Schmitz was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the son of an Air Force weatherman, and as a child also lived in Satellite Beach, Florida.

[3] On August 14, 1997, Schmitz created a Geocities website called Bookhouse's Previews of Upcoming Movies[4] as a way to avoid having to repeat the same information in chat rooms and message boards when people would ask questions about movies that had not been released yet, or that were rumored to be at some stage of development in Hollywood.

By October 1999, the site was earning enough of an income from advertising that Schmitz was able to quit his day job as a librarian.

Schmitz also moved to Santa Monica, California as part of the change, and during his time in California, he co-starred in a television pilot for MGM Television called The Movie Fan Show,[7] was frequently quoted in publications like USA Today[8] and The Chicago Sun-Times,[9] and made several radio appearances, including The Howard Stern Show.

As Schmitz's conditions worsened, his ability to continue working on the site, which had previously been a 60+ hour job, declined.