The story of Hollywood has often been told from the point of view of the stars, the directors, the tycoons, but not until now from the point of view of the gallery of writers who helped shape it, including Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Chandler, and many others. – Amazon
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* Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch
On Mon, October 23, 2017 (7:30 PM – 9:00 PM) I’ll be moderating another panel for the WGA Foundation. This one is near and dear to my heart as it’s on writing with the teenage voice: Freaks, Geeks, And Queen Bees: Crafting The Teenage Voice For TV.
Chuck Rosin of Beverly Hills, 90210 has agreed to join the panel and invites are out to folks on other iconic teen shows – I’ll update you as I know. General Admission is $25 / WGA or SAG members and Student tickets are $20.
From BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 and DAWSON’S CREEK to GOSSIP GIRL and RIVERDALE, television shows set in the world of teenagers have evolved through the years but still tackle the myriad issues young people face in this period of awkwardness and angst.
On this special evening, our panel discusses the craft behind writing with the teenage voice in mind, how they develop characters and refresh tried-and-true plots, and how writers are reinventing and reimagining the genre.
Panelists:
Charles Rosin (SOUTH OF NOWHERE, DAWSON’S CREEK, BEVERLY HILLS, 90210) Stay tuned for more panelist announcements!
Moderated by Dr. Rosanne Welch (TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, BEVERLY HILLS, 90210)
Doors open at 7:00pm. Event starts at 7:30pm.
All events advertised on our “Events” page are open to anyone who wants to buy a ticket – not just WGA members!
In the case the event is sold out, we will have a first come, first serve stand-by line at the event. The stand-by line does not guarantee entry into the event.
Proceeds benefit the Foundation’s library and archive and other outreach programs.
I was pleased to be asked to participate in a panel designed by former student (and current kick-ass professor) Warren Lewis. The panel included two other former students from the MFA in Screenwriting program at CSUF: David Morgassen and Lucas Cuny. For the panel’s theme — “What Else Do We Teach When We Teach Screenwriting: Context And Controversy: Strategies For Teaching Film And Television History And Current Events To Screenwriters” — I chose to present on: “Giving Voice to Silent Films and the Far From Silent Women Who Wrote Them”.
It involves the fact that when teaching screenwriting history, I begin chronologically. In essence I force students to watch the classic films of the silent era (happily accessible for free on YouTube) first because that is when women ran the town as evidenced in Cari Beachamp’s Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood”.) Beauchamp’s book is on my reading list so that they can encounter the careers of Frances Marion, Anita Loos, Lois Weber, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Eve Unsell and a host of other women who ran their own production companies for many years.
Secondly, knowing women once ran Hollywood makes it harder for today’s executives to wonder if today’s women can do the same. Third, I have learned that teaching silent films reminds modern students that in screenwriting the visual is as important as the verbal.
Fourth, recognizing the birth of major iconic archetypes helps them recognize those archetypes in modern films and develop their own characters more three-dimensionally. Fifth, I had to embarrassingly realize that in my zest to focus on forgotten females, I forgot to cover the careers of forgotten men and women of color and so expanded my viewing list to include the work of Oscar Mischeaux and other artists of color from the era.
Finally, I stretch back to the silents as a reminder that all artists stand of the shoulders of those who came before them – be they women or men.
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.
It has often been said that The Monkees gave birth to MTV, which may or may not ever be provable. Certainly, the fact that each episode involved at least two musical montages showed that audiences enjoyed watching their favorite songs visualized and two episodes could be considered long videos ala Michael Jackson’s Thriller, though those were more in the style of documentary.
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:
Rosanne: …and Micky Dolenz, being an actor said, sure, my character plays the drums, I’ll learn to play the drums. I will do that and he is considered by many people nowadays a very proficient drummer. He might not be the greatest drummer of all time, but he has been a drummer for 50 years in concert and people do appreciate the style. So, also what is interesting about him that I mentioned in the show — this ethnic quotient of the show — he had naturally sort of afro curly hair which they flattened for the first season because they felt that that was inappropriate for a young man in America.
Jean: Because they wanted to keep the whiteness that TV shows need to have at the time.
Rosanne: Exactly. Exactly. It is definitely that story.
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.
Davy We Hardly Knew Ye: Why The Monkees Matter By Janice Harper
One time when I was a little girl, I decided to run away. I stormed out of the house and began marching across the football field behind our home, hell-bent on never seeing my parents again, probably for no better reason than they’d told me to clean up my room. I had no idea where I’d go or how I’d survive, but I knew one thing for sure: I was never going back home, no matter what. And I marched on.
But as I reached the end of the field, I looked down at my watch to see how long it had taken me to make the long trek, only to discover to my horror that it was almost time for The Monkees. I had completely forgotten it was Monkees night, and I had about ten minutes to turn around and run all the way back if I wasn’t going to miss the opening theme song. I still remember standing there, torn between my desire for liberation and my desire for half an hour with Davy Jones. Runaway or not, I wasn’t about to run away from Davy, nor miss an episode of The Monkees.
Intolerance is a 1916 epicsilent film directed by D. W. Griffith. Subtitles include Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages and A Sun-Play of the Ages.[2][3]
Widely regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the silent era, as well as one of the first art films,[3] the three-and-a-half-hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines, each separated by several centuries: (1) a contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption, (2) a Judean story: Christ‘s mission and death, (3) a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, and (4) a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. Each story had its own distinctive color tint in the original print.[3] The scenes are linked by shots of a figure representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle.[3]
Intolerance was made partly in response to criticism of Griffith’s previous film, The Birth of a Nation (1915),[4] which was criticized by the NAACP and other groups as perpetuating racial stereotypes and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.[5] It was not—as is commonly implied—an apology for the racism of his earlier film;[6]in numerous interviews, Griffith made clear that the film’s title and overriding themes were meant as a response to those who he felt had been intolerant of him in condemning The Birth of a Nation.[7] In the years following its release, Intolerance would strongly influence European film movements despite its lack of commercial success domestically. —Wikipedia
* 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!
I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch
My ABC-CLIO catalog arrived while we were off in New Zealand at the Screenwriting Research Network Conference and inside it was this page for my latest encyclopedia — which is now available for purchase. Please take am moment to recommend it to your local librarian.
Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. It is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur. McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay’s employer William Randolph Hearst later curtailed McCay’s vaudeville activities, so McCay added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release. McCay abandoned a sequel, Gertie on Tour (c. 1921), after producing about a minute of footage.
Although Gertie is popularly thought to be the earliest animated film, McCay had earlier made Little Nemo (1911) and How a Mosquito Operates (1912). The American J. Stuart Blacktonand the French Émile Cohl had experimented with animation even earlier; Gertie being a character with an appealing personality distinguished McCay’s film from these earlier “trick films”. Gertie was the first film to use animation techniques such as keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer, and animation loops. It influenced the next generation of animators such as the Fleischer brothers, Otto Messmer, Paul Terry, and Walt Disney. John Randolph Bray unsuccessfully tried to patent many of McCay’s animation techniques and is said to have been behind a plagiarized version of Gertie that appeared a year or two after the original. Gertie is the best preserved of McCay’s films—some of which have been lost or survive only in fragments—and has been preserved in the U.S. Library of Congress‘ National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. — Wikipedia
* 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!
I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch
The Monkees also dabbled in super hero adventures by creating the Monkeemen. Because shots of them in Monkeemen costumes appeared in the series’ opening credits, it cemented the idea that the Monkeemen appeared more frequently than they did. Yet only three episodes involved Monkeemen: “I’ve Got a Little Song Here”, “Monkee Chow Mein”, and “I was a 99 lb Weakling”.
![Giving Voice to Silent Films and the Far From Silent Women Who Wrote Them with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (17:44)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Slide01.jpg)
![17: Even More on Micky Dolenz and The Monkees : “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Power [Video] (0:38)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/rmw-power-17-dolenz-3.jpeg)
