Many Thanks to Sarah Clark for inviting me along on this book group discussion of Mike Nesmith’s new “Infinite Tuesday” – which due to his eclectic writing style and his honest look at his life’s successes and failures, turns out to be an interesting testament to how to survive having been young and famous in the 1960s.
Sarah Clark is joined by Rosanne Welch, Ghosty Tmrs, and Music Biographer Andrew Vaughan to dig deep into Infinite Tuesday: an Autobiographical Riff! Hear the panel’s thoughts, some of Sarah’s favorite Nez Songs (not featured on the Infinite Tuesday soundtrack), Then Melanie Mitchell talks Peter Tork “SSB” Pics surface, Monkees News & More!
On a side note, there are many connections between The Dean Martin Show and The Monkees, beginning with the connection between his daughter, Deana Martin, and The Monkees. She guest starred in “Some Like it Lukewarm” which aired as the next episode after “Mind Their Manor”.
Jean Powergirl takes the host reigns and welcomes her guest Rosanne Welch, PhD to the show! They’ll be discussing Roseanne’s book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.”
Transcript:
Hello again, I’m here with Dr. Rosanne Welch. She’s a professor She’s a screenwriter. She’s a producer. She’s this Hollywood lady and she has lots of interesting things to tell us about and I am fascinated. Here’s her book we’re going to talk about today — “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.” You can go to Amazon.com to get this book and yea, we have lift off now. Let me go ahead and tell you er credentials again because I’m going to have this memorized. I know all about my friend, Rosanne. Alright, she’s a professor at Cal State Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College, and Cal Poly Pomona. She has a Ph.D. in 20th Century United States Film History from Claremont Graduate University and she has a Master of Arts in 20th Century US History from California State University Northridge in 2004. She’s a writer. She’s a producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210, CBS’ Emmy-winning Picket Fences and Touched by and Angel.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement 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 Rider and Five Easy Pieces.
Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.
As an extra bonus, this episode also contained one of the 19 end-of-show interviews that gave the viewers a chance to see the stars discussing their personal lives. Rafelson found those final moments to be so important he left them raw. “Those interviews are strictly unedited. I don’t touch them. I don’t want to. If I have to edit them, out they go. I can tell you damn well they’re not puppets, they’re sensitive and intelligent–they have opinions on everything–they can speak for themselves.”
New material in the form of Outtakes included in the course of an episode or added to the end in the form of a Tag, often became interjected inside the locked script. These outtakes truly let the audience feel as if they were a part of the whole production, in on the laugh as it were. In the end that is one key to the success of the program, letting the young audience be a part of something at a time they felt they had little say in anything going on around them.
Each author was asked to describe their book. The encyclopedia came first (since Peg’s last name is Lamphier and the practice of alphabetical discrimination lives on). I let her have the honors since I knew I would speak about The Monkees’ book last. Going last I also had to keep in mind that the rest of the audience had already received their awards and were anxious to get back to the delightful dessert table – so humor came to the rescue as I commented on how odd it was to be speaking about my favorite television show when I was six after other professors had spoken of Immanuel Kant and architectural digs in South America and Mass Spectatorship in Modern France.
Here’s how I closed out the show…
Thanks to Doug for taking all the photos and video – and to Peg for being such a great collaborator – and to all the friends and fans who have read the book and enjoyed learning more about the 1967 Emmy Winner for Best New Comedy Series.
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In “Monstrous Monkee Mash” (written by Neil Nephew and David Panich, directed by James Frawley and edited by Pozen) when a frightened Micky piles chairs before the door to avoid the Wolfman, the film is sped up to highlight his fear and sense of panic. The creative team on The Monkees often used the frenetic personality of Micky’s character in this fashion as in “Alias Micky Dolenz” (edited by Stanley Frazen).
To achieve this amount of material to use in the editing bay, directors would have to manage 78 to 100 camera set ups a day, an unheard of number in an era when 30 set ups were considered a long day. They would also have to be free enough creatively to show the audience the metaphorical wizard behind the curtain.
Blondie, the Monkees and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: these were Andy Murray’s musical touchstones as a child. As he explained on Friday, “My mum used to drive us a lot to and from tournaments that were five, six hours away, and singing was one way of keeping us amused.”
While metatextuality is largely the work of the writers and actors, the examples in the previous chapter also represent the work of many of the other creative craft departments involved in producing a television show, beginning with directors, editors, properties masters and costumers, all hand-picked by producers Schneider and Rafelson. The show even involved detailed work from the transportation department in the form of the design and creation of the Monkeemobile by Dean Jeffries, who had already created the Mantaray for Bikini Beach and Black Beauty for The Green Hornet.
![01 – Introduction: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (1:02)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/rmw-power-01-intro.jpeg)
![Dr. Rosanne Welch at Golden Leaves Presentation 2017, Cal Poly Pomona [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/golden-leaves-award.jpg)
