history – Page 36 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

11 Even More On Beverly Hills 90210 from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

So those characters became three-dimensional human beings for the five years he ran the show and then he left and a couple of people who mostly worked in — more that’s the word I want — more soap opera kind of things and I like soap operas. I don’t think they’re bad but they’re a different style and they turn the show into who is having sex with who each week but it stayed in the air for another three or four years because of the foundation, the love, for those original characters that the audience had. They just kept wanting to watch them even if the stories got less and less interesting and that’s the power of what he put together in those first two years. So truly believing and caring about those characters — which meant he truly believed and cared about the writing — the stories had to be real and I think that showed. That’s why I mean come on why do you guys still know what Beverly Hills 90210 is? You weren’t around in the 90s right but it’s been around and rerun. There’s a lot of other teenage shows but that one sticks right? There’s a reason for that.

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.

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03 Transcendentalism and the 1960s from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.

Then I found Tammy Rose’s podcast on the Transcendentalists – Concord Days – and was delighted when she asked me to guest for a discussion of Fuller’s work in Italy as both a journalist – and a nurse. — Rosanne

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: When I used to teach a straight history class I would often compare this era of the transcendentalists and all the utopian societies to the 1960s because we have that same urge going on to make the world a better place and I love that and most people — we know about the 60s. We’ve seen it in movies and stuff but they really don’t know that that urge happened so much earlier and that women were part of it.

Tammy: Exactly. Well, and the women were part of it kind of whether they wanted to be or not because these utopian societies were maybe designed by men. You know Bronson was kind of like, all right this is how I want to run the school. I want to be open and honest with the kids and even Elizabeth Peabody you know she wrote a book called the history of that school and in it she’s like we told the children the right answers to all the questions that they had including when they asked about sex. You know we told them honestly.

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24 Conclusion from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

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When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

Transcript:

…and then there were many many stories in this one particularly, very quickly, there were people in the room who wanted to shoot down your ideas. Again reading the room and I had an idea about dealing with teenage young men who were fathers and lived in gangs and they had to make a commitment to their real family not their gang family. I knew that someone else in the room would not want me to have the extra script that year because that’s a nice chunk of money he would rather have. So my joke is I followed my executive producer into the bathroom because she was a woman and so was I and then I pitched her while we were washing our hands. So that when we walked back in the room, she already liked the idea and for someone else to shoot it down would be to say she had a bad idea and therefore I got whatever. So reading the room has always been a very important lesson. As well as remembering the doctors have power. Whenever you think about side characters, think about making them ethnic because that’s really important and then these are just the things that I learned from the room. You have to do research. You have to think about your nightmares. You have to speak up. I teach my female students this all the time. Please speak up. Don’t wait for the boys to give you a moment because they won’t and then I learned a lot and then I will briefly just say teachers make great writers because they do and collaboration doesn’t just happen in tv right because these guys collaborated on those films we have to recognize that so collaboration and chaos makes good quality presentations. Thank you.

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10 More On Beverly Hills 90210 from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

…and I always say Beverly Hills 90210 is an excellent study for people in how who the showrunner is makes a difference because that show was created as a pilot by Darren Starr who’s still famously writing pilots and then he left and the show was run, managed on a daily basis by Chuck Rosen. If you look at the pilot of 90210, it’s really a bunch of rich kids and fancy clothes hanging out at the beach having bonfires. There’s not a whole lot of meat to it. Two Ohio kid’s dad moves to town because he’s an accountant and he’s going to work in Beverly Hills and so their midwest values meet Beverly hills values and that’s all you get. Chuck took over and he was the child of a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai. He grew up in Beverly Hills. So those children became real three-dimensional human beings because one of the issues is how do you — how do you connect to a character that’s uber-rich. Like they have no problems because they’re rich and that’s what most people would think because we’re not all rich but he knew kids who had drug problems. He knew kids whose parents had drug problems and therefore weren’t there for them. So he looked at the fact that it doesn’t matter how much money you have, if there’s a problem in your family, it still makes you vulnerable and that is going to make an audience interested in you.

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.

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

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02 Fuller’s Life and Bronson Alcott from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: So I was, I was enthralled to find a woman with such a modern mind in that country.

Tammy: Exactly and let’s sort of go through her life. Sort of hit the major time periods before she gets to Italy because she’s in Italy at the very end of her life. So she was born in 1810 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, which is like 10 miles away from Concord, and she was kind of born into the world of you know she grew up playing with Thomas Wentworth Higginson you know and she very quickly met Emerson and fell in with the Transcendental crowd just as they were actually starting to get going.

Rosanne: Exactly and I think it’s important that she worked you know when she did her early teaching and things like that she worked with Bronson Alcott, who was also someone that — we all knew Louisa May Alcott — which we should and then it was later that I learned her father was involved and you know was maybe not one of the most successful transcendentalists but was trying with ideas — like an integrated school and it was hurting him financially and Margaret was part of that right, supporting that so you can see early on.

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23 Being True To Your Ideas from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

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Transcript:

In this particular episode, I was doing a piece about a married couple that I were using their children as weapons during the divorce and I wanted that lesson to be don’t do that and I had to bring in memories of Mrs. Doubtfire because on my show I was afraid the answer would be don’t get divorced and that’s not an honest answer to young children whose parents are getting divorced. So happily when Robin Williams did this film he only agreed to do it if in the end the couple never got back together. Since he was a divorced man and he didn’t want to lie to his kids. So i took that lesson and I made sure that one of the parents was already remarried so I thought that was kind of fun but I had to go around the desires of my executive producer in order to make sure that I got what I wanted right? So you have to learn the people in the room.

For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit

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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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09 Beverly Hills 90210 from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

Host: Were you a writer? Were you a writer’s assistant in that?

Rosanne:I was a freelance writer on that. That was my very first script.

Host: Okay so wow yeah. How did you– how did you feel when you got like the um the chance?

Rosanne: That’s wonderful stuff. It’s wonderful stuff. It was because at the time I had a partner and she was the assistant to the executive producer of that show. So after reading four — count them — four spec scripts of ours, he finally agreed to let us pitch and so we came in and pitched and that was lovely. So she was much more comfortable in that room than I was because she knew everybody. She’d been there for two or three years at that point but you know I knew the gentleman in charge, Chuck Rosen was one of the quote-unquote good guys in town. A real — a sweetheart. He’d been on a show called Northern Exposure, which I adored. He’s an excellent writer — just and cared about the stories.

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.

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

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The Importance of Endings

I had typed out one of those quotes I tend to use all the time –

“So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.”

— and in my habit I wanted to credit the writer of the quote, which we all know comes from the movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, adapted by David Seltzer from the book by Roald Dahl.

My question became “Did that line come from the book OR the film OR both?” I couldn’t find any clarification on that right away – but I did find this great NPR interview with Seltzer about how he changed the ending of the film because the director felt “It ends with the word, yippee? He said that’s not a screen play. That’s not a movie. You can’t do that” so Seltzer rewrote the ending to be this:

Mr. SELTZER: It ends with the word, yippee? He said that’s not a screen play. That’s not a movie. You can’t do that.

COHEN: So, what did you do?

Mr. SELTZER: I said, well, let me think about it. You know, how long do I have? He said, how long? We’re standing here. It’s $30,000 an hour. You tell me. And, I said, well, give me a second. And I think it was about 6 in the morning. And I walked down, literally, looked over the lake in Maine. I thought, what the hell am I going to do? My head space was totally out of this movie. I could barely remember what had led up to this but I thought, OK, it’s a fairy tale. It’s a children’s story, and how do children’s stories end? I don’t know. How could – how do they end? They end with, they all lived happily ever after. But that’s not good. That’s not what a screenwriter writes. And so I took a deep swallow and I went to the phone. I said, Mel, OK, listen carefully. They’re going up in the spaceship and looking at the ground disappear. And Willy Wonka announces to Charlie that the chocolate factory is his. Then, Willy Wonka looks at him and he says, but Charlie – in a very cautious voice – you do know what happened to the little boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted, don’t you? And fear comes across Charlie’s face and he says, no, what? And Willy says, he lived happily ever after. And it was a long pause, and I thought my career as a screenwriter is over.

22 Getting What You Want In The Room from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

Transcript:

In all of them, I learned something about how a room should be run, and one of the first things I teach my students is that you have to — you should take a class in psychology. You need you need to know how to read a room and know how to behave in the room with people and that’s something that sometimes people don’t know. So it’s a silly thing but it’s true. This — on this episode, Smokescreen, we have two people, Roma Downey who is an Irish-American woman and Della Reese, who is an African-American woman. They would pretend to be other people in people’s lives. In this particular episode, Roma always did more work because she was younger and Della only worked three days a week because she was in her 70s. They were going to have Roma portray this gentleman’s lawyer and Della portray his maid and I understood how upsetting that would be to my African-American friends if yet another maid character was portrayed by an African-American woman. So I said we shouldn’t do that. What if we switched it and the problem was production, Della didn’t have many hours in the week to do that filming. So we could have ended the idea there but I was a little pushy then and and I wanted the movement and i suggested we ask her, would she be willing to work an extra day that week for the chance not to play a maid and guess what she said. Exactly.

For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit

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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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01 Left Out Of The History Books from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: I am very pleased to be able to welcome Dr Rosanne Welch who is the Executive Director of the Stephens College program for the MFA and who is an author on many topics in American History and American culture. Welcome, Rosanne.

Rosanne: Thank you so much for having me. I love to talk about these things as you know.

Tammy: Exactly. Exactly. So can we start with your how did you first discover Margaret Fuller.

Rosanne: I discovered her a roundabout way. I would say I first had her mentioned when I was in eighth grade in Ohio and we studied Ohio history which was abolitionists and really got into “We’re on the right side of the Civil War and John Brown was somebody very important to them because he’s from Ohio so very proud that he was anti-slavery and I started to learn about abolitionists and then you forget. You go to college. I was studying theater but I needed a class once — an elective — desperately to fill out my schedule and the only thing available was this transcendentalism class and I had completely forgotten anything I might have learned previously and I begged to get in the class and he let me in and there I found Margaret among all these other gentlemen and it was another one of those examples of “Wait it sounds like women never did anything until the modern-day but they always did they just got left out of the history books.”

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