Women – Page 46 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch Named As The New Executive Director Of Stephens College MFA In TV And Screenwriting Program

From Stephens College Office of Academic Affairs…

I am pleased to share with you the following announcement about an exciting change of leadership for the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program. Congratulations to the team and thank you for all of your hard work building an amazing program.
– Dr. Leslie Willey, Stephens College Vice President for Academic Affairs

The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting established in 2014, has named Dr. Rosanne Welch as the new executive director. Program founder and former director Ken LaZebnik will serve as Writer-in-Residence, while Khanisha Foster ’17, a graduate of the M.F.A. program, will serve as associate director. The program also features 15 faculty mentors and a rotating group of guest lecturers, all working writers, members of the Writers Guild and successful industry professionals.

Welch has served as a faculty member in the M.F.A. program since its start, creating a set of courses around the history of screenwriting, and teaching courses in one-hour drama. Her television writing credits include “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Picket Fences,” “ABC News: Nightline” and “Touched by an Angel.”

She edited “When Women Wrote Hollywood,” a book of essays published in 2018 that was named runner-up for the Susan Koppelman Award honoring the best anthology, multi-authored or edited book in feminist studies by the Popular Culture Association. She co-edited “Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia,” which was named to both the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List and the list of Best Historical Materials by the American Library Association, and authored “Why the Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Popular Culture.”

Welch serves as book reviews editor for the Journal of Screenwriting and on the editorial board for Written By magazine. She was elected to the executive committee of the International Screenwriting Research Network this year for a two-year term.

Sarah Phillips, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alumni, Wins Founder’s Circle Award at the Louisiana Film Prize

Congratulations to Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alumni Sarah Phillips (IMDB) for winning the Founder’s Circle Award at the Louisiana Film Prize for her film Supplements!

The year is 2289, and all that’s left on Planet Earth is the domed city Old Centauri, roaming sun flares that scorch the land, and the nomadic tribes that mitigate the two. Kiirke comes from one such tribe, and she must travel to Old Centauri, along with her stowaway younger brother, to seek a small fortune to save her family – But the only way to make money as a newcomer to the city is to enroll in Supplements Labs as what the locals call a “lab rat”.

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20 More On Leigh Brackett from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (46 seconds)

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

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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.

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22 More On Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minutes)

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

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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.

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Quotes from When Women Wrote Hollywood – 46 in a series – Lillian Hellman

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

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If it was possible for one woman to shake up a world, Lillian Hellman did it, and shook it till it raged back at her. When one goes about searching for information about Lillian Hellman, there is a never ending bounty about her trials and tribulations, her accomplishments and failures, and most of all, about her personally. However, it is extremely hard to find anything wholly positive about her.

In Defense of Lillian Hellman
by Kelley Zinge

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19 Leigh Brackett from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (32 seconds)

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

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.

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21 Anita Loos from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (57 seconds)

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

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Transcript:

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.

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Mothers Unleashed Storytelling Event with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Alumni

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Mothers Unleashed Storytelling Event with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Alumni

Myself and 2 of my Alums, Julie Berkobian and Amelia Phillips at this wonderful event.

This will be a monthly event with a different theme — centered on Motherhood — each month. Amelia was both host and reader. They also recorded for a podcast version of the event.

Follow @mothersunleashedla for more info.

Quotes from When Women Wrote Hollywood – 45 in a series – Nick and Nora

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

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The success of The Thin Man (1934) led to plans for a sequel, the series would eventually go on to feature six films. David L. Goodrich wrote in his book The Real Nick and Nora: “The couple intentionally closed all three of their screenplays with intimate, emotionally charged and funny final scenes. In the first they deftly caught the delicious, naughty, only us feeling of exciting sexual encounters – and did so without resorting to today’s flesh shots and heavy breathing (113).

Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett: The Most Beloved Couple in Hollywood
By Julie Berkobien

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Another night, another sunset, Porto, Portugal via Instagram

Another night, another sunset, Porto, Portugal

Sunset from BH Foz Restaurant at evening dinner during the recent Screenwriting Research Network Conference.

** We have returned from Porto and I am streaming out our photos over the next few weeks.

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
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