Video – Page 88 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Women of Purpose and The Monkees from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (1:00)

This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne

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Transcript:

I would like to get more people to focus on The Monkees because when I look at textbooks about this time, they don’t talk about them at all. People thought they were this bubble gum group and they think only about that aspect and they don’t think about the messages that came from the program. When I think about that I think about episodes that had to do with feminism and that sounds odd for a show about 4 kids who were playing rock and roll, but in fact if you look at all 58 episodes — which I obviously did, you will find that never do they date the girl who didn’t have her own job and was taking care of herself in the world. She was either a student who was worried about her grades or she was a woman with a job. They were journalists. They were girls that worked at record companies or record stores. Yes, they were princesses, but the princesses rather than them wanting to wear pretty dresses and marry Davy Jones — which everyone in the audience wanted to do — the princesses gave that up in order to go back to their countries and life out there obligations to their people. They were women of purpose.

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Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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03 – Monkee Emmys and “Romps”: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (0:55)

Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

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:

Rosanne: The adults that did take it seriously are the adults who were in the business because they won an Emmy for best Comedy Series in their first season.

Jean: They won 2 Emmys, right?

Rosanne: Yes. They won one for Best Directing as well, And James Frawley who won that had begun his directing career on The Monkees and he grew up to direct The Muppet Movie.

Jean: Awesome. And we love our Muppets. So, in terms of the production and everything The Monkees did some interesting things that — and these are the things that I remember. I remember a lot of little chase scenes that were so cute. Kind of zany. Kind of Groucho Marx-y kind of things, but also they employed the use of what, flashbacks and things like that. Let’s talk about the tools that they used.

Rosanne: They used flashbacks. They would use a lot of old footage whenever they would say something funny, they’d cut to — if I’d say, “The Sky’s falling” they’d cut to a building being dynamited down and that sort of thing and that helps because it saved them money, because they’re using old footage, but it also gave a very frenetic, energetic feel to the show.

Get your copy today!

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.

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Why Study The Television We Watch? from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (0:58)

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Transcript:

I think when we think about the intimacy of what we get from television we learn a lot about why isn’t important and why we should pay attention to the kind of television we’re watching and supporting. For me, obviously, that’s going backward to The Monkees and showing that to students today, so that they can think about what ideas were prevalent in the 60s. I think all the things that we credit to All in the Family and the whole Norman Lear empire, those things appeared on The Monkees long before it happened on those programs. Studying The Monkees, for me, illustrates the history and the evolution of the medium of television and it provides a time capsule of American society at that moment when youth culture was becoming everything and if you think about it, we still look at it that way. Everyone’s still trying to pretend with the botox and whatever that they are still 22. It’s an interesting point. But it was the beginning of teenagers in America in many ways and the films and the television were showing us what teenagers were all about.

Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today!

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

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A History of Screenwriting – 21 in a series – Ramona (1910) – MARY PICKFORD – D. W. Griffith | G.W. Bitzer

Based on Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel Ramona, starring Mary Pickford & Henry B. Walthall. The first film to identify filming locations in its credits. Was promoted as ‘The most expensive motion picture ever made’ by Biograph in 1910. Film debut of Mae Marsh.

From Wikipedia…

Ramona is a 1910 American short drama film directed by D. W. Griffith, based on Helen Hunt Jackson‘s 1884 novel Ramona. Through a love story, the early silent short explores racial injustice to Native Americans and stars Mary Pickford and Henry B. Walthall.^[1] A copy of the print survives in the Library of Congress film archive.^[2] The film was remade in 1928 (dir. Edwin Carewe) with Dolores del Rio and 1936 (dir. Henry King) with Loretta Young.

Ramona chronicles the romance between Ramona (Mary Pickford), a Spanish orphan from the prestigious Moreno family, and Alessandro (Henry B. Walthall), an Indian who appears on her family’s ranch one day. A man named Felipe (Francis J. Grandon) proclaims his love for Ramona, but she rejects him because she has fallen for Alessandro. They fall deeply in love, yet their desire to wed is denied by Ramona’s stepmother, who reacts by exiling Alessandro from her ranch. He returns to his village, only to find that it has been demolished by white men. Meanwhile, Ramona is informed that she also has “Indian blood”, which leads her to abandon everything she has to be with Alessandro. They marry, and live among the wreckage of Alessandro’s devastated village. They have a child together and live at peace until the white men come to force them from their home as they claim the land. Their baby perishes, and then Alessandro is then killed by the white men. Ramona is then rescued by Felipe and returned to her family back on the ranch.^[3]

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I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch

02 – Why DID The Monkees Matter?: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (1:00)

Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

Transcript:

Jean: Why The Monkees Matter. Cute kids. Mop Tops. Allowed to talk about controversial things that adults didn’t like talking about back in the 50’s, right? Rosanne is a busy woman. She does it all and actually one of the exciting things about me living here in Los Angeles — I’m a Texan if up can’t tell – is I love people like Rosanne. It’s a different world and it’s a fascinating one that’s I’ve always been interested in. So here we have The Monkees/They introduce touchy subjects like the Vietnam War just by playing a domino game. Things like that. They don’t put it in your face like that. So, The Monkees start to be a popular show among teenagers obviously. Now, Were adults starting to like it, as well?

Rosanne: A little bit, I mean, you know. it did all right but it never made the top 10 for lots of reasons, including that it didn’t air all over the country because there were some southern stations that didn’t take because their long hair — which we would laugh at today, because we wouldn’t consider it long — was so strange and anti-establishment that they immediately dismissed the show for their purposes.

Get your copy today!

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.

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From The Research Vault: How to help horses helped by a Monkee, Statesman Journal

How to help horses helped by a Monkee

Carol McAlice Currie and Michael Davis, Statesman Journal

With apologies to the songwriting duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart:

“Here she comes. Walkin’ down the street. She could get the funniest looks from. Ev’ryone she meets.”

But she doesn’t. In fact, rather than monkeying around, Salem author Jerri Keele has been busy writing a book to benefit the Davy Jones Equine Memorial Foundation. (Yes, that Davy Jones, the lead-singing, television heartthrob of ’60s boy band The Monkees).

Read How to help horses helped by a Monkee

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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A History of Screenwriting – 20 in a series – The Kiss (W. K. L. Dickson, USA, 1896)

From Wikipedia…

The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) is an 1896 film, and was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public. Around 18 seconds long, it depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical The Widow Jones. The film was directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison. At the time, Edison was working at the Black Maria studios in West Orange, New Jersey.

In 1999, the short was deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The film contained the very first kiss on film, with a close-up of a nuzzling couple followed by a short peck on the lips (“the mysteries of the kiss revealed”). The kissing scene was denounced as shocking and obscene to early moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship and moral reform – because kissing in public at the time could lead to prosecution.^[1]

The film caused a scandalized uproar and occasioned disapproving newspaper editorials and calls for police action in many places where it was shown. One contemporary critic wrote, “The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other’s lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting.”^[2]

The Edison catalogue advertised it this way: “They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time.”

Perhaps in defiance and “to spice up a film”, this was followed by many kiss imitators, including The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) and The Kiss (1900).

Learn more about Thomas Edison and Early Movies with these books and videos

* 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!

Television is Intimate from Why The Monkees Matter Book Signing [Video] (0:47)

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Transcript:

The thing that I think is special about TV is that if you go to a film, you’ve chosen to pay your money for that message. So, you’re not likely to learn anything new. You’re not likely to believe you’re going to pay for something you don’t wan to be told, but television is intimate. It sneaks into your house when you’re not thinking. When you kid switches the channel and suddenly new messages come to them that you might never have wanted them to hear and that’s what The Monkees were doing. They were embedding some new political ideas into the 13 and 14-year-olds who were watching the show at that time and if you think about it, we’re in 1966, give those kids 5 or 6 years and they’re the ones protesting the Vietnam War in the 70’s. That’s when the big protests hit. So, this is a period that The Monkees falls into.

Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today!

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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01 – Introduction: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (1:02)

Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

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.

Get your copy today!

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.

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From The Research Vault: The Invention of Teenagers: LIFE and the Triumph of Youth Culture

The Invention of Teenagers: LIFE and the Triumph of Youth Culture

Ben Cosgrove, Time, September 28. 2013

Historians and social critics differ on the specifics of the timeline, but most cultural observers agree that the strange and fascinating creature known as the American teenager — as we now understand the species — came into being sometime in the early 1940s. This is not to say that for millennia human beings had somehow passed from childhood to adulthood without enduring the squalls of adolescence. But the modern notion of the teen years as a recognized, quantifiable life stage, complete with its own fashions, behavior, vernacular and arcane rituals, simply did not exist until the post-Depression era.

Here, in the first of a series of galleries on the evolution of LIFE magazine’s — and, by extension, America’s — view of teenagers through the middle part of the 20th century, LIFE.com presents photos that the inimitable Nina Leen shot for a December 1944 article, “Teen-Age Girls: They Live in a Wonderful World of Their Own.”

Read The Invention of Teenagers: LIFE and the Triumph of Youth Culture on Time

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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