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.
Garson Kanin, who broke into show business as a saxophone-playing high school dropout and went on to write ”Born Yesterday,” direct ”The Diary of Anne Frank” and become the co-writer of two classic Tracy-Hepburn movies, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.
He died after a lengthy illness, according to a spokeswoman for the family. His wife, the actress Marian Seldes, whom he married in 1990, was with him.
In a life filled with work — ”I become physically ill if I don’t work for three days,” he once said — Mr. Kanin wrote or directed 32 plays, acted in 8, worked on 29 films and wrote more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of short stories and articles that were translated into numerous languages.
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Transcript:
So unreliable narrators are something we have to look at when we’re doing our own research or study about films. In this case, we have a woman named Jeannie Macpherson and a gentleman who you may or may not have heard, if if you know about early American films Cecil B. DeMille. Mostly if I teach this woman’s work people have heard of him they have never heard of her because when he outlived her and gave an interview to the Academy of Motion Pictures in oral history, he said — after she was long dead — she didn’t do much work I did most of it. She had some nice ideas but I was the one who did all the real work. But if you do the research, all the movies that he made that were blockbusters she wrote and when she didn’t write his films they did not make money. Why would he have kept her on board for 20 years of filmmaking if she did so very little but she didn’t live long enough to give her own oral history and he did.
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
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.
JAN ZILLIACUS was the daughter of the pioneer American film director Laurence Trimble, owner of Jean, the Vitagraph dog, who won international fame long before Rin-Tin-Tin.
“Father wanted six boys and all he got was this miserable girl,” she said. “So he treated me like a boy. He gave me no quarter at all. I was breaking horses at the age of 10 and 11. I was very strong. I didn’t go to school properly – I had tutors from time to time. But somebody had to be chased by wolves, and the actresses didn’t like the idea.”
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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library
Dawn Comer Jefferson is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning writer. On television, Comer Jefferson wrote on the CBS family drama Judging Amy, served as writer/consulting producer on MTV’s teen drama, South of Nowhere, freelanced on the CBS hit NCIS, and developed a drama pilot at NBC Universal Studios. She was nominated for an Emmy for writing the Fox-animated family film, Our Friend, Martin, and for the last nine years has written Emmy-winning arts programming for PBS, performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
As a non-fiction writer, Comer Jefferson has written about children, families and public policy issues for national print and online media including Garnet News, Working Mother, Fit Pregnancy Magazine and MomsRising, and her essays have been featured in the anthologies A Woman Alone (Seal Press) and Go Girl (Eighth Mountain Press). She adapted, produced and directed the eight-part NPR radio series adaptation of the biography Maggie’s American Dream, co-wrote the nonfiction book Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family, and the African American historical children’s fiction, The Promise. Visit her website.
“My first piece of advice is to recognize that you are a writer and a storyteller. A lot of people are hesitant to own that yet you really need to be in that mind space. And then remember that your first draft is not your only draft. There are probably 15 or 16 more and you’re not really done until your done… and even then, you’re not done.“
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Transcript:
Stories have always transmitted culture. If we go far back to the cave paintings of many ancient cultures, to Gilgamesh, to the griots of Africa, we have always used stories to move forward our culture, right, and movies are just the most current version of doing that.
So why do we forget who the storytellers are? That doesn’t make any sense to me, right, and I think there are some reasons that we can fix both in our own casual discussions of films and in the teaching that people might do about what is important, right? One of the first things I discovered in my research is this issue of unreliable narrators. Often we find when people are interviewed to discuss films they chose not to credit anyone who will take away their own fame.So this is one of the most egregious quotes. Alfred Hitchcock, who everyone seems to recognize — you say that you’re watching a Hitchcock film — but he did not write any of his films. He had many other writers who worked for him. This photograph is a woman named Eve Unsell and she’s from the early 1920s in Hollywood. At one point, she was sent to England to work in the studio there and she trained this young man who knew nothing about how films were made and when he wrote about her in his biography, he didn’t mention her name so you could research her. He only said “a middle-aged American woman.” He wrote her out of history as nothing but a middle-aged woman and yet she taught him everything he knows. So, in fact, his movies are Eve Unsell movies but we don’t think that way.
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
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.
With the perspiring assistance of Thomas Mitchell, who acts like a steam locomotive, the Spewacks have tossed another one of those melodramatic lampoons at the newspaper profession in “Clear All Wires,” put on at the Times Square last evening. It is brisk, noisy, extravagant and funny in “The Front Page” and “Broadway” tradition.
* 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
As a member of the Executive Council of the Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) I have the great pleasure of meeting with colleagues from several continents (Australia, South America, Europe, etc) on a monthly basis to discuss the business of the organization. it continues to amaze me how technology allows us to do this – as it continues to amaze me how lucky I am to have had the chance to meet all of these lovely folks in person at our various conferences. Can’t wait for the next one – in Oxford in 2021!
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Transcript:
I apologize for the long quote but I am very appreciative when actors recognize the work of writers and so Frances McDormand said this when she won her Oscar basically she said of the writer Martin McDonagh, He did not sketch a blueprint. That’s an insult to a screenplay. He didn’t string together a few words. He wrote and meticulously crafted a tsunami of a story and then he let the actors play there. So she immediately was crediting the writer in a way that many people do not. I believe the stories are important because they transmit our culture around the world. Again, United States has had a corner on that market for far too many years and now we’re beginning to see other stories permeate our culture and that’s only been a good, beneficial thing for us.
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
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.
When Your Urge’s Mauve, [go to] the Cafe Intemational on Sunset Boulevard. The location offered supper, drinks, and the ability to watch boy-girls who necked and sulked and little girl customers who … look like boys.
The 1940 guidebook How to Sin in Hollywood offered tourists this description of a commercial establishment that they could see when they visited the Holly-wood area. On the opposite page, a cartoon featured two women in tuxedos above the caption “the little girl customers.”‘ One smoked a cigar and both wore prominent lipstick The description and cartoon presented images of women in the Los Angeles area who defied the culture’s gender and sexual norms.
* 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
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
I think that’s what we should remember but we don’t and I think we realize it without realizing it because when you talk about movies to your friends you don’t say, “I loved the camera angle in scene seven.” No! You quote dialogue. You quote the lines from your favorite movies whether they’re Pixar or Disney or The Princess Bride. You know the dialogue and that is the work of the writer. That’s the person you should credit but often when I start a class I have students list their two or three favorite films and then who directed those films and then I ask them who wrote that film and they very often cannot name the person who wrote the film they adore. How can you want to be a writer if you don’t remember the writers yourself. So I think that’s a really important thing for us to remember.
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
†![08 Jeannie Macpherson from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/rmw-sao-paolo-08.jpeg)
![07 Storytelling And Unreliable Narrators from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 30 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/rmw-sao-paolo-07.jpeg)
![06 Stories Are Important! from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/rmw-sao-paolo-06.jpeg)
![05 Do You Know Who Wrote Your Favorite Films? from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/rmw-sao-paolo-05.jpeg)