Ninotchka is a 1939 American film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.[1] It is written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch,[1] based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. Ninotchka is Greta Garbo’s first full comedy, and her penultimate film. It is one of the first American movies which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray, in this instance comparing it with the free and sunny Parisian society of pre-war years.- Wikipedia
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It really hurt me to watch these generations of women discuss the business of being a woman and their dismissing her skill entirely.
Audience: Which year is the film? In which year was that a film, sorry?
The film is 1959. Thank you, sorry. Yes, 1959. We’re going to move into the 1960s with the next 2 sequels and the show.
So this is typical when a guy writes it and also the difference between the book and the films. In the book, she has a friend who’s an aspiring playwright. Gidget herself is reading Rachel Carson because Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was about how we were affecting the environment and the environment means everything to her because that’s where the surf is. In the movie, she doesn’t read because that’s a boring thing for a girl to do. Her father’s a professor, in the movie he’s kind of a sitcom goof-off. He’s actually played by Carl Reiner in one of the sequels. She wants to learn to surf. that’s her “character want.” If we scripting this story. In this she want’s a boyfriend. I mean entirely take away the thing that makes her special and different.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
So why are we doing this? Why are we studying Screenwriting History? Because who tells your story is important. All the books about screenwriters have been written by men. They write about all the important men. They read each other’s books. They repeat what they learned in the last book. Cari came out of nowhere and said “Who’s this lady who’s paycheck is bigger? I want to find out about her life.” And as she delved into it, she found fourteen women around her who were all friends, part of the same sort of path and friends, who wrote movies. As I said, Anita Loos and all those other women. It matters that students understand any history book they read is not the entire history of what they are reading about. There’s no way to fit it all into one book so you have to your own research and move further, which is what have them do. So, again, as I said, they got into the story because their nephew put them in the story.
…and yet we don’t read books about a girl’s coming of age and Gidget turns out to be just such a thing. About a woman who goes to the beach to learn a skill. Yes, she meets some boys along the way and, of course, she finds one or two of them handsome, but she also makes choices about whether or not to have sex and that is a huge moment in the coming of age of a girl. Nobody takes advantage of her which tends to be the way the story goes. She makes the choices and the men respect her for it and thought that was fascinating when I read this book. So, Hollywood gets a hand of this book and they have to do something with it. They have to make it silly. So, in the real world, this is what she has to say. This book is all about how much she loves surfing and that’s a picture of the real Kathy Kohner back in the day with her surfboard. That is how she identified herself. We get to the movies and this is some typical dialogue. Yeah, the cringing can start at any time.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
This is from the very beginning with D. W. Griffith. It’s not his movie. Right? He shouldn’t get the credit. Then again, it’s a terrible movie and I hope nobody ever teaches this movie. I always tell my students, we’ll never touch this movie. It’s all awful and everything that someone says you’re supposed to learn from about it close-ups and tracking shots are in all the movies by all these women that I’m telling you about. So watch one of their movies that show those things. Don’t watch his movies.
I love John Carpenter because he’s the one who said…Let’s be fair. It’s a collaboration. Be honest about it. I do this. They do that. We blend together and that is what makes a product really good.
Torrent was the first American film starring Swedish actress Greta Garbo.[6] The film also starred Ricardo Cortez as the son of a domineering mother, played by Martha Mattox.
The title refers to a flood that occurs in the small town where most of the action takes place, which draws the two romantic leading characters closer together. — Wikipedia
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* 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 at the LA Public Library
So, we’ll start with the real woman. This is the real woman in the modern day. She’s still alive. She works in — she works as a Maitre D of a restaurant in Malibu and she’s still known as the “Real Gidget.” That’s kind of her — everyone in Hollywood is a bit of a celebrity so you can go that restaurant and meet the “Real Gidget” and have dinner. It is pretty funny. She also did a documentary a few years ago about her life that traveled the festival circuit. She’s trying to bring back the real story out of all the Hollywood glitz and glamour. So that’s Kathy Kohner and this was said about the book in the introduction and which I found very interesting. This is what connected me to it, that when it came out there was a thought that this was essentially a female Catcher in the Rye. Catcher in the Rye being the JD Salinger book that every high school student in America is still made to read and I don’t understand. It’s about a kid who decided whether or not to go to a hooker and I’m not really sure why that’s the most important book for teenagers to read.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
The other thing we argue about at the Writers Guild all the time is that we have this business where we have a credit that’s always “A Film By” the director. If he is a writer/director, fine. Ok, but if there’s nothing of that than why does he get this credit and why don’t the writers get that credit and we can’t get rid of that because the Director Guild will not get rid of it. Makes me nuts. Makes me nuts. Makes me nuts. But it’s true.
So this perpetually puts it in the audience’s and the student’s mind that this is the person to credit for that movie and it is not true. Same thing, obviously we know all these wonderful movies by Spike Lee. In the beginning, yes, he did write and direct “She’s Gotta Have It” but he did Malcolm X with Arnold Pearl. We don’t remember Arnold Pearl and he did Chi-Raq with Kevin Willmott and of course, he adapted that from Aristophanes and Lysistrata. So, let’s remember that there were other writers involve but they’re still only A Spike Lee Joint. That’s the only credit that’s given above the title and that’s something that we’re fighting against in our classes.
“It” is a 1927 silentromantic comedy film that tells the story of a shop girl who sets her sights on the handsome, wealthy boss of the department store where she works. It is based on a novella by Elinor Glyn that was originally serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine.
This film turned actress Clara Bow into a major star, and led people to label her the It girl.
The film had its world premiere in Los Angeles on January 14, 1927, followed by a New York showing on February 5, 1927. “It” was released to the general public on February 19, 1927.
The picture was consideredlostfor many years, but aNitrate-copy was found inPraguein the 1960s.[1]In 2001,“It”was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registryby theLibrary of Congressas being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. — Wikipedia
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Now, this piece of dialog really made me really made me cringe. Oooh, why would a girl ever say that about her own life and yet this is the line given to Gidget by the male writers. So this is something that I found along the way.
As far as the adaptation of Gidget, it all started again with an actual real girl and her real words. Kathy Kohner was a Jewish young girl and her father was a television writer. She lived in Beverly Hills and one summer in her year between 16 and 17 she went to the beach every day and discovered this community of surfing males — no girls allowed — and she didn’t fall in love with the boys. She fell in love with the sport and what really bothered me was that is what her book is about. How hard she tried to be such a good surfer the men would take her seriously.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
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