academic – Page 8 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

10 Star Trek From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

Transcript:

Desilu Productions gave the world Star Trek, a program that is credited with saving Paramount Studios from going bankrupt. This program became, as you know, such a cult following that it was followed into rerun after rerun after reruns for so many years. It’s one of the first television shows anyone thought to make into a feature film story. No one had done that with an earlier tv show before but they felt they had enough fans going in that they could get away with it and certainly the first one was not considered as critically wonderful but the second one, The Wrath of Khan, was considered one of the classic films and one of the best films in the Star Trek series and this series is so important, of course, was even rebooted with an entirely new cast right? So this story has gone on and on. We also know that it went into Star Trek: The Next Generation. It went into Star Trek Discovery. There’s now Star Trek: Picard. All of these shows have been very important in getting female writers started in the business. If you sold an episode to a Star Trek — any of the various franchises — you were considered a serious writer and you move forward. People like Jane Espenson and all kinds of women have moved forward from Star Trek.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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23 More on The Bradley Cooper Version…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

In this scene, and these are quotes from Bradley Cooper as he was making the film he’s being interviewed right, he says he’s on stage trying to support her but his demons won’t let him right? So we still have the debacle but it’s not because he wants to ruin her night. He’s trying to be there to support her and then it’s embarrassing and terrible and sad and also he says that at the end of the movie, she’s just starting right and what she’s going to create is going to be bigger than what we’ve seen prior. That means her movie isn’t this movie — that her movie is the next one which will never be made. That means this is the Jackson Maine story and that’s not what I signed up for. I signed up for the star — the female star — being born. So I think that’s a huge change that he as a male writer has brought to this franchise. You look at the writing credits, right? So if Bradley wrote it with this guy Will Fetters. If you go to the Writers Guild when you have time when it’s open again in the library, they have a copy of the first draft and if you read it to compare to the film that you saw in 2019 you will be shocked because it is not brilliant. It is this guy who’s an Academy Award winner for Forrest Gump and I think he has two Academy Awards, Eric Roth who came in to do the rewrite that really molded the piece but he’s taking the ideas that Bradley Cooper had which are to focus more on Jackson Maine’s character. They base themselves on the Moss Heart screenplay, right? So by the time we’re done with this Dorothy’s name has finally disappeared entirely even though all the bones of it are really still there and really still her if you ask me.

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Connections at conferences matter! Through the most recent SCMS, I met Vicki Callahan, whose film history focus right now is on Mabel Normand. When she learned I could put together a lecture on the importance of the female voice in the A Star is Born franchise she asked me to give that lecture to her master students.

It made for a great opportunity for me to hone the ideas I’m working on for a chapter on that franchise that I’m writing for a new book from Bloomsbury: The Bloomsbury Handbook Of International Screenplay Theory. It’s always nice when one piece of research can be purposed in other ways – and it’s always fun revisiting such a female-centric film franchise – one that drew the talents of such powerful performers as Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, and Lady Gaga.

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09 Other Desilu Shows From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Transcript:

…and those programs include some very very popular shows. The Andy Griffith Show — still in reruns today as well and something that we know in television history for a million reasons including the fact that this young man grew up to be Academy Award-winning director Ronnie Howard right? So this was an amazingly iconic show that people still recognize and reference today. Obviously The Mod Squad — very fresh and new thing for the 60s. So she had a good eye — Lucille Ball had a good eye for what would sell and what was progressive and moving forward right? Isn’t that interesting? She captured both the past and the present in the ideas that she put forward and of course, Mannix was just basically an iconic detective show. However, also think about the progressiveness of it. His “girl Friday” was an African-American woman and she was a working woman, right? Who had a real position in his company and she was very intrinsic to what he did. So that’s a pretty amazing step forward again all coming out of Lucy’s creative ideas. Yes to this no to that. These are the shows she said yes to including, I like to say, a little show called Star Trek right?

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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22 The Bradley Cooper Version?…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

Now I tend to call this the Bradley Cooper version and as Jacob asked me”Do I like it?” I like it to the extent that I like the bones of this story but because a male wrote it, and had two other male screenwriters rewrite him, it becomes his story. It becomes the Jackson Maine story. We have much more focus on his character, his backstory, and while giving a female superstar one name seems modern, in many ways it erases part of her own history. What is her actual last name right? A female character without a last name is not one who’s been thought through all the way, I would say in reading a script. So in this case, we focus so much on his backstory. So much about his own family. It’s his brother that’s part of the story. So much is more about the star who’s dying than the star who is being born in this movie. She doesn’t really have the same agency. Certainly not that Barbra Streisand gave her character. Really not that we had out of Julie or Janet either.

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08 Lucille Ball From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

The trick about Lucy is that most people think she was just an actress and a comedian and a funny person but maybe if you read Desi Arnaz’s book you’ll learn that she actually was one of the first women to run a television production studio and that was Desilu — obviously a combination of Desi’s name and Lucy’s name. They started that company to run I Love Lucy. He was quite brilliant. We have to give him some props. He was the person who thought we should film this program not put it on earlier versions of tape which disappeared. Which is also why we don’t know some early women in the business because their work disappeared but because Desi was smart enough to say let’s put this on film and let our production company own the product, they of course then were one of the first shows to rerun and that was a moneymaker for them as they randomly ran as we know many many years but lucy was the Vice President. Imagine that. They invented the company together. He’s the president. She’s the vice president. Why aren’t they co-presidents? Nobody asked that question because men were supposed to have the higher title right and yet she was Lucy right? She’s the engine behind all of this. Her job was particularly to do the creative work. He did the business work and he was brilliant at that we want to give him all the props he deserves but she made the choices about what other programs their production company would support.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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21 The 2018 Version…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

So the idea lagged for a while and then all of a sudden the Lady Gaga version comes up, which I’m sure most of you have seen. Let’s see — similarities. She’s not a rock star so much as she’s a pop star and that’s because we have the dancers behind her and we’re sort of working in a different world. He more or less though is a rock idol because it’s cooler for boys to do rock than pop right? We giggle at Justin Bieber. We think rock stars are hot. So he maintains the rock business but here’s a change that Bradley Cooper — who’s one of the writers on the movie definitely made — his dude is not jealous of her. He is supportive and happy. His problem is that he’s an addict and he can’t break his addiction. It has nothing to do — he’s an addict before he meets her. Her popularity does nothing has no change to that. So I think that’s an important difference and we’re going to talk about why that difference happens. Same thing they’re going to write a song together –a beautiful song. Again that’s a very sexy thing for them to do. At the Grammy Awards, he’s going to embarrass her but not out of anger that she’s getting attention and I’ve got a little slide I’m gonna show you on that. We’re gonna use the “one more look at you” line, so Dorothy Parker is still hanging out not only in the plot but in these lines. This time her guy — and they call him Jackson Maine because Norman is boring and so is John by the time we get to 2019. What we do is — he doesn’t cheat on her. In the other ones the woman finds the guy cheating because he finds another young girl that you know will make him feel better because his wife is better than he is. He does not do that. Bradley Cooper did not want his character to do that. Like Kris Kristofferson, though, he will commit suicide essentially on screen. We’re gonna know what he’s doing and it’s not off — lose his body and nobody has to see him. She’s gonna see his body when they find him and in the more modern world, if you want to call it that, she is just Ally like Cher is Cher right and Beyonce is Beyonce. She is Ally. So at the end of the movie, she can’t change her name but she does in fact introduce herself as Ally Maine. So she establishes that last name repetition from the previous versions.

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07 Madeline Pugh From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

Madeline Pugh is not a woman who is forgotten in the books because she wrote for, of course, the most iconic woman on television, Lucille Ball and Madeleine Pugh was at the very beginning of Lucille Ball’s television career and stayed with her all the way through each of the three major shows she was ever a star of. You’ll notice here very tiny on her chair. It said Madeline Pugh Girl Writer. Imagine that. She is not a girl at this stage in her career. She is a grown woman who has a good history behind her of writing radio programs and then moving into this world. She co-wrote with this gentleman Bob Carroll whom she never married. They were just writing partners which was marvelous. She had her own personal life. She, in fact, married a man who had three children and eventually left Hollywood for a while and then decided she missed it and they as a whole family moved back and she continued. so Madeline Pugh is a huge, huge person in the history of television. She’s one of the few who might show up in a book because if you talk about The Lucille Ball Show you must talk about Madeline. One of the things madeleine did was as they wrote gags or the particular physical comedy that they would expect Lucy to do, Madeline would perform those tricks first. She would have to see if they were safe and they were doable and in fact, were they really funny when you saw them finished. So she was both sort of a side performer and of course a writer on the show. So I think Madeline Pugh is someone you should never forget as well as of course Lucille Ball.1

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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20 A 3rd Remake?…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

Here’s something that fascinates me. I remember reading this in the trades and how cool it would have been when they thought about the third remake. This is obviously some 15 years ago now. It was a natural for Whitney Houston. You want a famous female singer. You want this story and she had just done The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner which had her be a famous singer right and she has as you know — falls in love with her bodyguard, in this case, etc etc — which also became a Broadway musical believe it or not and I’m gonna do a little tangent because I love to talk about writing. Why in the heck is Dolly Parton in my picture? She wrote a song called I Will Always Love You in the 50s when she quit her partnership with a male country singer. When they did the bodyguard, they needed a song that would be the song where Whitney Houston’s character kind of declared that she loved Kevin Costner. He’s a country music fan. He said to her you know I know this song that Dolly Parton wrote like 20 years ago. Could you reuse it and she liked it. Whitney Houston said yeah and they went to Dolly Parton because they have to get rights to it because she wrote the song and they were like you know Dolly once Whitney sings this, this will be in history Whitney Houston’s song and Dolly, being a very smart businesswoman, said yes but the writer gets all royalties for the song and I am perfectly happy for Whitney to own the performance. So it was a pretty brilliant move on her part and I’m sure that you’ve all heard that song as a Whitney Houston song. So that came out of The Bodyguard. They were thinking about getting Denzel to be the actor slash rockstar slash whatever they would need him to be in this version or they were thinking about Eddie Murphy. Sadly Whitney Houston died so this version was never able to be made and I think that’s a big loss because if we’re gonna remake a movie you know let’s do new and different things and she would have been brilliant. It would have been great. It didn’t happen.

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05 The Missing Women Part 2 From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

However, those two ladies were so important to the creation of Rose Marie — this character on the beloved Dick Van Dyke Show. This is one of the most important characters really in television history and many many female tv writers today will tell you that they knew this job was possible because they saw her do it on the fictional Dick Van Dyke Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show was a fictionalization of the staff writing for Sid Caesar right? Carl Reiner’s character is meant to be a personification of that. So these are the typical gentlemen who worked for him and she is a representation of Lucille and Selma Diamond sort of wrapped together. A woman who never got married right? Couldn’t find a guy. This is a very stereotypical vision of a career gal as they would say back in the day but she inspired many many women all the way up through Tina Fey and I think it’s always important to think about the power of television. One of my favorite stories has nothing to do with tv writers but to do with a Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who says she learned that she could be a lawyer someday by watching Perry Mason as a child. She learned that lawyers existed and that it was a job that required college and so she did well in school so that she could move forward and look she’s on the Supreme Court today. So television has a lot of power and the visuals women see on television are very very important to the ideas. You have to see it so that you can be it right? So Rose Marie stands for a lot of things — a representation of the women who truly did come before her and an inspiration to the women who came after.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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19 Up Close and Personal from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

Just briefly I wanted to cover the fact that so 20 years later, Joan and John are going to write “Up Close and Personal.” It’s about an ambitious female news reporter, her seasoned older male news reporter, who’s at his peak but he’s Robert Redford so he’s not failing but he’s about to fail. He’s hit the best of his career. They fall in love. They fight. Spoiler — he dies not over trying to help her but like his world is over and it’s time for him to go and then she goes on with that. It’s the same freaking basis but I wouldn’t say that it’s a remake of A Star is Born right? There’s not enough in there that makes it the same.

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