history – Page 12 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

09 More On Women Writing Westerns For TV from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

…but so these women have moved into tv they start doing these other sorts of westerns and then of course Leigh Brackett moves back into movies when she writes “The Empire Strikes Back” but also think about the era of tv as it expands and grows they’re done telling the same repetitive stories. So then we’re going to get Beth Sullivan and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”, right which takes the West from that female perspective and is based in real life on a couple of women who couldn’t be doctors in the East, right, but it’s still Western. We got horses. We got cute guys and you know outlaw outfits. It’s a western. It’s just a female experience. So they see much more opportunity there and then slowly maybe they’re appealing back in the movies when it comes to westerns but not as much as we’d like.

The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting is building a relationship with the Autry Museum of the American West since both organizations are devoted to bringing out more diverse and untold stories. Last year we were able to take our cohort of graduating MFA candidates to the museum’s theatre for a showing of Michael Wilson’s Salt of the Earth and we had plans to present a film of our choice this year – but of course the pandemic changed all that. Instead, Autry Curator Josh Garrett-Davis asked me if I would sit for an interview about female screenwriters in the western genre and so “When Women Wrote Westerns” came to be a part of their “What Is a Western? Interview Series”.

I had a great time discussing so many wonderful women writers – from Jeanne MacPherson to D.C. Fontana to Edna Ferber to Emily Andras. If you love westerns I suggest you watch Josh’s other interviews covering everything from the work of Native Americans in Western movies to films in the western-horror hybrid. —

What this entire presentation

As part of a series exploring the significance of the Western genre and the ways in which the movies shape our understanding of the American West, Autry Curator Josh Garrett-Davis interviews Professor Rosanne Welch about the women screenwriters of Hollywood and their contributions to the Western genre.

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Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget

On Saturday, August 6th I had the pleasure of giving an Introductory lecture on Adaptation before a screening of the movie Gidget. Written by Gabriele Upton the film was based on the novel by screenwriter Frederick Kohner which was itself based on the diaries of his daughter, Kathy Kohner, about the summer she learned to surf.

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

I focused on the fact that the book is a love story between a young woman and a sport – surfing – whereas the movie became a more generic love story about a girl and a college boy. While it has been enjoyed over the years its saccharine take has kept readers from discovering the real excitement and joy of independence Kathy (nicknamed Gidget) found that summer in Malibu. She made a series of important decisions about her life and proved herself among a group of seasoned male athletes simply by working hard at being good enough to surf alongside them. I ended by illustrating how the TV series (written by Ruth Brooks Flippen and starring Sally Field in her first big role) managed to capture the truth of the novel better than the 3 films made from it – which oddly starred 3 different women in the lead role but the same male lead – as if the films belong to Moondoggie but the TV show belonged once again to Kathy.

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

I had the great treat of bringing my 2 MFA cohorts to the Autry Museum for the event so they could check out the museum before the show. Then we all had the great treat of being joined by the real Kathy Kohner Zuckerman herself along with a group of young female surfers who wanted to watch the movie and meet an idol. Thanks to Ben Fitzsimmons for inviting us all to create this event together. And remember whenever you see a film based on a book that reading the book will make for an even richer experience of the story.

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

27 TV Helps People See The Future from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.

It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!

Transcript:

In the same way, we could do a whole episode on you know Star Trek and Lieutenant Uhura that’s why Mae Jemison is the first African-American astronaut because she saw Lieutenant Uhura when she was a kid. She’s like oh look a black woman could be involved in space and Tada she’s the first astronaut. So just amazing the power of Television even more than films because TV comes into your house. Really I think an important thing.

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18 The Beginning of Bingability from Why Torchwood Still Matters (2021) with Dr. Rosanne Welch , San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I recently presented a talk on Torchwood (Why Torchwood Still Matters) where I highlighted a few ways in which the show (airing from 2006 to 2011) came up with progressive and innovative ideas that are being used by other franchises today.

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

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Transcript:

They were early in the concept of bingeable television right – the idea of doing five episodes, five nights in a row. Bang bang we’re done. That’s a season? Nobody was doing that. I will say nobody – we actually did do that in America in 1977. Eight nights in a row but sadly that’s because they produced Roots and then the network got cold feet and went “Oh my god. No one’s gonna watch this. What are we gonna do?” So they dumped it into one week hoping that one week would be the bad ratings and it wouldn’t hurt the whole season and it turned out to be the highest rating thing in like the last 15 years and went on and on for many years after that to be the highest rated mini-series ever. So we had done it but nobody had done it since then right and it was not a big thing in England and then suddenly we have “Children of Earth” and for me was very bingeable before Netflix and bingeability existed. I remember starting it at like you know maybe eight or nine o’clock at night. We’re like we’ll just watch a couple and then we’ll watch the rest tomorrow and then you got to like the end of the second one you’re like oh we gotta watch one more one more and then it’s two in the morning and you’re done and you’re crying because it was so terrible and so sad.

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08 Women Writing Westerns For TV from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

…and tv is a place where a lot of these women move because they get we’re doing westerns on TV. We start to do a few less westerns – even in the film world as science fiction and stuff takes over – and the women move into television and they’re doing episodes of “Bonanza” and “Wagon Train” and “High Chaparral.” Again, you have the David Dortort” papers there which are so interesting to read because “High Chaparral” is a really cool show when it comes to a female who owned the ranch and then she married – she’s an indigenous woman – she marries a white guy then he co-powers it with her. Really fascinating story. So the women start writing those kinds of things and eventually in the TV realm they move into places where I always rank D.C. Fontana because here’s a woman who wrote westerns on TV and then she got involved in “Star Trek” which as you know was sold as “Wagon Train” to the stars. So she’s just writing westerns with guys in you know tight suits and really the sad thing about that is takes years for people to realize D.C. Fontana is a girl because one of the things that producers and publishers still ask women to do when they’re writing male-focused stories is to use their initials because they don’t think boys or men will read or watch something by Dorothy Christine (actually, Catherine) Fontana I can’t remember Christine’s her middle name. I don’t remember but same thing is and you think we’re done with that except my kid grew up. He’s 22. He’s the generation that read “Harry Potter” by J.K. Rowling. I mean come on. Could we just not use women’s name right? I grew up reading “The Outsiders” by S.E Hinton. It’s ridiculous, right?

What this entire presentation

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17 We Stand On The Shoulders…from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Nearly two years ago I had the pleasure of being invited to join a panel at the then upcoming SCMS (Society of Cinema and Media Studies) conference set for Seattle. As you know that was canceled due to Covid with the hopes of reconvening in Colorado in 2021. That became a virtual conference but our group decided to reapply our panel and we four were able to ‘meet’ on Zoom on Sunday and present: Writing Between the Lines: Feminist Strategies for Historical Absences, Cliché, and the Unreliable Narrator.

Here you can watch a clip from my part of the presentation,

“When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”

Transcript:

I think that we stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us and it’s our job to make sure they are not forgotten. So, we have to be the people who do our own research and don’t trust all of those narrators that we study when we go through our research and – I do love and archive so I don’t want people to think I don’t – but there you go. That’s me. That’s my book. That’s what I want to talk about and I hope that you remember those names and if you haven’t heard of them before and you feel like looking them up and learning more about them, because women did run Hollywood for a long time.

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26 The Companions and History from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

So to think about what’s a piece that even in the UK they need to remember their own history and always not the good parts right and the choices that were made. So what a perfect way to use Yaz and what a cool thing you want to see your grandmother’s wedding and then Oh gee it’s a wedding. It’s a wedding for Rose and these are places you shouldn’t haven’t been. So I think that’s a lovely bit and of course, I’m tracing that all the way back to the Original “Star Trek” which is the ultimate sci-fi on tv right, and this beautiful episode – which if you don’t know what you need to know – but won several science fiction awards back in the day by Harlan Ellison “The City on the Edge of Forever” right. Which is where Kirk falls in love with a woman and when they before – Joan Collins, exactly, before “Dynasty” – and then learns – spoiler alert – that she is she’s pushing for peace before World War II and if she succeeds Hitler will have time to rise and he will, in fact, take over the world. So she has to die and you’re like No No No No No, he’s never fallen in love – yeah it’s great. Very funny. Very funny and just the other day right William Shatner is now going to go up to space at the age of 90. Like wow. Amazing how TV affects things. Really it’s William Shatner. He’s just an actor from Canada but he’s Captain Kirk right?

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17 Spoilers…or not from Why Torchwood Still Matters (2021) with Dr. Rosanne Welch , San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

Rosanne: In terms of – I think again innovation – I think this was – I’ve not seen this in American show, right? This is not a thing. So I think it’s very cool that they got away with it twice and they get away with it because of being creative with their publicity and that the – I mean the UK is not that small but smaller than here – and the idea that they could go to the newspapers and say “Do us a favor don’t – you’re going to figure it out from the call sheets. You’re going to know these people don’t exist after a couple of episodes but let us do this. Let us have this surprise.” So both shows were put out with the extra character as if they’re a regular. This is the cast of this new show and you’re looking at it going well that makes perfect sense and even – especially the picture with The Doctor it’s like Oh you want to have the two flanking each side. It looks balanced. It looks perfect right and but they’re not. So they literally worked with the journalists and the people that they had to deal with which I think is cool. We don’t necessarily do that here. It’s all about breaking news. I just found out this character’s dying next week. Thank you for ruining it for everybody.

Audience: I don’t want spoilers.

Rosanne: Exactly. Exactly. I want a little book where they’re hidden in. Don’t tell me.

Audience: I don’t watch the social media at all because they ruin it.

Rosanne: Yeah. They totally do. I mean and I think that’s a problem. So it’s so interesting to me that the UK can sort of be tight enough that they’re all willing to get in on the act and I think they understand that’s what’s going to make the piece more popular. They want the piece to be more global and more people to pay attention. So this is a big deal. I can’t name an American show that got away with this right? So I think that’s pretty cool.

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07 Women Writing Westerns from What Is a Western? Interview Series: When Women Wrote Westerns from the Autry Museum of the American West [Video]

Transcript:

Host: You mention the Silent Era being this
really open, Wild West period of film writing.

If we sort of sketch a line across the 20th Century and now into the 21st Century how

did women’s opportunities kind of wax and
wane in different periods?

What new opportunities opened up?

What things were foreclosed?

How did those kind of trends go across the
history of film?

Rosanne: Wonderful.

Well.

first of all, of course, in the Silent Era
it was – everybody going at it and having

fun until there was too much money in it and
then the women segued out.

Again, they went into novels and literature
although a few people survived that period,

but they weren’t writing westerns.

right?

Except – as you all know from the Autry
Museum – Betty Burabge was writing Gene

Autry movies, right?

So there were some women.

Leigh Brackett – again who is coming in
handy when we’re talking about “Star Wars”

was a western novelist and write western serialization
and things.

So we have some women but it becomes a dude
thing, right, and then this is a problem for

writers all the time.

You get pigeonholed just like actors do.

Oh you did that one movie and your brilliant
at it?

We want you to do fourteen on the same movie.

It’s very few people who get to be William Goldman and do a variety of different things. You have to really reach that peak. So women – it wanes in movies. Although B Serial have a little more opportunity for them and then, yes, TV is invented.

What this entire presentation

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Powers Cameragraph projector, c. 1904-06, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram [Photography]

From Curator, Richard Adkins…

“This is a Powers Cameragraph projector, c. 1904-06. It is without its original housing, which would have been a metal box not unlike the Powers projector that is on display to the right of this mechanism. It comes from the estate of Richard Nederhauser, a projectionist who later was in charge of all technical updates for the Metropolitan Theatre chain.”

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