Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —
“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”
I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!
Transcript:
The idea of a haunted house and what we do with haunted houses led us to probably the most famous horror house – changed house — book then film series – The Amityville Horror. Written by a guy so right I’m not doing guys today too much however it’s kind of interesting to say that the dude’s book was proven to be an entire fake. He gave a story about a family that had actually lived in this house and what had happened and then eventually the family came forward and said “Yeah, we just did that for the money. None of that really happened. We made it all up.” So it kind of undermined the whole concept.
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
Marion Wong was a Chinese-American woman who made films in the early era in San Francisco. You won’t see her in many books. These ladies were also writers in the early days and I think that we’ll find out more about them in the future because they were connected to other important United States people like President Ulysses S. Grant but no one’s done a lot of research on them. No one has found that of interest yet. It’s just becoming a new thing for us.
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
In Of With Their Heads! A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood, scenarist Frances Marion speaks of her attempts to secures writing job in Hollywood ma reputable salary, particularly of her encounter with Fox who couldn’t understand why she would want to write. “Listen, cuteness, don’t try to be a foolish somebody. Nobody cares nothing about female writer,” She kept pestering him until he offered her a job as a staff writer for $80 a week. She then went across town to William A. Brady’s office at World Film Company and pushed her way in at $200 a week stating in her autobiography, “it’s about time the writers got on the gravy train.. It was the teens, the early days of scenario writing in Hollywood. Anita Loos was a staff writer at Biograph where she was paid by the story, eventually earning $200 a piece. Gene Gunder was acting and writing scenarios for Kalem, then her own company, Gene Gauntier Feature Film Company, and eventually Universal. Jeanie Macpherson was beginning along and prolific partnership with director Cecil B. DeMille. Grace Cunard was taming out and acting in action-packed serials at Universal. Arid by the end of the decade, June Mathis, a regular scenarist at Metro, was chief of their script department. Women did not struggle to be a part of the growing industry of scenario writing in its early days, for women dominated the industry, and women like Marion, Loos, Mathis and Macpherson were among the most successful scenarists finale on female) in film history.’
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —
“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”
I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!
Transcript:
You probably know her more from the show that is currently on Netflix. However this show is not the book at all. It is based upon ideas in the book right? So Netflix is pretty smart. It’s based on the idea that a family grew up in this house and now as adults what’s wrong with their lives that they trace back to these moments in their childhood. So it’s a little bit like a haunted This Is Us, basically, but again with Stephen King, he really believes that the show is quite good and that she would like it and that’s a high praise from him because he thinks she is the greatest science fiction excuse-me horror writer in the United States. So I think it’s pretty cool that you can sample that and then go back and read the book and see where they got the ideas from. Imagine just taking that book and going “How do I do this differently right?” for TV. So Shirley Jackson, a very very big name.
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
Even books like this book, Without Lying Down is written about famous women in early Hollywood but she doesn’t write about the people of color who worked in early Hollywood. She was very focused on reviving the names of women and I appreciate that but in doing that she forgot this gentleman. Oscar Micheaux was a famous African-American — that’s the phrase we use in the United States — filmmaker and he wrote many films some of which you can find on youtube today in answer to the stereotypes he saw being portrayed in the early days of film. He was trying to put out a different story right? So he’s not written about in very many books because people aren’t thinking about anyone but the very mainstream writers they’ve heard of.
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
“At eighteen I must have been regarded as a woman, writes the author in this colorful memoir, for I was one of the first women reporters, maybe as an all-around police beat, sports, sin and society reporter the first in the world.” “Although she chose what was considered a man’s career, she never forgot that she was a woman, and in her recollections, she also finds time to discuss her youghful flirtations, her bittersweet marriage to Ike St. Johns, a profound love affair, her difficulties with being simultaneously a wife, mother and coreer woman, as well as more serious personal problems. The result is a blockbuster of a story which catches the reader up in its drama and excitement and involves him in a personal confrontation with the events.” — Amazon
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —
“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”
I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!
Transcript:
Some of you probably know her more from this short story that is also often read in high schools, The Lottery, which has to do with a town where once a year we choose one person who everybody else in town can stone to death and then we get all our aggressions out and we’re -peaceful the rest of the year and if you think about that coming from the brain of a housewife who’s been hanging around little kids all day and what was she saying about “I just want one day when I can take out all these aggressions and then I’ll be fine. I promise you,” but, of course, the issue is it’s a random — it’s a lottery when that name is pulled and this particular year it’s the mother in a family and how does the family react when it’s their mother that is going to be stoned to death this year. So, a really interesting brain going on with this woman. You might have heard of her before. This is her best-known novel and her best critic novel, “We’ve always lived in the castle.” Again, having to do with the family and people coming together and being horrified together. I think it’s very cool. I like that she says, “I delight in what I fear.” That’s not usually what I delight in but ok, whatever.
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
Likewise this young woman — and these are all from early Hollywood, because they come out of this book, so they’re in my brain right now — Sarah Mason married this gentleman, Victor Herrmann. Before she married him she’d written 15 films. Together they wrote three or four and they won an Oscar for adapting a book called Little Women and then he became a director. He directed for another thirty years. He never wrote another film. She wrote 35 more films. He outlived his wife and when he went to give his oral history, he talked about how he trained her to write and how if it wasn’t for him she wouldn’t have had a career. That is how she is remembered in history because her own husband was her unreliable narrator. So I really have to think about interviews when we use them as the only piece of research.
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
Garson Kanin, who broke into show business as a saxophone-playing high school dropout and went on to write ”Born Yesterday,” direct ”The Diary of Anne Frank” and become the co-writer of two classic Tracy-Hepburn movies, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.
He died after a lengthy illness, according to a spokeswoman for the family. His wife, the actress Marian Seldes, whom he married in 1990, was with him.
In a life filled with work — ”I become physically ill if I don’t work for three days,” he once said — Mr. Kanin wrote or directed 32 plays, acted in 8, worked on 29 films and wrote more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of short stories and articles that were translated into numerous languages.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —
“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”
I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!
Transcript:
I’m jumping ahead to the woman we consider the mother of all haunted house stories and someone we actually teach in this class that we do here, which is Demons, The Undead and the Monstrous Other and we talk about horror. So Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson was actually said by Stephen King to be the best horror writer in American history and hello Stephen King is not exactly a nobody when we talk about that world and so The Haunting of Hill House was her major book. She’s a really interesting woman. She was a housewife which doesn’t sound like woo a housewife and she wrote horror while she was taking care of her kids. She had a little deal with alcoholism so that was a problem.
![11 Marion E. Wong & Jennie Louise Toussaint from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (27 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/rmw-sao-paolo-11.jpeg)
![12 The Haunting of Hill House from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (50 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/rmw-cpp-horror-12.jpeg)
![10 Oscar Micheaux from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (43 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/rmw-sao-paolo-10.jpeg)
![11 More On Shirley Jackson from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/rmw-cpp-horror-11.jpeg)
![09 Susan Y. Mason from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (47 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/rmw-sao-paolo-09.jpeg)
![10 Shirley Jackson from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/rmw-cpp-horror-10.jpeg)