It’s no surprise that Meyerson and Silverman became good friends during their two seasons on the show, to the point where they partnered up for some later work on other series (Captain Nice, Accidental Family) because Silverman was the other writer who happily identified with the counter-culture world of the time. “I remember going back East and telling my old college roommates that I had started smoking grass. They were shocked.
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.
The Hays Code stayed with us until 1968. Finally we let it go and it was replaced by the Motion Picture Film Rating system that we’re all used to today. So your G, your PG, etc, etc. One of my favorite funny stories is that an R rating — and there’s listing of everything you have to do to see what rating you earn. The R rating can be earned if you use the F-word more than once in consecutive conversation. So The King’s Speech, which won the Oscar a couple of years ago was originally released with an R rating, because when he’s stuttering he says the F-word 4 or 5 times in a row on one sentence. That’s entirely – nobody has sex in that movie. Nobody does anything that — it’s a G-rated movies. It entirely is except for that moment. So once it won the Oscar that cut that one piece out and they re-released it as a PG film, because then they knew families wanted to come see it. I think that’s hilarious. So there are rules that come off of the Hays Code, but that work in our fim system now, but they’re not as bad as the Hays Code.
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:
…and Treva Silverman — in the world of looking for women writers was the first woman to write comedy on television without a male partner and a couple of years after The Monkees — yeah, I know, Yea for her!. After The Monkees she joined the Mary Tyler Moore Show where she won an Emmy for writing the episode where Lou Grant’s wife asks for a divorce and that was because, as the only female writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show — which seems crazy, but was, in fact, true, she came to the producers and said, “You know, all my friends think Ed Asner is sexy, but they feel guilty liking him because his character is married. So, if we got rid of the wife then they wouldn’t feel so guilty.” and the guys on the show were like “Ed Asner? You’re out of your mind” but they let her write that episode and she won an Emmy for it because it was, of course, in the early 70’s and this idea of women choosing to be divorced because they’s never had a life and they didn’t want to be the side of their husband, was a really fascinating thing. So she won an Emmy — she won 2 Emmys — that year actually. So all these folks had really — these are the people I interviewed and helped me get a focus on what was going on with the show, which I think is really interesting.
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.”
The community reading event will also include a talk about the television series “Dr. Who” by Rosanne Welch, who teaches humanities courses in the interdisciplinary general education department at Cal Poly Pomona. Welch has written about the show and “Torchwood,” a show spin-off.
“Dr. Who” is a British television science-fiction series that has a large following and which has been produced by the BBC since 1963.
Welch’s talk will appeal to both those who are longtime fans of the show and for those just learning about it. The series is a good example of the pairing of creativity and quality writing, Welch said.
The main character in the show is an alien who travels through space and time with different companions. The departure of actors playing the main character has not hurt the show. Instead, the changes have provided show writers a way to give the alien character and his companions new adventures, Welch said.
“They’ve really become a huge worldwide phenomenon,” she said.
One generation enjoyed “Dr. Who” in their youth, and they introduced it to their children and now their grandchildren are following it, Welch said. “Dr. Who” offers “a positive look at the future,” Welch said, while most science fiction tends to be dystopian.
The alien finds goodness in earth and its people, “and he’s a champion for us,” Welch said.
Meyerson mixes a metatextual moment with a comment on the counter-culture when a western deputy answers the second call. This time, when Davy says the boys are in trouble the deputy says, “I better get Mr. Dillon.”
Davy asks, “Marshall Dillon?”, referencing the long-running Gunsmoke.
But the deputy answers, “No Bob Dylan. He can write a song about your problems.”
Meyerson was also behind the Vietnam War reference in the domino-playing scene in “Monkee Mother”.
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.
…and it was worse when it went to television, which is another level of adaptation. I’m going to take a movie and I’m going to put it on TV where you can do even less, because we’re not in the movies. In this case, just look at how once we bring in Sally Field into the picture it gets even younger and there’s not a surfboard in sight. This entire book is about a girl who masters a sport. On TV it’s about a girl who talks on the phone and hangs out with cute boys. That’s an entire destruction of the point of that story and it was written by the father of the girl who had achieved that. So he was looking to make his daughter a respectable, interesting person. So, I think that’s an interesting example of something being ruined. Only in the book do you get the true story of what it was like. So, again, I’ll just go back, you have to read the book.
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.”
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