26 More On My Screenwriting Story from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

26 More On My Screenwriting Story from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

I had a partner in my early days and we got a job on “Beverly Hills 90210” because she was the assistant on that show and then we got a job on “Picket Fences” because I had met Jeff Melvoin who was the producer of that but I’d met him four years earlier as an assistant on a different show and so then I had to wait until he got a high enough level job that he – you know – could invite me to do a freelance and then I spent seven years on a show called “Touched by an Angel” which ran for 10 years and was a – we sometimes say in Hollywood it’s when they back up the money truck because you need residuals and all those things that don’t exist in streaming. So the business finances are changing as well. There will be more jobs that pay less. They still pay more than being a high school English teacher though but there won’t be residuals. Which a lot of people relied on residuals for many many years.

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

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

10 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: When you look at all of the histories and biographies that you learned about of women screenwriters are there a couple in particular that you wish more people knew? Maybe these are some of the ones you’ve mentioned already, but are there a couple that you just want to sort of shout from the rooftops? This is a classic. This is a person who should be on the marquee.

Rosanne: Oh, yeah. Well, obviously I did mention Frances Marion. She wrote a series of westerns for her husband, Fred Thomson, who was a western star, right? He was right up there rivaling William S. Hart moving into the talkie world. The problem is he died young and when he died she lost her interest in writing westerns because, of course, it was too reminiscent of him. They were right up there with Pickford and Fairbanks except they were a writer/actor team. So I think that Frances Marion is someone who people have to look more into. I love Jeannie MacPherson and she wrote several westerns. Always about a woman going out west and having experiences and surviving the West. Which is really a western story. A lone person – doesn’t have to be a boy or a girl – a long person challenges themselves and succeeds. So I think she is a really big name.

 

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

25 My Screenwriting Story from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

25 My Screenwriting Story from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

Host: Speaking of screenwriting technique, I feel I should ask you to tell us a little bit more about your career as a practicing screenwriter. Yeah, what have you been working what what what have you worked on, and are you working on anything at the moment?

Rosanne: Yes I come out of the world of –  I came out in LA from Cleveland. I was a kid from Cleveland and I moved out here for the purpose of working in television and had to do the whole – I was an English teacher – high school – that was my out of college job and luckily I got hired on as a writer’s assistant because I could spell, which was the funny joke like I could clean up their spelling which I thought was funny. So I was an assistant for probably about five years and everyone and when I tell students that they sort of cringe because they think they’re going to get the job and then they’ll get hired as a writer and they have to say you know it’s about networking. It’s about meeting people and then meeting people who like the things you’ve written. You have to write a lot of spec scripts and keep showing them to people who are willing to read them. They have to decide the stuff is good enough and then they’ll offer you a freelance script. That’s one season. You’re still the assistant while you’re doing that and then if they think it’s good enough and the show doesn’t get canceled they’ll offer you, perhaps, a staff –  you know it’s all so much of that as part of it. I would get offered scripts on shows for the second season and it would cancel at the end of the first season. So not only are you scrambling for a job to pay the rent but you now lost that hope and so you’re in a new place with new people. You convince them you’re pretty good. They give you a freelance on their show and the next season they’re canceled.

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

From Ireland To Palestine Gene Gauntier Invented Location Filming – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, August 2022

From Ireland To Palestine Gene Gauntier Invented Location Filming – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, August 2022

As with many women in early Hollywood, Gene Gauntier entered the business as an actress. Born Genevieve G. Liggett in Texas sometime in the 1880s, Gauntier had graduated from the Kansas City Academy of Elocution and Oratory. After a couple of years on the New York stage, she auditioned for director Sidney Olcott at the Biograph Studios in 1906. She saw that in the script her character appeared to drown and though Gauntier did not know how to swim, she took the job anyway. On that adventuresome spirit, she built a career in which she served as a writer, producer, director, and production company owner. She also instituted rules that covered adaptations for years.

Read From Ireland To Palestine Gene Gauntier Invented Location Filming


Read about more women from early Hollywood

 

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]

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. — 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

24 Women in Modern Westerns from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

Host: Didn’t you write a book on westerns?

Rosanne: I’ve written chapters in some books on westerns yes – on women and how women are portrayed in westerns. One of them actually yeah one of them had to do with westerns from the 20th – from 2000 to the modern day and the scary thing was you assume the women would be more powerful and more have their own sort of agency but the most powerful woman I found in a movie from the 2000s to now was in “Rango” and she’s a little animated –– what is she –– I forget –– she’s like some lizard or something her name is Beans and she is the most empowered woman I found in any of the western and “Rango’s” beautifully written film. It’s just so hilarious, plays on all the western tropes, and yet actually tells a heartfelt story. I often have students watch that movie because the very first half hour the Rango character narrates the process of writing a script. He literally says that when this is my midpoint. I wonder what I’ll do from this point on. I mean it’s hilarious. It’s like you have to know screenwriting technique to get the inside jokes in that movie but yeah.

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

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

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]

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?

 

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

23 “The Mandalorian” from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

23

Transcript:

 

Host: Your own writing is more on TV so what did you make of “The Mandalorian” speaking of “Star Wars.” Have you managed to watch that?

Rosanne: Yes. Yes. My son was the first one to check it out. I am fine with the new right? I’m such an old “Star Wars” fan that I don’t appreciate the prequels. I don’t ever need to see those again. The next three were fine. I’m debating how much I love them or not really I mean because I’m so tied to the first three but so I wasn’t sure about “The Mandalorian.” I didn’t rush to see it but my son who’s 22 did and he was like you’ve got to see this –  it’s and we’re both –  I mean I’m the one who of course introduced him to “Star Wars” and would sit on the couch and watch “The Empire Strikes Back” over and over again when he was you know a toddler. So on his word I said okay. Check it out and of course, what’s lovely about that is it’s a western. It’s a western and westerns are pretty cool. I like westerns. I’ve seen a bunch of them…

Host: …they’re my favorite genre.

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

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”

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

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.

 

 


Watch this entire presentation