A Woman Wrote That – 9 in a series – Klondike Annie by Mae West (1936)

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 9 in a series - Klondike Annie by Mae West (1936)

ROSE “THE FRISCO DOLL”

When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.

Where’s Her Movie? Civil Rights Activist, Elizabeth Peratrovich – 5 in a series

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film.  This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history.  — Rosanne

Where's Her Movie? Civil Rights Activist, Elizabeth Peratrovich - 5 in a series

By Source, Fair use, Link

from Wikipedia…

Elizabeth Peratrovich (née Elizabeth Jean Wanamaker, Tlingit name: Kaaxgal.aat; July 4, 1911 – December 1, 1958)[1] was an American civil rights activist, Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood,[2] and member of the Tlingit nation who worked for equality on behalf of Alaska Natives.[3] In the 1940s, her advocacy was credited as being instrumental in the passing of Alaska’s Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, the first state or territorial anti-discrimination law enacted in the United States.

In 1988, the Alaska Legislature established February 16 as Elizabeth Peratrovich Day “for her courageous, unceasing efforts to eliminate discrimination and bring about equal rights in Alaska”.[2][4] In March 2019, her obituary was added to The New York Times as part of their “Overlooked No More” series,[5] and in 2020, the United States Mint released a $1 gold coin inscribed with Elizabeth’s likeness in honor of her historic achievements.[6] The Peratrovich family papers, including correspondence, personal papers, and news clippings related to the civil-rights work done by Elizabeth and her husband, are currently held at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.[7]

The Civil War On Film – 12 in a series – Reformer Jane Addams condemned the film as ahistorical and prejudiced…

The Civil War On Film - 12  in a series - Reformer Jane Addams condemned the film as ahistorical and prejudiced...

Though the NAACP had little success banning the film, in part because film boards were all white and in part because the film was a monster success, they did prompt a national discussion about the film’s racism. Reformer Jane Addams condemned the film as ahistorical and prejudiced, while President Woodrow Wilson, himself an ex-historian (if such a creature can be said to exist), believed the film “terribly true.”

Movies profiled in this book:

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Giving credit where credit is due: Frances Goodrich Hackett and Albert Hackett and The Thin Man by Dr. Rosanne Welch

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


Giving credit where credit is due: Frances Goodrich Hackett and Albert Hackett and The Thin Man by Dr. Rosanne Welch

This article addresses the long-lived literary and popular culture assumption that the beloved characters of Nick and Nora Charles in the MGM film The Thin Man (1934) were representations of the relationship between novelist Dashiell Hammett and his lover, playwright Lillian Hellman. However, in a comparison of the screenplay to the novel, the screenplay’s specific dialogue and plot changes incorporated by married screenwriters Frances Goodrich Hackett and Albert Hackett can lead to a different conclusion. I will explore the Nick and Nora marriage that has served for so many years as a benchmark in romantic comedy relationships and propose that, in fact, this relationship was based largely on the marriage shared by the Hackett’s. The results of my exploration suggests credit to the screenwriting couple and serves as evidence that some screenplay adaptations often prove more enduring than their original source material.


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!

42 Sharing Culture Internationally from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (50 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

42 Sharing Culture Internationally from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (50 seconds)

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Transcript:

When I was in Italy last visiting my cousin he has a little daughter named Carlotta which is Charlotte in English and he had never heard of Charlotte’s Web as neither the book nor the movie. So we bought a copy to show his daughter when she gets a little older and it was so beautiful to see the title of this book that I had always known in another language and then to know that they would share that story together with her and now we have this connection across the ocean that her — their child and my son knew the same story right? So it’s the culture. It’s the stories that teach our culture. This is a program from Canada that airs in the United States because of Netflix and I always have to say, people think Canada and the United States are the same place but we’re not. The Canadians have an entirely different culture which is often so much nicer than ours. So much more peaceful.

Watch this entire presentation

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

A Woman Wrote That – 8 in a series – Something’s Gotta Give by Nancy Meyers (2003)

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 8 in a series - Something's Gotta Give by Nancy Meyers (2003)

ERICA

The truth doesn’t have ‘versions’.

The Civil War On Film – 11 in a series – “This national enthusiasm for the Lost Cause…”

This national enthusiasm for the Lost Cause

Lost Cause ideology, in its many iterations, maintained its grip on American movies for nearly eighty years, from Birth of a Nation (1915) to Gettysburg (1993). This national enthusiasm for the Lost Cause suggests white Americans, regardless of their regional roots, enjoy and believe the narrative.

Movies profiled in this book:

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Frances Marion: Censorship and the Screenwriter in Hollywood, 1929-1931 by Leslie Kreiner Wilson

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


Frances Marion: Censorship and the Screenwriter in Hollywood, 1929-1931 by Leslie Kreiner Wilson

The careful study of the screenplay – including archival study – can clarify our view of film history. While some film historians argue studios and studio bosses disregarded censors in the early 1930s before the Production Code Administration (PCA) was formed, archival research reveals screenwriter Frances Marion faced escalating censorship pressure at MGM in 1929 and 1930 as she moved through several drafts for Anna Christie (1930), The Big House (1930) and The Secret Six (1931). This research provides insight into the nature of the problems Marion faced and exposes the day-to-day frustrations and complications in the life of one screenwriter struggling to create art within a convoluted matrix of censorship negotiations as the Production Code was being drafted and ratified.


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!

A Woman Wrote That – 7 in a series – Love & Basketball by Gina Prince-Bythewood

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 7 in a series - Love & Basketball by Gina Prince-Bythewood

MONICA

When you’re a kid, you see the life you want, and it never crosses your mind that it’s not gonna turn out that way.

Announcing the Journal of Screenwriting Special Issue: Women in Screenwriting with Editors, Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Rose Ferrell

I’m happy to announce the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Screenwriting focused on “Women in Screenwriting” that I co-edited with my SRN colleague Rose Ferrell, lecturer at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, at Edith Cowan University. 

While focusing on females was our first mandate, our second mandate was to be as international as possible.  This issue, then, includes articles about women in screenwriting covering five continents including countries such as Japan, China, Syria, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Zimbabwe and Canada. — Rosanne

Announcing the Journal of Screenwriting Special Issue: Women in Screenwriting with Editors, Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr.  Rose Ferrell

 

Contents
Volume (11): Issue (3)
Cover date: 2020

  • Editorial introduction by Rose Ferrell, Rosanne Welch
  • Tang Cheng: The first female animation screenwriter and director in the People’s Republic of China by Shaopeng Chen
  • Scouting for scripts: Mizuki Yōko and social issue film in post-war Japan by Lauri Kitsnik
  • Who is the author of Neria (1992) – and is it a Zimbabwean masterpiece or a neo-colonial enterprise? by Agnieszka Piotrowska
  • The Hakawati’s Daughter: How the Syrian revolution inspired a rewrite by Rana Kazkaz
  • The silent women: The representation of Israeli female soldiers in Israeli women’s films by Mira Moshe, Matan Aharoni
  • How the scripts of Latin American screenwriters Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), Anna Muylaert (Brazil) and Claudia Llosa (Peru) have made a mark on the world stage by Margaret McVeigh, Clarissa Mazon Miranda
  • ‘Polite, no chill’ for the win: How Emily Andras engaged fans and overcame problematic tropes in Wynonna Earp by Tanya N. Cook
  • Battle of the sketches: Short form and feminism in the comedy mode by Stayci Taylor
  • Anita Loos Rediscovered: Film Treatments and Fiction, Cari Beauchamp and Mary Anita Loos (eds) (2003) by Cierra Winkler
  • Modern Film Dramaturgy: An Introduction, Kristen Stutterheim (2019) by Andrew Wickwire
  • Nobody’s Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood, J. E. Smyth (2018) by Toni Anita Hull
  • How to Write for Moving Pictures: A Manual of Instruction and Information, Marguerite Bertsch (1917) by Diane Barley

Read article abstracts


Journal of screenwriting 94737 800x600

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!