The Scriptnotes Book Intersects with Screenwriting from Iowa

“When John 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

The long awaited Scriptnotes book by screenwriters John August (Big Fish) and Craig Mazin (The Last of Us) is now out in the wild. I purchased the audio version and Kindle digital version and will have the hardback version next week. That means I have enough hope in this content to purchase it three times.

When I started the blog Screenwriting from Iowa…and Other Unlikely Places way back in 2008 it was my version of a Purple Cow inspired by the then recent success of the movie Juno written by Diablo Cody who was a fairly recent graduate from the University of Iowa and had written the script in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

So I was pleased to read in the Scriptnotes introduction that when John August started his blog that “his idealized reader was a kid in Iowa who was curious about screenwriting but had no good way to learn about it.” That’s where his blog and my blog intersected. I was a video producer living in Cedar Falls, Iowa at the time (with tons of notes from film school on looking for a home) and August was an established Hollywood screenwriter who’d done his undergraduate work at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Around the time Juno was in theaters, two young filmmakers were also graduating from the University of Iowa: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. After years of struggling, they found success when their script for A Quiet Place became a surprised critical and financial success in 2018. I was pleased to learn they were familiar with my blog coming up and thrilled when they agreed to write the introduction to my book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles.

I imagine that Beck and Woods were also familiar with John August’s blog and, eventually, the Scriptnotes podcast with Mazin as well. It would be a mistake to look at August, Beck, Woods and Cody and assume there’s something special in the water in Iowa. The truth is the success they’ve all found is rare—just as rare as Iowa native Kurt Warner rising from the University of Northern Iowa to become a Super Bowl-winning MVP. His football journey was so unlikely that it became the movie American Underdog. (One of my most read posts is How Much Do Screenwriters Make? where I compare NFL football players with professional screenwriters.)

But all the examples above show that great success is not impossible—even if you come from an unlikely place like Iowa. And there are many more examples of creative people from all over who have found various degrees of success and long lasting careers in the arts. (Recently, I heard the quote ”You’re fortunate if you find something you love to do. If you find someone to pay you to do it—it’s a miracle.”)

While I’ve just started the listening to the audio version of the Scriptnotes book and reading the Kindle version, I can easily recommend the book as a great resource because it’s the “greatest hits” from August’s blog and the over 700 episodes of the Scriptnotes podcast. (I estimate that I’ve listened to well over 500 episodes being a listener from the start.)

I’ll pull some quotes from the book in the coming weeks on this blog. And I will also lean into the book for some YouTube shorts on my YouTube channel Filmmaking with Brass Knuckles.

Until then here are just 15 of links I’ve written over the years inspired from the Scriptnotes podcast:

Waiting to be Great

The 100th Scriptnotes Podcast

‘Torture your heroes’—How to Write a Movie via Craig Mazin

Is It a Movie?

Scriptnotes #300 & the Difference Between Screenwriting and Directing

Christopher Nolan on Gaming the System With His ‘Oppenheimer’ Screenplay

The Film School Gamble via Sam Esmail: Hit It Big or Die In Debt

‘Chernobyl’: Craig Mazin’s Real Life Scary Movie Lands 19 Emmy Nominations

Quality—Quality—Quality

Your Path to Success is Doing What You Do Best

Most Optioned Books (Even Most Scripts) Don’t Get Made Into Movies—John August

Double Down on Substance (Tip #106)

‘I was never good or smart enough to get industry work before I made my first movie’—Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer/director

‘I never saw myself as a sitcom person, but I was waiting tables…’—Hit Sitcom Writer

How to Get an Agent

P.S. Here’s an interesting quote from Steven Spielberg back in 1991:
“I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we’re all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines.” 

As of 2025 a photographer turned YouTuber I knew in my Iowa years, Tim Dodd, has a YouTube named Everyday Astronaut that currently has just under 2 millon subscribers. His Space X tour video with Elon Musk has over 7 million views and his Blue Origin tour with Jeff Bezos has over 2 million views. Suddenly, Spielberg’s predication doesn’t seem like SciFi fiction.

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.

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‘Go make something cool’ — DP Lawrence Sher (’Joker: Folie á Deux’)

Oscar-nominated cinematographer Lawrence Sher (Joker) ends a super Vanity Fair discussion on color and lighting by encouraging people to ”Go make something cool.” He packs into 15-minutes various lighting samples from films he’s shot (Garden State, The Hangover, Paul). If you’ve ever had someone tell you to never use or to turn off un-color corrected fluorescent lights (with their green spike), or ugly sodium vapor lights, or not to mix color temperatures, then you’ll appreciate the creative approach that Sher takes to lighting a scene.

And if you’d like to make films but aren’t even sure what a director of photography does on a shoot this is an excellent primer for you as well.

In the four years since that video came out (but I just saw for the first time today), one of the film Sher has been working on is the second Joker film with director Todd Phillips, Joker:Folie á Deux. That film will come out later this year and has reported budget three times that of the original Joker.

And if you don’t have $200 million to make on a movie, look what Sher pulled off visually on the Zach Braff indie film Garden State (2004). Then go make something cool.

Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles and runs the Filmmaking With Brass Knuckles YouTube channel.

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Plot vs. Character (According to Pollack Via Zwick)

Emmy and BAFTA winner and Oscar-nominated producer, director, writer Edward Zwick has a book out titled Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Forty Years in Hollywood. I bought the audio book yesterday and will pull some quotes from it in the coming weeks. But Zwick has had an amazing career starting out writing prestige television (Thirtysomething) back in the ’80s before anyone was talking about ”prestige television.”

Then he went on to make prestige movies (Glory, Shakespeare in Love, The Last Samurai) working with many prestige actors including Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, and Denzel Washington. And he’s learned from many of the most talented people Aaron Spelling, Woody Allen and Sydney Pollack in the entertainment business.

In a podcast interview with Marc Maron, Zwick said as he was defending a plot of a script he was working on Sydney Pollack told him ”Plot is the meat that the burglars throw to the dogs when they climb over the walls to get to the jewels—which are the characters.” In other words, the plot serves the characters. It doesn’t matter how cool the plot is if the characters aren’t strong.

That reminds of the this Stephen King quote:

“Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored. I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story . . . . I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work free.”
—Stephen King
On Writing, A Memory of Craft (2000 version), page 164

Related posts: Screenwriting Quote #148 (Edward Zwick)

Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles and runs the Filmmaking With Brass Knuckles YouTube channel.

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