Interview: Jayson Johnson

Guest Links

• Website
• Jayson on IMDb
• Facebook
• YouTube

Transcript

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. On our recent Watch episode, we were joined by independent screenwriter and film director Jayson Johnson. After the show, we chatted with Jayson about his journey to becoming a filmmaker, found out more about his body of work, and heard a pretty entertaining story about a time he worked on a Bollywood film. We’re presenting that conversation here as a bonus episode. Before we begin, I want to let you know that Jayson was in a co-working space when we recorded this, so sometimes you’ll hear strange background noises when he speaks. All right, let’s jump in.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Jayson, when you originally reached out to me, it sounded like you had a pretty interesting story. So, can you tell us a little bit more about that and how you got to where you are now?

[Jayson]
I’m originally from the Chicagoland area. I went to school at Eastern Illinois and did an undergrad in radio, TV, and film, which is not really a traditional film school. I guess that program really prepares you to work, like, at the nightly news. But, you know, it did have some perks where I was able to learn some camera angles and just get some hands-on experience. So, after I finished at Eastern, I followed a girl out to California, as probably a lot of guys do, and no, I’m not still in that relationship, but at the time, she had a job, and I didn’t have a job. I remember just filling out resume after resume after resume for applications and just for opportunities, and I kind of lost count of how many I applied for. But there was one place that called me, and it was Francis Coppola Winery, and they were looking for a wine steward. And I was just like, “I’ll take the job, but I don’t know anything about wine.” I don’t think I’ve even drank wine at this point. And so they taught me how to be a wine steward and quickly learned that I was terrible at it, but I had some creative ability, and that eventually helped me to transition over to their creative marketing team. And from there, I kind of transitioned over into doing a little bit of film work, and that gave me the confidence to kind of venture out and do the film thing after four years of working there. And I’ve been kind of just learning and trying to just figure it out as I’ve been going along ever since.

[Thomas]
What does a wine steward actually do?

[Jayson]
They’re the persons that- so you have the menu, you’ll have the white wine, the rose, and then the big, bold wines, and the wine steward will tell you the notes that you’re smelling and tasting.

[Thomas]
Sort of walk you through the tasting, then. Yeah, okay. Got it.

[Jayson]
It’s basically someone to talk to you while you get drunk.

[Shep]
I’m in the wrong business.

[Thomas]
Yeah, really.

[Jayson]
That’s what people would always say there’s, like, “You have the best job ever. You just get to drink wine all day,” and it’s just like people automatically assumed I was, like, this raving alcoholic.

[Thomas]
You mentioned when we first got in touch that your personal journey is one that’s been marked with challenges. What were some of those challenges and how did you overcome those, and how do you think they’ve shaped your perspective as a filmmaker?

[Jayson]
Yeah, great question. I’ve had a lot of challenges. At times, I’ve been homeless. As a filmmaker, there’s no shortage of “No”s that you will get, and that can be really frustrating and just downright depressing. But I guess I made up in my mind that this is something that I really wanted to do and that I was going to follow through no matter what the consequences were. So whether I was homeless or had to kind of take a detour and work jobs that I didn’t really want to, I’ve just always believed that in some way, it will kind of come full circle and I will get an opportunity to follow my dreams and work in my dreams, ultimately.

[Thomas]
You talk about your dream of being a filmmaker and making movies. How did you originally develop that dream?

[Jayson]
So when I was a kid, my mom would always watch One Life to Live, and we’d always end up talking about it, and she would always talk about the characters as if they were like our neighbors or something. And I don’t know, it was always really interesting to me how my mom was so vested into these characters and just how much joy it brought her. And I was just like, wow, that’s really cool that she’s just so into this, and it really makes her happy. So me being a mama’s boy, I wanted to give other people that feeling. So I think that’s where the love, really, of filmmaking and just wanting to create something started and then just kind of it grew from soap operas to TV to film and so forth.

[Thomas]
It’s really interesting how these stories and these characters can have a pretty profound effect on people’s emotions and their lives and how we can get so entangled in fake people. Tell us a little bit more about your family growing up. Were they pretty creative, or are you kind of the black sheep in that respect? Like, they’re very analytical and you’re very creative, which seems like that happens a lot. I don’t know.

[Jayson]
I would definitely say I’m a black sheep because my mom was an executive at AT&T.

[Emily]
Oh, wow.

[Jayson]
My dad is a truck driver, and my brother is a teacher. So I don’t know really where I got my creativity. I know that every Sunday we would be hauled off to church, and it would last for, like, forever. So what I did to pass the time was I would draw on the back of the bulletin sheets and draw other people in the church, and then I kind of make up scenes in my head and just kind of do anything to not be in there at that moment. So that’s kind of where I guess I got my start in creativity because before I even decided to make films, I was drawing comic books. And then eventually I started doing comic strips when I went to college to kind of help pay for some of my tuition.

[Thomas]
That’s cool.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What was your comic strip about?

[Jayson]
Really controversial, because I would always take issues that were kind of like hot button topics in the day. So, I remember one was- I’m probably dating myself, but at the time there was “1-800-Collect is so cheap” and the school was not using that service and they were using a competitor service. And I made a cartoon depicting Mr. T saying, “You’re better off using 1-800-Collect, fool,” or something like that. And then the communication office fact checked my comic strip and I was just like, wow, this is kind of crazy that it rubbed such a nerve that they would do that.

[Thomas]
That’s how you know you made it.

[Jayson]
Yeah. And from there on, every comic that I did was either fact checked or edited by the newspaper until they finally fired me.

[Shep]
Success!

[Thomas]
That’s funny.

[Jayson]
Yeah. I think I lasted six or seven weeks and then they gave me the boot.

[Thomas]
Jayson, where do you typically find inspiration?

[Jayson]
I like to listen to people a lot. I live in the Bay Area, and there’s no shortage of kind of interesting things happening everywhere. There’s people that talk to themselves. If you just sit and watch people on the street, then you may see someone break into a car and take things or there may be an illegal sideshow. There’s just always something happening here. So I really like to just watch and listen to people because I think that’s where you get the best dialogue. Sometimes in a film, people say, “I really like that. Your dialogue, where’d you get that?” And I always get it from just, like, hearing the shit that people say on the street. It’s so great. So I was just like, oh, I have to write that down. Or sometimes I even record it on my phone. It’s gold.

[Thomas]
And then it’s probably more natural sounding as well because somebody actually said those words.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What does your writing process look like?

[Jayson]
Well, I don’t know if my writing process is a good one to follow. I usually will start with, like, a character, and I won’t have an outline or anything, but I’ll write a character and then I’ll just have them go through kind of this world by themselves and just kind of adding characters and events around that person until I have somewhat of a story. And then from there, I edit it down and I try to jigsaw it into kind of a story structure. And generally that’s how I get my first draft and it’s terrible. I’ll go back and edit it and then eventually I’ll get to the next draft, and that’s actually what I’m doing now. For my project, Grip Tape, I wrote about a character that is a Mexican American that is an illegal immigrant. He has a daughter. They’re losing their benefits and try adding characters and events around that. And then I’ll kind of shoehorn it into a story structure.

[Thomas]
So you mentioned Grip Tape. That’s the one you’re trying to get the funding for?

[Jayson]
No, I have two other films that I’ve written. One’s about counterfeit wine and then one’s about a guy that falls asleep and crashes into a tropical goldfish store.

[Thomas]
Weirdly specific.

[Emily]
Both of those sound amazing.

[Thomas]
Is that something you saw in the Bay Area? You’re like, “I’ve got to write a movie about this.”

[Jayson]
No, no. The goldfish story. I had a goldfish that died, and it was terrible. So I wanted to write a story that kind of had a memory to him. My goldfish’s name was Roger. So the story is about a computer savant that his girlfriend breaks up with him, so he goes to an all-night hackathon, and although he does well, he falls asleep on the way home, crashes into the goldfish store, and the judge gives him a 30-day sentence with a GPS infused goldfish. He has to get from one side of the town to the other without the fish dying. And that’s just the general setup of the story.

[Shep]
We’ve all been there.

[Jayson]
Along the way, he finds- he runs into a whole bunch of weird characters and instances that try to separate him and the goldfish.

[Emily]
This sounds oddly right up our alley. If this gets made, we’re reviewing it.

[Shep]
Tell me more about the counterfeit wine. It’s still wine, though, right?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So what’s the problem?

[Emily]
This is a thing that actually happens is people make fake expensive bottles of old wine and nobody ever opens them and tastes them, so they fill them with whatever.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s like that episode of Northern Exposure where they have to recreate that really expensive wine. Am I the only one who watched that show? Never mind.

[Emily]
Well, that’s also an episode of Black Books.

[Shep]
I’ve seen both of those shows and not those episodes. Yeah, but if nobody ever opens the bottle, this sounds like a victimless crime.

[Jayson]
There’s a documentary called Sour Grapes, and one of the Koch brothers got taken for counterfeit wine, and he was very pissed about it, and he raised a whole bunch of hell. And that was why this documentary was started. I guess the guy that was counterfeiting all this wine eventually went to prison and that they’ve since come up with a figure that maybe 30% of all wine produced is counterfeit. So it’s kind of crazy.

[Thomas]
So you’ve talked a little bit about the stuff that you are working on. Tell us a bit about the things that you’ve already completed.

[Jayson]
So I’ve completed, was it eight short films now? And I would say that not really any of them are really related. As far as topics. I’ve done one on a man becoming radicalized to becoming a Nazi. I did one a mockumentary on the exploding bird population in San Francisco.

[Thomas]
Now, literally exploding? Or like, now there are suddenly more birds.

[Jayson]
There’s just suddenly more birds now.

[Shep]
Someone was feeding them Pop Rocks. You can’t feed them Pop Rocks.

[Jayson]
Did one on suicide prevention, one on one called T.H.O.T., which is like not a great word, but it’s actually a love story. So I guess I’ve been trying to tackle a lot of different topics and just kind of try my hand at many different genres. I’ve also done a blaxploitation film called Black Rogers. So, yeah, I’ve tried to do a lot of different projects.

[Shep]
Are any of these available online?

[Jayson]
Yeah, I have most of them on my website. The last couple of projects, as the budgets have gotten bigger, we started licensing music and you can only keep those online for so long before you have to re-up with the licensing fees. But for the most part, some of my earlier works are online.

[Thomas]
That’s cool to have that diverse portfolio and be able to try your hand at a bunch of different styles and genres and stories to really get a sense of what you like and not, I don’t know. It’s nice to have that freedom that maybe you don’t always get if you’re working for a client or for a studio or whatever. You don’t want to get pigeonholed too early.

[Jayson]
Yeah, I really like comedies, but everyone seems to get offended these days.

[Shep]
How dare you say that?

[Jayson]
But I guess I’m to the point where I don’t care. So I think I’m just going to just make the film that I want to make anyway and when it offends, because I’m sure it will, I guess that’s okay.

[Thomas]
Well, along those lines, who do you trust to give you honest feedback?

[Jayson]
That’s a good question. I don’t really have a lot of people to bounce ideas off of these days. And I find the people that are in my circle, they don’t really tell me “That’s a great idea” where it’s a horrible idea. Recently, I just started sending my films off to critics so that I can get, like an unbiased review.

[Emily]
Oh, smart.

[Jayson]
Yeah, that’s what I did with my last film T.H.O.T.. And I want to say I sent it off to Film Courage, Film Threat, The Independent Critic, hoping that they would just trash it. But I always got either three and a half stars or four stars almost with all the reviews.

[Thomas]
That’s not terrible, though. That’s pretty good.

[Jayson]
So that’s good. Yeah. When I first started going to film festivals and they would screen my film, I would physically have to leave the theater because I was scared someone was just like, “Did you see this crap on screen? And it’s just like, this is terrible. How did this get in there?”

[Shep]
Booing and throwing popcorn at the screen.

[Jayson]
Yeah. But yeah, I’ve kind of gotten over myself, so it’s just like, grown thicker skin. So I think you have to have that.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
What’s the big project you’re working on that takes up most of your time right now?

[Jayson]
So right now I’m just editing Grip Tape that’s taking a long time because it forces me to read it out and to kind of rethink some of the dialogue and to look at things critically. So I found that for me, I wouldn’t say this is for everybody, but I have to physically print it out, get the highlighters and the colored markers and pens and go through the whole process of scratching stuff out and writing new notes and doing that. And that has been taking a lot of time recently.

[Thomas]
When you’re reading through, and especially when it comes to dialogue, are you reading that out loud to yourself?

[Jayson]
For the first pass, no, I’m looking at what doesn’t make sense and looking for typos and just sentence structure, things like that.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Jayson]
And I feel like I don’t have to necessarily do that, but after I do that first pass, I read it again. And that’s when I read it out loud, I feel like that really does make a difference. I remember someone telling me that, and I was like, “You’re crazy. That doesn’t make any sense.” But then I did it and I was like, “Wow, that really makes a big difference.”

[Thomas]
It really does.

[Emily]
In your head, it sounds one way, and then when you actually read it out loud, you’re like, “That’s not what people sound like.”

[Jayson]
Yeah, it’s like, “Oh, the man said that he…” It’s just like-

[Thomas]
Plus, I’ve seen where you can have something that’s not worded… It’s like, worded in a way that doesn’t really make sense. And if you just sort of read it in your mind, your brain is like, “Yeah, got it. Whatever.” And you sort of move past it. But reading it out loud forces you to say those words in that order, and you go, “Oh, wait, no, that’s not what I want there,” or “That doesn’t make sense,” or, It’s a word salad. It’s tough to say or unclear to understand.

[Jayson]
Yeah. I’ve been around another filmmaker that he would read it out, but he would go a step further. He would, like, change his voice for each of the characters.

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Jayson]
And I was like, oh, my God, he’s bonkers. But I guess it’s a good strategy because you can decipher for the males, females, et cetera.

[Shep]
So when I was editing, I used to put it in a text to speech program and have the computer read it out because sometimes there would be mistakes or whatever that my brain would fix as I’m looking at the words, I’m not reading out the words that are on the page. I’m reading out the words that I think are there. And the computer has no such filter. It will just read what is literally there. And that’s another-

[Jayson]
That’s a good idea. Yeah.

[Shep]
Are there any books or writing frameworks that you’ve read that you use that you would recommend, like Save the Cat?

[Jayson]
When I first started writing, I read Save the Cat and I thought that that was a really good structure and I use that for the first couple of books. But recently I’ve been using Dan Harmon’s story circle. I think that that is really effective as far as telling a good round story. And I like the beats in that better than Save the Cat. But, you know, I’m always learning and if there’s a book out there that is really useful, then I try to read it. I also want to say I read Walter Murch’s In the Blink of an Eye. I think that that really helped me as far as not only with editing, but just also with how you perceive the story, know, making sure that you value the audience’s time. I’m sure that we’ve all watched movies where you’re just like, we just get to the point already.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
It’s just all this exposition. So I want to try to always be respectful of the audience’s time because they’re taking this ride with you. I want to at least be an enjoyable one.

[Shep]
This is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for. I didn’t know this book, so thank you.

[Jayson]
It’s a great book. Yeah, I know about him because he edited a lot of Coppola’s films and I actually got a chance to meet him. So then, you know, I did the fanboy thing and I went and I read his book and I was just like “Oh, OK.”

[Emily]
Are there any stories or passion project ideas that you haven’t developed yet that are, like, sitting in the back of your mind that this is my one day or when I have my big break? Or do you just get them all out as soon as you think of them?

[Jayson]
No, I have a couple of ideas. I have this comedy idea where a redneck hillbilly from West Virginia that makes pruno moves to Napa Valley and he makes the best wine in Napa history. So I haven’t quite reconciled the story yet, but I just thought that that would be an interesting concept where you have this moonshiner that, you know, goes to Highbrow Napa and now all of a sudden-

[Thomas]
Winning awards and stuff.

[Jayson]
Yeah, and the elite can’t stand it. They’re like, “Oh, how’s he doing it?” That’s an idea that I think would be interesting.

[Shep]
See, I can picture, the whole thing as you’re describing it.

[Emily]
Yeah, it would be fantastic.

[Thomas]
Maybe we’ll have to have you back for another episode and we’ll workshop that one. That’ll be the pruno episode.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What do you want to talk about that we aren’t asking you about? Is there something that you want to get out there?

[Jayson]
How about if I ask you guys, what do you think about the writers strike and the viability of Hollywood moving forward?

[Shep]
I think it was overdue.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And I hope that they got everything they wanted this time. In the previous writers strike, Whenever, that, when was that?

[Thomas]
Strikes, plural?

[Shep]
Yeah. The one that got us Dr. Horrible. Whenever that was.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
2009-ish.

[Shep]
Yeah. So it failed. It failed, basically. And that was my fear that would happen this time as well. And I heard that it went well. I don’t know the details, but I hope they got everything they asked for because it was not much. They’re asking for so little! Like, it’s absurd. The whole studio system is bonkers.

[Thomas]
What I always remember in the movie State and Main, they fire the writer and he goes to get on the train and leave, and the director chases him down and says, “You’re why we’re here.” And that always stuck with me. It’s so true. Like, these movies don’t exist without the writers. It all starts with the writers and the stories they create. And so it’s crazy to me that the studios don’t treat them with more respect and they seem not to understand. I think there’s, like, this weird time that we’re in where they’re like, “Oh, well, AI can do all the work.” But you understand that the AI has been trained on the work the writers have already done. And also, have you played with the AI? It’s fucking awful. It’s so dumb, the shit that it comes up with. Or it might have the germ of an idea, but it can’t write a good screenplay. In fact, I’ve heard some really funny stuff where people have had an AI write a screenplay and people have read out what it says and it’s just so stupid and clearly doesn’t understand humanity. But it’s very funny because it’s so stupid.

[Shep]
Not funny in a good way.

[Emily and Thomas]
Right.

[Thomas]
Not funny in, like, a four quadrant, “We can make money on this” way.

[Jayson]
I always think it’s funny, sometimes I’ll watch, like, the AI generated commercials where they’ll use Midjourney, they’ll use ChatGPT to create the dialogue, and then there’s some type of animation software. And I saw this pizza commercial that it was so crazy.

[Thomas]
Yes, I’ve seen that.

[Jayson]
Oh, man. But, yeah.

[Thomas]
I mean, I think AI definitely has some value as an inspiration tool or a way to kind of get your creative juices flowing. Or if you’re stuck on something, it can give you- It’s almost like having someone to talk to, if you don’t have someone to talk to. You can kind of bounce some ideas off of it. But to get anything of quality from it, you have to put good ideas into it in terms of the prompt. And even then, you’re not guaranteed to get anything out of it that’s usable.

[Jayson]
Yeah, totally.

[Thomas]
It still requires somebody with that skill to craft a final product. A finished, polished product.

[Jayson]
Totally. Yeah.

[Thomas]
I think another big thing that we learned from the writers strike, something we already knew but was reconfirmed, was that A24 is fantastic.

[Emily]
Yeah, they are the best. They were the only ones allowed to continue to work through the writers and actors strike, because that’s just already what they did, what they both wanted.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Everybody asked for stuff, and A24 went, “Yeah, that sounds reasonable.”

[Jayson]
That’s cool. I want to say there’s a filmmaker out here, Joe Talbot, that did The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

[Thomas]
I’ve heard of that.

[Jayson]
Yeah. I interviewed to be the-

[Thomas]
The Last Black… oh.

[Jayson]
The location manager for the film. And I’m glad that I didn’t get it, because, you know, they had, like, crazy locations on that project. It was really good. I think there’s, like, a lot of movies that are being made here in the Bay Area that kind of bounce. They make them and they kind of bounce around the Bay Area, and then they don’t really go national. I’d say that film and then have you guys seen Sorry to Bother You?

[Thomas]
Yes. Oh, so good.

[Jayson]
So I worked on that film too.

[Thomas]
Oh, cool.

[Jayson]
Yeah. That was a fun project that I think has some really good success based off of the budget, because I want to say it was just $3 million budget.

[Emily]
Do you go out and encourage younger generations of filmmakers, or is there an outreach that you participate in or something that you feel like more people should be aware of?

[Shep]
No, that’s just bringing in competition.

[Emily]
I was going to say younger, less heard voices. Like, we were in an era where we’re trying to get more black voices, women’s voices out there and have them in the industry and have it kind of taken away from that white male patriarchy. And is that something that you’re out there participating in or want to or have projects that you want to promote or groups that you want to promote for that?

[Jayson]
Yeah. So I’ve spoke to a local college about filmmaking and took on some interns. I would like to do it more, but I feel like this generation or the upcoming generations aren’t very easily impressed.

[Emily]
Oh, so it’s not like the 90s when somebody came in and be like, “I’m an independent filmmaker”, and you’re like, “Gosh, I want that job.”

[Thomas]
“That’s a job I could do?”

[Emily]
“You mean I get to have coffee and cigarettes every day?”

[Jayson]
For one of the classes, they were like, “This is Jayson Johnson, and he’s an independent filmmaker.” I think I heard one of the kids say, “So?”

[Shep]
It’s the prevalence of the tools, because every phone has a video camera on it now. So everyone’s an “independent filmmaker”.

[Emily]
Right. And with things like TikTok and YouTube, everybody has their stuff out there. Like, everybody’s got their reels out there.

[Shep]
Yes. Which is great. Lower the barrier to entry. I think that’s wonderful.

[Jayson]
Yeah. They were not impressed, so I do want to give back. I do want to try to help the younger generation get into this. I feel like I’m always a giving person. I hope that maybe I’m better suited or in a different space where, I don’t want to say the word respect or anything like that, but just maybe they’re like, “Oh, that’s cool, actually,” instead of “So?”

[Emily]
Yeah, that makes sense.

[Jayson]
Yeah. So I was like, “Wow, tough crowd.”

[Shep]
Yeah. I used to be a teacher, and I’ll just tell you, that’s just how kids are now.

[Thomas]
I’ve got a question for you. Do you have any crazy set stories?

[Jayson]
Yes, I have, actually a lot of them. I’ll tell you one. So I’ve worked on two Bollywood films.

[Shep]
Oh, cool.

[Jayson]
And if you’ve never worked on a Bollywood film, then well, maybe I shouldn’t generalize it, but I’ll say the ones that I worked on were very disorganized, and they didn’t want to take film permits for anything. So one day they wanted to film on the campus of Cal Berkeley. So I said, “Well, let’s figure this out.” And eventually we came to the idea that we’ll all wear Cal Berkeley shirts and kind of blend in as students. And the plan was working perfectly for like an hour and a half. And then they said that they wanted to film in a classroom. So I said, “Okay, so I’m going to go and try to open one of these classrooms.” When I came to one door, it happened to be a professor’s office. And she immediately said, “Security! Security!” So I freaked out, and I just took off running. And there was these security guards that were chasing me on a go-cart. And I was just like, “Oh my gosh.”

[Shep]
Never run! Because then security guards see you as prey and chase instinctively.

[Jayson]
So there I was, like, I ran by my film crew that didn’t even bother to stop. They just kind of looked at me go by, and then they just said, “Just keep going.” And then I disappeared in Berkeley. And then my executive producer said, “They don’t want to arrest you. They just want to know what’s going on.” And they’re like, “You need to come back, otherwise we’re going to get kicked off the campus.” And I was like, “Are you sure?” And it was kind of like this hostage negotiation thing where I finally agreed to come back and said “I wasn’t trying to break in. I was just trying to find a film location.” That was an interesting experience. I’m a kid from Chicago, and the first thing to do is just run.

[Thomas]
Well, Jayson, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us. And it’s really interesting talking to you and hearing your process and your stories. Where can our listeners find out about you and the projects that you have worked on and are working on?

[Jayson]
I don’t have, like a Jaysonjohnson.com. It’s like one of those ghetto Weebly accounts. So the best thing to do is just to Google me. Jayson Johnson. And Jayson is spelled J-A-Y-S-O-N Johnson. And it should be the first page that comes up. You’ll see a lot of my projects and any press and just what I’m doing next, so I hope you’ll come and visit. And if you do come and visit, please buy one of our Strike Five Films hats. That helps cause.

[Thomas]
Awesome. Well, thank you so much and best of luck getting your funding together and getting all of the films that you have in your head into reality.

[Jayson]
Yeah, thank you.