but they didn’t hit your brain immediately as obvious Monkee songs so then I would pick something else. The first one is obviously “I’m (Still) A Believer” because that’s what brought me to writing about them.
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.”
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.
Lots of true Tolkien fans – deeply angry that such a thing should happen and there should be focus on a character when other stuff was being thrown out. This is a choice for screenwriters and directors as they try to decide to bring something to film. The Hobbit had been made in animation several years earlier — 1977 — and it’s only 77 minutes long. So, would you rather have that version or the new version with an extra elf that doesn’t really exist. Now make up your mind. What I love about this is that made by Rankin-Bass the same company that gave us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Who himself was an adaptation of a song. A song turned into a beloved Christmas story. So, you can adapt from anything.
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.”
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