film – Page 65 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 09: “Eve Unsell in New York.” Film Daily 6 August 1936

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.

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 09: “Eve Unsell in New York.” Film Daily 6 August 1936

Read “Eve Unsell in New York.” Film Daily 6 August 1936

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At The Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting and TV Winter Workshop via Instagram

At The Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting and TV Winter Workshop

Guest Speaker, Pavel Jech, myself, and the entire MFA class of 2020 in the Chaplin Screening Room at the Jim Henson Studios — where we host the workshops twice each year.

Visit Stephens.edu/mfa for more information.

Follow @StephensMFA on Instagram

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

33 Princess Leia from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (56 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne

Transcript:

Now of course, post Star Trek, the next big star science fiction thing that’s going to happen is Star Wars. We all know that and so it’s interesting because now sometimes people go oh Princess Leia sort of sat there and waited to be rescued. Ehhh… it was a big deal back in the day that she fought her way out right? She grabbed the blaster and they jumped in the garbage chute and all those things. She was considered a much more active princess. She’s not as active as we want people to be today but she’s like a bridge between where they didn’t do anything and where they do everything but I think it’s an important thing to pay attention to. She writes a lot about that in her last book before Carrie Fisher died, The Princess Diarist. She writes about the experience of filming that. What I don’t like is that we sort of when you look up pictures of Princess Leia and you think power it’s because she’s always got that blaster in her hand. So we’re still equating power with the male concept of a weapon as opposed to the interior power that you bring.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: More therapy with Dr Melfi (the character who guides viewer engagement with Tony Soprano): Relationship arcs in serial antihero narratives by Fernando Canet

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

More therapy with Dr Melfi (the character who guides viewer engagement with Tony Soprano): Relationship arcs in serial antihero narratives by Fernando Canet

Antihero narratives constitute a common thread in the current boom of TV fiction. The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) could be considered an early example of this tendency. The antihero is a complex character who demands equally complex responses from viewers. The title of this article is an allusion to Rob White’s article, ‘No more therapy’, in which White explores Dr Jennifer Melfi’s role as a narrative mechanism used to undermine viewer sympathy for Tony Soprano at the end of the series. Here I seek to explore this role further since Dr Melfi’s responses to Tony’s actions serve as a narrative strategy used by The Sopranos writers to guide viewer responses in their relationship with Tony Soprano, a pioneer example of the antihero figure. In doing so, it is my purpose to demonstrate the relevance in antihero TV series of the evolution not only of the antihero themselves but also of their relationship with other major characters over the course of the series. I call this evolution, through which the creators develop the transformational arcs of the two characters concerned: the ‘relationship arc’.

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!

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK

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35 Harriet Frank, Jr. from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

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Transcript:

Moving through into the 50s, we come up with Harriet Frank Jr. — a woman going by Jr. because her mother was Harriet Frank and her mother was a reader at one of the studios which is how she got into the business of writing. She married Irving Ravetch and together they made several important films. To me, most important is Norma Rae. Again a very female based film which really falls into Harriet’s world and also Stanley and Iris and Murphy’s Romance are very female-focused stories. Harriet was a really strong woman — very involved in the Union which makes sense when you think about Norma Rae right? So again names people don’t really know because these are considered Martin Ritt films because he directed all four of them, because he was best friends with Frank and Ravetch. So they liked to hire directors they knew who wouldn’t muck up their work and I believe in those collaborations. I don’t — like I’m dissing directors. I don’t mean to. I like directors but there it’s an even collaboration and I think that’s what academia has to start referencing more than we do because that’s how writers get lost and if male writers are getting lost you know female writers getting even more lost right? So we need to keep thinking about it’s a — it’s a collaboration.

Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 08: Marion Fairfax: “Algerian Village Erected for Desert Healer.” Motion Picture News. Motion Picture News, 15 March 1926

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 08: Marion Fairfax: “Algerian Village Erected for Desert Healer.” Motion Picture News. Motion Picture News, 15 March 1926

Algerian Village Erected for
“Desert Healer”

Marion Fairfax Productions in collabora-
tion with Sam E. Rork have had erected a
complete Algerian village for the company
producing “The Desert Healer” under the di-
rection of Maurice Tourneur. The principals
in the cast include Lewis Stone, Barbara
Bedford, Tully Marshall, Katherine MacDon-
ald, Walter Pidgeon, Ann Rork, Arthur
Rankin and Albert Conti.

Read “Algerian Village Erected for Desert Healer.” Motion Picture News. Motion Picture News, 15 March 1926

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

32 Characters: Uhura, Guinan, Star Trek from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 16 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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Transcript:

Because of him talking to her at that event, she stayed on the show and as we know, she went through the movies– as an older woman, which is also a big deal an — older woman doing empowering things very cool. She influenced Whoopi Goldberg who at that point was an Academy award-winning actress. She did the TV show, The Next Generation, for the very same reason. She said I grew up watching Nichelle Nichols. I want to give that same message to children in the next generation. So she would guest frequently on Next Generation and while we’re busy thinking about people who got very very influenced, you may not know this lady? Anybody? She’s the first African American female astronaut. Her name is Mae Jemison, all right, so she’s an American woman who saw Star Trek as a kid and said I’m gonna get that job and she did which is pretty amazing. So much so that she guest-starred on the show to say thanks for what influence you gave me in my childhood and I want other young girls to see me in the future. That’s an amazing piece of powerful message coming from one character, right, one character being invented in a show. So it’s fascinating to me what we can learn from that.

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34 More On Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett – “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 10 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

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Transcript:

Directors are lovely people but when you talk about a movie to your friends rarely do you discuss camera angles. You discuss dialogue and that’s what the writer wrote.It should be the writer’s movie or nobodies. I have a big fight with publishers now. I refuse to do things like Spielberg’s Lincoln. No. Tony Kushner wrote Lincoln and he’s got a Pulitzer Prize. it’s either his movie or it’s just Lincoln. Let’s leave it at that all right? It does not belong to Steven Spielberg cuz he didn’t write any of it but these guys are wonderful. Their work was great. They were invited — they did Thin Man. They did It’s A Wonderful LIfe — they were invited to work on the play the Diary of Anne Frank. A couple other people were offered at first. This was at a time when everything was crazy after the war. There were some thoughts that maybe it was a fake diary right but these guys believed in i.t They met Otto Frank — Anne’s father — and worked with him and created the play which won them a Pulitzer Prize and then they adapted their own play into a film. So Francis and Albert Hackett — they were considered the most beloved couple in Hollywood. They were friends with Dorothy and Alan and all these other couples that work together and they were apparently the nicest people you could ever meet, right?

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31 Characters: Nyota Uhura, Star Trek from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 20 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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Transcript:

In terms of characters that we need to pay some attention to, if you don’t know the original Star Trek you should but you’ve seen some of these characters and memes all over the internet right? Nyota Uhura. It was a big deal. They’re putting an African-American woman in the future. Now there was some chit chat about the sexism going on because she was just answering the phone. She’s running the radio on the ship but she’s still on the ship on the main place and she often was involved in stories, but what’s really important about her character and why these two are connected in these pictures is that after the first season on the show, she was kind of like “I’m just answering the damn phone like I don’t really feel like I’m empowered very much I don’t really want to do this show anymore” and she was a big band singer, she could go back out on the road , sing, tour America, make money. I don’t need to do this cheesy science fiction show and then she met him at some event– I forget — some fundraising event and she said she kind of apologized for kind of how stupid her role was in the show and told him she was quitting so she’s proud of I want you to know I’m not gonna do this anymore and he was like “Oh no no no no. You have to stay. You are the only African-American who is seen in the future. You do not understand the power of little children looking up and saying okay we survive. She made it. I’ll make it. This is a big, big deal.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 07: “Frederica Sagor Maas, Hollywood’s ‘Shocking Miss Pilgrim'” The Forward.

Read From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 07: “Frederica Sagor Maas, Hollywood’s ‘Shocking Miss Pilgrim'” The Forward.

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

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* 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!
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