Speaking – Page 46 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

14 Quimby and MacPherson from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 2 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Transcript:

Some people recognize or have heard if you know anything about aviation history, Harriet Quimby was the first pilot — female pilot — licensed in the United States. To pay for her flying lessons she wrote screenplays for the Biograph Company. So there was a new world. A new place to make money and women were jumping in that world if it was possible. So I always thought was pretty cool. Jeanie MacPherson is probably one of my favorite early film screenwriters and she is the perfect example of how women get left behind. Everybody who does film history has heard about Cecil B. DeMille over and over and over again. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. If you look at his films, all the films he made, that made a profit, were written by Jeanie MacPherson. When they stopped working together, he never made a profitable film again. So are they Cecil B. DeMille films or are they Jeanie MacPherson films or are they Macpherson/DeMille films?

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.

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11 Alice Sheldon from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (51 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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:

Jumping into the 1960s thank you very much which is sad to go that far but what’s going on is we have to think about how women are being presented in the purchasing public, right? So when we come over here this woman is named Alice Sheldon. First of all, she doesn’t look like a science fiction writer because we think that they’re all dudes. She has the little pearl thing going on which is kind of cute. She couldn’t get her novels published under her own name. So she went by the name of James Tiptree jr. and James wrote a whole lot of books that were big bestsellers and then eventually, almost 20 years later, Alice was like “No, the next book is going out of my name right, but it had to say formerly known as James Tiptree Jr. to make sure that her fans would travel over. I Know is that silly? It’s silly but it is a habit we are still in.

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13 Alice Guy Blaché & Fictional Filmmaking from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (52 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

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Transcript:

She starts all of this and her theme was “Be natural.” That’s what she was teaching actors because they came to film with that theatricality that you can’t do on film. Be natural. Be a little more normal. That’s what we want to see. so, it’s really Alice that we credit now with getting fictional filmmaking started. She came to America and started the Solax Company and they were doing films here and started to distribute them. They were starting to make some good money. The problem is her husband became the President of the company and her husband had a gambling problem and the profits of the company started to go away and then they got a reputation for not finishing things on time because they ran out of money and that pretty much destroyed her career, but she is — in film histories now — being credited more and more. There’s a new documentary coming out about her shortly.

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10 Virginia Woolf and Orlando from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

Transcript:

This lady is Virginia Woolf. Most people think of Virginia Woolf as writing those sort of lovey-dovey, Jane Austen-y kind of things or some you know a little mystery kind of stuff but she in fact wrote a novel we consider a piece of science fiction. It’s Orlando, which is not the biography of Orlando Bloom but in fact the story of a man born during the first Queen Elizabeth’s reign who regenerates into a woman and lives for 300 years which sounds a lot to be like Doctor Who which is my other big favorite thing in the world. So there’s Virginia Woolf right but she’s already known and so she can dabble in this other genre and it’s okay because people have paid more money for her other stuff. That’s all drawing-room stuff. So we’re moving through the world but not as many women as I’d like to see.

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12 Alice Guy Blaché from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (58 Seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

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Transcript:

This lady is someone who’s just now getting more known in film histories. Alice Guy Blaché. She was the Secretary to the Lumiere brothers in France. So we’re moving away from America and moving back to France right? They were filming dudes walking out of a factory. They were filming guys standing on a train platform smoking. Whatever they felt like. Reality basically. They weren’t fictionalizing. They weren’t looking at film as a place to tell stories and she was their secretary and she said you know I’d like to do something else with the cameras and they said “Oh, on your lunch break you can do whatever you want. Just make sure you’re back at your desk on time to type the things we need typed” right? So she started making silent films obviously in 1896. Her first film, which you can find on YouTube, is called “The Cabbage Fairy.” It’s literally just her picking babies out of a field behind cabbages right in the fictionalization of how do we find children — how are children brought into the world. Very short but that’s what we were doing in that era.

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09 Mary Shelley, Her Life, And Fiction from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (47 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

Transcript:

…and the sad thing is — so she invented a whole genre. A whole genre. She invents it. We’re not going to see another female writer of science fiction for a while. Right? We’re not going to see that. Now a lot of what she came through — this is her mother — Mary Wollenstonecraft — and her mother was a famous feminist in England at this time. Right? So a lot of her ideas are coming from her mother’s writing. She didn’t know her mother because her mother died when she was very, very young. So she never had an actual relationship, but she wanted so desperately to live up to this famous women and how often did that happen back in the day. Usually, it’s men who have to live up to their rich and famous fathers. Here’s a woman who had to live up to something that her mother had accomplished. Right? So she’s got a lot of those themes again running through that. Right? And likewise, this is a picture of her mother. Which is just kind of fun from back in the day.

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11 Women Writers You Don’t Know from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (35 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

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Transcript:

These are some ladies you probably don’t know. Does anybody recognize any of them? She’s the most likely one for anyone to know because she’s also an actress. If you saw Harold and Maude, Rosemary’s Baby? That’s Ruth Gordon. Ruth Gordon was a four-time oscar-nominated screenwriter as well as winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary’s Baby. So we’re gonna talk about these ladies and who they are.

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8 Assumptions That A Man Did The Work from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (31 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

Transcript:

So like side tangent story I remember reading that when Barbara Streisand was directing her first movie she asked Steven Spielberg a couple of questions and immediately what the Press reported was Spielberg Co-assists Streisand directing. Of all the dudes who direct Spielberg called up George Lucas and said, “I’m doing this Indiana Jones thing what do you think?” Nobody said George Lucas co-directs Indiana Jones right? No the boys can ask questions. The girls. No no, that means they need help right? So we have a lot of that sort of old-fashioned controversy which hangs around for a while.

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10 Shonda Rhimes & Tina Fey from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (44 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

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Transcript:

…and we recognize Shonda Rhimes. We can’t not recognize Shonda Rhimes. She owns television thank to this show getting her started but, of course, Scandal, How To Get Way With Murder, all of these things have made Shonda Rhimes Shondaland, She’s got her whole production company as her “land” and the way she runs things. We recognize her? (Audience: Tina Fey) Tina Fey. Exactly. We sometimes forget she’s a writer. There’s a reason that this show existed. 30 Rock is basically a fictionalized version of working on Saturday Night Live. For which she got several Emmys and then, of course, she did Mean Girls, the movie and the Broadway show which was nominated for several Tonys last year or 2 years ago. So, you know, Tina’s doing pretty well.

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07 More On Frankenstein from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 16 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

Transcript:

It then became such a huge hit that was kind of like “Oh” and then she’s rich so it’s not gonna hurt her day her reputation too much. Then she was kind of like “You know I want some credit for that. Everyone’s talking about this really wonderful book. I should let people know I did it. So the next version that came out in 1823 they put her name on it and of course from then on we’ve done that. Of course, just like with all things women achieve, I hate to tell you this but there’s always the discussion of “really did she write that I did Percy Shelley do most of the work and he drew his girlfriend’s name on it just as a present to her” and that’s been debated for years how much of it did he actually write. Luckily, in the British Library, they have her original papers. They have her original handwriting and his copy editing. So the different handwriting and you can see that in the next version which of those notes he took she took and which of those notes she ignored cuz honey it’s my book, not yours, right? So we have proof that is largely by and large hers. In any book that’s written, a writer sends it out to many friends, takes many notes, makes changes as they choose. We just always like to pick on when the girls make changes it must be something that the boys contributed much to, right? So I think that’s fascinating.

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