Women – Page 36 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Power Of The Pack: Women Who Support Women Are More Successful via Forbes

Here’s a great Forbes article by Shelley Zalis that our Dean recently shared about the power of women supporting women in their professional worlds.

It illustrates ideas already in place within the alumni and current students in our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting from “Finding your Squad” to “Amplifying other Women” to “Taking the ‘work’ our of ‘Networking’”. — Rosanne

I always say a woman alone has power; collectively we have impact. Traditionally we have been taught to be competitive with one another, because there was such a scarcity of jobs at the top. It’s so clear that strategy doesn’t work. The truth is that raising each other up and channeling the power of collaboration is truly how we’ll change the equation—and have a lot more fun along the way.

There is a boys’ club where women never felt comfortable, so we decided to create a Girls’ Lounge more than six years ago where everyone feels like they belong. We discovered two things:

There is power in the pack.
You realize your strengths make the table better.

Read Power Of The Pack: Women Who Support Women Are More Successful via Forbes

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

13 Alice Sheldon and Alice Mary Norton from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)

Watch this entire presentation

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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:

So she’s James, right? There there’s your buddy James. This is a marvelous new book about her life. So really gets into the story of what she was doing and why. I really like autobiographies or biographies because it’s fun. You learn so much about a historical period when you read someone’s individual story and how they worked in the world and society as it was allowing them at the time. So this is actually a book about Alice Sheldon. This lady, Alice Mary Norton, had to be Andre because the boy’s name right? Andre is writing all of these books and look at her again, not the face you imagine when you think of a science fiction writer. She looks like somebody’s great aunt. But why shouldn’t your great-aunt write a really good book, right? Why did we not allow those two things to live in our brain at the same time? So I think it’s really interesting and her stuff is really fascinating. You know we’re all into swords and all that sort of thing. She’s doing the whole Game Of Thrones thing long before we get involved in that right? So we need to give her a little more credit.

* 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!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

15 Who Tells Your Story? from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (44 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

Transcript:

Sadly she died early in 1948. He lived another 15 years and when he did an oral history and did interviews about his work, when they brought her up, because the good a good historian would look at the names on the things and ask him — he would say “Oh Jeanne. She wasn’t such a good writer but you know I kept her around because she needed that money. — immediately writing her out of the history of the business she had helped to found right? So this is what happens. This is how women fall out of history so easily. We interview the guys and the guys want you to remember how brilliant they are right and that’s really sad. “Who lives? Who dies?” It matters who tells your story. You have to be in charge of your own story.

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.

Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* 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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

Producer/Screenwriter Cindy Chupack on the “How I Wrote That” Podcast from the Stephens MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program [Podcast]

Subscribe to the How I Wrote That Podcast

Producer/Screenwriter Cindy Chupack on the “How I Wrote That” Podcast from the Stephens MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program [Podcast]

Listen to this episode

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

Cindy Chupack has won two Emmys and three Golden Globes as TV writer/producer whose credits include “Sex and the City,” “Better Things,” “Divorce,” “Modern Family,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and most recently Showtime’s darkly comic hour “I’m Dying Up Here.” She is the author of two comic memoirs: the New York Times bestseller The Between Boyfriends Book: A Collection of Cautiously Hopeful Essays, and The Longest Date: Life as a Wife. Last year she directed her first episode of television for “I’m Dying Up Here,” and her first feature, OTHERHOOD, starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette, and Felicity Huffman. OTHERHOOD is a comedy Chupack co-wrote that premiered this week in select theaters and on Netflix.

It feels very paint by numbers so it seems so easy – but it’s not.
As soon as I get good and comfortable I want to take a risk. To challenge myself.

-Cindy Chupack

“Write Like A Mother” Panel with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting and hosted by the Writers Guild Foundation

On Friday, August 9th, I had the great pleasure of moderating a panel on working mom screenwriters for the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting and hosted by Writers Guild Foundation.

I thank them for being so honest and real about describing the way they balance the lives they love and the work they love. It’s never easy for any of us and sometimes that’s the best lesson of all. Though each of the writers talked about how the skills of being a mother are so perfectly attuned to the nurturing and multitasking required of showrunners in television.

We also learned about offices that have nurseries provided for their writing staff and the fact that, as with all things in life, moms have to make tough decisions between being on set when your pilot is filming or catching your 2nd grader’s talent show… But we also all admitted that it’s a privilege to make the stories that are watched by other people’s children – and to share stories with your own children all their lives. — Rosanne

From the Writers Guild Foundation…

Talking TV writing and motherhood with writers/producers and working moms Julia Brownell (THIS IS US), @jamiedenbo (AMERICAN PRINCESS), Valentina Garza @totalvaligirl (JANE THE VIRGIN), and moderator @RosanneWelch.

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting on Facebook

Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Quotes from When Women Wrote Hollywood – 39 in a series – Cinema 360

Do you know about these women screenwriters? Many don’t. Learn more about them today!

Get “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

June Mathis, one of the most prolific screenwriters of the Silent Era, not only wrote cinema, she lived it. Mathis traumatically passed away at the young age of 40 in the same place she began her career as an entertainer, the stage. The New York Times reported her dramatic demise in a front-page headline: “June Mathis Heart Victim” after Mathis died suddenly of a heart attack while attending a play at a New York theatre. Mathis lived out what cinephile critics would later coin “cinema 360”.

Fearless and Fierce: June Mathis
by Lauren E. Smith

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood or Buy the Book on Amazon

†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* 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

Alumni Screenwriter Sahar Jahani returns to share her screenwriting journey with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Workshop

Last night the Class of 2021 shared a treat – a visit by alum Sahar Jahani (Class of 2018)

Since graduation she has written episodes for Ramy on Hulu and landed on the staff of season 4 of 13 Reasons Why, while also adapting a YA novel into a film.

She credited the spec script she wrote under the mentorship of Jon Vandergriff for helping open doors.

Thanks, Sahar, for sharing your journey with us!

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Screenwriter/Producer Cindy Chupack Interviewed at Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Workshop for “How I Wrote That” Podcast

How much would you love to learn about the writing of an iconic episode of “Sex and the City”?

The Class of 2021 was treated to just that when guest Cindy Chupack, who has won two Emmys and three Golden Globes as a TV writer/producer, was interviewed in front of our students for the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program’s “How I Wrote That” podcast, hosted by Khanisha Foster. (Episode coming soon!)

Screenwriter/Producer Cindy Chupack Interviewed at Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Workshop for

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

12 Male Pseudonyms from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (42 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

Transcript:

Now most of you I imagine in your in your younger years read Harry Potter which is written by JK Rowling because the publishers didn’t want or didn’t assume that boys would read a book written by Joanna. We’re not gonna read books written by women. My favorite book as a kid, which is still quite popular, The Outsiders is written by SE Hinton. Susan Elizabeth Hinton and nobody believed that boys would read a book about gangs written by a girl. Even though she lived with those kids and that was her childhood. She understood those kids obviously so well but yeah so we still do that to women, right? The best-selling book really of the last generation had to be written by someone with initials.

* 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!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

Cari Beauchamp, Author of “Without Lying Down” at Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Can you name the first woman to win two Oscars for her writing?

The students of the newest cohort of our Stephens College MFA know the answer – Frances Marion – because the highlight of Day 2 of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting workshop August Workshop was a visit by Cari Beauchamp, who wrote Marion’s biography: “Without Lying Down” and graciously contributed the Forward to “When Women Wrote Hollywood”.

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

††

* 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