{"id":3152,"date":"2014-11-09T11:36:32","date_gmt":"2014-11-09T18:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/?p=3152"},"modified":"2014-11-09T11:36:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T18:36:32","slug":"35th-anniversary-interview-with-jeanne-rosenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/35th-anniversary-interview-with-jeanne-rosenberg\/","title":{"rendered":"35th Anniversary Interview with Jeanne Rosenberg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8GlZJ4wVLdA\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nHere&#8217;s a special treat for you, an interview with Jeanne Rosenberg, the screenwriter on the movie of &#8220;The Black Stallion&#8221; (1979)<br \/>\nShe was there in the early days and we all had a very strange trip &#8230; at the track, on the Drake and back home again. Thanks to our friends at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsechannel.com\/\">Horse Channel<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsechannel.com\/horse-magazines\/horse-illustrated\/\">Horse Illustrated. Check out the November magazine for two more articles on &#8220;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\">The Black Stallion&#8221;<\/span><\/span>!<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/HI-nov.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3157\" src=\"http:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/HI-nov.jpg\" alt=\"HI nov\" width=\"200\" height=\"267\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a title=\"gift\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theblackstallion.com\/shop\/\">Don&#8217;t forget to pick up a little piece of history for yourself @ the Gift Shop!<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsechannel.com\/horse-exclusives\/the-black-stallion-film-35th-anniversary.aspx\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #999999; text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong> The Black Stallion Film\u2019s 35-year Anniversary<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/a><br \/>\nScreenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg recalls her unlikely path to the job.<br \/>\nBy Elizabeth Kaye McCall | September 2014<\/p>\n<p>Never doubt the impact of a college course on life. Los Angeles screenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg can vouch for it. &#8220;I had written a script analysis of my favorite childhood book, The Black Stallion, when I was in film school,\u201d says Rosenberg about the door that opened her screenwriting career. &#8220;After I graduated, I found out that they were making it into a movie and Carroll Ballard was directing it. I wrote him a letter. I had done a script analysis. He called and said, \u2018I really like what you wrote. We have to get together.\u2019 Time passed, we didn\u2019t get together. I called again. \u2018Oh, they\u2019re in Canada in pre-production.\u2019 I called him again. He apologized for not getting back to me.\u201d<br \/>\nCrazy about horses from her earliest girlhood memories in Illinois, Rosenberg grabbed the reins of her own destiny. &#8220;I said, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m coming your way. Do you mind? Maybe I\u2019ll just stop in.\u2019 I was flying from Los Angeles to the Midwest and they were in Toronto.\u201d She arrived in the midst of chaos. &#8220;People were tearing their hair out because Carroll wouldn\u2019t commit to anything,\u201d she recalls. &#8220;We were supposed to meet for coffee one morning. He was late. I was making some notes on a napkin. He showed up, grabbed the napkin out of my hand and kept my notes. I went home and got another call. \u2018Carroll would like you to come back. We need help on the script.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rosenberg\u2019s initiative paid off. &#8220;It was total chaos when I arrived in the pre-production phase. Melissa Mathison [who later wrote &#8220;ET\u201d] got off another plane and we met and became this writing team as we were about to shoot,\u201d she describes. &#8220;Carroll hadn\u2019t committed to a screenplay! All the actors were there. Everyone was. The art department didn\u2019t know where to go to dress the set. They didn\u2019t even know the locations. Do we need a farm house? Do we need a race track? What do we need? Carroll liked to keep everything open and see what developed. To have an entire film crew that had to be told [what to do] at every moment and to get that information from a guy who doesn\u2019t like to make decisions is tough,\u201d Rosenberg laughs. &#8220;He was driving everyone crazy, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A graduate of USC Film School [now USC School of Cinematic Arts], Rosenberg planned on a documentary film career. &#8220;I remember being forced to take a writing class and thinking, \u2018This is ridiculous. There\u2019s no way I\u2019m writing.\u2019 And, here I am,\u201d adds the real-life horsewoman and reining competitor, whose scores of film credits include family favorites like &#8220;White Fang,\u201d &#8220;Bambi II,\u201d and &#8220;The Young Black Stallion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The date &#8220;The Black Stallion\u201d started shooting in Toronto is etched on Rosenberg\u2019s mind. It was 7\/7\/77. &#8220;We shot the second part of the movie first,\u201d she notes. Meanwhile, preparations were underway to move the crew overseas to film the first half of the movie. &#8220;Carroll kept refusing to let us write the island sequence,\u201d says Rosenberg. &#8220;Of course, we did it anyway. He has an amazing eye and is quite a storyteller. But he was really more used to being a one-man band, making all of the decisions on the fly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now the mother of two grown children, Rosenberg writes from an office with a view of her American Quarter Horses. She revisited the production that launched her career this summer, when film critic Stephen Farber held a 35th anniversary screening of &#8220;The Black Stallion\u201d in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p>From a personal standpoint, Rosenberg shares that &#8220;The Black Stallion\u2019s\u201d magic remains. &#8220;It was fun to see again,\u201d she says. If any scenes can be favorites, these made Rosenberg\u2019s list: &#8220;The shipwreck sequence is amazing and scary. The whole island scene was everyone\u2019s favorite. When the boy wakes up on the beach and is staring straight at a cobra ready to strike, and The Black comes and saves him\u2014that\u2019s a wonderful scene. Of course, the boy climbing on The Black for the first time is brilliant. But it all goes back to Walter Farley\u2019s novel,\u201d adds Rosenberg. &#8220;He wrote such a wonderful, descriptive story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a special treat for you, an interview with Jeanne Rosenberg, the screenwriter on the movie of &#8220;The Black Stallion&#8221; (1979) She was there in the early days and we all had a very strange trip &#8230; at the track, on the Drake and back home again. Thanks to our friends at the Horse Channel &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,36],"tags":[61,67,71,81,529,527,89,98,528,50,530],"class_list":["post-3152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","category-movies","tag-black-stallion-literacy-project","tag-cass-ole","tag-corky-randall","tag-film","tag-horse-film","tag-jeanne-rosenberg","tag-kelly-reno","tag-magazine-article","tag-screenwriting","tag-walter-farley","tag-white-fang"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3152"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblackstallion.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}