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‘Death of a Brewer’ — a film about the Iowa City beer mafia — is coming to a brewery near you
Doug Alberhasky, owner of Iowa City’s John’s Grocery, teams up with an Iowa native filmmaker and a Coralville author to tell a ‘fun tale of immigrants and America’
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Movie audiences next summer may view the historic drama of the bloody fight over alcohol sales in Iowa City. They may even watch “Death of a Brewer” over a cold beer at their local brewery.
“It’s our goal that every beer lover across the world is going to see our movie,” said Doug Alberhasky, the film’s producer and third-generation owner of John’s Grocery in Iowa City. “It’s a love story, it’s espionage, and it’s all true.”
Shooting starts next month in Quincy and Galena, Ill., Iowa City, and Dubuque. Alberhasky said about half of the two-hour film’s scenes will be shot in Iowa City, at the Old Capitol, the legendary Black Angel monument at Oakland Cemetery, and in what’s left of the beer caves where three local brewers once aged their lagers.
The script is based on the historical novel “Beer Money: A Tale of the Iowa City Beer Mafia,” by Coralville author S.C. “Steve” Sherman. The book recounts the 1880s battles between three Iowa City brewers, their mostly immigrant customers, and Temperance campaigners who wanted to ban alcohol.
“It should be a lot of fun,” said Mokotsi Rukundo, the film’s director and screenwriter, and an Iowa City native. “We’ve been so blessed to have these intact breweries (in Quincy and Dubuque), these locations. It’s such a gift.”
Rukundo was 10 when his family emigrated to Iowa City from Swaziland. He graduated from West High and from the University of Iowa with a business administration degree in 2011, operating a food cart at Iowa City’s downtown Pedestrian Mall during his college years.
“I was really just a cinephile,” he said. “Once I graduated, I had a lot of time and I got into writing these scenes. What started as a hobby became an obsession.”
In a story as old as Hollywood, Rukundo’s passion led him there to become a filmmaker, largely self-taught.
“I will never know unless I try, so I moved out to L.A. without really knowing anyone,” he said. “I put the hours in. I did take some courses that really helped. I just dove in.”
Rukundo, who now splits his time between California and Iowa, returned to his hometown in 2019 for the shooting of “East of Midwest,” a crime drama he wrote. That’s when he encountered Sherman — who’d just published “Beer Money” — as an extra in some of the Iowa City scenes.
“I had my book in my back pocket and stopped him,” Sherman said. “He finally read it and he called me up and said, ‘Hey, this is a great story.’ I said, ‘I know.’”
“I was really impressed with the story of Iowa City in a time I didn’t know much about,” Rukundo said. “It’s so rich, with immigration and the breweries.”
To close the circle, Sherman wrote “Beer Money” after meeting Alberhasky on a tour of the beer caves. Alberhasky and others started conducting the tours to benefit local charities in about 2010, after learning of the network of caves and tunnels about 35 feet below street level. Built in 1848, John’s Grocery is the last place the caves can be accessed.
“I took the beer cave tour and just got obsessed with it,” Sherman said. “I lived in this town 20 years and never heard of it. I thought I’d tell the story if only people in Johnson County read it. It’s such a fun tale of immigrants and America.”
Sherman’s research filled out the story of the “wets,” led by three immigrant brewers — German, Bohemian, and Irish Catholics — and their battle with the “dries,” mostly Protestant pro-Temperance crusaders. Rukundo adapted Sherman’s book.
“We did a lot of Zoom sessions with the script,” Sherman said.
Although the producers aren’t ready yet to make an official casting announcement, they’ve signed one notable name, according to Alberhasky.
“We’ve got one big actor lined up and we’re working on two others,” he said. “One of them was in an Oscar-nominated movie and is very recognizable. The other couple we’re in negotiations with are very recognizable. We’re going to have some top-notch talent.”
With a $2 million budget — a rounding error for a major-studio production — the producers are counting on the cost savings of shooting at authentic Midwest locations and a unique marketing plan. After the film-festival circuit and a brief theatrical release, “Death of a Brewer” will be screened at craft breweries and taprooms nationwide.
“We’re going to go around to, eventually, every single brewery in the United States,” Alberhasky said. With a positive response so far from breweries in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, the producers will screen their trailer at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver in October.
“There are over 10,000 breweries across the U.S.,” Alberhasky said. “If we get into a portion of those to show our movie once, we’ve made our investors whole.”
“We love that it’s going to pull in a grassroots feel,” Sherman said. “We need the world to see it, and to partner with the breweries, it gives them a night to bring people in.”
“The film industry has these different outlets for films,” Rukundo said. “We’re going to go those typical routes, however this film is different. (Beer) is an actually tangible product people experience in their lives.”
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