Show – Page 5 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

22 Preserving Women’s Film History from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

Host: So are there some ways that we as – like the work you’ve been doing with your research – that in terms of revising those kind of incomplete histories of the film industry. What steps can we take to actually repair that and have a more accurate Narrative of the past?

Rosanne: Oh wow. Well, of course, hire more women writers. Step one to get more of those stories that – hire more underrepresented voices to tell us the stories we haven’t heard before and once we’ve done that, we have to preserve this material. One of the issues again with why we don’t remember these women is when we started preserving films and doing the Library of Congress and the 100 Years of – all of that stuff – people kind of push the that wasn’t important. It was Charlie Chaplin and these other people and we preserved all their material. We didn’t really think about that when it comes to stuff done by women.

The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting is building a relationship with the Autry Museum of the American West since both organizations are devoted to bringing out more diverse and untold stories. Last year we were able to take our cohort of graduating MFA candidates to the museum’s theatre for a showing of Michael Wilson’s Salt of the Earth and we had plans to present a film of our choice this year – but of course the pandemic changed all that. Instead, Autry Curator Josh Garrett-Davis asked me if I would sit for an interview about female screenwriters in the western genre and so “When Women Wrote Westerns” came to be a part of their “What Is a Western? Interview Series”.

I had a great time discussing so many wonderful women writers – from Jeanne MacPherson to D.C. Fontana to Edna Ferber to Emily Andras. If you love westerns I suggest you watch Josh’s other interviews covering everything from the work of Native Americans in Western movies to films in the western-horror hybrid. —

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As part of a series exploring the significance of the Western genre and the ways in which the movies shape our understanding of the American West, Autry Curator Josh Garrett-Davis interviews Professor Rosanne Welch about the women screenwriters of Hollywood and their contributions to the Western genre.

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09 More On Neo-realism and Black Cinema From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]

Transcript:

“Nothing But A Man” deals with this really in a way we hadn’t seen before. Then we get into “The Cool World” and this is now the first time we’ve seen sort of gang life and it’s not glorified and it’s not beautiful. This is a very sad version of this is all I have to make money. This is all I can do to survive. Which is very post-war and Italy except there’s no war here. Except the constant war that had been fought against African Americans from the very beginning right? So thinking about the trauma of it and all those things being reflected and always there’s youth in these movies to see how that trauma affects yet the Next Generation and again and again. Which I think I see a lot in “Rome Open City.” Then we get Melvin Van Peebles coming along with “Sweet Sweetbacks Badassssss Song” and suddenly we have auteurs in the black theater rebellion and that’s kind of a fascinating new idea. He breaks out into more mainstream. People know who he is. He’s the beginning of a kind of a dynasty because his son Mario also becomes a filmmaker and that’s the first time that we’ve seen that opportunity.

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At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”

In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.

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21 Examples of the Heroine’s Journey from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

Host: What are the examples of the heroine’s journey? What are some of those the stories that are in the heroine’s journey format template? I’m curious.

Rosanne: Oh I would obviously “The Wizard of Oz” like I said. In a TV world, we claim that for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” right? Very much so about that. The joke becomes you could say “Scooby-Doo” does that. It’s anything that involves a team coming together and so in a fun way that can also be sometimes a male-focused team. If you think about war movies they’re all about a team of people coming together for the betterment of each other. Even though they’re like the most dude movies and you could say the same thing about westerns. If it’s a group of people an Oregon Trail kind of thing or group of men in a town or the sheriff and a couple of his buddies. The heroine in terms of pulling away from being female and then pulling back into it, that tends to happen more often in sort of romantic comedy or something like “The Intern” where she’s trying to figure out how to be a leader of these other men and then she has to realize it’s about the nurturing that I do. That is better than me being more loud and annoying and stuff but I can make a list for you that I can have.

Host: Okay great. Well, I’ll claim “The Wizard of Oz” and “Buffy” as westerns. I think Sunnyvale – Sunnyvale? Is that – I think that’s in California we can call it

Rosanne: it is. That’s true. It is about making the town safe for the new inhabitants.

Host: Right.

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08 Neo-realism and Black Cinema From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]

Transcript:

So it’s been really important to reincorporate these movies into and to see the progression of how they fit into International World Cinema. I think that’s really important. So I’m starting with “Nothing But A Man” which is a beautiful film interestingly enough made by not an African-American filmmaker but considered to have captured the struggle quite well. In this Ivan Dixon plays a railroad worker and he just moves from state to state avoiding the Jim Crow South. Trying to avoid the treatment that he would receive if he settled into any of these locations but you see him receive the treatment. So we’re dealing with the underpinning of how Americans are treating Americans of color in this time period and that was very harsh. It’s a sad side note. I actually worked with Ivan Dixon’s daughter on a show years ago and he did a show called “Hogan’s Heroes” which you may or may not have seen in reruns and it kind of ruined his independent film career because they thought he’d sold out but in fact, it’s a show about four prisoners of war in a German prisoner War Camp. It’s a comedy. I don’t understand how they ever thought that was a good idea but it was very popular in the late 60s and when people argued with him about why he did that piece because it made Nazis funny he said I had to prove that black men were there in the war and I thought that seeing me in that set of prisoners was important enough that I should do that but it meant that he didn’t do a lot of more serious films after that because of doing a comedy which I think is sad.

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20 Diversity in the Room from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

But we’re also looking for news stories and the newer, most interesting ones. They’re gonna break through because the audience is so diverse and so wide and now we’re International right with Netflix and streaming and all that stuff. We can think about people we haven’t covered before and we know around the world other people will be interested in it. In the same way, we’re watching Japanese anime and you know Korean telenovelas and all that stuff.

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07 More On Neo-realism in the US From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]

Transcript:

…but interestingly enough in a place where it’s been ignored, it came deeply into the world of the black filmmakers of the 1970s who felt that they wanted finally to show the world and how harsh it had been in their lives. So we see a lot of that influence come through these movies which also didn’t end up often in mainstream film courses. You had to take a side class right and that’s a difficult thing.

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19 Claim Your Space in the Room from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

…and there’s a lot of dudes in town — really good guys — who are learning that wait a minute, we’re used to talking over women and all that sort of thing and we have to stop and let people finish their thoughts before we dive in with something else and then people forget things and then women also have to be good — you know the classic story is that you might pitch an idea and no one takes it up and 15 minutes later a guy pitches it in the writer’s room and then everyone’s like oh yeah let’s go with that. Then you have to say that’s exactly what I said 10 minutes ago and then they’ll all kind of oh yeah. You’re right. You have to claim your talent or other people will gladly walk over it. So I think those are behavioral things right but we don’t want to — we don’t have to be super dude-like to succeed. We just have to be strong and know that you’re good at what you do…and you’ll succeed.

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06 Neo-realism in the US From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]

Transcript:

Americans start paying attention because of things like “Rome Open City” which is not something Suso wrote on but is of course a film that was very majorly important here and we start thinking oh how can we incorporate that into our movies and so it begins with things like “On the Waterfront” which most people have seen or heard about which is really working through the HUAC hearings and who’s a stool pigeon and who’s not and who gives names. So we start to see the influences come into American films. “Marty” is considered one of the best examples of that and I do think this is a beautiful film because we’re looking at people who aren’t beautiful. People who aren’t rich. People who aren’t who we think movie stars should be and I often tell my students — it’s hilarious — Ernest Borgnine. They know him from being the Mermaid Man in SpongeBob. The man’s career went 80 years and here he is, they watch “Marty” in there. Amazed that what a brilliant actor. He is playing an Italian-American butcher. So a very unromantic job on top of all that. So we’re seeing some of the Italian neo-realism come into American films.

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18 The Heroine’s Journey from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

For women particularly though, we know the world is still a boys club and so you have to be confident and you don’t want to be overly aggressive because then people say bad things about you and yet if you’re not, you don’t get through the sort of the clutter of everything. One of the cool things that we teach about is we all know “The Hero’s Journey” – which is what I talked about with Luke Skywalker – but “The Heroine’s Journey” is a thing that we teach right and Maureen Murdoch came up with that. “The Heroine’s Journey”, of course, is about a female character but it’s about what women learn from society which is generally if you want to succeed you have to act like a man. So you separate – your beginning of that movie – you separate from your girlishness and you start doing dude stuff and by the time you’re done with the movie you figure it out, no the only way to actually get forward is to use the talents that I have, perhaps inherently, because I’m a female and when I reconnect to how female I am then I succeed. So to me, that’s what women have to remember to do.

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34 Conclusion from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

Host: Well that’s about what we’ve got time for but is there anything you would like to add just at the end? I would just like to also like to shout out the “Journal of Screenwriting” again and want everyone to go and check out the special issues on women in screenwriting, which is really important and excellent work and the start of a lot more research coming out and focusing on women screenwriters and so thank you for putting that together. I’m really glad it came out and came out with Intellect. So yeah thanks for that.

Rosanne: Yes well it’s – in two years, in 2023, the SRN conference I’m gonna hold it on the Stephens College campus and it’s going to be the theme will be women in screenwriting. So we’ll get a whole lot more stuff and probably a publication will come out of that. So that would be exciting.

Host: I will I’ll definitely be coming to check that out in person when we can also go back to conferences again but yeah just everyone should check out the Screenwriting Network . Is it screenwriters Network?

Rosanne: The Screenwriting Research Network and it’s free to join if you’re an academic or a practitioner and it’s online. You can see our website and we have of course a Facebook page and all that stuff.

Host: Really oh and I should also say about the “Journal of Screenwriting.” There is free content online so you can download free articles from that journal publication. So I recommend people do that but yeah just thank you so much. It’s been a real honor. You really know your stuff and you wear many different hats you know. A practicing writer, a teacher, and an excellent scholar. So thanks for coming and joining us today. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Rosanne: Well thanks you know. It’s another beautiful thing about conferences. We met because of SCMS without that we would not have met. So I appreciate this time and it’s been – it’s always fun to talk about this stuff because I’m a fan above everything else.

Host: We’re like cool nerds it’s interesting. Cool nerds. That’s what it is.

Well thanks, everyone for tuning in. We’ll be back again next Wednesday I don’t know who my guest would be yet so what’s this space and thank you again Rosanne Welch. It’s been amazing having you on. Have a great rest of your day and thank you again.

Rosanne: Thank you. Bye-bye.

One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.

We chatted about my work with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, and then my work with co-editor Rose Ferrell on the Journal of Screenwriting’s special issue on Women in Screenwriting (Volume 11, Number 3) that came out recently and which featured articles about an international set of female screenwriters from Syria, Argentina, China and Canada (to name a few).

We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.

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With Intellect Books Editor James Campbell (@IntellectBooks)

Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.

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