speaking – Page 22 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

27 The Exorcist from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (25 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!

Transcript:

What’s interesting to me about The Exorcist — again, written by a guy, adapted by a guy — when we think Exorcist we think about Linda Blair and the girl who had the demon in her, but they didn’t sell the movie on that. They sold the movie on the man who saves her — the priest who comes to exorcise the demon. They sold it as a boy’s movie, but it’s a girl’s movie. Right? So I think that’s a problem.

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26 Jamie Lee Curtis from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (47 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

Another famous female in horror films is Jamie Lee Curtis. She also happens to be another Hollywood childhood because her parents are both actors right, but she starts an interesting trend because as a young person doing the first Halloween, which was based on the idea of babysitters being terrorized by a bad evil guy. She is actually — I forgot — as a child actor she could have been Linda Blair in The Exorcist, yeah. She was up for that part and their parents said “No that’s too horrifying. You shouldn’t do that. We don’t want you to go through that experience.” So it happened to Linda Blair whose career was over at the end of that movie. Nobody ever took her seriously after the spinning head and the puking. It was like too much right, whereas Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t do that job, grew up a little more, did Halloween and then has had a 40-year career. So it’s an interesting thought.

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25 Sissy Spacek and Carrie Fisher from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

Sissy Spacek was quite wonderful. Do a little pop culture moment here. That’s Sissy Spacek and she’s with Carrie Fisher. Why would i put those two together in a picture? I’s because long ago and far away onthe day that they each auditioned for their separate movie, the two directors swapped the women. So Sissy Spacek could have been Princess Leia and Carrie Fisher could have been Carrie. Think about how different both of their careers would have gone had that happened and how much that each of them affect the further work they did. Carrie Fisher would always argue and I believe with her Princess Leia was powerful. She wasn’t as powerful as she could be but she was a character that took a weapon and helped with saving herself right? So each of them affected the work they did in the future.

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Presentation: Write. Reach. Represent: How Having a Female and an(Other) ‘New’ Voice in the Writer’s Room has Always Been Paramount (even at Universal) with Rosanne Welch, PhD – August 25, 2020

I am happy to have been invited to kick off a slate of talks for ScriptDC, the premier conference for Mid-Atlantic filmmakers including writers, directors, producers, editors, and talent to connect with accomplished teachers, consultants and industry professionals. My presentation — “Write. Reach. Represent: How Having a Female and an(Other) ‘New’ Voice in the Writer’s Room has Always Been Paramount (even at Universal)” will introduce attendees to the names of the many, many women who gave birth to the Hollywood movie industry but who have largely been left out of the history books. Their input mattered to bringing more realistic female characters to the screen. Come learn about them so the world of women won’t be left behind any longer. — Rosanne

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Write. Reach. Represent: How Having a Female and an(Other) ‘New’ Voice in the Writer’s Room has Always Been Paramount (even at Universal) with Rosanne Welch, PhD.

Whenever modern day studio executives wonder if women can handle ‘big budget pictures’ we need to educate them on the many, many female screenwriters, directors and producers who gave birth to the film industry from the turn of the twentieth century through today. This talk will introduce listeners to several prominent female screenwriters from Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) to Dorothy Parker (A Star is Born) to Frances Goodrich (The Diary of Anne Frank) to Harriet Frank, Jr. (Norma Rae) to Joan Didion (A Star is Born). In all of their personal writing about writing screenplays, they mention the importance of (often) being the lone woman in the room during pitches and during the development of a screenplay. Goodrich was quoted as saying, “I’m always the only woman working on the picture and I hold the fate of the women [characters] in my hand… I’ll fight for what the gal will or will not do, and I can be completely unfeminine about it.” Joan Didion told the story of how her writing partner/husband John Gregory Dunne would often feign illness so she would attend script meetings alone after they noticed male executives ignoring her at earlier meetings. Come learn about them and many, many other powerful women of earlier Hollywood so you can school the next executive who dares to wonder if women can ‘hack it’ in the movies.

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24 Carrie from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

So now I want to focus for a second here also now on what happens when women are in horror films and what kind of women kind of female role models are we seeing in that world right? So, in movies, we didn’t have for a long time women doing a lot of writing so the women were represented as the characters in this piece so right? Popular, most famous, of course, being Carrie so now we’re back to Stephen King who wrote that right? So not written by a girl and the movie was actually adapted by Lawrence Cohen, but Carrie’s an interesting study in a girl revenge movie right? This is a chance for “You misused me and I’m going to get you back,” and that wasn’t something frequently that girls had a chance to get. They just got bullied and hurt and then gee who saves the day? She’s going to save her own day when she rises from the dead.

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23 Taking Horror Seriously from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (43 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

It’s one of those questions you find yourself — you know people think, “Oh you’re doing a class on horror. That can’t be anything you take seriously.” Well, we have to because it’s information people are taking in. What is it making you think right? If you’re with a dude who’s scary, do you think oh yeah it was good for her. It all worked out in the end for he.r Maybe not right? Let’s reconsider how we’re taking these fictional stories into our life. So I think that’s really interesting. Twilight of course was put together by Melissa Rosenberg who had come off the tv show, Dexter. So what an interesting background before you’re gonna write about Twilight and vampire romance, she’d written about a serial killer who you know kills once a week. I don’t know but uh she made a good ton of money off that and obviously was pretty successful.

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22 Modern-Day Vampires from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

We also then, of course, know about The Vampire Diaries. Julie Pleck put that out, but now she has Legacies which is a sequel to that and Origins which is another one. Interesting because here she’s also turning them more into the sexy dudes and we’re starting to talk about that concept. The problem behind it is at what point does the super-sexy guy really become a way to hide the toxic romance that’s going on when we think about vampires, because vampires are, in fact, capable of killing you. This is a boyfriend who can kill you and you are agreeing to be with him knowing how dangerous that is. That’s a definition of domestic violence in its own way and yet we’re turning it into pop culture hot oh boy which one do I pick? Which team are you on? Right? so is that, again, defanging them, or is that accidentally empowering those kinds of relationships?

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21 Buffy and Masculinity from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

The other thing that was going on with Buffy and a couple of other shows we’ll talk about, is that we’re taking vampires who were the other and the scary and the bad and we’re making them sexy and hot, which is a female perspective but then we have to ask ourselves is that good or is that bad? Is that good because in a way when you make the men the objectified sexual object are you taking power away from them and therefore giving that power to the women? That’s a question because you can’t deny David Boreanaz was hot. This is all there is to it. He’s still hot. I know through Buffy through Bones and through Seal Team that man just… but I think it’s a great credit to this actor. We have to recognize he could manage to be deeply, deeply masculine while not being the most important person in the story. He could be the supportive man beside her and that made him all the more man and that’s a different way to define what manhood is and that’s I think a really important thing we’re seeing in some newer literature. So that I think is fascinating.

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20 Even More On Buffy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 16 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

The other thing that’s important about Buffy is that we’re going to blend in some LGBTQ stories in the course of time. We’re going to blend in the fact that these men in her life help but never save the day. In any other story, it’s the men who come along and save the damsel in distress. In this case, it’s the chick who saves the dudes in distress or through sharing the work they make the solution happen. One of the special things about Buffy was it is about how a woman masters a problem in a feminine way right? Sadly we tend to think that when boys learn how to save the day they learn how to master a weapon and go one on one with the bad guy. That’s what they’ve seen in a million movies — many movies that i enjoy myself. The way women do it is they gather a group around them and they empower that group to be as good as they can be together and then as a group they go forward and they save the day and that’s a feminine way of doing things that’s a very that’s a very teacherly way of doing things. Together we will learn this and we will master this thing and move on in the world and succeed. So i think the show did so many things from a feminine perspective and i think it’s because of those two ladies. That makes a big difference.

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19 More On Buffy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (39 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

Importantly, Jane Espenson eventually went on and created Warehouse 13 which is an adorable little show also in the sort of sci-fi world. Really good show. So I think it’s really important to think about everything that Buffy did to throw all the tropes of horror to flip them. So now we have the blonde is saving the world. This rarely happens. The blonde is usually the one who gets dead first right? So not only is she a girl who saves the world she has to be a blonde girl and she has to be a cheerleader because we have to take every single anti-female trope and say “no”, there’s power in who she is.

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