Video – Page 16 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

13 More On The Classic Books Couldn’t Teach Without from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

Host: What are these books that they couldn’t teach without? The people you know were interested in screenwriting or studying screenwriting maybe go check out or it could be film theory in general.

Rosanne: Right. Well, I definitely like Carrie Beauchamp’s book “Without Lying Down” which is the story of Francis Marion and all the other women who worked at the same time. She was a sort of a salon kind of person, lots of female friends and they helped each other. So that’s a great book. I used Tom Stemple’s “Framework” which is older now. It’s one of the first textbooks of screenwriters, not directors. He was a student at UCLA and he wrote that he was assigned to cover the –– to create the oral history for Nunnally Johnson and in getting to know the man I think he did 11 hours of tapes and so then he wrote the first biography of Nunnally Johnson. One of the earliest biographies of a writer and then we’re going to get the biographies of Dalton Trumbo coming from other people. So he sort of started this niche –– what is the history of screenwriting? Then Horton and Hockster have a really good book on screenwriting which is more modern which is good but it’s been out for about eight or nine years now and my students tend to like that.

One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.

We chatted about my work with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, and then my work with co-editor Rose Ferrell on the Journal of Screenwriting’s special issue on Women in Screenwriting (Volume 11, Number 3) that came out recently and which featured articles about an international set of female screenwriters from Syria, Argentina, China and Canada (to name a few).

We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.

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With Intellect Books Editor James Campbell (@IntellectBooks)

Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.

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07 Husbands As Unreliable Narrators from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Nearly two years ago I had the pleasure of being invited to join a panel at the then upcoming SCMS (Society of Cinema and Media Studies) conference set for Seattle. As you know that was canceled due to Covid with the hopes of reconvening in Colorado in 2021. That became a virtual conference but our group decided to reapply our panel and we four were able to ‘meet’ on Zoom on Sunday and present: Writing Between the Lines: Feminist Strategies for Historical Absences, Cliché, and the Unreliable Narrator.

Here you can watch a clip from my part of the presentation,

“When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”

Transcript:

Husbands are unreliable narrators. Sarah Y. Mason wrote with her husband Victor Herman who later became a director of the Marx Brothers comedies. They won an Oscar for adapting Little Women and they wrote it twice right? They wrote the original version and they wrote the Katherine Hepburn version. They won to oscar together. When he did his oral history he said that he was the better writer than his wife. She was already dead. She didn’t get to say how much work he really did but if you look them up on IMDb, she has about 20 credits before she marries him and about 20 or 30 credits after they stop writing together because he becomes a director. He has about seven credits and half of those are writing with her. So who’s the real writer in that team. I don’t know but I think I can tell you. Clara Behringer’s husband did pretty much the same thing and Clara helped found the writing department at USC. She wrote one of these earliest books on how to write for the screen –– which is very difficult to use because it costs about $600 online right now –– because it’s like there’s few copies left but she wrote 85 different films. Her name is not particularly brought up often at USC even though she helped found the school and her husband was William DeMille who wrote about his career and not about hers.

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17 Diverse Writers…from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.

It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!

Transcript:

This comes from the writer’s room and they do those a little bit differently in the UK as well. They don’t necessarily have everyone on staff meeting every day the way we do in the states but he hired a group of people to write certain freelance episodes expecting to get this variety of stories that we had not yet seen before and so he was looking to hire more women of course and more people of color which was not you know a record that Doctor Who had going well for it even moving into the Steven Moffat years. So he made a commitment and he followed through. What’s interesting about a lot of these writers is they came out of theater where there’s a little bit more chance sometimes because you can do smaller plays in smaller locations around the country and then someone can sample your writing. It’s hard to break into television even in the UK. It’s even a smaller business than here. So he was looking into other places to find new writers for these shows and I think again I think he succeeded there.

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08 Ianto Jones from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch, San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I recently presented a talk on Torchwood (Why Torchwood Still Matters) where I highlighted a few ways in which the show (airing from 2006 to 2011) came up with progressive and innovative ideas that are being used by other franchises today.

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

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Transcript:

Now we know that eventually, they build into him being with Ianto which is so interesting because we start with Ianto has a girlfriend and she’s the cyber woman that he saved right which was – they – I in one of the things Russell said when he first offered the job the actor said Nah sounds like a boring character and they said in the third or fourth episode we’re going to find out you’ve been hiding your girlfriend and she’s a cyber woman and he was like oh I’ll do that show. I’m in for that right? So I think that’s so fun but of course so again Ianto, we find out is bisexual right? He starts with a girlfriend. That doesn’t work. Eventually, he and Jack come together. One of the things I learned on this trip to Cardiff for this event was – he is such a beloved character there is a monument to him and it there and it’s still there. It just – about six months ago John Barrowman visited it and was seen there and you just on his Instagram page but it literally and it was not – this is a later edition. This actual formalization of it. It started by individuals – people just putting up poetry in Ianto’s name. In honor of him right because he died in the universe. Amazing. This is the tv character, right? This is not a real human being but the story moved people so much that they just started coming here and dropping these things off and that’s why then the city has made it permanent and this is actually Roald Dahl Place. So that’s interesting too because it ties into all of the English you know the culture that we have fallen in love with if you will but I just think that’s amazing. I can’t name necessarily an American tv character that has had a permanent monument in their name. So that’s an amazing thing.

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12 The Classic I Couldn’t Teach Without from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

I started a column called the classic I couldn’t teach without because there are a lot of older books that people don’t know about and I thought well let’s highlight those right? Even though they’re not brand new and you know maybe the publishing company isn’t that excited about it. If it can stay in the canon and be reused by class after class I think that’s really useful. So like I could put in Carrie’s book on Francis Marion and other people. So yeah that was kind of a fun thing to be able to invent and then I have my students read those books in class. So then I could pick out the best of those and maybe use that in the journal. So it gave them a stepping you know stepping stone into their academic publishing.

Host: Two birds with one stone there. That’s a really good tactic and I just think that’s something that I hope people are paying attention to – this idea of you know the forgotten classics again.

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With Intellect Books Editor James Campbell (@IntellectBooks)

Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.

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06 Female Writers Can Be Unreliable Narrators from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Here you can watch a clip from my part of the presentation,

“When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”

Transcript:

Francis Marion. So female writers are their own unreliable narrators. She was throwing away all her papers at the end of her career. She felt nobody would care. Her secretary dragged them out of the trash and gave them to Carrie Beauchamp who ended up writing “Without Lying Down”, right? This is one of the most wonderful books about the history of Francis Marion which wouldn’t have existed because the female writer herself threw away her work. She did not think that it was worth keeping. She didn’t think anybody would care. Likewise, Carrie worked on “Anita Loos Rediscovered” I don’t think Anita Loos needed rediscovering because Anita was very good at taking care of herself. So I apologize to Mr. Stemple for having to say his book didn’t tell us what it should but I’m not going to apologize to Mark Norman because he knew better. His book came out after Carrie’s book did and he actually interviewed Carrie and he refused to use the information from her book in his. So there.

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16 Guest Characters…from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

…Then he had to think about the guest actors – the people who would come and go in different episodes and I think again look at what he gave us in terms of powerful female characters right? I love Yaz’s Nan, right? I adore that episode. We’ll talk about that in a couple minutes. Yes, I know Grace? Now and we’re going to talk about that tomorrow because that’s a little bit of how Torchwood changed television in a smart way because he’s using the same trick he used on Susie right? We all thought she was a regular and then she wasn’t and that’s how else you get the modern world who reads everything out of Deadline and Variety and all online – how do you get them and you gotta have that gut-punch moment but he did a good job of keeping the character alive both in the dialogue right and then Graham saw her a few times and Ryan was always talking about her. So that’s pretty cool and then of course the two women in Witchfinders are strong powerful women on different sides of the debate of what was going on in terms of witches. So all these again strong females that he’s bringing forward.

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07 More On Captain Jack Harkness from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch, San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

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Transcript:

Imagine the idea that you could see two men kissing on television. That just was not done. In the mid-80s there was a show here called 30 Something and it was the first time two gay men kissed on American television and in something like eight states they refused to air it. They simply did not show that episode right? So here in you know England because of Queer As Folk and slowly. So I think Captain Jack is a fascinating character. It’s so interesting that he’s really – I mean he’s not any particular thing but he’s an American when we meet him right and that’s such an interesting – oh seed that into their culture. Maybe it made it easier to accept because he wasn’t an Englishman. I don’t know. It’s very interesting but he’s a fascinating character and of course, we’re going to talk about the fact that he starts out we all – look he’s bisexual because – look in Children of Earth we find out he’s got a daughter, and a grandson. So clearly there was a woman in his life at some point right? So that’s interesting. We don’t generally see that representation very much on tv either. People are either this or that and suddenly it’s like or both right? He’s a 21st-century guy which is a pretty cool thing right? He likes women. He likes men. He’s omnisexual, right? If you’re cute he’s all about it which is why not and this happened before. I teach college you know and now I have students who represent us pansexual, asexual. They all are much more comfortable about their sexuality right? They’re not defined by one thing. Nobody was having that conversation really and I’m not saying only Torchwood did this but as we start these conversations in the media they build into our society right and people feel comfortable then having a conversation about things. So I’ve been really impressed that they start with that and they tried to keep it up. It was hard because we want to see Jack with somebody we know and we like. So it usually is a human but that was laid into his character, right? This is what it’s like to be an alien.

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11 Writing Book Reviews as Intro To Journals from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch and Intellect Books [Video]

Transcript:

Host: When I’m trying to give people some tips on how they can maybe get their first article published and I often say to people that they should approach the book review editor and see if there’s anything that needs reviewing or of course go to the books review editor with like some really cool exhibition or something very recently seen and write book reviews because it’s a fast track way of getting yourself published and then, of course, people like you know that the person can be trusted to follow guidance and to submit to a deadline but do you have as a books review editor or just as an editor, in general, do you have any top tips for people looking to publish their first articles or…

Rosanne: Well you just gave the best one which is exactly how I got involved in the journal. I was invited to do a book review. A friend had written a book and she was like will you write a review of it. I was like oh, of course, that sounds fun. So yes then the editors got to know my name. I did a few more of those. I then published an article which was in fact about Dorothy Parker and then the book review editor was stepping down. He was changing universities and was going to get busy and so they invited me to do that and I was interested. So I started doing that and of course, then I’ve been able to help my MFA students by giving them assignments to write book reviews.

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With Intellect Books Editor James Campbell (@IntellectBooks)

Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.

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05 Unreliable Narrators In Textbooks from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Here you can watch a clip from my part of the presentation,

“When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”

Transcript:

Screenwriters who write textbooks are unreliable narrators. When Mark Norman wrote What Happens Next he has about six women mentioned in the entire book and he declares that their work wasn’t very worth studying. So this is not a textbook that I use after two years of trying it and my students pretty much having a fit. Now I love Tom Stempel. Tom gave us the first book on screenwriting history but he didn’t know anything about Francis Marion at the time. He didn’t have much to say about her and I’ll tell you why in a second. For McPherson, he listened to what Cecil B DeMille had to say and that’s what ends up in his book. Now i’ve been lucky enough to have him come to speak to my students and he has apologized because he’s learned more in the days since he wrote that book and he asked the publishing company could he do a rewrite but they didn’t think that the ratio of new pages would make the higher price worth it and they didn’t give that to him but he has a column you can read in Script Magazine and he tries to cover for the things he missed originally.

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