So I want to bring in a modal view controller that has a UITextView in it and I want the keyboard to automatically popup and the UITextView have focus.
I found a way
Since UITextView inherits from UIResponder (indirectly, it actually inherits from UIScrollView, which inherits from UIView which then inherits from UIResponder) you can call the -becomeFirstResponder method on your text field, which will cause it to become the first responder and begin editing:
[textView becomeFirstResponder];