On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
** Pre-Order “Why The Monkees Matter” Today via Amazon.com **
“If mentioned in television histories at all, The Monkees were seen as the bastard child when discussing counter-culture humor in 1960s television, behind Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, yet they prefigured and influenced both of those programs.”
from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!
Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
Amazon Pre-Orders Now Available!
I am proud to announce that “Why The Monkees Mattered” is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
Pre-Order “Why The Monkees Matter” from Amazon.com
Why The Monkees Matter is now scheduled for publication for Fall 2016, just in time to gift it to your favorite Monkee’s Fans among your friends and family…and, of course, a copy for yourself, too!
I’ll send out more information about the book as it happens. You can also join the Monkees discussion on my Facebook Page, Why The Monkees Matter.
Read more about “Why The Monkees Matter”, including chapter titles and more
This will be all over the internet in a minute – but I wanted so share it here for the folks who have enjoyed so many of my Doctor Who lecture videos.
“Television forced families to see things they might not have chosen to see, but needed to see, such as independent women, people of color and new political perspectives. All these things appeared on The Monkees long before the rise of social commentary comedies such as All in the Family.”
from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!
Who Wrote The Monkees? – “Monkees At The Circus” by David Panich – Part 6 of an on-going series
David Panich wrote Monkees at the Circus as one of only a few freelancers contracted for the series and was also on the staff 1967 of writers who won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing Achievement in a Music or Variety show for his work on Laugh-In, a show that took a page from The Monkees by bringing the counter-culture into more and more homes in that era.
The other Monkees freelancer who shared the Emmy with Panich was Coslough Johnson.
Likewise, Panich had been nominated for the same Writing award but for a different show and with a different future Monkees writer – Gerald Gardner – when they both worked on That Was the Week That Was. This is likely where Gardner knew of Panich and why Panish was invited to pitch ideas for The Monkees. He would be nominated for Laugh-in three more years in a row, and then receive a writing nomination in 1975 for his work on Cher, the show she headlined after her divorce from Sonny. A seasoned variety show sketch writer Panich had also written for The Dean Martin Show, and would later work for the Hudson Brothers and Dom DeLuise. Sadly, Panish died in 1983.
More information on The Monkees:
Previously in Who Wrote The Monkees?:
“This book allows academics to critically study The Monkees as a program that challenged the nascent rules of a new medium and paved the way for future innovation.”
from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!
Do you want to be one of the first people to get your hands on “Why The Monkees Matter”?
Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others will be coming online in the next 2 weeks or so.
Even better news, the book might even be out as early as mid-July 2016 (fingers crossed)
The publishers’ site will also provide academic discounts for students and class sets and review copies (in pdf form) available for professors.
I hope it pleases academics and fans alike!
Monkees Question of the Moment: What Do The Monkees Mean to You?
Leave your thoughts in the comments!
“The Monkees have come to mean so many things over the years – to me and to many others who have followed their careers both together and individually. As the band members said, even they don’t belong to themselves anymore. The Monkees belong to the audience.”
from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!
Who Wrote The Monkees? – “Case of the Missing Monkee” and “I Was A Teenage Monster” – by Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso and Dave Evans Part 5 of an on-going series
Did you know The Monkees had a connection to RFK? Not the movie, but the man. Read on…
This weekend Antenna TV is showing 2 episodes of The Monkees “Case of the Missing Monkee” and “I Was A Teenage Monster”. One was written solely by Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso, who were the showrunners, and one written by them AND Dave Evans, who I’ve written about before on this page. So today I’ll focus on Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso.
Sadly, Mr. Caruso had passed away just a few months before I first had the idea to interview the writers of The Monkees for the article in Written By magazine that turned into the proposal for my eventual book so I was never able to meet him. But his writing partner, Gerald Gardner, welcomed me warmly into his wonderful home and told me all about their work before, during and after The Monkees.
How does Robert F. Kennedy fit into the story?
Mr. Gardner had begun his writing career doing comical political satire books called Who’s In Charge Here?. Those books caught the attention of then President John F. Kennedy, who invited the writer to lunch at the White House. After his assassination, Mr. Gardner sent a condolence letter to then Attorney General RFK. When RFK decided to run for the Senate in New York, he asked Mr. Gardner to join his speech writing team. (Sound a bit like The West Wing, doesn’t it?) After Senator Kennedy went to work in Washington, Mr. Gardner wrote a book about the campaign: Robert Kennedy in New York. Mr. Gardner’s first work in television was in New York as the senior writer on That Was the Week That Was which was a forerunner to “Weekend Update” on SNL. All this work in comedy led him to partner up with Dee Caruso to work for producer Buck Henry on Get Smart and when Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson came to Henry asking to meet some hot young comedy writers to run their new show… well, you know what happened. And that’s how The Monkees are connected to Camelot?
More information on The Monkees:
Previously in Who Wrote The Monkees?:
Monkees Question of the Moment: How did you defend The Monkees to your friends?
Leave your thoughts in the comments!
“…But I also wrote it in honor of and to honor the fans who love the show and lived with years of teasing when the mistaken reputation of the band and the show as ‘plastic’ kept dogging them. With this book I hope to show that those early and continuing fans all recognized the diamond in the rough from the start. ”
from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!
