You never know when you’ll stumble on a piece of popular culture proof that The Monkees were an entrenched part of the 1960s – and a bonafide world-wide phenomenon of that time. I thought I had found quite a few of them in my research for the book – from the then newest moment on the first season of Grace and Frankie (where Frankie admits she once hung out with Micky) to the couple of Simpsons show references – to the now ubiquitous “I’m a Believer” ending of Shrek (no matter who sings it, that is always a Monkees song).
But watching reruns of the long-running BBC detective series Lewis unearthed a new one I had missed. This moment I’m posting came in Season 3, Episode 3, titled “The Point of Vanishing” in 2009 between characters at a high class Oxford cocktail party. The character properly credits the writer of “I’m a Believer” as Neil Diamond (in my other, non-Monkees-fan life I do teach screenwriting so I’m always pleased to see writers credited) so he does not call it a Monkees song – but we all know that it IS a Monkees song being referenced in this high-end program (it did air in the U.S. on PBS’s Mystery.
To achieve this amount of material to use in the editing bay, directors would have to manage 78 to 100 camera set ups a day, an unheard of number in an era when 30 set ups were considered a long day. They would also have to be free enough creatively to show the audience the metaphorical wizard behind the curtain.
While metatextuality is largely the work of the writers and actors, the examples in the previous chapter also represent the work of many of the other creative craft departments involved in producing a television show, beginning with directors, editors, properties masters and costumers, all hand-picked by producers Schneider and Rafelson. The show even involved detailed work from the transportation department in the form of the design and creation of the Monkeemobile by Dean Jeffries, who had already created the Mantaray for Bikini Beach and Black Beauty for The Green Hornet.
You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!
Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library
Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.
Now, the excellent work adapting Harry Potter was tossed away when they adapted the Rick Riordan series that my son loved — Percy Jackson. Loved these books and in many ways, they are ripoffs of Harry Potter. They just really are. I’m sorry. Kid finds out he’s a Greek god instead of the wizard. What’s the difference? All right, I going to be powerful and save the world. The problem is when they went to make these into movies they didn’t trust the source material. In the film version, this boy is 17. In the book, he’s 12. The thing that a child can say to his parents at 12 sound ridiculous and whiny if a 17-year-old says them. So they destroyed the support for that character by making him older and they only did that so that his best friend — his Hermoine — in the books can actually be the hot chick he wants to have a relationship with in the older books. So we don’t care about 12-year-olds having it we want the 16-year-old to have a girlfriend.
About this talk
Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
About Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!
Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library
Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.
So, when we come around to Harry Potter coming of age, that’s the same book that has all the elf stuff going on with Hermoine and she’s going to unionize the elves and all that stuff. That doesn’t appear in the movie at all. That has nothing to do with Harry Potter and his growing. So that storyline disappears. So, it’s and interesting choice. it’s a difficult choice. it’s why they then chose to split the last book in two, not just to make a lot more money, but because they did, but because they didn’t want to throw too much away and they had gained enough power and enough cache at that point that they could do that. It’s one of the more successful adaptations really of all time and in contrast little tiny things change like, for instance, you have to remember — you have to read the books again — when it’s time to get the gilly weed in the movie it gets given to him by Neville because we have to keep the Neville character alive. In the book, Dobby gives it to him, but Dobby is — we can’t waste time on him. Also, he costs money to put on-screen because he’s all fake, right? Little things like that along the way and generally fans weren’t too upset because they understood the reasons for it.
About this talk
Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
About Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
Perhaps the show’s boldest comment concerning television came near the end of their run in episode 52 “The Devil and Peter Tork” (Kaufman and Gardner and Caruso). In visualizing hell as the place Peter may be sent since he sold his soul for the ability to play the harp, every time they say “Hell” they are bleeped. This elicits the comment from Micky, “You know what’s even more scary? You can’t say (bleep) on television.”
As the show was winding down this second season, the occasions for recognizing themselves as actors in a television program, often referenced as being trapped inside the program, become more pronounced, giving evidence of the growing conflict between the artists and the front offices of the studio and network.
You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!
Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library
Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.
This is a huge thing to adapt and what I think is fascinating is This guy over here, Steve Kloves, he did 6 of the 7 Harry Potter movies. He actually quit after the 3rd movie. He’s like “Well I have to go focus on my own work” and his son said — his son was 10-years-old — “Dad, there’s no cachet in being the son of the guy who used to write the Harry Potter movies.” So he took on the next one and he did all the rest of them. He created a great friendship with J. K. Rowling to the point where they could talk often about things she hadn’t released yet. He was privy to new things coming up and books that had yet to be published and it was a very deep secret — you can’t tell anybody, blah, blah, blah. Really kind of fascinating, but to study the work they did — and one of the great things he said in several interviews — was that they had to look at these giant books and think of the theme. Which is what we teach people to do when their writing films. It’s all about theme. Start with a theme and any storyline that is tangential to that theme has to be thrown away. We can’t waste our time on that.
About this talk
Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
About Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
In the pilot, the mere act of beginning with the unrehearsed auditions of Jones and Nesmith ushered in the underlying metatextuality almost by accident. It was actually a desperate attempt to raise the ratings of the test audience who complained they could not tell the difference between the four long-haired band members.
![Adapting Percy Jackson from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (0:54)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/adapt-43-percy-jackson.jpeg)
![Harry Potter and What To Leave Out from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (1:02)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/adapt-42-harry-potter-leave-out.jpeg)
![Harry Potter and Theme from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (0:55)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/adapt-41-harry-potter-theme.jpeg)
