On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Author, Tom Stempel Speaks at Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop
Tom Stempel, (historian and author of one of the textbooks used in our MFA – Framework: a History of Screenwriting) has a blog – Understanding Screenwriting — where he analyzes the work of recent screenplays, many of which you may have just seen.
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Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
This article examines the screenwriting practice in Czech silent cinema in the late 1910s and 1920s. It focuses on Jan Stanislav Kolár’s narrative poetics as a case study of specific storytelling choices within the transitional era from one- or two-reelers to the feature-length format in the context of local technological restrictions in exhibition – inevitable breaks of changing film reels in single-projector cinemas. Poetological analysis of Kolár’s Řina (1926) with his other surviving scenarios and pictures shows that meant not only the necessity of adapting to these limitations, but also became a productive way of achieving particular effects on the audience. Semi-independent narrative acts, thrilling moments occurring at the end of the reel, or significant shifts in space and time between two reels were integral parts of his own original stories as well as adaptations of various novels. Nevertheless, the article outlines more general perspective in relation to film reels as structural narrative units and screenwriting practice among Czech filmmakers as well.
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!
Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK
* 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!
Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
Watch this entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
Elaine May is another name that’s fallen out of history and shouldn’t. Now we’re in the 70s. Elaine I think is a brilliant writer. Heaven Can Wait wouldn’t be what it was. Warren Beatty got tons of focus for that but she wrote it. She came out of doing nightclub things with Mike Nichols. They were Nichols in May and they wrote all their routines. It was like a traveling SNL sketch. You probably still know who Mike Nichols is, but Elaine May has fallen out of history because at a certain point she started directing. Which is cool, but she directed a movie called Ishtar which lost a ton of money and she was never given a directing job again. I can name you many a man who has directed a film that lost a ton of money and somehow they still got a second and a third and a fourth job. Elaine Mae was never given the right to direct a film again. Her writing is brilliant and as you know she still continued writing she did Primary Colors.
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.
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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Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television
![Listen: Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on TV [Audio]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/WGAF-Sheets-131.jpg)
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The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program teamed up with the Writers Guild Foundation to pull the covers back on a topic that still makes viewers blush: sex. On this special evening, our panel of TV writers and producers share how they approach writing about sex, from intimate scenes to revealing dialogue, and the nuances they consider when crafting stories about sex and sexuality.
Panelists:
Writers Guild Foundation – @wgfoundation
Months of research went 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.
By Unknown – impawards.com, Public Domain, Link
Watch Ben Hur (1925) on Hoopla (Free)
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is a 1925 American silent epic adventure-drama film directed by Fred Niblo and written by June Mathis based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by General Lew Wallace. Starring Ramon Novarro as the title character, the film is the first feature-length adaptation of the novel and second overall, following the 1907 short.
In 1997, Ben-Hur was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” — Wikipedia
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
Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television
The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program teamed up with the Writers Guild Foundation to pull the covers back on a topic that still makes viewers blush: sex. On this special evening, our panel of TV writers and producers share how they approach writing about sex, from intimate scenes to revealing dialogue, and the nuances they consider when crafting stories about sex and sexuality.
Panelists:
Writers Guild Foundation – @wgfoundation
Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting
Producers Pitchfest – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop
Thanks to mentor Laura Brennan (left) the 2nd year cohort were treated to a pitchfest with a panel of producers during one of their nights of workshop. Joining the panel were producer/director Lisa Singer Haese, producer/studio executive Suzanne Lyons, and television writer/producer Brian Bird (“The Ultimate Life” (2013), “When Calls the Heart,” “When Hope Calls”).
Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting
Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
This article poses a question previously overlooked in the tremendous body of research on Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari: why does the cabinet take such a prominent place in the title alongside the protagonist? The question is approached through a reading of the Caligari screenplay, which reveals that its narrative can be fruitfully conceived as a struggle of ‘evil spaces’. Pursuing the origins of this original spatial structure, the article uncovers a close connection between the script and the popular fantasy novels of the early twentieth century, in particular the only novel by the Austrian graphic artist Alfred Kubin. It is finally argued that acknowledging this connection to fantasy novels as well as the importance of the spatial structure in the Caligari script allows us to reconsider the crude opposition between the script’s narrative and the film’s set design that is prevalent in the existing research on the film.
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!
Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK
* 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!
Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
Watch this entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
Then, of course, we were talking about Nora Ephron but before we get Nora Ephron — that’s her mother Phoebe Efron — was a film writer in Hollywood in the 50s with her husband right but she’s the one who gave her daughter the phrase “Everything is copy.” Whatever’s happening in your life write it down that’s gonna be good in a movie someday, right? So Phoebe did all these films we’re looking at here. They did largely adaptations of musicals but they were very — Phoebe and Henry Efrain. This is Nora when she was in college. She got herself a sweatshirt that said Girl Writer because she worked at a newspaper and that’s what they were. They weren’t junior writers. They weren’t journalists. They were the girl writers who wrote the girl stuff for the newspaper, right. Do she just blazoned that on her chest and said fine Then I’ll be a girl writer right? I think it’s cute because you notice when we move into the television world that’s Madeline Pugh who wrote almost all of the I Love Lucy’s together with her male partner Bob Carol who she wasn’t married to and she called herself a girl writer. That’s all you were back in the day even though you invented Lucy for heaven’s sakes.
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.
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television
The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program teamed up with the Writers Guild Foundation to pull the covers back on a topic that still makes viewers blush: sex. On this special evening, our panel of TV writers and producers share how they approach writing about sex, from intimate scenes to revealing dialogue, and the nuances they consider when crafting stories about sex and sexuality.
Panelists:
Writers Guild Foundation – @wgfoundation
Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting