On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
“Add together the tendency for American war movies to be stereotypical and to celebrate a white man’s vision of martial glory, sprinkle in the fraught nature of Civil War memory and you get a sub-genre of films doomed to be mediocre at best and ideologically horrifying at worst.”
Movies profiled in this book:
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![33 The First Six Years from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (49 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/rmw-sao-paolo-33.png)
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Transcript:
I read once that Tennessee Williams, who’s a famous playwright in the United States, had said that most writers work from the emotions of the first six years of their life and some people laughed at that and I laughed at that and then I realized that in many episodes that I had written, a recurring theme that I tend to go to is that — to be a father is the most important job in your life and you should take it seriously. My father left when I was six years old. Until looking backward at things that I had written I did not notice the repetition of that theme. Clearly, it means something to me. Everybody doesn’t have that experience but everybody has been abandoned in some way or another. We recognize that emotion of loss and that’s what we sell
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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
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I’m happy to say our book just received a review in The Journal of American Culture.
The reviewer (from the University College of North Manitoba, Canada) singled out several chapters for being outstanding for various reasons. They found Amelia Phillips’s chapter on Jeanne Macpherson to demonstrate “exacting research”, Julie Berkobien’s chapter on Francis and Albert Hackett to be “beautifully crafted” and Chase Thompson’s chapter on Lois Weber to be “trailblazing”. They found that Pamela Scott gives “thorough and measured” coverage to the scripts of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman; Laura Kirk “comprehensively” examines Sam and Bella Spewak’s signature style; Kelly Zinge authored “carefully detailed discussion” of Lillian Hellman’s confrontation with the Blacklist, and that Elizabeth Dwyer’s work on Dorothy Parker is “riveting.”
Congratulations to all the contributors to our book!
Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
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Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org
* 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 fishwife tells her young daughter a fairy story about a princess imprisoned by a hunchback in a seashell, a story that parallels her own life. – IMDB
More about Ida May Park
Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
† †
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org
* 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
Watch this entire presentation
![33 Get Out and The Last Boy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 28 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/rmw-cpp-horror-33.png)
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Transcript:
Now, I think it’s really important to think about also another thing that we use in our class. Jordan Peele, right? He wrote which horror film? Get Out. Thank you very much. He got an Oscar for writing that. That’s how different, unique, and creative that film is. He gave us not a final girl because if you haven’t seen the movie she’s a bad guy. Spoiler alert. He gave us the final guy. This is a movie about the final guy — the guy who survives where no one else survived before right? He sees the horror that’s happening and he uses his brain to get out of it. So I had to think about that. So does he qualify for these definitions? He is the last one left standing. All the other people who came before him have been incorporated you know white people have been put into their brains and it’s weird. Ehhh, I don’t know if he’s definitely young he’s not necessarily innocent because he and his girlfriend have definitely had sex right but he’s a really good nice guy so maybe he qualifies as innocent. I don’t know and then we think about in the end — spoiler alert — he kills the bad girl by strangling her right. Is that a feminine way to kill people? Poisoning is more a feminine thing. I don’t know but it’s not a masculine way either. So it’s a little bit right a little bit. Maybe it’s not the perfect definition but he’s definitely the last guy standing when we get to the end of this movie. Which is quite brilliant.
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
“At five feet five with blond hair and blue eyes, Garibaldi was visually more Greek than Italian, but Italian women were drawn to him all the same, especially when those who supported a united Italy understood he was on their side. Teresita Cassamiglia and her mother, Caterina Boscovich, who owned the Osteria del Colombo in Genoa, were among the many women who helped Giuseppe. Ignoring the danger that could come from aiding and abetting revolutionaries, they housed Giuseppe at their Inn between naval journeys, slyly seeking out other potential converts to Mazzini’s Young Italy to send his way.”
As historian Thomas Cripps said, “movies not only wear history at best as a loose garment, but their makers care more for following well tested recipes for making good grosses than for the niceties of history” (Cripps 1995). There is no movie genre where this is this more true than Civil War movies.
Movies profiled in this book:
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Transcript:
When I teach my students about writing, there’s the quote “you should write what you know” and sometimes people think that means if you come from a family where your father’s a policeman you should write about policemen. If you yourself were a high school teacher you should write about teachers. It doesn’t mean, to me, you should write your experiences only. It means you should write the emotions that you know because the emotions are what are universal and that’s what sells to other people.
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
The spoiled, somewhat “mama’s boy” young son of a railroad magnate and the pretty young daughter of the magnate’s partner set out to stop their respective fathers from their constant quarreling. In the process they find themselves falling for each other. – IMDB
More about Lorna Moon
Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
† †
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org
* 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
Watch this entire presentation
![32 Women As Survivors from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (40 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/rmw-cpp-horror-32.png)
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
Now we’ve had a ton of final girls in movies. There was actually a final girl movie because of that trope right? So i think that’s kind of interesting, but what’s great is that after 11 Halloween sequels, they came back to Jamie Lee Curtis and said will you do another one of these movies and she said “Now I will only do it if we flip the whole damn thing and from now on I’m the survivor. She’s the survivor. She gets back at the guy who did that to them. That’s why she agreed to the movie to flip that trope over in her adulthood. She’s like why don’t we call women survivors? Why are they girls? They’re survivors. Let’s think about the language and how it’s used.
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS