Though she wrote over 100 films in the Silent Era and was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, June Mathis appears in film history books (when she does) as a writer-producer with an eye for talent in that she gave both Buster Keaton and Rudolph Valentino their debuts on film.
She came to film from an early career as a child in vaudeville, despite suffering from undiagnosed heart issues. Born as June Hughes in 1887 in Leadville, Colorado there was no father listed and the child would later take Mathis, the last name of her stepfather, as her own.
Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
This is a practitioner’s case history of a particular, personal scripting process, in the context of Arts public funding of film in the United Kingdom, before the rise of the current screenwriting orthodoxy. The role of the script for an auteur writer-director is, here, seen more clearly as a personal tool for the development of the screen idea; format, for example, works creatively for the director rather than as a standardized part of the conventional memorandum for others it has become. Using the experience of scripting Brothers and Sisters (1981) I reflect on the interconnection between script and eventual film as a whole process, rather than as a separate set of skills, and conclude that the best way of achieving those representational goals in the screenplay context should remain open to continual experiment and debate by researchers and practitioners alike, and not be closed off for all time by absolutist formulas and set-in-stone formats.
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
You know, the difference between TV, obviously, and movies — movies you are going to tell me the most interesting 2 hours in someone’s life. What are the most crazy, interesting 2 hours and we’re done. Maybe there’ll be sequels, of course, blah, blah, blah — but, in general, that’s what you’re going for. In a TV show — especially a pilot — you need to give me enough fodder to understand that there are at least 20 hours — nowadays with streaming, 40 — used to be 100 — in order to get to syndication — but that there’s that much interesting embedded conflict among this group of people that I’m going to be constantly interested in watching them overcome whatever their problem might be. Whatever their issue might be. So, every show has what we would call an overarching dramatic question that is trying to be answered. It’s like — and it can be — it should be — the bigger it is, the more universal. So, for me, an easy example is Bones, right, which some people realize what was — she’s uber-smart and autistic and he’s uber-Catholic and, you know, goes for the emotion. Which, of course, is a flip to what we think gender-wise. It should be the dude being super-logical and the girl being super-emotional, but they flipped it so that’s interesting. But really it’s a show about science versus religion and the 2 characters represent those 2 points of view and there’s never going to be an answer to that question. Except if you accept that the answer is you need them both and that’s how they solve their crimes is the 2 of them together are better than each separately. So, you’re overarching question every week is being addressed. The individual question each week is simply who committed this murder. That’s always going to be solved but the overarching dramatic question can never be solved or your show’s over.
It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.
Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).
We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
Also has been said about her, her stories feature female characters trying to square exhilarating new choices with the enduring bold constraints of social expectation. The social expectation in A Star Is Born is that a man should be more successful than his wife. That is something that happened in any particular level of the society at the time. Also, her heroines are lovelorn and there are always suicidal alcoholics in so many of her pieces and this appears in other films she wrote without Alan. They did effect eventually split up and get divorced. So she wrote for Hitchcock. He specifically sought her out. He wanted a writer as famous as she and she got an Oscar nomination both for A Star Is Born and for Smash-Up, the story of a woman which was about a female alcoholic. So clearly these are all pieces of her little ingredient book that she threw together into A Star Is Born.
Watch this entire presentation
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.
Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
This article discusses the creative working processes of Eric Rohmer (1920–2010). It argues that his method, of working on film subjects for decades, and carefully preparing every aspect of his films, contrasts with a deliberately ‘amateur’ and improvisational approach, influenced to a certain extent by ethnographic film. Rohmer provides an unusual and fascinating case study, combining approaches to scriptwriting that are usually seen as diametrically opposed.
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
HOST: They do a really good job of holding the tension for you to keep watching on to the next episode and I think that’s really well done yeah so.
Rosanne: We used to think when streaming came along that wouldn’t be as important because the idea of leaving a show with a bit of a cliffhanger was so you’d wait a week and you’d remember to come back the next Thursday at nine o’clock or whatever that was and then we’re like oh streaming. You just binge right through it you don’t need it but of course, Netflix will say no no now we need what they’ll call the binge-ability factor. Oh yeah, we need you to see the thing that says next episode and click that right away. We want you to watch five in a row. That’s just as important as coming back next week and I think that’s really a funny — we thought there was a change there and it’s not necessary at all.
HOST: Yeah just because it’s on this platform where you can binge it doesn’t mean that people will automatically just go to the next episode if you don’t make it enticing for them to do so. I mean I’ve watched a lot. I’ve started a lot of shows on Netflix and I didn’t move on to the next episode like you didn’t
Rosanne: It didn’t catch you.
HOST: — I don’t see the reason.
It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.
Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).
We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
A screenplay is a text in transit and in constant tension between the written and the audio-visual dimensions, resulting in a process of a great potentiality. Such a phenomenon can be perceived in Pedro Almodóvar’s screenwriting, in which a distinct idea of style and creative process emerges. The screenwriting of objectivity and exteriority gives way to a generous, dynamic and expressive text. This study highlights how the screenplay can be shaped within a peculiar and poetic textuality, mixing technical references with insight and more abstract comments, i.e. presenting itself simultaneously as a perceptual and as a conceptual text. What if the effects resulting from the audio-visual metaphors of Almodóvar’s screenplay for Todo sobre mi madre/All about my Mother (1999) were ‘present’ only in the screenplay? What if such deviation from classical rules engenders an experimental space within screenwriting that eventually expands the very idea of ‘screenplay’ itself?
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
So that’s the writing credits but I will say that it was her voice that did it and this in fact is one of the quotes that makes me — gives me evidence for that. Somerset Maugham, a very, very famous writer in his own time. A novelist so much better than a movie writer. Much more literate and important and he recognized right away she had this gift for finding something to laugh at in the bitterest tragedies of the human animal and that is exactly what this story is — the bitterest tragedy of life that someone you love cannot deal with the fact that you are having more success or luck in life than they are and that is the saddest thing or one of the saddest experiences that they could imagine. So I think that’s important for us to keep in mind when we think about her voice and how it appears in this particular piece. I love her. As we said, her wittiness is there. She was talking about a time when the Motion Picture Academy was trying to create a union for writers and this is what she had to say about having them watch “…was like trying to get laid in your mother’s house. Somebody was always in the parlor watching.” They couldn’t trust them obviously. So this wit and this sadness I think very interestingly connects inside this story..
Watch this entire presentation
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.
Rosanne: The Murdoch Mysteries? The one about the cops…
Host: I think so yeah.
Rosanne: Canada’s got some interesting tv. Interesting business there too. It’s called Murdoch Mysteries. It’s on Netflix for a few seasons. It’s run for ten seasons. It’s about a constable. It is what they call their police in Canada in the turn of the century 1900. So you’re getting a period piece and his girlfriend, who becomes his wife later on, is the coroner because she was a rich woman who learned to be a doctor but nobody will trust you to be a doctor. So she basically cuts up cadavers and helps solve crimes and what they did beautifully is they’re very interesting little you know detective stories but they have a lovely cast of surrounding characters and eventually they married these two people and in the States if you marry characters the show’s over right? Bones they got married shows done. Castle they got married shows done. We don’t understand that the day after you get married like that’s when the story starts.
Host: Yeah there’s this trope that marriage and then that’s the end game. Like the end game was getting married but there’s nothing after that yet yeah.
Rosanne: Whereas they’ve been I think married for four or five seasons now and you know they’re perfectly interesting and fun and work together.
It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.
Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).
We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
Neo-Baroque scholars argue that, because television serials build their story arc on episodic rather than linear structure, they feature the paradigmatic over the syntagmatic axis of story development. This article will extend that argument, claiming that, unlike three-act structure, serial story structure layers character against generic tropes and, as a result, limits character development. It will propose two such strategies for this layering: the static, where the trope remains the same, and the fluid, where the character moves from one trope to the other in the course of the story. In The Sopranos, the example of static layering, even though Tony Soprano pulls against the trope of the gangster don, he always returns to it. By contrast, in Breaking Bad, the example of fluid layering, Walter White is allowed to move through a series of tropes, evolving as a character as he does. However, the evolution is limited by the theme-and-variations style, which ultimately requires that subsequent variations play off of, and recapitulate, the initial theme.
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
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