22 “Star Wars” from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

22

Transcript:

Rosanne:…and then, who doesn’t love “Star Wars?” I mean, I was a kid who, you know, was in line for the second one and, in fact, I was in high school or early college, I guess, when “The Empire Strikes Back” came out. Yeah and no one had ever ended a movie on a cliffhanger. Like that didn’t happen. Right? The movie should end and I remember sitting in the audience and Harrison Ford is all in the stuff and they’re taking him away and Luke is looking out the window right, and I’m looking at my watch going “This is going to be a really long movie. They’re going to have to save him really in a stupid fast way. This is..how are they going to…”and then slowly they walked to the window and it’s him and Leia and they’re sort of almost waving goodbye to the thing and I’m like “This is.. like your wasting time. Get to the rest of the rescue…” and then the movie ended and my brain wasn’t even thinking and I shouted some cuss words out loud in the theater. I mean you can’t end a movie like that and my friends were like “Rosanne. Sit down you’re embarrassing us.” “But but…”and I vowed to never see the other one because it would take 2 years to finish the story and you know, 2 years later, I was in line for the midnight movie the first time that it was going to show. I was like, ‘You can’t not tell me how this ends.”

Host: Genius that was.

One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.

We chatted about my work with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, and then my work with co-editor Rose Ferrell on the Journal of Screenwriting’s special issue on Women in Screenwriting (Volume 11, Number 3) that came out recently and which featured articles about an international set of female screenwriters from Syria, Argentina, China and Canada (to name a few).

We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

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With Intellect Books Editor James Campbell (@IntellectBooks)

Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.

Journal of Screenwriting Cover

16 Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne 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”

16 Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Transcript:

Again, as I said, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne who wrote all these wonderful things together. John Gregory Dunne actually would have Joan go to meetings first because the men you work with in Hollywood, if you went to a meeting together would look at John while they talked. So, if they sent Joan alone and pretended John was sick one day the men got used to looking at her and then when they came together they looked at both of them. so, they were pretty brilliant about making sure she didn’t get forgotten in the writing process like that.

 

 


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Reading Leads to 6 Degree Games with Famous Names

Reading Leads to 6 Degree Games with Famous Names by Dr. Rosanne Welch

A funny thing happens when you read a lot of biographies – sometimes names you never heard of turn up in the lives of people who never met and you’re reminded that the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon game could be played in generations in the past (with different names of course).

Rachel Carson, 1940 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee photo
Rachel Carson By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – This image originates from the National Digital Library of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service at this page This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing. See Category:Images from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. http://training.fws.gov/history/carson/carson.html, Public Domain, Link

That’s what happened when I picked up William Souder’s biography of Rachel Carson On a Farther Shore. I had taught her book Silent Spring which reinvigorated the environmental movement in the 1960s so I wanted to know how she became a writer. As I was reading one of her influences was Hendrik Willem van Loon, a Dutch-American children’s book author, historian, and journalist (like Carson). He wrote The Story of Mankind in 1921 as a history of the world for children and won the first Newbery Medal in 1922. I’ve been reading Newberry Award winners all my life so it was fun to learn he won the first, but that’s not why I remembered his name.

Hendrik Willem van Loon
Hendrik Willem van Loon By Underwood & Underwood – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a02154. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

That knowledge came from another biography I had delved into several years ago when I started teaching the History of Screenwriting. There I ‘met’ Frances Goodrich Hackett, co-screenwriter with her husband Albert of several classics including The Thin Man, Father of the Bride, It’s a Wonderful Life before winning both the Tony and Pulitzer Prize for the stage version of The Diary of Anne Frank. Then they adapted it into a film. Turns out Von Loon had been Goodrich’s second husband (Albert was her third and final since their marriage and writing partnership lasted over 50 years).

Hackett and Goodrich.jpg
Frances Goodrich Hackett, By not known Fair use, Link

I love accidental finds like that. Carson was influenced by Von Loon to become a writer and Frances became one after she left him. Interesting that both of these women and their writings are now more well-known than he or his works when, at the time, he was the more famous.

Rosanne In Mr. DeMille’s Office , Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram [Photography]

Rosanne In Mr. DeMille’s Office , Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn)

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

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

Transcript:

Rosanne: Right. One of the great comparisons people will make – and I adore “Star Wars” and we’re going to talk about “Star Wars” and how that’s really a western – 

Host: Okay.

Rosanne: I adore “Star Wars” but of course, that’s the lesson that you know young Luke Skywalker learns whereas you compare that to – and there’s a lovely Ted Talk that does this – “The Wizard of Oz”, which is a female heroine and what she does is she takes the group around her, empowers all of them to do their best, and as a team they succeed and those – that’s a different look at our West but we know the West did not survive because one or two men took on one or two other people. It survived because great communities of people came together right and did that and on the flip side –when we think about Native Americans – they all fought together as well. It wasn’t just the male warriors. The women were upholding all these things and they also took the brunt of the disease that was passed and all those things. So the community idea is really what – I think – we all succeed at and by not seeing that side of a story, we’re telling men they have too much work to do all by themselves and that’s not fair.

Host: that’s a great way to tell – I’ll teach my daughter that.

 

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. — RMW Rosanne Signature for Web


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.

Find more information at the Autry Museum of the American West

21 “Norma Rae” and “Silkwood” from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

21

Transcript:

Rosanne: I love a movie like “Norma Rae.” I think “Norma Rae.” is an excellently written film and that’s Harriet Frank, Jr. and Ivan (Ravetch) her husband. They were a married writing team. That’s a quite perfect film and Sally Field does a perfect job and it’s it’s so raw and honest but I like “Silkwood”, too and that’s by Nora Ephron. More whistleblower than union representative.

Host: Okay I don’t I’ve seen that one. No. Now i don’t think so no.

Rosanne: Yeah. Well you know you can’t find it streaming now. There’s some issue with whatever studio eventually owned it or the music rights to it. It’s Meryl Streep and Kurt Russell. Karen Silkwood was – worked in a nuclear power plant in the late 70s and she found them cutting corners that were dangerous and she was on her way to meet a New York Times reporter with paperwork showing what side cuts they were taking which would make things dangerous and her car unexplainably ran off the road, crashed into a tree, and she died and there were no papers found in her car when they found the body. So it’s always been a mystery but her and Kurt Russell are a couple and he works at the plant and Cher – it’s one of Cher’s early films and she got nominated for supporting actress Oscar but she didn’t win but it’s just a really well-written piece about this woman who’s kind of a goof-off but she has to get serious when she realizes this is bigger than her. It’s bigger than just I don’t want to be an unsafe place but what could happen if kind of thing. So that’s a really good movie. Nora Ephron.

One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.

We chatted about my work with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, and then my work with co-editor Rose Ferrell on the Journal of Screenwriting’s special issue on Women in Screenwriting (Volume 11, Number 3) that came out recently and which featured articles about an international set of female screenwriters from Syria, Argentina, China and Canada (to name a few).

We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Watch this entire presentation

 

With Intellect Books Editor James Campbell (@IntellectBooks)

Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.

Journal of Screenwriting Cover

Vintage Film Makeup Kit, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram [Photography]

Vintage Film Makeup Kit, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram [Photography]

Follow me on Instagram

DeMille Office, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram

Visit The Hollywood Heritage Museum

15 Nice Guys and Allies 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”

15 Nice Guys and Allies  from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Transcript:

I very briefly want to be fair to all the lovely nice men in the world because they are –they do exist and they do credit the women in their lives. These husbands all – from Garson Kanin to Albert Hackett to John Gregory Dunn all credited their wives with equal or more work on all the projects they did together and you’ll recognize of course Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon having done these films which won them all Academy Award nominations and Garson always talks about how much of a writer Ruth was even though we as a culture remember her as an actress but he does complain about the fact that they call it George Cukor’s “Adam’s Rib” when in fact much of the direction was written into the script by Garson and Ruth. Having been theater people they understood exactly where they wanted the camera to go, So they get erased by Cukor. Albert and Francis, of course, are brilliant. They wrote for almost 50 years in Hollywood but when you look at the posters of their work it’s the director Frank Capra who essentially erases them from the picture. Their names are down here very tiny and here’s the crazy thing about that. They also in their career are going to write “The Diary of Anne Frank” for which they’re going to get the Pulitzer Prize. Capra don’t have no Pulitzer Prize but it’s called Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” right? No thank you. They also wrote Nick and Nora Charles the real “The Thin Man” which is Nick and Nora Charles. I’m talking fast because I want to use up all my time. I’m sorry and that’s normally put off on Dashiell Hammett who wrote the novel but if you look at the movie the couple in the movie is actually Francis and Albert.

 

 


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Vintage Film Camera, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram [Photography]

Vintage Film Camera, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram [Photography]

Follow me on Instagram

DeMille Office, Hollywood Heritage Museum (Lasky-DeMille Barn) via Instagram

Visit The Hollywood Heritage Museum

Screenwriter Ruth Goodman: Her Instincts Made ‘The Heiress’ an Enduring Classic – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, July 2022

Screenwriter Ruth Goodman: Her Instincts Made 'The Heiress' an Enduring Classic – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, July 2022

Ruth Goodman’s family had been involved in theatre even before her birth in 1908. Her father produced shows involving W. C. Fields and Jerome Kern. Those connections, and her education in New York and Paris, brought her jobs as a costume designer and story editor before marrying Augustus (Gus) Goetz on October 11, 1932, after having met onboard ship. Her mother disliked him, but Ruth described Augustus as enchantingly witty. Though a stockbroker when they met, he gave up finances and they began writing plays together, collaborating nearly exclusively throughout their career. Their most famous play, The Heiress, brought them to Hollywood.

Read Screenwriter Ruth Goodman: Her Instincts Made ‘The Heiress’ an Enduring Classic


Read about more women from early Hollywood