Writing – Page 18 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Filling up the glass: A look at the historiography of screenwriting by Tom Stempel

Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

Filling up the glass: A look at the historiography of screenwriting by Tom Stempel

This article covers the historiography of screenwriting over the past 60 years, discussing whether there has developed a critical mass of scholars, writers, and publishers in the area. It begins with writings in the fifties, sixties and seventies by such writers as Pauline Kael and Richard Corliss, then spends time with the author’s experiences in writing about the history of screenwriting, and the problems he faced dealing with publishers. From there, the article moves on to the development of books about the history of screenwriting and screenwriters. There is a brief history of the rise, death and revival of Creative Screenwriting, which started as an academic journal and evolved into a magazine. The article notes that non-American academics got into the field earlier and in more depth than the Americans. The reasons American academia avoided the study of screenwriting are discussed, as is the recent growing involvement of American academics in the field.

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.

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The Civil War On Film – Review

Because the Civil War ended less than 30 years before the first motion pictures, it became a favorite subject for the new medium and has remained so ever since. Unfortunately, many of these Civil War films are historically inaccurate. According to Lamphier (humanities, California State Polytechnic Univ.) and Welch (screenwriting, Stephens College), films of the Civil War “almost universally erase the past” in order to forget that it was so “painful, destructive, and unpleasant” (p. ix). To illustrate the varying approaches to Civil War history and memory, the authors selected ten significant films—ranging chronologically and thematically from Gone with the Wind (1939) to Free State of Jones (2016)—devoting a chapter to each. All the chapters present the historical background and cultural context for the film, contexts that include, among other things, combat, gender, immigration, leadership, pacifism, race, and slavery. Other works—e.g., Bruce Chadwick’s The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film (CH, Mar’02, 39-3875) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color, ed. by Douglas Brode, Shea Brode, and Cynthia Miller (CH, May’18, 55-3151)—cover more films and themes; the present volume will be especially useful as a tool for teaching cinematic representations of the past. — J. I. Deutsch, George Washington University

Movies profiled in this book:

05 Working The Room…from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

Then you have to understand them. What are they like? How do they want to hear things? Are they — what type of personalities do they like? You can’t really change yourself but you can readjust some things when you see how the rhythm is of what they like to do and actually, one of my favorite stories is that you also can cheat because I recognized early on in a particular show that there was a gentleman who didn’t like other people to win and so when you started to pitch he would find ways to tear it apart before the boss could say yes. Once you go the yes, he would be on board, because he wasn’t going to go against what the boss said. So, a joke I often tell students and friends is I had an idea that I wanted to pitch and I didn’t want to do it in front of that person being in the room so I waited until the boss — who happened to be another female — went to the bathroom and I pitched it over washing our hands at the sinks and by the time we got back to the room, she liked it enough that she started with “Rosanne had this great idea. We should talk it through,” and I saw the guy’s eyes across the table and I saw that he wanted to say something and he stopped and then I got the script because I stole it away from him. So…

It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.

Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).

We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.

Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 1: Poetic dramaturgy in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (1983): A character without a goal? by Marja-Riitta Koivumäki

Poetic dramaturgy in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (1983): A character without a goal? by Marja-Riitta Koivumäki

This article centres on the use of a character goal and a character arc as elements to express the theme and the meaning in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (1983). In classical dramaturgy, the goal of the character – what does the character want and what actions may he or she take in order to achieve this goal – is considered to be of the utmost importance. In Tarkovsky’s film, however, the character is passive and there does not seem to be any obvious goal to achieve. Through dramaturgical analysis my aim is to reveal the dramaturgical function of both the character goal and the character arc in Nostalgia. My contention is that a passive character forms part of an extensive dramaturgical system and that it carries more meaning than is apparent on the surface. Usually it is the character goal, what the character desires, that carries the spine of the narration and it is usually the starting point of the story design. I argue that the character arc (inner goal) can also assume this function and, accordingly, we can start the development of the screenplay from the perspective of considering how the character changes or why he/she might change. I also suggest that there is a need to reconsider the centrality of character goal, since the screenwriting theories of the twentieth century emphasize the importance of the character goal at the expense of the character arc. This article forms part of a larger study that aims to define certain characteristics of so-called poetic dramaturgy. As I’m interested in whether or not it is possible to define the features of poetic dramaturgy in a similar way as in classical dramaturgy so that they too can be incorporated into the writer’s craft, I also challenge the conventions of classical dramaturgy.

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* 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!

04 What The Show Is from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

The first job you have to do and any new show, of course, every new show — unless it’s someone you’ve worked with before and that that can happen but not always right sometimes your friends don’t get other jobs and so you move in with somebody else kind of. You have to understand them first. First, you have to understand their show and what do they think the show is. I give a classic example that most people will have heard of or at least seen some of The Sopranos and the joke about The Sopranos was they described the show as a family drama where dad happens to be a hitman. So if you were pitching an idea, you weren’t pitching a crime. You were pitching mom and dad had a fight and I’m afraid they’re getting divorced so I’m going to pretend to be sick to draw mommy and daddy together and while I’m doing that, daddy gets busy having to kill someone and I don’t get his attention right? Always the the dad’s story with that. Crime was a secondary thing and if you didn’t understand that you would pitch the incorrect kind of stories and you’d never win right? So first you have to understand what the person thinks their show is.

It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 1: ‘It’s literature I want, Ivo, literature!’ Literature as screenplay as literature. Or, how to win a literary prize writing a screenplay by Ronald Geerts

‘It’s literature I want, Ivo, literature!’ Literature as screenplay as literature. Or, how to win a literary prize writing a screenplay by Ronald Geerts

Ivo Michiels, besides being one of the most acclaimed and radical experimental literary authors in Dutch literature, is arguably the first Flemish professional screenwriter.These two occupations, that he continuously tried to combine, resulted in screenplays that either have been published as novels (and awarded important literary prizes) or repurposed as fragments in the Journal Brut cycle. Michiels developed a specific style for the screenplay by turning away from economical concrete descriptions. Instead he pursued a more literary way of writing, using narrative strategies aiming at certain effects in the mind of the reader, over conventional description. This article situates Michiels’ script writing as ‘performative’ in its intention and offers a case study of his work, as an expanded notion of the screenplay that elevates the form beyond mere description of what will be visible/audible on-screen. In Michiels’ practice, a screenplay is not just a text that ‘desires to become another text’, in the words of Pier Paolo Pasolini. In contrast, this article frames Michiels’ screenplays as ‘postdramatic’ texts which become artefacts, in and of themselves, claiming a certain independence from the film, whilst at the same time maintaining dialogue with the film (Bakhtin), realized or not.

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!

* 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!

03 Inside The Writer’s Room Part 2 from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

The best thing I learned was that everybody has their own different way. You can’t try and copy somebody else or it’s just like a bad tv show that’s a rip-off of a ripoff of a ripoff. You know it and it’s very doesn’t have any emotion or passion to it. So it was really important to learn that you’ve got to do it your way and you’ve got to get better at it. You can’t be that shy person in the corner waiting for someone to offer you a turn that’s never going to happen because a room full of writers is a room full of performers and they’re all wanting to tell you their story. So they’re not going to turn around and say and what do you think about that? So you have to be comfortable doing that. So it was a really good lesson. I really say of course that is the jumping-off job for television writers. You need to get a job as an assistant because you need to study that little world before you dive into it because then you won’t know the people management part of it. You might be a really good writer — and that happens to a lot of people — but if you can’t manage the people aspect, you’re not going to be successful in the writer’s room.

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Frances Goodrich Hackett (and Her Husband, Albert) Wrote Themselves a Wonderful Life, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script magazine, June 2021

You have watched countless films written or adapted by Frances Goodrich Hackett. She has four Academy Award nominations for screenplays AND a Pulitzer Prize. Yet I bet you didn’t know her name until now. True to the title of one of her most enduring creations Frances had A Wonderful Life. Yep, she (and her writing partner and husband Albert Hackett) developed that beloved film from the bare bones of a postcard.

Though she was born in 1890, Goodrich found herself in an atypical family — one that accepted the idea of the theatre as a career — and she lived an atypical life for a woman of that era. Goodrich married three times (with the third to Albert being the charm that lasted over 50 years). When Goodrich showed an interest in the stage after her graduation from Vassar in 1912, her father arranged for her to join the Northampton Players stock company in Massachusetts. There her performances convinced her father that she should move to New York where she quickly earned bit parts on the Broadway stage.

Eventually, she started writing plays and asked a fellow actor, ten years her junior to read her script, give her notes, and help her on the rewrite. The play was Up Pops the Devil and the younger actor was Albert. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios offered the Hacketts a six-month writing contract at $750 per week in the midst of the Great Depression, they jumped on the steady money and made the move to Hollywood.

Like Wonderful Life the other stories the Hacketts brought to American films have made an indelible mark on our culture. They earned an Academy Award nomination for their adaption of the Edward Streeter novel Father of the Bride which became so entrenched in American memory it — and the sequel they also wrote– were remade in the 1990s for Steve Martin and Diane Keaton to headline (screenplay by then-also-married-screenwriting-couple Nancy Meyers & Charles Shyer). Few high school or college students graduate without once watching the film the Hacketts adapted from their own Broadway play, The Diary of Anne Frank (for which they earned a Pulitzer).

When Frances and Albert approached their first adaption – bringing The Thin Man (written by Dashiell Hammett) to the screen in 1934 — Nick and Nora Charles became synonymous with the emerging ideas of equality in modern marriage. Film studies have long held that the detective couple were patterned after Hammett and his companion, playwright Lillian Hellman. According to The Real Nick and Nora By Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett, written by their nephew David L. Goodrich the relationship of Nick and Nora as it appears on film is in fact more closely connected to the relationship of the Hacketts.

Their marriage made their written work deeper and more sophisticated and whose shared work lives made the marriage stronger and more capable of lasting fifty-three years (ending only in Goodrich’s death in 1984.) In fact, as Nick and Nora are often referred to as the screen’s most beloved couple, Frances Goodrich Hackett and her husband Albert were often described as the “most beloved couple in Hollywood”.

Read Frances Goodrich Hackett (and Her Husband, Albert) Wrote Themselves a Wonderful Life on the Script web site

Read about more women from early Hollywood

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 1: The ‘De Santis case’: Screenwriting, political boycott and archival research by Paolo Russo

The ‘De Santis case’: Screenwriting, political boycott and archival research by Paolo Russo

In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s writer-director Giuseppe De Santis was the most successful Italian film-maker worldwide, thanks to box-office hits like the Oscar-nominated Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (1949). However, endless rows with producers, distributors and censorship soon forced him into professional exile until his creative voice was completely silenced. Over the years De Santis denounced a systematic boycott against him because of his social and political commitment. All scripts needed the central government film office approval; this system enforced a form of pre-emptive censorship by controlling the writing and packaging process. This article unveils the findings of comprehensive research conducted at the De Santis Fund in Rome. While De Santis’s official filmography lists only one title in the last 33 years of his life, his archive contains dozens of treatments and full scripts (and the film-maker’s correspondence) adding up to a total of almost 50 projects that were never made. The materials analysed here not only allow a thorough re-write of De Santis’s career, but also shed light on the intricate relations between politics and the Italian film industry in the post-war years.

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!

* 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!

The Civil War On Film – 36 in a series – “Hattie McDaniel, who would not be allowed in the segregated theater where the film premiered.”

Local politicians and MGM publicists alike planned a gala three-day celebration that involved all the major cast members except Leslie Howard, who had returned to England when he heard his home country had declared war on Germany, and Hattie McDaniel, who would not be allowed in the segregated theater where the film premiered. Another African American was present, though his fame would not come until later in life. Martin Luther King Jr., then a ten-year-old member of his father’s church choir, sang four spirituals at the gala.

Movies profiled in this book: