Tag: screenwriting

38 Elaine May from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (53 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

38 Elaine May from

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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

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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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Related posts:

  1. 36 Leigh Brackett from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (47 seconds)
  2. 35 Harriet Frank, Jr. from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)
  3. 37 “Girl Writer” from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 6 seconds)
  4. 34 More On Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett – “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 10 seconds)
  5. 17 Tressie Souders from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (49 seconds)

Listen to “Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on TV” from the Writers Guild Foundation and Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting [Audio]

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television

Listen: Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on TV [Audio]

Listen to Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on TV from the Writers Guild Foundation and Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

  • Michelle Ashford – Masters of Sex, The Pacific
  • Cindy Chupack – I’m Dying Up Here, Divorce, Sex and the City
  • Sahar Jahani – 13 Reasons Why, Ramy
  • Dayna Lynne North – Insecure, Single Ladies, Lincoln Heights
  • Gladys Rodriguez – Vida, Dynasty, Sons of Anarchy
  • Moderated by Dr. Rosanne Welch. 

Writers Guild Foundation – @wgfoundation

Visit Stephens.edu/mfa for more information.

Follow @StephensMFA on Instagram

#MentorMonday 8 - Dawn Comer Jefferson - Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 11: Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Screenplay. Wr: June Mathis. Dir. Fred Niblo, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1925 USA 142 mins.

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.

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 11: Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Screenplay. Wr: June Mathis. Dir. Fred Niblo, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1925 USA 142 mins.

Ben-Hur-1925.jpg
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

Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 07: “Frederica Sagor Maas, Hollywood’s ‘Shocking Miss Pilgrim'” The Forward.
  2. When Women Wrote Hollywood – 15 in a series – “The Ancient Mariner” (1925), Wr: Eve Unsell, Actor: Clara Bow, Dir: Henry Otto/Chester Bennett
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 08: Marion Fairfax: “Algerian Village Erected for Desert Healer.” Motion Picture News. Motion Picture News, 15 March 1926
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 10: Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman by Vincent L. Barnett
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 09: “Eve Unsell in New York.” Film Daily 6 August 1936

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Photos via Instagram

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Photos via Instagram

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:

  • Michelle Ashford – Masters of Sex, The Pacific
  • Cindy Chupack – I’m Dying Up Here, Divorce, Sex and the City
  • Sahar Jahani – 13 Reasons Why, Ramy
  • Dayna Lynne North – Insecure, Single Ladies, Lincoln Heights
  • Gladys Rodriguez – Vida, Dynasty, Sons of Anarchy
  • Moderated by Dr. Rosanne Welch. 

Writers Guild Foundation – @wgfoundation

Visit Stephens.edu/mfa for more information.

Follow @StephensMFA on Instagram

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

#MentorMonday 8 - Dawn Comer Jefferson - Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Related posts:

  1. Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Photos via Instagram
  2. Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Panel via Instagram
  3. Panorama before the panel: “Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television” at the Writers Guild of America
  4. Event: Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television – Writers Guild Foundation – Friday, January 12, 2019
  5. Chatting after the panel via Instagram

35 Princess Leia – Part 3 from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (58 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

35 Princess Leia - Part 3 from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction - Dr. Rosanne Welch

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

 

This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne

Transcript:

What’s really cool about her is that the series survives into a couple of generations later and now, of course, she gets to be a general. That’s huge. That is a huge step that people didn’t necessarily foresee and, of course, in the new versions we’re surrounded by women in power. However, you have probably seen online much controversy over the fact that when she, who’s a general, didn’t tell dude who has got no rank what she was up to — oh no, it’s all her fault. Trouble happened. She should have told the boy. He’s way lower than her rank. She had no business telling him anything that was being planned at the higher levels, but there was so much discussion about how it was all her fault that things went bad because she should have told the boy and he would have saved the day. He’s not in charge. They are. Right? But our biases — our ideas are that they have to let the boy take over. So I think it’s really, really fascinated where we’re going with this series.


* 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! 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Related posts:

  1. 33 Princess Leia from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (56 seconds)
  2. 34 Princess Leia – Part 2 from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)
  3. 31 Characters: Nyota Uhura, Star Trek from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 20 seconds)
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Producers Pitchfest – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

Producers Pitchfest – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

Producers Pitchfest - Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

Producers Pitchfest - Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

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”). 

Visit Stephens.edu/mfa for more information.

Follow @StephensMFA on Instagram

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

#MentorMonday 8 - Dawn Comer Jefferson - Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 3: Once again into the cabinets of Dr. Caligari: Evil spaces and hidden sources of the Caligari screenplay by Alexandra Ksenofontova

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

Once again into the cabinets of Dr. Caligari: Evil spaces and hidden sources of the Caligari screenplay by Alexandra Ksenofontova

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!

Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2020

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!

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37 “Girl Writer” from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 6 seconds)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

37

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

…or via Amazon…

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

Related posts:

  1. 35 Harriet Frank, Jr. from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)
  2. 34 More On Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett – “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 10 seconds)
  3. 36 Leigh Brackett from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (47 seconds)
  4. 17 Tressie Souders from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (49 seconds)
  5. 26 Dorothy Parker and A Star Is Born from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (55 seconds)

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Photos via Instagram

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Photos via Instagram

Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Photos via Instagram
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:

  • Michelle Ashford – Masters of Sex, The Pacific
  • Cindy Chupack – I’m Dying Up Here, Divorce, Sex and the City
  • Sahar Jahani – 13 Reasons Why, Ramy
  • Dayna Lynne North – Insecure, Single Ladies, Lincoln Heights
  • Gladys Rodriguez – Vida, Dynasty, Sons of Anarchy
  • Moderated by Dr. Rosanne Welch. 

Writers Guild Foundation – @wgfoundation

Visit Stephens.edu/mfa for more information.

Follow @StephensMFA on Instagram

Follow and Like the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

#MentorMonday 8 - Dawn Comer Jefferson - Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Related posts:

  1. Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television Panel via Instagram
  2. Panorama before the panel: “Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television” at the Writers Guild of America
  3. Past students at new events via Instagram
  4. Event: Between the Sheets: Writing About Sex on Television – Writers Guild Foundation – Friday, January 12, 2019
  5. Chatting after the panel via Instagram

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 10: Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman by Vincent L. Barnett

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.

Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman by Vincent L. Barnett

The first full-length study of the authorial and cross-media practices of the English novelist Elinor Glyn (1864-1943), Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman examines Glyn’s work as a novelist in the United Kingdom followed by her success in Hollywood where she adapted her popular romantic novels into films. Making extensive use of newly available archival materials, Vincent L. Barnett and Alexis Weedon explore Glyn’s experiences from multiple perspectives, including the artistic, legal and financial aspects of the adaptation process. At the same time, they document Glyn’s personal and professional relationships with a number of prominent individuals in the Hollywood studio system, including Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. The authors contextualize Glyn’s involvement in scenario-writing in relationship to other novelists in Hollywood, such as Edgar Wallace and Arnold Bennett, and also show how Glyn worked across Europe and America to transform her stories into other forms of media such as plays and movies. Providing a new perspective from which to understand the historical development of both British and American media industries in the first half of the twentieth century, this book will appeal to historians working in the fields of cultural and film studies, publishing and business history.

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

Related posts:

  1. When Women Wrote Hollywood – 17 in a series – “It” (1927) Starring Clara Bow, Wr: Elinor Glyn , Hope Loring , and, Louis D. Lighton , George Marion Jr.
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 09: “Eve Unsell in New York.” Film Daily 6 August 1936
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 07: “Frederica Sagor Maas, Hollywood’s ‘Shocking Miss Pilgrim'” The Forward.
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives: ‘Movie Plots Pushed into Prose’: The Extra Girl, Will Hays, and the Novel of Silent Hollywood by Justin Gautreau
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 08: Marion Fairfax: “Algerian Village Erected for Desert Healer.” Motion Picture News. Motion Picture News, 15 March 1926