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This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
George Lucas writes Star Wars himself and directs it and decides he doesn’t like writing so much. He’s not sure of it. That doesn’t work for him, right? He likes the directing part and the casting, all that fun stuff. So he gets somebody else to write the sequel to his big hit movie that nobody expected to be hit and he hires Leigh Brackett because he wants what she can bring to the table, both in science fiction and in strong male characters oddly enough. She is contribute she is credited for contributing a lot to the creation of who Han Solo became because the first movie he’s kind of just swagger really cool. It’s just Harrison Ford wearing a cute uniform right? He gets much more developed in the second film and she wrote a lot of cowboys and if you think about the Han Solo we know in the second and continuing films he’s pretty much a space cowboy, but you know cool.
* 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!
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
And when The Great Gatsby came out it was a flop. The book fails. It survived because there were so many extra copies in a warehouse that weren’t sold that when they started sending packages –care packages — to soldiers in World War I they threw in these books nobody wanted and all the soldiers ended up reading it and coming home thinking that was the greatest novel they’d ever read and it became this centerpiece of American literature while her books never gone out of print right and yet we don’t teach it to kids in high school which I can’t fathom. It’s the same era. It’s the same attitude. Anyway she’s very famous for many many films, San Francisco, The Women, which was remade about six years ago by Diane English from the Murphy Brown show and Anita’s version is better. It is really quite lovely and it has a classic line in it. They’re watching two dogs fight and somebody says “What do you call them?” and she says “Witches, with a different letter.” So you know exactly. So Anita Loos deserves to be more famous.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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! † Available from the LA Public Library
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?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
If you think about it, we know that Dr. Timothy Leary — who was famous for dropping a little acid back in the day — he already was watching the program and saying, there is a whole lot going on here that no one else is paying attention to. So this isn’t information that I invented years later. People already we’re saying these things but the network television guys weren’t really listening. They thought it was a show about four guys who wanted to be a band and there was a good way to sell music. It was synergy, right? It was the big mood of the day. So that’s what they thought, but when you think about what they were talking about on the show — this particular song Randy Scouse Git is a song that Mickey wrote. It hit number one on the charts in the UK and made it to like number three in charts in the United States. Came in the second season also in the second season their clothing began to change. They went from JCPenney matching band uniforms to the poncho, the more hippie attire, looking more like they looked in their real lives. .
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.
This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
Now, this lady I love Leigh Brackett. She’s kind of a hidden gem in the world of both science fiction and screenwriting. She wrote a lot of Westerns in the beginning of her career. She wrote a lot of short stories science fiction you can find in a lot of collections in the 40s and 50s and she’s so popular and so beloved by the dudes who like those B motion pictures and those pointed kind of cheap science fiction pieces that she gets hired by a guy we know to write this movie which is pretty much one of our best science fiction pieces in the world.
* 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!
This lady people should know more. You might recognize from the title of her book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. This is Anita Loos. Anita Loos is probably the most prolific female writer of the silent era and she made the transition into talkies. Many, many writers did not. She did because she could write really witty dialogue but Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a novel that fascinates me. She wrote it because she was on a train with M Somerset Maugham who she loved as an intellectual and a blonde chick got on the train and he started to fawn all over her after they were having this lovely intellectual conversation and it made her mad. So she wrote a book about how blonds aren’t stupid. They’re actually working it and getting out of men exactly what they want. Yeah. So they pretend to be dumb. It’s really Legally Blonde long before there was Legally Blonde and it’s never gone out of publication but it is not taught in American literature class where The Great Gatsby is always taught.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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! † Available from the LA Public Library
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?
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript
So this is TV before our folks showed up and this is TV after and it’s definitely different. Suddenly we’re talking about on Laugh-In sex, politics, what’s going on in the world. We have Sonny and Cher who a couple of the writer’s The Monkees moved on to the Sonny and Cher show. If you know enough about The Monkees, there were two seasons of the program. The third season, the four guys wanted it to be a variety show — set around rock and roll and the problem was the network said “Nobody’s gonna watch a variety show that has to do with rock and roll” and the next season Sonny and Cher showed up and won some Emmys right? So there you go. Of course, The Smothers Brothers who were canceled you’re being too political. The Mod Squad which was a whole movement into the new hippie generation and of course All In The Family is gonna happen in the 70s and we’re going to get very serious about how we talk about politics on television but The Monkees were there in the beginning.
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.
This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
Then we move up to Ursula Le Guin. Quite famous. Quite wonderful. Tons of books. I could have covered the whole page with her books. Really somebody and again Ursula definitely not a dude’s name right so I think we’re safe. They think “Hey now women can put their names on science fiction and we can really think about their stuff.” Lots are really interesting alien stuff. Lots of strong female characters and that’s what comes out in these women writers, right? and again that fear the boys won’t read them, but I think we think we’ve moved beyond that right because Wonder Woman made a lot of money. So maybe we’re in a good place but Ursula Le Guin definitely worth paying attention to.
* 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!
Other things she did. She gave the first directing job to a guy named Larry who was an actor who wasn’t doing very well and he needed some money and he became DW Griffith. So she put him into the world right? She started his career which i think is important.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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! † Available from the LA Public Library
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
So these folks changed I say the face of television. Before 1966 we’re having a lot of fairly — for small very white folks — but also very sort of middle-of-the-road. — Very gentle and there’s nothing wrong with that but it’s all one flavor. There’s not a whole lot of difference there right? If you’ll notice in the bottom corner, who do you think that is? Micky Dolenz was a TV star. People think they were nobodies coming to the show but Micky Dolenz had himself had a show for three years because his parents were performers right and they had a friend who said they’re doing this show called Circus Boy. Would your kid die his hair blonde to be in it? and his parents were like “Yeah that’s good. That’s his college fund right there.”
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.
Based on the film he also wrote – The Prince of Egypt – the play is headed for a West End premiere early next year with plans to move to Broadway after that run.
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