Rory Williams – Family Man Part 3 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:14)

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents “How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity: A Study of the Doctors and their Male Companions“ at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library. Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

Watch the entire presentation here

Transcript:

So Rory is a reflection of modern day fathers and what women are looking for ina modern man, if they’re going to spend the rest of their life. You want somebody else who’s going to help you clean the toilet. Right? When you get married, it’s not just you cooking dinner every night. It’s a shared job. It didn’t use to be. I had a friend who would go to work, her husband got home an hour before she did. He would sit on the couch and wait for her to get home and start making dinner, ’cause dinner was her job. Yeah, yeah. So things have switched around and the show is reflective of that. I think that’s really beautiful. And, of course, we know who the baby grew up to be. River Song! Who allows us a family of “Ponds”, even though they were stripped of the chance to raise her. We now have a Pond family as part of The Doctor’s story and again Rory overlooking all of that. He had to deal with his feelings of losing his chance to raise his child. That was something that harmed him, more than all the danger. How many times did Rory die. Really now. All those deaths didn’t bother him nearly as much as being denied the chance to raise his own child. So, I think that defines him much more deeply as a family man above all other things.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Happy Birthday, Micky Dolenz!

In honor of Micky Dolenz 71st birthday here’s my opinion of his best natural smile, displayed in a moment from Monkee Mother (written by Peter Meyerson and Bob Schlitt).

The episode involves guest star Rose Marie (from the recently ended Dick Van Dyke Show) as Millie, a woman who moves into the Monkees’ beach house when they can’t pay rent. As a way of highlighting each Monkees’ niceness (in a time when all long-haired boys were bad ones) Millie has a moment with each boy where she asks him to do a household chore and then declares each ‘a nice boy’.

From 7:40-8:09 she asks Micky to fix a leaky faucet.

Another highlight is at 9:06 when Peter asks Millie if she likes music and then they go into Micky’s lead vocals on “Sometime in the Morning”, perhaps the finest of Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s songs written for the show.

We all know he’s done great work behind the cameras and on the Broadway stage since the show – but today we’re wishing Happy Birthday to the Voice of The Monkees.

Who Wrote The Monkees? – “Monkees in a Ghost Town” by Robert Schlitt and Peter Meyerson

Who wrote The Monkees? – “Monkees in a Ghost Town” by Robert Schlitt and Peter Meyerson Part 2 of an on-going series

The second Monkees episode Antenna TV is airing this weekend is “Monkees in a Ghost Town”, by the writing team of Robert Schlitt and Peter Meyerson. The partnership ended shortly after their work on The Monkees with Schmitt moving into one-hour dramas such as The Father Dowling Mysteries and, eventually, Matlock while Meyerson teamed up with fellow Monkees writer Treva Silverman on an episode of That Girl and a Buck Henry series called Captain Nice before eventually co-creating Welcome Back, Kotter.

I was lucky enough to interview Mr. Meyerson several months before he passed away and he regaled me with several stories about his time on the show and socializing with the actors, particularly at parties at Peter’s house, as Meyerson himself was quite the hippie, so their philosophies were well matched.

A few of the other writers I interviewed kept referring to Mr. Meyerson as their ‘college guy’ and in “Ghost Town” we see his homage to that perennial of literature courses – Of Mice and Men.

Yes, that is veteran actor, Lon Chaney, Jr. on the right.

More information on The Monkees:

Previously in Who Write The Monkees?:

“Success Story” by Bernie Orenstein

Walking the Los Angeles River with friends on Saturday #losangeles #la #california #walk #nature #outdoors #friends

Walking the Los Angeles River with friends on Saturday #losangeles#la #california #walk #nature #outdoors#friends

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My Favorite Book of Letters Between Writers, Cheever’s Glad Tidings

Answering another friend’s Facebook post reminded me today of one of my favorite books of letters between writers is between Cheever and John Weaver.

I stumbled upon Glad Tidings: A Friendship in Letters : The Correspondence of John Cheever and John D. Weaver, 1945-1982 many years ago at a used bookstore and deeply enjoyed reading how these two writers discussed their work and the origins of their most famous projects.

Of course, Cheever was also writing to Harriet Weaver but the editors left her name off the title, so it’s also a good look at how the Weaver marriage operated (in the same way The Letters of S.J. Perlemnan became a look at the marriage of Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell since he wrote so often to them).

What I enjoyed most was the inside look Cheever gave of coming to Hollywood when a studio adapted his story The Swimmer into a film – Weaver had much more experience living in Los Angeles as a writer of local histories so he helped Cheever navigate La-La-Land.

If you don’t know either of these writers, a selection of Cheever’s short stories, The Stories of John Cheever, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (not too shabby) and John D. Weaver’s obituary in the Los Angeles Times tells you how important he was: “Weaver wrote two novels and eight nonfiction books, including one that helped change history: “The Brownsville Raid,” a 1970 book that led to the exoneration of 167 black soldiers who had been discharged without honor 64 years earlier.”

Both are well worth reading – as is Glad Tidings. Check them out.

Who wrote The Monkees? – “Success Story” by Bernie Orenstein

Who wrote The Monkees? – “Success Story” by Bernie Orenstein Part 1 of an on-going series

The Monkees episode Antenna TV will air this weekend is “Success Story” – written by Bernie Orenstein, a freelancer who wrote two other episodes: “Dance, Monkee, Dance” and “Monkees à la Carte”.

This 5 minute interview focuses on his memories of writing for The Monkees .

His more full time writing was on the variety show The Hollywood Palace which showcased Hollywood talent such as Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. He later produced Sanford and Son. In our interview I asked Mr. Orenstein if he was part of the youth culture and he said with a laugh, “My wife accuses me of missing the sixties entirely, and I’m afraid she’s right. I avoided the ‘emerging counter-culture scene’ mostly because I didn’t know there was one going on.” He has taught in the MFA program for Writing and Producing Television at Long Island University in Brooklyn.

Rory Williams – Family Man Part 2 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:08)

Watch the entire presentation here

Transcript:

Of course, along the way, he gets to be a full family man because…he and Amy have a baby! I think it’s very important. There’s a photography of him holding his child. It’s not just her always holding the baby and taking care of it, this is a shared parenting which is part of the modern generation. You all are probably lucky. Your Dad’s were probably more involved, but if you get back to my generation’s Dad, there the folks that went to work, came home, had dinner, watched TV qnd never talked to their kids and that was what men did. Right? And over the course of a couple of generations, parenting has become a co-job and you can see a Dad just as easily taking his kid to the doctor or going to a school function and helping out. it’s become a definition of men in this new generation to be family caretakers — to be involved — to go to the soccer games even if their not coaching , right? And to go to the birthday parties at school when you have to hand out little cupcakes with candles in them. That’s become a new definition, right? You all are probably more used to that, but it’s not something that happened in the past.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

Follow Dr. Rosanne Welch on the Web and via social media at:

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The Vagina Monologues 2016 – Rosanne performs “The Flood”

The Vagina Monologues 2016 – Rosanne performs “The Flood”

On Tuesday February 16th the Women’s Resource Center of CalPoly Pomona presented their 15th annual performance of Eve Ensler’s “Vagina Monologues“.

My colleague Peg Lamphier and I joined a cadre of talented students in performing one monologue together. Then a student dropped out and the director asked me to cover for her so this is my rendition of a monologue entitled “The Flood”. It came from Ensler’s extensive interviews with women over the age of 65, many of whom were not able to say the word ‘vagina’ out loud.

The best thing about the evening (besides ‘acting’ on stage again!) was watching all the students create a bond over the material – and watching those who had sat shyly in the back of some of my classroom discussions suddenly shouting “Vagina!” or impersonate moaning… We had to stifle our laughter backstage during most of the show. But seeing all these female students become sisters through theatre was the best.

Link: Cal Poly Pomona Women’s Resource Center

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When I First Met Davy Jones: Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio – June 7, 1986 [Photo]

In my last Summer in Cleveland, just weeks before I got married and moved to Los Angeles, The Monkees played as part of a large event at Playhouse Square in Cleveland.

My soon-to-be husband caught this photo of us during raucous after-party. This is a cropped version of a larger photo as Davy was literally surrounded by people during the entire event.

Day Jones, Rosanne Welch at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio, June 7, 1986

Why The Monkees Mattered: Chapter 2: Authorship on The Monkees: Who Wrote The Monkees and what was that “Something” They Had to Say?

Chapter 2: Authorship on The Monkees: Who Wrote The Monkees and what was that Something They Had to Say?

from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Spring 2016 – Click for more info!

Monkees Question of the Moment: Did you even think about the writing when you were watching The Monkees? Did you think they were just making it up as they went along? A lot of people did.

Leave your thoughts in the comments!