Hollywood Screenwriter with 20+ Years of Experience & Founder of Matt Wolf Marketing — on Building a Creative Career Without Industry Connections, the Unglamorous Reality of Pitching Studios, and Why Every Business Needs a Story Worth Telling
Matt Wolf has spent over 20 years writing screenplays in Los Angeles — not as a well-connected insider, but as someone who built everything from scratch, without family in the industry, without a major agency behind him, and without a single produced film on his resume to show for it. He has been hired to write. He has been close on multiple projects. And he is still going.
In this episode of Be Yourself Podcast, Matt sits down with Sergey to talk honestly about what that journey actually looks like from the inside — the mechanics of pitching production companies, what it means to make a living as a screenwriter before anything gets made, how the Writers Guild of America works and why guild membership is harder to achieve than most people think, and why he built a parallel PR and marketing business alongside his creative work to stay financially stable.
They also dig into storytelling as a business tool — why every brand, product, and service needs a story that resonates, how to find the most interesting angle in what you are trying to convey, and what the difference is between a concept and a personal narrative that actually moves people. A rare, grounded conversation about creativity, patience, and what it takes to do the work that lasts.
Matt Wolf was born and raised in Los Angeles. He studied journalism at the University of Arizona, came back to LA, and spent the next two decades working simultaneously in two industries that most people would never think to combine: Hollywood screenwriting and public relations.
On the screenwriting side, Matt has written approximately ten screenplays — some on spec, some on hire — across the feature film range of $1 million to $3 million budgets. Several are currently in active development, attached to directors and working toward funding. None have been produced yet. He is not embarrassed by that. He considers it part of the job.
On the marketing side, Matt runs Matt Wolf Marketing, a PR agency whose clients have included Nestle, Freeform Channel, and consumer brands across the food, tech, and nonprofit sectors. His work has placed stories in the Associated Press, MSNBC, Wired, the Los Angeles Times, and Good Morning America. His philosophy is simple: if you cannot tell your story clearly and compellingly, no one will hear it — no matter how good the thing actually is.
I didn't have friends or family really in the industry. I wasn't working for a large agency where I could take my work to someone. So I really had to build a network of people.
That just goes to show you, you can make a living without having your work produced as well.
You could be the best screenwriter in the world or have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, then that's all it is.