On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Location as Character: The Craft of Writing Place Panel
From @writersguildf – Writers Guild Foundation
We team up with @ColumbiaChi to talk about how locations inform and impact characters on TV with @qu33nofdrama, @SparksAnthony, Matt Lutsky, @RosanneWelch and Connor Kilpatrick.
* 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!
Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
Watch this entire presentation
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Transcript:
And when The Great Gatsby came out it was a flop. The book fails. It survived because there were so many extra copies in a warehouse that weren’t sold that when they started sending packages –care packages — to soldiers in World War I they threw in these books nobody wanted and all the soldiers ended up reading it and coming home thinking that was the greatest novel they’d ever read and it became this centerpiece of American literature while her books never gone out of print right and yet we don’t teach it to kids in high school which I can’t fathom. It’s the same era. It’s the same attitude. Anyway she’s very famous for many many films, San Francisco, The Women, which was remade about six years ago by Diane English from the Murphy Brown show and Anita’s version is better. It is really quite lovely and it has a classic line in it. They’re watching two dogs fight and somebody says “What do you call them?” and she says “Witches, with a different letter.” So you know exactly. So Anita Loos deserves to be more famous.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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 from the LA Public Library
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Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
If you think about it, we know that Dr. Timothy Leary — who was famous for dropping a little acid back in the day — he already was watching the program and saying, there is a whole lot going on here that no one else is paying attention to. So this isn’t information that I invented years later. People already we’re saying these things but the network television guys weren’t really listening. They thought it was a show about four guys who wanted to be a band and there was a good way to sell music. It was synergy, right? It was the big mood of the day. So that’s what they thought, but when you think about what they were talking about on the show — this particular song Randy Scouse Git is a song that Mickey wrote. It hit number one on the charts in the UK and made it to like number three in charts in the United States. Came in the second season also in the second season their clothing began to change. They went from JCPenney matching band uniforms to the poncho, the more hippie attire, looking more like they looked in their real lives. .
Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement 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 Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?
Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Watch this entire presentation
![19 Leigh Brackett from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction - Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (32 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/scifi-rmw-cpp-19.jpeg)
This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
Now, this lady I love Leigh Brackett. She’s kind of a hidden gem in the world of both science fiction and screenwriting. She wrote a lot of Westerns in the beginning of her career. She wrote a lot of short stories science fiction you can find in a lot of collections in the 40s and 50s and she’s so popular and so beloved by the dudes who like those B motion pictures and those pointed kind of cheap science fiction pieces that she gets hired by a guy we know to write this movie which is pretty much one of our best science fiction pieces in the world.
* 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!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
From @writersguildf – Writers Guild Foundation
Happening Now: We team up with @ColumbiaChi to talk about how locations inform and impact characters on TV with @qu33nofdrama, @SparksAnthony, Matt Lutsky, @RosanneWelch and Connor Kilpatrick.
* 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!
Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
Watch this entire presentation
Transcript:
This lady people should know more. You might recognize from the title of her book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. This is Anita Loos. Anita Loos is probably the most prolific female writer of the silent era and she made the transition into talkies. Many, many writers did not. She did because she could write really witty dialogue but Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a novel that fascinates me. She wrote it because she was on a train with M Somerset Maugham who she loved as an intellectual and a blonde chick got on the train and he started to fawn all over her after they were having this lovely intellectual conversation and it made her mad. So she wrote a book about how blonds aren’t stupid. They’re actually working it and getting out of men exactly what they want. Yeah. So they pretend to be dumb. It’s really Legally Blonde long before there was Legally Blonde and it’s never gone out of publication but it is not taught in American literature class where The Great Gatsby is always taught.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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 from the LA Public Library
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
For the second year in a row I’ve been invited to do a couple of my favorite lectures about Doctor Who to the attendees of the SD (San Diego) Who Con which happens this coming Friday-Sunday October 4-6th.
It’s a chance to wear my new 13th Doctor (played by actress Jodie Whitaker who I first saw in Broadchurch) shirt and trenchcoat (which I bought from a vendor at last year’s SC Who Con). I’m updating two of my lectures on the show and its quality writing and then doing a ‘superbowl/commentary’ group watch of an episode called School Reunion which I use in my television writing courses as an example of a tight script/backdoor pilot.
* Friday. October 4, 2019
1:00-2:00
Dr. Rosanne Welch
How Doctor Who Redefines Masculinity: Join Dr. Welch in a discussion about masculinity and Doctor Who.3:30-5:00
Dr. Rosanne Welch
School Reunion Workshop: Dr. Welch will deconstruct the David Tenant episode “School Reunion” to show how well written it is, highlighting the set-up/payoff style of writing; the 4-act structure and the deft inclusion of exposition.* Saturday, October 5, 3019
11:30-1:00
Dr. Rosanne Welch
School Reunion Workshop: Dr. Welch will deconstruct the David Tenant episode “School Reunion” to show how well written it is, highlighting how the set-up/payoff style of writing; the 4-act structure and the deft inclusion of exposition.* Sunday, October 6, 2019
11:00-12:00
Dr. Rosanne Welch
Gender Diversity in Doctor Who: Join Dr. Welch as she discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the various writers and showrunners of the program.
This all came about thanks to a chance meeting on the Raleigh Studios lot with a wonderful fellow Who fan who happens to bear a striking resemblance to Alex Kingston, the actress who played the character River Song. Her office was strewn with Who memorabilia so I stopped in one day to say “Hi” and talk Who and she connected me to the organizers of the event. So the moral of this story is – say “Hi” to more people often. You never know what new (time) travels might be right around your next corner- — Rosanne
WHO CON 2019 “WHODUNNIT?”
OCTOBER 4 – 6, 2019
AT THE FOUR POINTS SHERATON HOTEL
8110 AERO DR, SAN DIEGO, CA 92123 [Map]
Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
So this is TV before our folks showed up and this is TV after and it’s definitely different. Suddenly we’re talking about on Laugh-In sex, politics, what’s going on in the world. We have Sonny and Cher who a couple of the writer’s The Monkees moved on to the Sonny and Cher show. If you know enough about The Monkees, there were two seasons of the program. The third season, the four guys wanted it to be a variety show — set around rock and roll and the problem was the network said “Nobody’s gonna watch a variety show that has to do with rock and roll” and the next season Sonny and Cher showed up and won some Emmys right? So there you go. Of course, The Smothers Brothers who were canceled you’re being too political. The Mod Squad which was a whole movement into the new hippie generation and of course All In The Family is gonna happen in the 70s and we’re going to get very serious about how we talk about politics on television but The Monkees were there in the beginning.
Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement 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 Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?
Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
** We have returned from Porto and I am streaming out our photos over the next few weeks.
* 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!
Chatting with conference attendees before my talk at the Screenwriting Research Conference in Porto, Portugal
A great way to encounter these international friends I only see in person once a year at the 2019 Screenwriting Research Conference.
** We have returned from Porto and I am streaming out our photos over the next few weeks.
* 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!
