Stephens College – Page 29 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 18: “Lillian Hellman: A ‘Difficult’, Villified Woman.”, NPR, Maureen Corrigan

Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 18: “Lillian Hellman: A ‘Difficult’, Villified Woman.”, NPR, Maureen Corrigan

“Difficult” is probably the most tactful word one could use in characterizing Lillian Hellman. If ever there were an author safer to meet through her art rather than in real life, she was the one. Born in New Orleans into a Jewish family, Hellman came of age in the Roaring ’20s, liberated by flappers and Freud. Hellman drank like a fish, swore like a sailor and slept around like, well, like most of the men in her literary circle, chief among them Dashiell Hammett, with whom she had an open relationship spanning three decades. She was, recalled one observer, a “tough broad … the kind of girl who can take the tops off bottles with her teeth.”

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#MeetTheGraduatesMonday: CJ Ehrlich- Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Every Monday we will be profiling a member of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting 2020 graduating class. This exciting, fresh crop of writers are the future of the industry and are going on to do BIG things, so get to know them now!

This week, Stephens College is proud to present: CJ Ehrlich #MeetTheGraduates

A Bostonian who resides in the wilds of NY, C.J. Ehrlich is an award-winning playwright, whose works have enjoyed over 200 productions around the world, and are published in numerous “Best of” anthologies (including The Best American Short Plays of 2015-16). Full-lengths include The Cupcake Conspiracy: Terrorism is Easy, Marriage is Complicated (with Philip J. Kaplan), the anti-romcom This Time We’ll Make It Work, and scifi comedy Zane to Gate 69. While in the MFA program, C.J. has written a full-length horror screenplay, Graduation, and is developing the comedy Stupid Voices from the Future, as well as pilots for a supernatural, teen-oriented thriller, and a comedy about a team of reality TV losers. She also spent a wonderful semester living amongst the female screenwriters of the silent era, and has mixed feelings about Al Jolson.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 17: After the Thin Man. Wrs: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Dashiell Hammett. Dir: Van Dyke W. S. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1936, USA 112 mins.

After the Thin Man. Wrs: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Dashiell Hammett. Dir: Van Dyke W. S. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1936, USA 112 mins.

After the Thin Man is a 1936 American comedy film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring William Powell, Myrna Loy, and James Stewart. A sequel to the film The Thin Man, the film presents Powell and Loy as Dashiell Hammett’s characters Nick and Nora Charles. The film also features Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia, Jessie Ralph, Alan Marshal, and Penny Singleton (billed under her maiden name as Dorothy McNulty).

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#MeetTheGraduatesMonday: Emma Jeszke – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

#MeetTheGraduatesMonday: Emma Jeszke

Emma Jeszke is a dramedy writer, with a focus on coming-of-age stories that challenge and expand typical narratives about girlhood, young adulthood, and motherhood. She has a special talent for keeping you laughing till you’re crying.

Her television pilot Postpartum, about the joys and struggles of being a new mom, was a top-ten finalist in the Women Writing Competition at Series Fest. She is the author of the feature screenplays Wildflower, a forbidden love story about a soldier and an antiwar activist set in 2004, and Bobbi Malone, which follows a thirty-something as she reconnects with her estranged grandmother through a theater troupe. She’s also the author of several stage plays, and the creator of the forthcoming web series Holly & Gem, about two sisters who reconnect after one escapes a cult.

Her plays have been performed regionally in places such as the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival and the Blank Theatre in Los Angeles. She is a book editor at Theatre Communications Group, the foremost publisher of theatrical literature, where she’s spent eight years working with world-renowned playwrights. She’s currently finishing her MFA in TV & Screenwriting at Stephens College.

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Listen to the latest “How I Wrote That” Podcast with Screenwriter Julie Hébert from ‘American Crime’ and ‘Man in the High Castle’

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Julie Hébert started her creative life as a theater director and playwright (Ruby’s Bucket of Blood). She’s written and directed for the Magic Theater, Steppenwolf, Victory Gardens, LaMaMa, The Women’s Project, Cornerstone and many more. Her plays were honored twice with the Pen Award for Drama. Moving into television, Julie has written and directed for some of the most respected shows in television including American Crime, The Good Wife, Boss, Numb3rs and The West Wing. Her films have been praised as “intriguingly complex” (Variety) and “pulsing with veracity” (LA Times), with “a raw power that is impossible to dismiss” (Roger Ebert). She blogs occasionally at JulieHébert.com.

“I honor the depth inside and the stories that really want to be told because often in television you can get away with topline chatter, but to really hit on something that has meaning for you, that will have meaning for someone hearing the story, it has to come from a deeper place.” -Julie Hébert

Presented by Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

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A Photographic February for Stephens MFA in TV and Screenwriting

February was a month of sharing the marvelous photos from all the guest lectures who graced the January Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting workshop with their talent and inspiration… (plus a quick shot of my upcoming book on Films of the Civil War).

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Write Your Family’s Stories! – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Sometimes the best scripts are hidden in our own families – call relatives, have dinners, write letters.

Then come to the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting to learn how to Write, Reach, and Represent all those hidden stories.

Charles M. Schulz Museum

💪🍪 We honor the great women who have gone ahead of us and who walk beside us every day on this #InternationalWomensDay. This Peanuts strip was first published on November 11, 1976⁠.⁠⁠

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#FacultyFriday: Phillip LaZebnik – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting would like to celebrate one of our mentors Philip LaZebnik, whose musical THE PRINCE OF EGYPT just opened on the West End! Congratulations Philip! #FacultyFriday

Philip Lazebnik has written numerous television episodes and motion picture screenplays in Los Angeles and Europe. His screenwriting credits include Disney’s Pocahontas and Mulan, and DreamWorks’ Prince of Egypt and The Legend of El Dorado. For the past several years, LaZebnik has lived in Denmark, where he has written movies and television shows throughout Europe and the U.S. His produced movies include the three Treasure of the Templar Knights movies in Denmark and The Three Investigators: The Secret of Skeleton Island and The Three Investigators: The Mystery of Terror Castle for Studio Hamburg; the Danish film Emma and Santa Claus; the English screenplay for Asterix and the Vikings and Asterix and the Domain of the Gods. He also wrote the TV mini-series Hindenburg in Germany, the Christmas TV series Ludvig and Santa Claus for TV2 in Denmark, and the book for Fairytale, a theatrical musical about H.C. Andersen with songs by Stephen Schwartz. Most recently he wrote the book for the musical theatrical version of Prince of Egypt with Stephen Schwartz, which opens in London’s West End on February 25, 2020.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 16: “Ida May Park.” Women Film Pioneers Project. Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, 27 Sept. 2013

The 1916 Motion Picture News Studio Directory credits Los Angeles native Ida May Park with twelve years of stage experience as a “leading woman in support of well-known stars” and with screen experience at Pathé and the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, where she was then employed as a scenario writer (134). Park flourished at Universal, where she wrote forty-four films, half of them feature length, between 1914 and 1919. Before 1917, Park’s husband, Joseph De Grasse, directed almost all of the films she wrote. In 1917, Park began directing her own scenarios and, according to a 1918 story in the Universal Weekly, a newspaper for exhibitors, editing them as well (29). She crafted a total of eleven features by this method in a scant two years. Park is important to understand as part of a strong creative presence that we now refer to as “Universal Women,” those who between 1912 and 1919 were promoted from acting or writing to directing and were credited on at least one hundred and seventy titles, a cohort that included Ruth Ann Baldwin, Cleo Madison, Ruth Stonehouse, Lois Weber, and Elsie Jane Wilson (Cooper 17, Denton 50). Park and De Grasse left Universal in the spring or summer of 1919 for reasons as yet unknown. On September 12, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lew Cody and manager-producer Louis J. Gasnier had signed her to direct motion pictures in which Cody would star (16). She made one such title, and, with De Grasse, directed two features for Andrew J. Callaghan Productions in 1920.

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Found Treasure – Some Of The Women Who Wrote Hollywood – Screenland Magazine, 1931

While many film historians and teachers still don’t know the name of many of these marvelous female screenwriters from Hollywood’s Golden era, research shows they existed. It’s the job of this generation of scholars to bring these names into the larger conversation.

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