A Woman Wrote That – 14 in a series – The Birdcage (1996) Wr: Elaine May

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

AGADOR

“My guatemalaness. My natural heat. You’re afraid I’m too primitive to perform with your little estrogen Rockettes.”

09 Studio Contract Writers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (46 seconds)

09 Studio Contract Writers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (46 seconds)

 

Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.

Transcript:

Men — because they were mostly men — worked in writer’s pools. So you got a contract with the studio to be a Universal writer and then people who ran different shows — so they’d be just like in England is today — one guy, again generally a guy, who was in charge of the show and that person would go into the writer’s pool and say “Who’s free this week? I need an episode of…Generally, it was these kinds of shows. Columbo is still kind of famous today. The NBC Mystery Movie was like that. So they go I need a Columbo who’s got an idea and somebody would raise their hand and go “I’ve got an idea” and then they would write next week’s Columbo right? So they were in a pool of writers. Out of that pool came these men who were icons of the 80s and early 90s and it was because of their originality that they began to stand out and I really can’t stress that enough.

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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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 22 in a series

Chi non va, non vede. Chi non vede, non sa.”

Aguyar had been picking up Italian but looked to Giuseppe for the proper translation.

“’If you don’t go, you don’t see. If you don’t see, you don’t know.’ It’s something my mother said to me a long time ago. Who knew how true it would prove to be?”

Get your copy of A Man Of Action Saving Liberty Today!

Event: ScriptChat with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Sunday, February 14, 2021 – 4PM PDT

I’m pleased to have been invited to be the guest on the weekly Twitter show #Scriptchat, hosted by editor Jeanne Veillette Bowerman.

On Sunday Februrary 14th at 4pm PDT we’ll be talking about behavior in a writers room, and the benefits of having an MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

If you haven’t checked in with their shows you should know that #Scriptchat brings the guests to the party so you can learn in a free, unbiased and respectful platform. Their #1 goal is to thoroughly enjoy spending an hour together every Sunday with writers working hard to improve and succeed, and they’re proud to have accomplished that time and time again, since 2009! – Rosanne

Event: ScriptChat with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Sunday, February 14, 2021 - 4PM PDT

ScriptChat with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Sunday, February 14, 2021

Wednesday, February 10, 2021
At 4 PM PDT – 5 PM PDT
TOPIC: Working in / behavior in a writers room, & benefits of having an MFA #WritingCommunity

@RosanneWelch – ##screenwriter, TV writer, novelist & Exec Dir, @stephenscollege MFA In TV & #Screenwriting

Engage via TwChat

Engage via TChat.io

Event: Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Open House – Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Wednesday, February 10, 2021
At 4 PM PDT – 5 PM PDT
 
Register Now

Explore the low-residency MFA in TV + Screenwriting with Executive Director Dr. Rosanne Welch. Our mission is to increase the impact of women and other under-represented voices in television and film. Our faculty and mentors include some of the best working writers in Hollywood, and our curriculum includes an in-depth look at the business side of TV and screenwriting.

Register Now

The Civil War On Film – 17 in a series – Often these maids were related to their mistresses, as in the case of Sally Hemmings…

The Civil War On Film - 17 in a series - Often these maids were related to their mistresses, as in the case of Sally Hemmings...

Supervision of the drudgery work done by enslaved women kept women of both positions in daily contact. Enslaved maids slept on pallets on the floors of their various mistresses’ rooms to be awoken whenever necessary through the night. Often these maids were related to their mistresses, as in the case of Sally Hemmings, maid and half-sister to Martha Jefferson on the Monticello plantation, which created complex relationships and widely reported whispers among women of both stations of life.

Movies profiled in this book:

A Woman Wrote That – 13 in a series – Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 13 in a series - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

PRINCESS LEIA

Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking… nerf-herder.

People are beginning to read screenplays as literature…

People are beginning to read screenplays as literature...

 

One of the biggest things that makes me so excited is people are beginning to read screenplays as literature.

The script isn’t just a blueprint. We’re going to read the action lines, the dialogue, and we’re going to hear the voice of the writer in a way that we can’t on screen.

 

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08 Monkees Writers and History from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (1 minute)

08 Monkees Writers and History from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (1 minute)

Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.

Transcript:

I wrote this article for Written By which is about these writers and it was very interesting to go back and speak to them in their 80s about what their experience had been to write hippie characters in the 60s and it was all about how they shared stories. Some of them were more conservative. Some of them were already becoming hippies. Treva tells a funny story about her mother not understanding what it meant when she said she smoked pot. Her mother thought she was doing something in the kitchen. She didn’t divest her of that opinion right? So they all had a different attitude toward how they wrote but in one-hour dramas, things were done differently back in the day as everyone is fond of saying. They used writer pools. They would simply hire you under contract at a studio — Universal, Warner Brothers, Disney, whatever it was — and you literally sat on the line now that’s a that’s a pool of women typing. That’s how scripts were done before there were computers right? They had a bunch of women in a room. They had that ditto paper and you type and you get three copies with the little purple stuff and think about that. You’re doing that 24/7. If you’re doing Gone with the Wind, how many copies of that script do you have to consistently keep typing so that it’s ready.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

 


* 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

“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 21 in a series

1848 – Return to Italy

Political changes in the various kingdoms on the Italian peninsula helped convince Giuseppe and many of the members of his Italian legion that now was the time to return, that now was the time to use the skills they had obtained in their battles for South American freedom to support unity in their homeland.

Get your copy of A Man Of Action Saving Liberty Today!