“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…
Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references. Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016
Transcript:
Now we think about censorship and the timeframe we’re in. Let’s think about what’s going on in television right now. Ok? We have codes about what you can and can’t do. The Smothers Brothers are going to get cancelled because they talk too much about the Vietname War and The Monkees talked about it before The Smothers Brothers showed up. Pete Seeger is not going to be allowed to sing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” because that’s about the Vietnam War and so he will not be allowed to sing that on television for a couple of years. Barbara Eden — who knows what was censored about Barbara Eden? (Audience) “Belly Button!” Her belly button. Her outfit, her harem outfit could not go below the belly button. You can’t show women’s belly button. On That Girl, Marlo Thomas had — any time she dated her boyfriend, Donald, we had to see Donald leave her apartment and her shut the door behind him. You could not assume that he had spent the night with her. She was a single woman living alone and you had to know that she was stilla virgin to make her acceptable to television. Right? This is what we’re talking about here in 1966.
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.”
They decided Mike would represent ‘us’, the leader, the one with his feet on the ground; Micky was meant to be the crazy off-the-wall type; Davy was a heartthrob, and then they came to the decision whether Peter would play a genius or a total idiot. “It was like voting on deciding the Pope. Sadly Peter was so smart and so perceptive and so insightful and yet we decided to make his character a total idiot for the sake of the comedy.”
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 one of the things that changed many of our films. Now, what we have to discover is what rating do you want, right? Really, people don’t want a G rating because they think teenagers won’t come to it. So they have to have a couple of bad words. So, for instance, ET, he calls his brother “penis breath.” That gives them a PG. That one moment and they entirely did that merely to make sure that they teenagers would go see that movie. It’s really quite hilarious. It’s calculated. it has to be planned ahead and likewise, sometimes they’ll do just a couple of extra things to nudge themselves into an R rating and then they’l fight with the board and then say, “Ok, we’ll take these 2 things out” and it’s the other stuff they really wanted to keep, but they had to put those extra things in there so they could be seen to compromise in order to pull down to a PG rating.
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.”
“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…
Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references. Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016
Transcript:
This gentleman directed most of the episodes of the Monkees and you all, right here on this lot, should know something about him, because he won and Emmy as a director of The Monkees and then he grew up to direct The Muppet Movie. He’s got a couple Emmys to his credit — so James Frawley. there’s a lot of really interesting people involved in the show early on that, of course, most people didn’t know that much about and that was fun. These are the guys — this is Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and Davy Jones who was the big heartthrob. In fact, he passed away a couple of years ago. He’s been voted the greatest heartthrob of all time. The greatest teen idol of all time beating out any other person you can think of. That’s them holding their Emmy. The show won an Emmy for Best New Sitcom in its opening year in 1967. So, that’s something people don’t really think about. People think of the music and whether or not they played their own instruments, but they won an Emmy. This was The Big Bang Theory, The Seinfeld of its day. It was that popular and that well-respected within the business. So I think that’s cool.
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.”
Thanks to the magic of Skype I was able to appear as a guest lecturer for the St. Scholastica Academy Honors Sociology class. Their engaging teacher has been using The Monkees to illustrate concepts in Sociology all year long and so I tailored this talk to the aspects of the book that discuss how feminism, civil rights and ethnic studies are represented in episodes of the show.
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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