screenwriting – Page 13 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

28 The Homage from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.

It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!

Transcript:

Now this homage business reminds me when I teach film history, we do this in movies all the time. Forget just remaking a movie. All you do is you take a storyline and you flip the genders and you have a new movie, right? So if you know “It Happened One Night”, it’s one of the first movie ever to win all five of the major Oscars. A very big deal. Robert Riskin wrote it. It’s the story of a –– Clark Gable is a reporter who’s following an heiress who’s run away on the eve of her wedding and of course, they fall in love on their little journey and by the time they get home they’re going to get married. If you move to the 70s and “The Electric Horseman”, Robert Redford is a rodeo star who’s become a celebrity. Jane Fonda is the reporter. He’s run away with a major expensive horse because they’re gonna like put the horse down and do something and then she follows him to get a story but they fall in love. So it’s exactly the same story. Just flip the genders right? So movies are always –– I mean writers always do this. We’re homaging something we loved by givingit a little flip. So I think that “Father’s Day” and “Demons the Punjab” fall into that.

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19 Ableism and Children of Earth from Why Torchwood Still Matters (2021) with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

I recently presented a talk on Torchwood (Why Torchwood Still Matters) where I highlighted a few ways in which the show (airing from 2006 to 2011) came up with progressive and innovative ideas that are being used by other franchises today.

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

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Transcript:

Audience: For a lot of people, where something doesn’t affect them, they kind of like push them under the rug. You’re like we’re not gonna but like the way that they talked about the ableism from that situation I thought was really interesting because like you wouldn’t expect a team of people that are in power to kind of like think about that but it just made it like so much more realistic because like everyone watching would know exactly what ten percent would be sacrificed. Like everyone knows but they had the guts to say it which I thought was really interesting.

Rosanne: Russell does that. That’s what’s so amazing to me about his writing. I really love his writing. I’m looking forward to him coming back to Who. I’m looking forward to you know all the future stuff he does. “It’s a Sin” just ended and that was you know quite good. Most of my students were very excited about that

Audience: Did you see “Years and Years?”

Rosanne: I saw the pilot and it was so hard I – it’s in my queue. I have to take my time to watch it. So I know it was but it was so hard to ––

It was scared me too much which is really interesting and I knew that meant he was gonna go deeper and I have to be like in a mood to quietly sit and soak that in so I don’t run through it and get scared.

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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. —

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

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24 Women in Modern Westerns 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.

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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.

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27 TV Helps People See The Future from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

In the same way, we could do a whole episode on you know Star Trek and Lieutenant Uhura that’s why Mae Jemison is the first African-American astronaut because she saw Lieutenant Uhura when she was a kid. She’s like oh look a black woman could be involved in space and Tada she’s the first astronaut. So just amazing the power of Television even more than films because TV comes into your house. Really I think an important thing.

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18 The Beginning of Bingability from Why Torchwood Still Matters (2021) with Dr. Rosanne Welch , San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

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Transcript:

They were early in the concept of bingeable television right – the idea of doing five episodes, five nights in a row. Bang bang we’re done. That’s a season? Nobody was doing that. I will say nobody – we actually did do that in America in 1977. Eight nights in a row but sadly that’s because they produced Roots and then the network got cold feet and went “Oh my god. No one’s gonna watch this. What are we gonna do?” So they dumped it into one week hoping that one week would be the bad ratings and it wouldn’t hurt the whole season and it turned out to be the highest rating thing in like the last 15 years and went on and on for many years after that to be the highest rated mini-series ever. So we had done it but nobody had done it since then right and it was not a big thing in England and then suddenly we have “Children of Earth” and for me was very bingeable before Netflix and bingeability existed. I remember starting it at like you know maybe eight or nine o’clock at night. We’re like we’ll just watch a couple and then we’ll watch the rest tomorrow and then you got to like the end of the second one you’re like oh we gotta watch one more one more and then it’s two in the morning and you’re done and you’re crying because it was so terrible and so sad.

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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?

What this entire presentation

Find more information at the Autry Museum of the American West

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

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.

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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.

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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”

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.

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26 The Companions and History from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

So to think about what’s a piece that even in the UK they need to remember their own history and always not the good parts right and the choices that were made. So what a perfect way to use Yaz and what a cool thing you want to see your grandmother’s wedding and then Oh gee it’s a wedding. It’s a wedding for Rose and these are places you shouldn’t haven’t been. So I think that’s a lovely bit and of course, I’m tracing that all the way back to the Original “Star Trek” which is the ultimate sci-fi on tv right, and this beautiful episode – which if you don’t know what you need to know – but won several science fiction awards back in the day by Harlan Ellison “The City on the Edge of Forever” right. Which is where Kirk falls in love with a woman and when they before – Joan Collins, exactly, before “Dynasty” – and then learns – spoiler alert – that she is she’s pushing for peace before World War II and if she succeeds Hitler will have time to rise and he will, in fact, take over the world. So she has to die and you’re like No No No No No, he’s never fallen in love – yeah it’s great. Very funny. Very funny and just the other day right William Shatner is now going to go up to space at the age of 90. Like wow. Amazing how TV affects things. Really it’s William Shatner. He’s just an actor from Canada but he’s Captain Kirk right?

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