Writing – Page 141 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

08 : TV vs. Movies : “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Power [Video] (1:03)

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:

Jean: So here we finally have television trying to deal with these difficult issues, but in a way that made a difference to people.

Rosanne: I think so. It made people start talking about those things in their own lives and that’s what TV’s always done. We credit Will & Grace with giving us a weekly gay character who came into people’s homes and it made people start talking about issues like gay marriage and gay adoption and things like that. So it’s really — people don’t realize — we think movies are influential, but you choose what movies you’re going to go see. You choose with your money to pay for those messages. So, often movies are preaching to a choir. TV comes into your home uninvited. You don’t know what you’re going to stumble upon when you change the channel and so there’s more of an ability to find things you didn’t think you wanted to know about.

Jean: Right, because it was there and it was free. So everyone’s going to sit down that evening — you’re not going out to a movie to watch something controversial and go “Let’s start flipping the channels. Oh look at these kids running around. That’s pretty funny”

Rosanne: Exactly. It attracted — the energetic feel of the show and that they were cute young boys made them pay attention.

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: Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s, Thomas Doherty

Teenagers and Teenpics tells the story of two signature developments in the 1950s: the decline of the classical Hollywood cinema and the emergence of that strange new creature, the American teenager. Hollywood’s discovery of the teenage moviegoer initiated a progressive “juvenilization” of film content that is today the operative reality of the American motion picture industry. The juvenilization of the American movies is best revealed in the development of the 1950s “teenpic,” a picture targeted at teenagers even to the exclusion of their elders. In a wry and readable style, Doherty defines and interprets the various teenpic film types: rock ‘n’ roll pictures, j.d. films, horror and sci-fi weirdies, and clean teenpics. Individual films are examined both in light of their impact on the motion picture industry and in terms of their important role in validating the emerging teenage subculture. Also included in this edition is an expanded treatment of teenpics since the 1950s, especially the teenpics produced during the age of AIDS. — Amazon

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

Order Your Copy Now!

07 : Mary Tyler Moore and The Monkees : “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview [Video] (0:40)

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

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

Transcript:

Rosanne: So, in fact, because we just lost Mary Tyler Moore a couple weeks ago there was a lot of discussion

Jean: God rest her soul

Rosanne:…about here show. Exactly and how she introduced a gay character on her show. She talked about birth control pills.

Jean: She was the working woman by herself. That’s why I watched it.

Rosanne: Exactly. Exactly.

Jean: I was shocked. She got a real job on her own.

Rosanne:…and she spent the night with boys without them coming to her apartment. We would see her come home wearing the same clothes she wore on the day before.

Jean: Oooo….Where’s my fainting couch?

Rosanne: So we were moving into that area where these things were going to be more open and so The Monkees couldn’t quite be blatant about it, but they could be subtle about the things they were saying.

Jean; Right and actually I do like the subtlety. I think it is an artistic thing that I appreciate.

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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“Honey, You Know I Can’t Hear You When You Aren’t in the Room: Now free online from Gender and the Screenplay Journal

My article “Honey, You Know I Can’t Hear You When You Aren’t in the Room: Key Female Filmmakers Prove the Importance of Having a Female in the Writing Room” published today in a special issue called Gender and the Screenplay: Processes, Practices, Perspectives in the journal: Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network (Vol 10 No 2 (2017).

“Honey, You Know I Can’t Hear You When You Aren’t in the Room PDF Version

The article provides a quick historical survey of the work of several prominent female screenwriters across the first century of filmmaking, including Anita Loos, Dorothy Parker, Frances Goodrich and Joan Didion. In all of their memoirs and other writings about working on screenplays, each mentioned the importance of (often) being the lone woman in the room during pitches and during the development of a screenplay. Goodrich summarized all their experiences concisely when she wrote, ‘I’m always the only woman working on the picture and I hold the fate of the women [characters] in my hand… I’ll fight for what the gal will or will not do, and I can be completely unfeminine about it.’ Also, the rise of female directors, such as Barbra Streisand or female production executives, such as Kathleen Kennedy, prove that one of the greatest assets to having a female voice in the room is the ability to invite other women inside. Therefore, this paper contributes to the scholarship on women in film and to authorship studies.

The title is a riff on a series of one-act plays I worked on in college called “Honey, You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running” written by Robert Anderson (author of the plays Tea and Sympathy and was Oscar-nominated for the screenplays A Nun’s Story and I Never Sang for my Father.)

You can read and download the entire journal, edited by Louise Sawtell, Stayci Taylor, which includes other fine articles have a global reach, covering questions of gender in screenwriting practice; reflections on the Irish film industry; Female Screenwriters and Street Films in Weimar Republic; Narrative and Masculinity in The Long Goodbye; How Hollywood Screenplays Inscribe Gender.

The editors had also asked all contributors to create video abstracts for each piece. Thanks to Doug’s help, mine came out pretty good:

From The Research Vault: Monkee Business. San Diego Reader, Dimock, Duane and Sanford, Jay Allen. (2008, Sept. 10).

Forty-two years ago today — September 11, 1966 — Del Mar was renamed “Clarksville” as part of a promotion for the Monkees’ TV show to debut the following night. The Sunday event marked the first time the foursome performed in public.

Ron Jacobs was a DJ at L.A. radio station KHJ at the time. “One of Boss Radio’s most exciting promotions was staging an actual ‘Last Train to Clarksville,’ ” he says on his website. “A few hundred KHJ winners rode to ‘Clarksville,’ the city of Del Mar.”

“The tenth callers would get two free tickets to the Last Train to Clarksville,” recalls KHJ promotions associate Barbara Hamaker in the Michael Nesmith biography Total Control.

“To this day I don’t know how we did it,” continues Hamaker. “I was the one who had to type up all the releases and all of the stuff that was involved in getting kids onto the train…we used some Podunk town called Del Mar.”

Read Monkee Business. San Diego Reader, Dimock, Duane and Sanford, Jay Allen. (2008, Sept. 10).

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

Order Your Copy Now!

06 : From Soap Operas to Primetime : “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview [Video] (0:51)

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

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

Transcript:

Jean:Your saying that part of thing was that this was just this era was the dawn of trying to show people more real life situations as opposed to fantasy like, for example, you cited in your book, the “Look Who’s Coming to Dinner” film about an interracial couple, which is this huge production back then and this was already happening in film, but not so much in TV, right?

Rosanne: Now, TV is interesting. I have to give credit, of all things, afternoon soap operas are some of the places where controversial stuff happened first. AIDS stories were first done. Gay characters were first introduced. People didn’t take the soaps seriously because they were just for housewives to watch.

Jean: Right.

Rosanne: … bit as those things seeped into daytime TV then they slowly can seep into nighttime television and usually in the hipper, younger, new programming.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Quotes from “Why The Monkees Matter” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 64 in a series – Cultural Changes Arrive

** Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today **

Due to the way former cast members have defined the stories on The Monkees during countless interviews, casual viewers assume the genre of every episode was light romance. Dolenz, Nesmith and Tork often recall the show as merely a weekly romp around the trouble caused by plots involving Davy-wanting-a-girl/Davy-getting-a-girl or Davy-losing-a-girl.

from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Buy your Copy today!

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

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

From The Research Vault: In Defense of The Monkees. American Music Review, XLI(2), Spring 2012

It is an unfortunate truth that performers and artists who were overlooked, unappreciated, or reviled in their time only gain critical acclaim and attention in death. When this article was first conceived, Davy Jones (1945–2012) was still alive, viewed by many Monkees fans (including this author) as the proverbial stick in the mud, the one who warned his bandmates to stick with the formula that yielded commercial success rather than challenge the whims of their management. He was the one who always went to the press with overtly critical and spiteful comments about his cohorts, most recently after the abrupt cancellation of their summer tour. Although Jones was the least innovative of the four Monkees, one can only hope that the band as a whole will still receive the critical reappraisal that should come with his passing.

The Monkees have never quite been able to enjoy their moment in the sun. In their time, the burgeoning rock press viewed them as an instrument of the music industry, an example of plastic pop marketing creeping its way into the “authentic” world of rock music. Their first reunion in the 1980’s was marred by bad publicity and a refusal to play ball with the media, with subsequent reunion efforts being greeted with increasing levels of derision and internal friction. Although they have been eligible since 1991, The Monkees have never been considered for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an embarrassing fact that says more about the music industry than it does about the band. Beneath the pop façade, the one that made the group such a punch line among critics, scholars, and rockists, were creative forces that were innovative, subversive, and groundbreaking.

Read In Defense of The Monkees. American Music Review, XLI(2), Spring 2012

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

Order Your Copy Now!

Quotes from “Why The Monkees Matter” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 63 in a series – Narrative Style

** Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today **

The Monkees kept their audiences guessing by varying the narrative style each week in a way few other programs were ever able to swap genres on such a regular basis. Star Trek: The Next Generation could sometimes tell stories in the western genre or the private eye genre through the use of the holodeck but that is a rare opportunity.

from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Buy your Copy today!

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

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

05 : Girls, The Beach House and The Monkees: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power

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

Watch this entire presentation (45 mins)

Transcript:

Jean: So they had this beach house and this was cool and there are these single boys now, but they did kind of keep it kind of wholesome. Now did they have girls spending the night over at the beach house or anything like that?

Rosanne: They did not. When I came to study the show because I loved it as a kid and when I decided to study it I thought, “Oh, well a show about rock-and-rollers. It’s going to be every week about who’s have sex with which girl and maybe as a kid, I didn’t remember that. And then I watched all 58 episodes in an era when I’m also watching The Big Bang Theory because that’s the number one comedy of our day and that’s of course about 4 scientists who spend their days discussing who they’re going to have sex with and it turned out, of course, because of the rules of what you could and couldn’t do on television at the time that The Monkees couldn’t do that. So when they had girlfriends we always saw that the girls left before the boys had time in their beach house. They never spent the night.

Jean: So it wouldn’t offend the sensibilities of the parents that are watching this television show with their teenagers and things like that.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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