Screenwriting, Acting & Babe Ruth

While studying acting for three years in L.A. I learned a few things about the craft. When I inquired about classes at the The Actors Studio in West Hollywood I was told, “If when your feet hit the ground in the morning you don’t want to be an actor more than anything then don’t even try, [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #28 (Robert F. Kennedy)

Yesterday I videotaped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa as he was honored with the Graven Award. The third son of Bobby Kennedy spoke a little about the environmental organization Riverkeeper and how they have fought to protect the waters of the Hudson River from being polluted and how those efforts have spread [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #27 (John Updike)

The well is deep with writer John Updike who died a couple days ago. So I thought it was fitting to quote him one more time. These insights coming from a Q&A he did with Salon when his novel In the Beauty of the Lilies first came out:
Dwight Garner: There’s a place in the new book where [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #26 (John Updike)

There was a big spike in readers here at Screenwriting from Iowa yesterday and I think it’s because author John Updike died this week. People’s Internet search that lead them to this blog was not because I’ve written anything about Updike, but because they probably confused him with writer John Irving who I have written a [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #25 (400 Year Old Advice)

Since I like to focus on dramatic writers with origins outside L.A. I think Lope de Vega qualifies. The playwright was born in Madrid, Spain in 1562 and is thought to have written around 1,500 plays. I was unaware of him until I read The Tools of Screenwriting by David Howard and Edward Mabley a [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #24 ( J. Michael Stracynski)

The movie Changeling was nominated for three Oscars last week. It’s success has made the writer,  J. Michael Stracynski, an A-list writer in Hollywood. And though he had been writing for TV for 20 years before Changeling sold he recently wrote in Script magazine,”Nobody in features knew me from Adam.” 
They didn’t know about his Emmy winning [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #23 (John Grogan)

While tears are not the best indicator of whether a film is great or not, it is an indicator that a viewer was moved. As so was the case yesterday when I saw Marley & Me. There’s been maybe a half a dozen movies in my lifetime that have brought water to my eyes—the first [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #22 (Blogging)

As I close out this anniversary week of seeing Juno and starting this blog it seemed fitting to find a quote that connects screenwriting and blogging.
“Although there’s been a tradition of journalists such as Nora Ephron, Nick Pileggi, Paul Attanasio and Stephen Schilff jumping into screenwriting, Cody is one of the first from the new [...]

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One Year Anniversary

Yesterday marks the one year anniversary of my blog Screenwriting from Iowa. In fact, January 22, 2008 was my entrance into writing any blog. I would like to thank all the people for wandering to this site over the past year because without growing stats I’m not sure I would have had the energy or [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #21 (Courtney Hunt)

Since it’s the middle of winter as I look at the Oscar nominations today, one title stands out—Frozen River. I don’t know much about that film other than it was a Sundance Film Festival winner. So I dug around a little and found out about the screenwriter, Courtney Hunt, who has been nominated for Best [...]

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