“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…
Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references. Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016
Transcript:
This is really scary. How much different things get censored and you don’t know why. Judgment at Nuremberg is a very famous play. It was on Playhouse 90. It was on television. It’s about the Nazi death camp trials. In the entire run of that play on television they never used the word gas, because the American Gas Association, which advertised on television, asked them not to or they would pull their advertising. So we never mentioned that that was the way that many thousands of people were killed. So that’s the kind of censorship you don’t even think is going on. Likewise, and now I’m moving a little into the 70’s with Maude, but just to think about it, Maude was the first character on television to ever have an abortion by choice. Because it had been legalized in New York. it was not yet federally legalized, but in New York at the time it was. And she was about 44 years old and they went though the whole “I feel like I’m too old to have a baby. It’s not going to safe, etc, etc.” No one had an abortion on television until Christina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy just a few years ago. No one was going to allow a female character to make that choice.
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.
What was crazy was, he wasn’t smart enough to ask to read a copy of the script. He didn’t know they would let him do that. So he just demanded that they never use the word and it turned out they only used it twice in the whole original script. So, they were perfectly happy to say “Ok. We won’t use it. Can’t say La Cosa Nostra. You can’t say mafia.” So they just keep saying “this thing of ours.” IT didn’t hurt the movie, but but it was something that stressed — it might have had a financial bearing on it, because they figured the Italian audience — this was who was going to come see this movie. Now. What really changes in most adaptations is the books are too long to be turned into films and so The Godfather provides us a good example of something that had to change both for length and for sexual content.
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.”
“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…
Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references. Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016
Transcript:
They could not choose to kiss one another. It had to be a forced kiss. For the actors, who did not want to insult each other, because they did not want to look like they didn’t want to, they came at it from the attitude — ” I am — work for you — right, because he’s Captain Kirk and she’s the communications specialist. We shouldn’t be doing this because it’s not proper in our relationship as professionals.” So that’s how they came at it, not “we don’t want two people of different races kissing.” But that’s all the kind of stuff that’s being talked about in what you can’t do on television at this time.
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.
Here’s what changed. In the book, they mention the word mafia a couple of times. In the adaptation, originally, the script, they did as well, because that was the word that people understood. The Italian-American Civil Rights League — which really exists — they demanded that that word not be used or they would protest the existence of the film and they were not giantly powerful – they’re not really the NAACP here, but, you know, they were kind of loud-mouthed Italians and they really wanted things done their way. What’s funny about them is that Joe Columbo was the founder of the Italian-American Civil Rights League and he’s a mafia leader who ended up in jail, then became a state’s witness and he’s like a true mafiosi and he was insisting the mafia didn’t exist and so they couldn’t use that word in the movie.
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.”
“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…
Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references. Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016
Transcript:
In the Star Trek episode you are seeing this woman with this very interesting outfit. There was a censor on the set when they filmed it to make sure that it didn’t move so that you would never saw the bottom of her breast. It was illegal to show the bottom of a female’s breast on television. So the side was OK. You get a little side picture there. and you may or may not know agin from Star Trek that this is the first interracial kiss ever on television and the censors did not want to allow it. the only way to do it was they did not want to be kissing. They were forced to do it by some Greek gods who were having fun with the humans.
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 change in terms of what we can do in movies. That doesn’t mean we stop having pressure to change particular movies and this one is probably my all time favorite movie in the whole history of the world, The Godfather, which I always make film students watch if they haven’t, because it’s quite brilliant. But as a kid, I snuck a copy of this and read it when I wasn’t supposed to. It was in the adult section of the library so I had a friend sneak it out. Instead of going to a liquor store and getting liquor, I got The Godfather. Som then I could read it and figure out — because I had seen the movie and really wanted to know more about it. Now, in the movie, we all know Marlon Brando is going to play Vito Corleone and it is a pretty good version of the book, but there are things they can’t do. The first thing is they had great trouble, not with any film rating system, despite the violence that will appear in this film. Violence not so bad. It’s the sex and bad words we don’t like children to see. Violence, they can see all kinds of.
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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