“I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa.”
Artist Grant Wood

Stone City by Grant Wood
Note: I don’t have the time to do this post justice, but I want to get in out there because it’s so timely to the success of A Quiet Place this month. I’ll try to update it when I have more time.
You may have seen a painting by Grant Wood titled American Gothic—it’s only one of the most recognized paintings in the history of painting. (And along with the Mona Lisa, probably the most parodied.) What you may not know is that small farmhouse is in Eldon, Iowa and is now a part of a small museum there.
Wood painted that painting in his small studio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the rest is well-documented history. For a couple of years back in the 1930s, he was part of a short-lived artist colony in Stone City, Iowa depicted in his painting above.
He would later teach at the University of Iowa. The same school where playwright Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire), and screenwriters Diablo Cody (Juno), and Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) all earned there bachelor’s degrees. As well as a long distinguished list of writers who did their master’s with the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
There’s some special mojo going on in that area. In fact, I did the rough not-to-scale map below (yes, Bettendorf should be west of the Mississippi River) that basically covers a two-hour radius from Iowa City where the University of Iowa is located. From 2003 to 2013 I lived in this zone of creativity and I’m not surprised that the A Quiet Place has its roots there.
I’ve either judged or had films in four film festivals located in this zone. There’s a lot filmmaking talent in the area. Most will never have the off-the-chart success that Woods/Beck but it’s not a total surprise.

When Beck and Woods talk about plan-B of shooting A Quiet Place in Iowa if they couldn’t get anyone in Hollywood interested, that doesn’t mean that it was going to be two guys on a farm with iPhones. (Though I’m sure they could have pulled that off, too.) No, they have a real support based in the Quad Cities on the Iowa/Illinois border.
If you check out their Bluebox Films website you’ll see some photos of some rather large casts and crews they’ve assembled for various productions. One connection I have with them is grip/ job operator Jon Van Allen who has a very extensive grip truck. Below is a production from way back in 2009 that I directed using Van Allen’s Jimmy Jib in a loft in Cedar Falls, IA.

Chicago is around 2 hours from Bettendorf so some of the locally-based talent is able to hone their craft there. And Eastern Iowa is just one pocket in the county where filmmakers are doing work on a regional level. Think of them like regional bands or community theater actors.
When I left Cedar Falls five years ago I think there were five establish college or community theaters. One of the actors that rose out of that talent pool is Sam Lilja
who is currently an understudy in the Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh starring Denzel Washington.

In some other pockets of the world I have no doubt that someone is going to take Blackmagic’s new 4K pocket camera (or some other camera) and make some inroads that puts another unusual place on the map. No one is saying that this a sure path to greater financial success, but I do think regional filmmaking is on the rise in a way mirrors what regional bands and community theaters have been doing for years.
If you have a desire to help out local filmmakers in your area here’s a helpful exchange between indie producer Keith Calder and John August.
I actually do think that if you live really anywhere in the world and you want to be a producer, I do think that your best step forward is to go to your local film festivals. Wherever you live there’s probably one within driving distance. And see what the local talent base is like and see if you can build a local filmmaking community of some sort and make movies that way. I don’t think that that is necessarily a path to financial success and kind of success within the larger industry, but it is a path to working within the arts and making movies in the same way that I think if you want to do theatre you can go be in your local theatre production. You shouldn’t have an expectation that that’s going to lead to you starring in a play on Broadway.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making regional cinema. I think that’s actually a great way for people to spend their time. And I think you can do really cool work that can expand way beyond that. But I do think that the arts has a tendency to look at the absolute most success and then say, “Well how do I get to that?” And there’s very rarely a real path to that other than doing what you can do as well as you can.
Keith Calder interview with John August on Scriptnotes (Ep. 343)
Scott W. Smith
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