film – Page 66 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

30 More On Jane Espenson from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (58 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:

Likewise, she wrote many Buffy’s but one of the best is an episode called Earshot and Buffy’s all streaming for free on Facebook right now so you can watch. (Audience: I grew up watching that.) I Iove Buffy, I know. It’s really brilliantly written show. Earshot was a brilliant episode about Buffy who is the Vampire Slayer being cursed with the ability to hear what everyone is thinking — so mental telepathy and the problem is the cacophony in your head starts to make you crazy because if you can hear what everyone was thinking you couldn’t think your own thoughts and along the way — she’s in high school — she hears someone say “It doesn’t matter tomorrow by noon they’ll all be dead.” So now she knows she’s in a school with a shooter but who is it because she can’t pinpoint where the voice came from. So the whole episode is about trying to find the kid and of course, you trace the kid who looks the most bullied and seems to be the most stereotypically that kid. I’m not going to tell you you did it but — spoiler alert — it ain’t that kid right? So it’s really again excellently written episode using all the tropes of the era so Jane Espenson a pretty important writer.

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#MentorMonday 8 – Dawn Comer Jefferson – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Dawn Comer Jefferson is our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting #mentormonday spotlight this week!

Dawn is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning writer. On television, Comer Jefferson wrote on the CBS family drama Judging Amy, served as writer/consulting producer on MTV’s teen drama, South of Nowhere, freelanced on the CBS hit NCIS, and developed a drama pilot at NBC Universal Studios. She was nominated for an Emmy for writing the Fox-animated family film, Our Friend, Martin, and for the last nine years has written Emmy-winning arts programming for PBS, performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

As a non-fiction writer, Comer Jefferson has written about children, families and public policy issues for national print and online media including Garnet News, Working Mother, Fit Pregnancy Magazine and MomsRising, and her essays have been featured in the anthologies A Woman Alone (Seal Press) and Go Girl (Eighth Mountain Press). She adapted, produced and directed the eight-part NPR radio series adaptation of the biography Maggie’s American Dream, co-wrote the nonfiction book Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family, and the African American historical children’s fiction, The Promise.

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30 Lillian Hellman from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (55 seconds)

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

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Transcript:

Another woman — we’re moving kind of through — now we’re moving to the 40s and 50s — Lillian Hellman. More people know of her because she was a playwright. They know about her winning some Tony’s and then her stuff was transferred to film. The Children’s Hour was almost a Pulitzer Prize winner but it’s the story of two lesbian women who run a girl’s school and one is accused of lesbianism and the Pulitzer Prize committee actually came out and said “we’re not giving an award to a movie that discusses that” — Oh to a play, excuse me. So it was won that year by Zoe Akins for a play that has been falling out of — nobody cares about anymore — et people are still performing The Little Foxes and you can still of course watch the Bette Davis version, which is quite brilliant. So Lillian Hellman is a pretty amazing woman. She’s also famous to us because during the Blacklist there was a threat of blacklisting her and when she was asked to give names to the committee in Washington that’s what she said — which could have destroyed her career.

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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† Available from the LA Public Library

DTLA Film Festival panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting via Instagram

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DTLA Film Festival panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting.

The importance of having material on the internet that helps tell people what you do and how well you do it came to my attention again last month.

I received an email invitation to moderate a panel at the Downtown LA Film Festival (DTLA) (https://www.dtlaff.com/) on the subject of “Implicit Bias” and how screenwriters can keep their scripts clear of their own and society’s implicit bias. Happily, I was able to invite one of our favorite Stephens mentors – Maria Escobeda – to be a panelist so we gave them a double-dose of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting magic.

DTLA Film Festival panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting via Instagram

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DTLA Film Festival panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives: ‘Movie Plots Pushed into Prose’: The Extra Girl, Will Hays, and the Novel of Silent Hollywood by Justin Gautreau

Months of research when 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.

Read ‘Movie Plots Pushed into Prose’: The Extra Girl, Will Hays, and the Novel of Silent Hollywood by Justin Gautreau

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* 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

DTLA Film Festival after our panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting. via Instagram

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DTLA Film Festival after our panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting.

Video of this panel coming soon

After our DTLA Film Festival panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting. via Instagram

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After our DTLA Film Festival panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting.

Video of this panel coming soon

26 Dorothy Parker and A Star Is Born from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (55 seconds)

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

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Transcript:

Dorothy and her husband Alan Campbell wrote A Star Is Born which if you know obviously the story is about a marriage where the woman is far more famous than the man. His career is going while hers is rising. That’s Dorothy Parker and her husband’s story. That’s exactly the emotion she was experiencing. She just put it on an actor and actress. It became such a classic it was remade in the 50s with Julia my brain just went dead. Thank you. Judy Garland. I was saying Julianne and that was wrong. Judy Garland. Thank you and it was written this was adapted by Moss Hart who’s a famous name from Broadway. He wrote it himself however he credited several scenes from the original movie he’d just cut and pasted them out of the first script and put them in his and admitted that when he was doing it. So whenever he got notes from the studio that they wanted to change something he would say “No no no. That’s how Parker had it the first time. It’s good enough. We’re not fixing it.” So essentially it’s Moss Hart and Dorothy Parker together right?

Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* 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

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After the DTLA Film Festival Panel via Instagram

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After the DTLA Film Festival Panel

Moderating panels at local film festivals is a good way to highlight the great work of mentors like Maria Escobedo and to meet new possible mentors for MFA program like Peruvian filmmaker Donna Bonilla Wheeler. Here we are chatting after a panel on how Writers Can avoid implicit bias in their work at the DTLA film Festival in Los Angeles.