Thinking about International Women’s Day and thinking about how whenever I ask female writers which writers they admired in their youth they often go straight to the boys – F. Scott and Ernest.
Sure, we read all of those boys (because that’s what school gave us) – and we’re welcome to have liked them – but really, WHAT were we reading on our own?
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.
Of course, I mentioned that we would talk about Harry Potter briefly. We could be here for a whole hours, 2, 3, 6 talking about all the Harry Potter adaptations. What I think is important to notice is, as you know, the book in England was called “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” When it came to be published in America, they were afraid American children would look at the word philosopher and walk away, because that’s old and boring. That’s for old people. Of course, in America, what did we call it? The Sorcerer’s Stone, because a sorcerer is kind of cool — Mickey with hat — so we like sorcerers. We’re good. I mean that’s and adaptation made our publication people just to sell more books.
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.”
Maria Mitchell was the first American astronomer to discover a telescopic comet—a comet too far away to see with the naked eye but detectable with a telescope. For her achievement, she was rewarded with a gold medal by the king of Denmark, became the first female member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and later became a professor at Vassar College, one of the first exclusively all-women colleges in America.
Ellen Craft was a fugitive slave made famous by the daring escape she and her husband William Craft (1824–1900) made in December 1848. Ellen, disguised as an infirm and sickly slaveholding gentleman, and her husband William, posing as a slave servant, traveled from the slaveholding state of Georgia to freedom in Philadelphia. So widely publicized was their escape that the Crafts became world- renowned spokespersons for abolitionism.
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
According to Edison film historian C. Musser, Venezuelan rope and slack wire walker Juan Caicedo performed in the U.S. during 1894 and again at the end of the century. From May 14 to Sept. 8, 1894, he appeared at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall in New York City.
From Raff & Gammon price list: The “King of the Wire” in his marvelous slack wire performance. $10.00.
OTHER TITLES Title in Raff & Gammon price list: Caicedo
Caicedo. No. 1
CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : Edison Manufacturing Co., [1894]
NOTES Copyright: no reg.
Performer: Juan A. Caicedo.
Camera, William Heise.
Filmed July 25, 1894, at the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, N.J.
SUBJECTS Aerialists–United States. Vaudeville–United States. Wire rope–United States. Venezuelans–United States. Variety
RELATED NAMES Dickson, W. K.-L. (William Kennedy-Laurie), 1860-1935, production. Heise, William, camera. Caicedo, Juan A., performer. Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Hendricks (Gordon) Collection (Library of Congress)
Martha Moore Ballard played a pivotal role in her community as a midwife and healer. Through her diary she has become a historically important female voice documenting social, economic, and religious change in rural postcolonial America. Few women could write in the 18th century, and fewer still participated in public life, resulting in poor documentation of women’s daily lives. Because women could not own property and seldom participated in legal matters, few details regarding individual women’s lives appear in historical documents.
The religious passion and antiwoman sentiment of 17th-century colonial North America reached its apogee in Salem, Massachusetts, during the infamous Salem Witch Trials. One victim of the trials, Bridget Playfer Waselby Oliver Bishop, was accused three times of being a witch and was hanged in 1692, the first victim of the Salem hysteria. The vast majority of people executed for witchcraft were women. Eighteen others followed Bishop to the hangman’s noose before the governor put a stop to it a few months later.
This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
Transcript:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank everybody for coming out tonight. It’s really coo to talk about The Monkees whenever you get a chance so I appreciate the chance. What I was just going to do was I was going to read a little bit from the Preface and the Introduction — kind of a setup for the purpose of the book and what it’s all about and then just talk about The Monkees for a little bit and see if anybody’s interested in telling stories and what they first remember about the show. So, if that’s good with everybody….I’ll start. The Preface of the book is called “I’m (Still) A Believer” and one of the things I did in writing it was I made all the chapters were the titles of songs — famous Monkee songs and it was really interesting to sit there and try to think of, what was the right song to put on this particular (chapter) and I ended up finding song titles I didn’t even remember because they put out so much music and everyone has their favorites and you just didn’t realize that there were these other titles. So, part of the them, they might have been perfect for that chapter, but they didn’t hit your brain immediately as obvious Monkee songs so then I would pick something else. The first one is obviously “I’m (Still) A Believer” because that’s what brought me to writing about them.
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.”
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