writing – Page 25 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

13 Something’s missing in writer’s rooms from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

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When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

Transcript

Something’s missing in these early writer’s rooms. What’s — who’s not in that picture? Audience: Women. Uh-hum. it’s kind of obvious, you know, so we had these shows that we admire greatly but they didn’t have a female perspective. Hello? They were missing and their opinion is missing and I think that’s a problem. But then along came Buffy and Buffy had a staff that included many female writers — some of whom are now credited with giving it the feminist bent that it had. Joss Whedon may have started the show but now we also know that — like Woody Allen — there are things we don’t like about him. So it seems it was the women on the staff who maintained that feminist idea right up to the point where they credited the first lesbian couple on television, Tara and Willow — and that was a big step in American television. So, Buffy’s a big step. Now, here we have a room for Orange is the New Black, which has many females, but it’s missing something different. Audience: People of color. A person of color, exactly, and yet the show itself was filled with women of color as characters. So, again, we have to address that issue. We’re not getting all the perspectives we can.

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A Woman Wrote That – 29 in a series – You’ve Got Mail (1998), Writer: Nora Ephron

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director. The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters. Feel free to share! — Rosanne

JOE

Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

You’ve Got Mail on IMDB
You’ve Got Mail on Wikipedia
Nora Ephron on Wikipedia and IMDB
Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

25 Video Game Writer’s Rooms from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.

Transcript:

So the thing about writer’s rooms is they had to evolve over time right? I was — it was interesting to watch them grow. So these are a couple of, you know, empires. I mentioned today. The new thing is that video game writers are using writer’s rooms and that’s huge. These gentlemen, Ralph and George, are with Blizzard so if you know Overwatch, right, and Diablo and those things. They came out of television. They were hired by the video game companies. They are now looking for television writers because they want people who understand how a writer’s room works and they were explaining at their writer’s room — most writers rooms now five six people — theirs go to 10 or 12 because they’ve got guys who are lore experts who are going to remind you of what this character did 15 years ago with his stepsister from the other kingdom whatever that is. They have to have people who are storyboard artists who are going to show you what the new characters look like. What their weaponry looks like. They are the historians who tell you what else should be happening in this village at this time. They have a giant room full of people plus about five or six writers who are creating the story lines for these characters. So it’s really a brilliant thing to be part of.

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A Woman Wrote That – 28 in a series – The Birdcage (1996), Witten by Elaine May

ALBERT

There’s no need to get hysterical. All I have to remember is I can always get more toast.

- The Birdcage on IMDB
- The Birdcage on Wikipedia
- Elaine May on Wikipedia and IMDB
- Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

12 Kenny Johnson from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

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Transcript

Kenny Johnson brought science fiction more seriousness, right? So he started The Bionic Woman. He moved on to The Incredible Hulk, then V, and then Alien Nation. A beautiful show about an alien nation and assimilation into new cultures all done through science fiction. So he brought social justice to science fiction and that was a very distinct way that his voice worked. I got to be his assistant for a while.

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Drs. Rosanne Welch and Sarah Clark discuss The Monkees “Monkee Chow Mein” episode on the Zilch Podcast’s Monkees 101 Series [Audio]

My co-host, Dr. Sarah Clark and I usually host a segment on Zilch: A Monkees Podcast where we break down episodes of The Monkees in terms of history and popular culture of the time in which is was written, filmed and aired.

For this episode, however, we tackled the problem with an episode we consider to be a sad outlier to the usual mix of positive energy and creativity. The title alone will tell you the problem with the episode – Monkee Chow Mein. Sadly, against the show’s youthful promise to celebrate how “we’re too busy singing to put anybody down” the title tells you laughs were wrung from doing exactly that so in this discussion Dr. Clark and I try to understand how that happened.

Monkees News and “We need to talk about monkee chow mein”. Farewell tour, it looks like this is it.

Dolenz Sings Nesmith, a collection of songs featuring Micky paying tribute to the songbook of Michael Nesmith.

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24 Diversity Makes Better Product from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

One of the big things about writer’s rooms these days is being as inclusive as we can be. You guys are better at that. I’m always impressed with British shows because it’s always kind of a mix of people — the ones that I get to see in America, all right, but that’s impressive to me and of course, we all know you went so far as to make The Doctor a woman. That’s huge. At least that was huge news in the states. I don’t know if it was huge news here but we’re very happy about that. So finally from the 90s and beyond we’re getting more inclusive writing rooms right, but you might notice we don’t yet have too many Asian American writers I mean there’s a lot of ethnicities not completely being represented but writer/producers are more responsible to that idea now because they recognize it makes the product better because a collaboration of many ideas is always going to be a more layered piece that you’re presenting.

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Dorothy Parker: Born to be a Star of Poignant and Pointed Word Play, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script magazine, May 2021

Mention of the name “Dorothy Parker” conjures up thoughts of New York’s famed Algonquin Round Table and the lone woman (though Edna Ferber and Ruth Gordon often stopped by) trading quips with the greatest male writers of her day. Few know that Parker pounced on Hollywood, following in the footsteps of many those male writers looking for a quick – and hefty – payoff. Parker’s second husband Alan Campbell (who knew she was married?) had heard the call of the West but her name in their shared credits cinched those extra 000s on their shared studio checks.

The imbalance of fame in their marriage lead to one of Hollywood’s greatest stories, one that is remade in almost every generation. But Parker lived emotional experience gave the story its birth. If you’ve seen any of the myriad versions of A Star is Born I believe you have seen into Parker’s heart as much as if you’ve read any of her poetry or short stories. All these writings share a voice dripped in sarcastic wit and word play used as brain armor to combat an ever-present tide of melancholia and loneliness.\

Star originally focused on an up and coming actress (Janet Gaynor) who falls in love with a partner whose fame is on the wane. Remade in 1954 for an up and coming musical comedy performer (Judy Garland) it was reconfigured for a rock star (Barbara Streisand) in 1976 and a pop star (Lady Gaga) in 2018. All but the latest version share the tragic concept that society couldn’t condone a woman more successful than her man. Parker’s lived emotional experience encompassed more sadness than her marriage.

Born Dorothy Rothschild in New Jersey in 1893, her mother died when she was five years old. Her father raised her with the help of a stepmother Parker disliked. In her late teens Parker, who was even then witty, wrote what she characterized as ‘light verse’ that didn’t sell – until it did. Parker’s reputation as a writer grew from writing for The New Yorker and then publishing Enough Rope, a collection of poetry, in 1926.

Her first marriage failed after her husband returned from World War I. Her second ended in divorce, remarriage and then Campbell died of a drug over dose. Her career largely never wavered, moving from magazines to screenplays, including Saboteur for which Alfred Hitchcock courted her contributions and counted them as so important he offered her a shared cameo in the film.

You can find comments about how Parker and Campbell worked together in S.J.Perelman’s published letters or in reminiscences of prolific (and also married) screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett who had the office next door. It amounts to the idea that Dottie, as she was called by friends, did the bulk of the writing and character creation and Campbell did not. You’ll hear more about Goodrich next month! Meanwhile, it is hard to decide which cultural icon has become a more enduring and influential touchstone to the twentieth century – A Star is Born or Dorothy Parker.

Read Dorothy Parker: Born to be a Star of Poignant and Pointed Word Play on the Script web site

Read about more women from early Hollywood

23 The importance of A Voice in the Room There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

So, for instance, we were doing a story once about a young little girl. She was nine years old and she happened to be a young girl of color. She was lost at a park or something like that and you know the first thing that came to us — what do we do next in the story — well she’s gonna go find a policeman and the two African-American women in her room went “Oh no she’s not. My parents told me never to go to a policeman” and we were like but I was always told to find a policeman if I got lost somewhere. Yeah because you’re not a woman of color. So you can be safe with them. That was a whole new perspective, right? A perspective that I would not have had had I not had that other voice in the room.

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A Woman Wrote That – 27 in a series – 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) Written by Karen McCullah & Kirsten Smith

KAT

But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.