”Enjoy the process because building things does not happen overnight.”
—YouTuber Kariza Santos, Life of Riza
Once upon a time…
I had this idea to start a blog. Thought maybe I’d do it a year. Thought maybe I could blog a book. Well, to paraphrase Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) in The Natural, Things didn’t turn out the way I expected. But the book did get done—12 years later. Here it is Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles. And that blog I was going to do for a year—still here18 years later. Haven’t missed posting at least once a month in 217 month.
To date I’ve written 3,000 blog posts that have gotten over 2 million views. And in 2024 I started the YouTube channel Filmmaking with Brass Knuckles which essentially flows from seeds grown on this channel. I’ve seen plenty of ups and downs and expectations that were both not met and exceeded. Much like the film industry itself. Part of why I like the brass knuckles analogy I came up with many years is it connotes a fight. A creative fight.
I’m even thinking about changing this blog name to Filmmaking with Brass Knuckles to match and keep unity with the YouTube name. (Anyone think that’s a good or bad idea?) But for now the title is Screenwriting from Iowa because it’s where I was living in 2008 when I saw Juno and learned that the screenwriter Diablo Cody went to school at the University of Iowa and wrote that screenplay while living in Minneapolis.
So I wanted to start a blog that focused on the writers in unlikely places. I started this blog just a few months after Scott Beck and Bryan Woods graduated from the University of Iowa. When they eventually hit Hollywood success with their script A Quiet Place, a mutual production friend told me they were familiar with my blog. While I can’t take any credit for their success, they were the kind of reader I was hoping to inspire. And they were kind enough to write the introduction to my book.
Today I happened to record a new YouTube video on the new John August and Craig Mazin book Scriptnotes and in it August talks about the screenwriting blog he started years ago also hoping to inspire writers in places like Iowa. (He did his undergraduate work at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.) Look for my video next week on my top 10 favorite things about the Scriptnotes book.
“When John [August] started his blog, his idealized reader was a kid in Iowa who was curious about screenwriting but had no good way to learn about it. That’s one target audience for this book: the aspiring writer who want to learn about the craft.”
From the introduction to the book Scriptnotes by John August and Craig Mazin
Here’s one of the passages from the Scriptnotes book that I talked about today: “The screenwriting life is an endless hustle…Let’s be honest the numbers are against you. There are very few jobs and many people who want them.” But the Diablo Cody success stories happen. They just don’t happen that much. I think if Diablo Cody was starting over in her 20s today there’s a very good chance that she’d be tearing it up creating content on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
I will continue to write about new and long forgotten filmmakers and their movies and process, but this year I plan on doing more posts on a wider variety of content creation. YouTube was only 4 years old in 2008 and today way more young people want to be YouTubers than screenwriters or traditional filmmakers. (And way more content creators are making a living than those in the traditional filmmaking world. And they’re doing it around the world.) Until then, if you’re just getting started in the production world, here are some videos I recently watched that I hope inspire you wherever you are in the world. Starting with an interview Patreon CEO Jack Conte did with YouTuber/content creator Kairza Santos who is known for her CineVlogs inspired by movies like Ferris Bueller’s Days Off and Juno.
Cheers.
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles and runs the Filmmaking With Brass Knuckles YouTube channel. Scott makes a small commissions off some affiliate links.
Screenwriting from Iowa 