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

CSUF lecturer, author shines light on lost legacies of Hollywood’s female screenwriters: Rosanne Welch tells her students: Make your voices heard

It’s always wonderful to be given another chance to talk about “When Women Wrote Hollywood” – the book of essays on female screenwriters who deserve to be much more famous and spoken of much more often in modern day film history courses.

Women writers are fascinated to know how many women blazed the trail for them and more than happy to help make their names more well known. So this interview with Susan Gil Vardon of the OC Register turned into an hour and a half chat between two new friends. — Rosanne

CSUF lecturer, author shines light on lost legacies of Hollywood’s female screenwriters
Rosanne Welch tells her students: Make your voices heard

By SUSAN GILL VARDON | sgvardon@scng.com | Orange County Register

Rosanne Welch has advice for female students who want to get their screenplays noticed: Speak up.

A lecturer in screenwriting at Cal State Fullerton, Welch says she has seen a pattern — even in her master’s classes. When she asks her students to pitch their scripts, the men start talking while the women sit quietly, as if they’re waiting their turn.

“They’re so polite,” Welch said about the women. “I say, Hollywood will never give you a turn. Open your mouth, overspeak the boy. You gotta be loud and proud of what you do.”

Welch did it. Leaving Cleveland, Ohio, with a degree in secondary education, she worked her way up in television from a job as a receptionist for a production company to writing for the shows “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Picket Fences,” ABC’s “Nightline” and “Touched by an Angel.”

In recent years she has focused on writing books, including several on women whose achievements and legacies have been sidelined or lost to history.

Her latest is “When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry.” The book, which she edited, features 24 essays her students wrote in a master’s of fine arts class at Stephens College in Missouri on such pioneering women writers as Adela Rogers St. Johns, Anita Loos, Lillian Hellman and Dorothy Parker.

Read the entire article

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood or Buy the Book on Amazon

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Listen to the latest “How I Wrote That” Podcast with Screenwriter/Producer Tara Hernandez of The Big Bang Theory [Audio]

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Tara Hernandez started working on The Big Bang Theory as an assistant to the executive producer in season 4, and became a staff writer in the middle of season 5. From there she rose in the ranks to be a co-executive producer, helping to craft the series finale before moving to work on the show’s spin-off Young Sheldon.

The key to pitching sitcoms – there’s the event and then there’s the story. The event is the thing that happens but the story is her emotional realization that comes from the event… So for my first story that sold on Big Bang Theory was about the time Bernadette was getting married and Amy was going overboard so the girls decide to go dress shopping without Amy. That was the event that happened and then, because she was so devastated, Sheldon had to step up as a boyfriend and comfort her and it lead to their first cuddle. – Tara Hernandez

Drs. Rosanne Welch and Sarah Clark discuss “Success Story” on the Zilch Podcast’s Monkees 101 Series [Audio]

Zilch just posted another of the Monkees 101 segments I so enjoy recording with my co-host and fellow Doctor – Sarah Clark – as we critically study each episode of the show chronologically.

In this episode we take apart one of our favorites – Success Story – which involved Davy’s grandfather visiting Los Angeles and discovering that he had not yet become successful, so it was time to return to England and the real world. It brings a pang to most Monkees – and all Davy’s fans – because the goodbye scene enacted all those years ago became the clip all the newscasters chose to use when Davy Jones died in real life, and therefore became the first one to leave the group.

It’s always fun to look at the times in which a piece of media was made, how that affected the way the story was digested then – and how changes across time affect the way the story is seen in concurrent generations. The Monkees is quite a rich show for the kind of sociological slicing Sarah and I give it each episode.

Hope you enjoy listening!

Zilch is back! “SUCCESS STORY”-Monkees news and Mailbag. MONKEES 101 looks at the episode “Success Story” and the times around it,

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Want to learn more about The Monkees? 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

02 Rosanne’s Writing History from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)

Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation!

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?

Transcript

First thing is a little bit of who I am. On television I wrote for Touched By An Angel, Beverly Hills 90210, and Picket Fences and ABC’s News Nightline. When I decided to get into academia and start writing first of all the Monkees book obviously but then I’ve written a lot of stuff about women in history, women in popular culture, very interested in that and you’ll be hopefully interested in finding out but there is some things to be said about feminism on The Monkees in the 60s which nobody would have expected until I studied it. I also do book reviews for the Journal of Screenwriting. I’m their book review editor and I work on Written By magazine on the editorial board. That’s a magazine for members of the Writers Guild. So my deep focus is generally — words matter — writers matter — and women writers matter and we’re gonna find out that on The Monkees, there was the first female television writer who didn’t need a male partner in order to be have job which is sounds a little crazy to us today but was true back in the day.

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

Event: Story Structure in Cinematography with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alum, Sarah Phillips

Story Structure in Cinematography with Sarah Phillips
Sep 05, 2019 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT
Canon Burbank

Get Free Tickets at Canon

Come join Cinematographer Sarah Phillips (and Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alum (inaugural class of 2017)) as she talks about how to help (or hurt) your story structure with the way you (as a director, writer, actor, or producer) work with your cinematographer, and the way you craft light and character together.

Sarah Phillips is a cinematographer (and camera nerd) in Los Angeles who works in many areas of film. She primarily shoots independent films, including scripted features, documentaries, and short films, but also can be found the camera departments of national commercials and music videos, because her passion for writing story with light supersedes that of genre and form. sarahphillipscamera.com

Key Takeaways:

Learn about story Structure as a Cinematographer
Hear how to craft light and character together
Discuss working with directors, writers, actors and producers on building story structure

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Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alum Ilona Rossman Ho (Class of 2019) BAFF Screenplay Award Winner!

Major Congratulations to Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alum Ilona Rossman Ho (Class of 2019) who’s screenplay “Indivisible Mom” has been named a 2019 summer edition BAFF (Big Apple Film Festival) Screenplay Award Winner!

Ilona worked on the script with mentors Niceole Levy and Lisanne Sartor while in the MFA program.

Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Tour Warner Bros. Studios and Speak With Michael Lawshe (Sound Supervisor) and Bob Berens (Producer, Supernatural)

On Wednesday the 2nd year Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting candidates were treated to a tour of the backlot of Warner Bros. Studios courtesy of Emmy-winning Sound Supervisor Michael Lawshe…

…which culminated with a one-hour Q&A with Supernatural Executive Producer Bob Berens, discussing the crafting of their final season.

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Writer/Producer Ken Aquado Talks “Agents and How To Get One” with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Workshop Students

Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Workshop guest lecturer (author of “Based On” which explains how to option rights to a book/article/song for the purpose of adapting that into a screenplay) recommended this article to explain the #1 question asked by students:

“How Do I get an Agent?”

I thought I ought to share it with the whole community, so here it is… — Rosanne

As established members of the entertainment community, we are frequently asked to speak to aspiring filmmakers. And with the success of our book, The Hollywood Pitching Bible, the number of speaking invitations has greatly increased. We are now regularly invited to speak at numerous entertainment industry events, festivals, film schools and conferences.

No matter what the topic of the event, inevitably the dialogue with the audience veers onto our views about the industry in general and life in the biz. Overwhelmingly, there’s one question we get asked more than any other: “How do I get an agent?”

Often the question is asked with such intense interest that we sometimes wonder if the rest of our lecture has been “filler” for the audience who are just waiting to get to this topic. Because of the overwhelming concern with this question, we are presenting this in-depth, three-part article on the topic for the benefit of LA Screenwriter readers.

How to Get an Agent – Part One via LA Screenwriter

* 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!

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Power Of The Pack: Women Who Support Women Are More Successful via Forbes

Here’s a great Forbes article by Shelley Zalis that our Dean recently shared about the power of women supporting women in their professional worlds.

It illustrates ideas already in place within the alumni and current students in our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting from “Finding your Squad” to “Amplifying other Women” to “Taking the ‘work’ our of ‘Networking’”. — Rosanne

I always say a woman alone has power; collectively we have impact. Traditionally we have been taught to be competitive with one another, because there was such a scarcity of jobs at the top. It’s so clear that strategy doesn’t work. The truth is that raising each other up and channeling the power of collaboration is truly how we’ll change the equation—and have a lot more fun along the way.

There is a boys’ club where women never felt comfortable, so we decided to create a Girls’ Lounge more than six years ago where everyone feels like they belong. We discovered two things:

There is power in the pack.
You realize your strengths make the table better.

Read Power Of The Pack: Women Who Support Women Are More Successful via Forbes

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The Big Bang Theory Writer/Producers Eric Kaplan and Tara Hernandez visit with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting students

It was a double-header for the 2nd year MFA candidates when they were visited by two writers from The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon on consecutive nights this week. On the first night, Eric Kaplan (also a former David Letterman staff writer) came at the invitation of student CJ Ehrlich.

On the second night, producer Tara Hernandez sat for an interview with Khanisha Foster for our How I Wrote That podcast.

We thank them both for sharing their expertise (and their humor) with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

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