Since 1986, the Golden Leaves program has celebrated those members of the Cal Poly Pomona campus community (faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees) who have authored or edited a book* in the preceding year. The Golden Leaves program is funded by the University Library.
Each year, books published by Cal Poly Pomona authors are on display in the Library during the month of April. The Golden Leaves program is celebrated annually at the University Library in conjunction with National Library Week.
*A book is defined (per UNESCO) as “a non-periodical printed publication of at least forty-nine pages, exclusive of cover pages.”
* 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
“What if I interview all the writers of The Monkees? All the people who are in their 80’s who once wrote for The Monkees who are still alive. So I met with the writers of the show and it was fascinating. They had also written for many other things — Get Smart, Laugh-In. They’d won Emmys for The Mary Tyler Moore Show later in their career. They were all very accomplished people.
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.
* 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
Luckily we’re in Los Angeles, so we do the research hands-on of the Margaret Herrick Library. These are in the database the screen archivist has created so that you can find the digital things for your own students and much is being scanned and put online for us these days. This is the Writers Guild of America. We have an archive as well of original scripts which is a great test to bring students to read. We don’t have enough writers who give their stuff to the Guild. They give it to the Herrick because that’s fancier and more cool. So we’re trying to give their own personal correspondence to the Writers Guild. Anyway, All of this and my first couple of years led me to realize that when I had started having them do essays — research essays — 20-page research papers, they were all so good in the first year the students were so excited by what they were discovering that I wrote my publisher — emailed my publisher — and said I have twenty really good essays on early women’s screenwriters in Hollywood from Dorothy Parker to Frances Hackett to Ruth Gordon and would you want to publish them? And they said “Yes” and so I was able to give my students their first publications through this course and one of them is here Jackie Perez has an essay in the book. She’s come to the conference for the first time. So this was an amazing thing for me to be able to create through the use of these students. This is that first class who are all published in that book. Even though we’re a women’s college in higher learning you have to accept men so there three men in that class also represented in the book. Men have become interested in our mission which is to provide more female-focused stories and more female writers into the business so it was a really good class. We love them all and that’s what I have to say.
* 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
They also all do a research paper — as anyone should do in a master’s class. A gain through the network I’ve been able to provide them with books they can think about. Nunnally’s there. Emma’s there because of female screenwriters. That’s a lovely book –where she has the script and then she discusses filming and being on set as a writer and how difficult it was to do both and and of course it’s one of the movies I have them watch, so that’s lovely. There’s a million books they can use. These are some examples. I like, while it’s John Gregory Dunn’s book, it’s the story of he and his wife Joan Didion, who were creating a film for Disney and this is the entire eight years it took them from the day they were offered the job until the day the movie was made and how — the difficulty. So to teach students the process and how hard the process is I think is very important. So that’s very handy book. It’s also very thin. So students like to read it. They also are the writers of the third — the second remake of “A Star IS Born.” The one with Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand. So interesting to hear their perspective before the new Lady GaGa version comes out.
* 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
We also bring in guest lecturers like my friend Paolo who I met coming to an SRN. So he came to town for a week and we did some story work with our students. This is our first class. You can hear about it a little more in a minute. So this was great. He came to lecture about the Global Neorealism because we wanted an Italian expert so there you go. I’m also very fond of the idea that I’ve learned a lot from doing this with my students because I planned the whole thing focusing on women only to realize that I’ve left behind minorities. There were African American filmmakers in the silent era. Oscar Micheaux is one of them. Very famous. Much of their work has been lost so it’s difficult to teach them or to offer students the chance to study them or analyze their work but he has a lot of work out there. So I’ve had to find texts that cover the gaze the focus of African Americans in the film in America through the years. So this one– it turned out it’s mostly about actors — but it gives you a sense and then also my LGBTQ students want to see where they fit in the picture and this is an excellent book on the history of LGBTQ people in Los Angeles — screenwriters, actors, directors — the whole thing. So by them asking me what they want or where they don’t see themselves in the picture, it’s forced me to go outside of my own background and give them more.
* 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
“So that’s when I realized as a kid, “Oh, when they take a book or a play and make a movie out of it, they don’t actually just copy what was already done. Oh. That’s kind of annoying , but now it means I really have to focus on the actual piece of literature first.”
Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.
In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.
Transcript
Just for fun. If you don’t know their theme song — you should but if you don’t if you do and you speak Spanish because there wasn’t Spanish version but there’s an Italian version.
[Theme From The Monkees (Italian) Plays]
Identity confusion? They played with it in the closing credits. Which i think is adorable and cute we get back to where we were. All right! That’s The Monkees. That’s why you should watch them and read about them and listen to their music because they’re pretty cool. Thank you for coming today. It was lovely.
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.
We also bring in guest lecturers like my friend Paolo who I met coming to an SRN. So he came to town for a week and we did some story work with our students. This is our first class. You can hear about it a little more in a minute. So this was great. He came to lecture about the Global Neorealism because we wanted an Italian expert so there you go. I’m also very fond of the idea that I’ve learned a lot from doing this with my students because I planned the whole thing focusing on women only to realize that I’ve left behind minorities. There were African American filmmakers in the silent era. Oscar Micheaux is one of them. Very famous. Much of their work has been lost so it’s difficult to teach them or to offer students the chance to study them or analyze their work but he has a lot of work out there. So I’ve had to find texts that cover the gaze the focus of African Americans in the film in America through the years. So this one– it turned out it’s mostly about actors — but it gives you a sense and then also my LGBTQ students want to see where they fit in the picture and this is an excellent book on the history of LGBTQ people in Los Angeles — screenwriters, actors, directors — the whole thing. So by them asking me what they want or where they don’t see themselves in the picture, it’s forced me to go outside of my own background and give them more.
* 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
Kevin Willmott is located at Kansas University, much farther than Los Angeles and he’s come in through Skype. Where he’s not gonna fly up to LA. So we can get guest speakers who are current working writers. We need to do more of that. in the second year, we go into looking at screenplays right — so William Goldman is the head guy there and I’m happy to use books that I found out about from my coming to these conferences and also I wanted to expand their studies so — because I’m — my grandparents were Italian so that’s how come I get to call myself Italian, so I said “Oooo let’s do some Italian films. What’s my excuse? Global neo-realism affected American film so let’s study that!” So this turned out to you great piece because there are essays by followers in many countries so it’s also pretty international which is also something made for me to bring to the Americans. We aren’t the only ones who do movies. Sometimes we pretend we are but we should not think that way and we learn a lot from international films. So I do that.
* 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
Dr. Rosanne Welch receives her award at the Cal Poly Pomona 2019 Faculty and Staff Appreciation Night during the Women Bronco’s Game in Kellog Arena.
Rosanne was nominated for the award by Rebecca Islas. player on the Women’s Broncos Basketball Team who said…
“Her great energy and always being positive coming into class in a great mood. Always so eager to teach. Pushing me out of my comfort zone.
This was the first time she taught a course like this and she did a great job at it. I liked her very much as a person. She is caring and very understanding.”
†
![16 Conclusion from Why (and How) I Created a History of Screenwriting Course [Video] (2 minutes)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/srn-rmw-2018-16.jpeg)
![15 Research Papers and Books from Why (and How) I Created a History of Screenwriting Course [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/srn-rmw-2018-15.jpeg)
![14 Learning From Students from Why (and How) I Created a History of Screenwriting Course [Video] (55 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/srn-rmw-2018-14.jpeg)
![37 Conclusion from How the Monkees Changed Television [Video] (1 minute 23 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/monkees-tv-37-conclusion.jpeg)
![13 More Guest Speakers and Diversity from Why (and How) I Created a History of Screenwriting Course [Video] (1 minute 18 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/srn-rmw-2018-13.jpeg)
![12 More Guest Speakers from Why (and How) I Created a History of Screenwriting Course [Video] (58 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/srn-rmw-2018-12.jpeg)
![Dr. Rosanne Welch receives her award at the 2019 Faculty & Staff Appreciation Night, Cal Poly Pomona [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cpp-appreciation-night-2019.jpeg)
![Dr. Rosanne Welch receives her award at the 2019 Faculty & Staff Appreciation Night, Cal Poly Pomona [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cpp-award.jpg)
