Amy Jo Johnson Talks ‘Tammy’s Always Dying’

Amy Jo Johnson is perhaps best known for her acting work, as the original pink power ranger, as well as roles in the hit television series Felicity and Flashpoint, and for her work in films such as Susie Q, Killing Mr. Griffin, and Perfect Body. She has since discovered her passion in the director’s chair and brings her sophomore feature Tammy’s Always Dying, originally intended for theaters, to VOD May 1st, 2020. Film Review sits down with Amy for an exclusive interview in advance of the film’s release.  

Film Review (FR): How did this project come to you?

Amy Jo Johnson (AJJ): I went to the Canadian Film Center. I went there to do the Director’s Lab, which was a wonderful program, and while I was in there, I met Joanne Sarazen, who was in the Writer’s Lab. She was actually writing Tammy’s Always Dying at that time. She did a reading of the script and I just fell in love with it in a very cathartic way. My mom passed away of cancer, my dad suffers from depression and he’s a non-functioning alcoholic. He’s a male version of Tammy in a lot of ways. I asked her if I could make the movie and she said yes. Then we spent half a year raising money. My former manager in LA got the script into [Felicity Huffman’s] hands and she fell in love with it. As soon as Felicity hopped on board, the whole project really got wings. 

(FR): Tell me more about the Director’s Lab, how that functioned and what that experience was like?

(AJJ): It was incredible! I’d already made my first feature film, The Space Between. One of the producers, Jessica Adams, had gone through the Canadian Film Center as a producer. I just loved what I saw from afar. She actually brought The Space Between through that program and I really wanted to go through it myself. Being an actor for twenty years, I had a certain amount of training. Filmmaking comes to me in an innate way, because I’ve spent so much time on a set, but I just wanted to study directing. So I applied -- actually I had to apply twice. I didn’t get in the first time and then the second time I applied, I got in. 

(FR): How long is that process and what is the structure of the program?

(AJJ): It’s a six month, very intensive program. It’s really cool actually, they pick five directors, five writers, and maybe ten actors. They have five editors and put us all together. We just make these little movies and have all these different projects and exercises together through this six-month course. It was great, because I really wanted to practice without being seen, you know what I mean? I wanted to make something that didn’t mean anything besides just being an exercise. Make mistakes, figure out lenses, and figure out what I’m doing. So I appreciated the program so much. It’s tough; there were some challenges for sure. It’s an institution, so there were some very strict rules on how to film, because they can’t get sued. Which I think frustrated a lot of people, but for me, filmmaking is problem solving. It’s figuring out how to work through the problems. Going through that really got me ready for shooting Tammy’s Always Dying, because this is my first union movie. When the union’s on top of it all, that can be very restricting. You have to navigate and figure out how to not guerrilla shoot. So that everyone’s safe. The unions are there for a purpose. 

(FR): You met Joanne, you got this script, you started working together. What was the development process like from there? Raising the funds and getting the project off the ground?

(AJJ): I feel very grateful living in Canada, in Toronto, and deciding to pursue a career as a filmmaker here. I find this city, and this country, very nurturing to filmmakers. There are a lot of grants, a lot of support. Jessica Adams (who produced the movie) and I spent six months applying to Telefilm, CBC, Crave and Ontario Creates. We pieced together the money from all these really wonderful organizations that support filmmakers. Joanne worked on the script a lot, we would give notes and when Felicity came onboard, she had some thoughts and notes. We spent the year just prepping. Joanne said yes in January of 2018, and we shot in the fall, in November. It went super quick. 

Felicity Huffman as Tammy

(FR): When did Felicity come into the process?

(AJJ): She got the script, probably in July of that year. She read it and she loved it. I flew to New York and met with her. She had a few more questions and wanted to talk to [the screenwriter] Joanne. She really wanted to make sure the movie was a redemption story and it is. So we honed the script a bit more and as soon as she hopped onboard, the whole project really got wings. She was so generous; she came up here to Canada to shoot our little two million dollar movie and didn’t know us. She trusted us and brought her A-game. I’m so grateful. She’s so good in it too! 

(FR): She is! I think that also shows the strength of the script and prep work. That it was a project she was excited about. 

(AJJ): Anastasia Phillips who plays Cathy in the movie, she’s so good in it. The two of them together, they collaborated so well. 

(FR): I love the mother/daughter dynamic that they captured in the film. Did they have time together before you started shooting?

(AJJ): Felicity came about a week before and we did three or four days in the rehearsal room, reading the script and getting to know each other.

Felicity Huffman and Anastasia Phillips

(FR): We were talking about some of the cast, what was that process like in terms of getting your team together?

(AJJ): As I said, having Felicity really solidified that we were actually making this movie. Then finding Anastasia, which, I fell in love with her off her tape. We still had all the Cathy’s come in, but she had the role from the first time I saw her on tape. To me, she was Cathy. Clark Johnson, who plays Dougie, is a director himself, a very good director. He was an actor on The Wire and a bunch of stuff. He directed Flashpoint when I was on there. I asked him and he said yes, he would do the movie. He showed up and let me boss him around a little bit. So that was really wonderful that he came onto the project. Jessica Greco and Aaron Ashmore happen to be really good friends. I had no idea they’re best friends, because I casted them separately. Jessica came in for Cathy. It was between her and Anastasia for a while. I think she’s such a Kelly. She’s a wonderful Kelly. Aaron is so good as Reggie, I thought he was great. I had worked with Lauren Holly on Flashpoint, so I just called her and asked her if she would come and play Ilana. I feel really bad because that storyline was a lot bigger and a lot longer. When we finished shooting, our assembly was two and half hours. In the editing room, I had to bring it down to an hour and a half, or to eighty-five minutes. Through that process, I had to really streamline and figure out the story that we’re telling here. There was just too much going on, we had to streamline it.

(FR): Did you feel like you re-discovered the story in the editing room?

(AJJ): Oh god yeah. It’s funny though because of the shapes [it took], the different ways and roads. It became this drama at one point and it looked a lot of different ways at a lot of different times. By the end, the final movie we have is really the movie that I set out to tell and really the essence of the script. If you breakdown Joanne’s script, we got the heart of it I think. I think we figured out how to tell it. The humor is really important to me. For a moment, when it became this drama, I didn’t love it anymore. I didn’t love the movie. We were about to lock, because it’s a really small budget. The producer was like, we don’t have more time. We have to lock the movie. I was about to lock a movie I hated. For me, in that moment, I had to stand up and be like, ‘I need a second, I need a moment.’ I actually sat with myself, for, I think maybe three or four days. I took the assembly, I took this dramatic movie, I stuck it in my iMovie and I chopped it up. I rediscovered the movie I wanted and the humor and the tone. Brian Atkinson, who was the editor on the film had edited this wonderful, awesome assembly. I rediscovered the movie that way and brought what I had done in iMovie into the editing room and let Brian, the actual editor [take over]. That was our road map. Then we went from there and actually did a better job. It was a process; it was a real journey. 

(FR): How long was your shoot? 

(AJJ): The shoot was 19 days. 

(FR): So you’d gone through the director’s lab, discovered this project. You spent half a year funding it and getting it off the ground. Then you had 19 days to shoot. Can you talk a bit about what your focus was right before you prepped to shoot? 

(AJJ): I was really scared shitless before we embarked on the actual prep of the movie. I actually went to Maine where my very good friend Xander Berkeley lives. He’s an actor you might know,  he and his wife Sarah Clarke. I stayed with them, because I needed them in that moment. They’re so creative, they’re such a cool couple. I did a movie with Xander a long time ago [Magma: Volcanic Disaster]. I went there and needed a mentor in a way. We just drove around in his truck. He showed me all his properties. They live in Maine now on a big farm and he just instilled some confidence in me and reminded me of the artist that I am. I left there and came back to Toronto ready for prep. I just felt ready to go. It was really important to me, that trip and hanging out with Xander. Then I just jumped two feet in and the learning curves were huge. I didn’t know how to properly work with a production designer. I hired this woman Marian Wihak, who’s an artist and a veteran. She challenged me a lot. She asked me a million questions that I hadn’t asked myself yet. She really taught me how to collaborate and how to work with a production designer. I think that was probably my biggest learning curve, figuring out how to incorporate her. My collaboration with Daniel Grant, who was the cinematographer, was very fluid and fun. We would act the scenes out and figure out where we’re putting the camera in prep, but I didn’t know how to incorporate Marian into those conversations. That was a real amazing lesson to learn, for the next time around. 

(FR): How long was the editing process?

(AJJ): Brian was assembling the movie while we were shooting, so we had our assembly, maybe two weeks after we wrapped. That was right before Christmas. When we came back in January, Brian and I jumped in there. We were supposed to be done by the end of April, but we locked picture at the end of June. We needed the time, you have to sit with it. You do a pass of the edit and then you’ve just got to let it breathe for a second. You don’t always have that luxury. There was a moment with the ending of the film that became a little bit controversial. Everybody had a different idea about the ending that they wanted. There was a moment where I hated the movie again, because it wasn’t my ending and it wasn’t the ending Joanne had written. I had to sit with myself and get all the voices out of my head. What is the ending I want? What is the ending that I want to make? I had to go back and tell everybody, ‘This is the ending.’ They trusted me and said ok. Sometimes you get so many voices going on, all these notes.

(FR): How close was that ending then, to Joanne’s original script?

(AJJ): It’s the ending. It’s what she wrote. It was her intention in the first place. It was the first ending that I edited too. It got lost along the way, from notes. It’s very sensitive, that ending. It needed to take a journey. I actually worked with Felicity a little bit on the ending too. I sent her rough cuts and she sent some notes back. It was a journey finding it, but it landed right back where I began, which is usually the way, right?

Anastasia Phillips

(FR): What was that collaboration like, having an executive producer that’s also the lead in the film?

(AJJ): I would reach out to her; she never once was like, ‘Can I see what you’re doing? What’s happening?’ I got to a point where I felt a little bit lost, because I had a lot of voices in my head and I wasn’t loving the film. That’s the first time I reached out to her and said, ‘Will you watch this?’ I trust her, you know. She and her husband [William H. Macy] are filmmakers. The caliber of where they are, I wanted that [level of] input. She watched it and she wrote me back. She hated it and she was like, ‘I’m so sorry Amy Jo, but this is terrible.’ 

(FR): Oh no!

(AJJ): No it’s ok, because I knew it. That’s why I was sending it to her, you know? She had a few specific notes, but basically the note was, this isn’t the movie. This is when it had landed in this very dramatic [place], with a sort of dreamy quality to it. I wasn’t fluid. That’s when I put it all in the iMovie and rediscovered the story that we wanted to tell. I sent it to her after I found the movie again and then she was so excited. I think I scared her with that first cut. That was supposed to be the cut we were locking on too. I let her in the process a bit late in the game, but I’m glad I did, because I think I needed to go through all of that on my own and find my way back with a fresh, bird’s eye view. She might have been just as lost as we all were, if I had let her in earlier on. 

(FR): I’m glad it all came together and came full circle.

(AJJ): Me too. I really love where we landed.

(FR): I’m also glad, that with everything going on, new films are being released and there’s something to celebrate. 

(AJJ): Yeah. It was supposed to be in theaters next week and it’s not because of everything that’s going on, but that’s ok. We went to TIFF [the Toronto International Film Festival], which was amazing. We got to celebrate the movie there. My experience there as a filmmaker for the first time was incredible. It’s coming out in May and I think people are searching for things to watch right now and I’m excited for the premiere of it. We’re doing a whole little premiere party. My friend Greg Grunberg from Felicity is going to host the event with me and there’s a contest going on right now. If you want to come to the premiere, you post a picture of yourself with what you would wear and tag the film (@TammysAlwaysDying) and my Instagram (@atothedoublej) and #TammysAlwaysDying #PremiereFromHere . That’s your ticket into the contest and we’re picking 50 people to join us to watch the movie, do a Q&A, hang out and celebrate the movie being released.

(FR): I’m glad you’re still having the premiere virtually and celebrating the work. 

(AJJ): Yeah, because so many people put their heart and soul into it. This is Joanne’s baby. And my surrogate baby. 

(FR): Where can everyone find Tammy’s Always Dying?

(AJJ): May 1st, it’ll be on demand, VOD, pretty much everywhere you can rent a movie. 

(FR): What kind of stories do you want to tell in the future?

(AJJ): I’m writing a movie now called Somewhere, Someone, which is this epic [fictional] love story about a woman who was on one of the planes that landed Gander, in Newfoundland, during 9/11. There were 38 planes that landed in that little town. It’s a love story, she falls in love with a local. I’m writing that right now. I went over there in the fall, to do some research. I optioned another script called A Hypochondriac and a Germaphobe Walk into a Bar. Kind of apropos right now. Daniel Barrett, in New York City, sent me the script in December. It’s so funny and beautiful and heartbreaking and everything that I love about a film. So I optioned it and we’re pursuing that too. 

(FR): That’s awesome. I’m still waiting for Susie Q to show up on Disney+

(AJJ): I know! So it wasn’t a Disney movie, it was Saban, and I think Disney aired it. It has to be somewhere. Yeah, I’d like to show my daughter that movie, she’s eleven, she would love it! 

AMY JO JOHNSON is a multifaceted talent in the industry, working as a director, writer, producer, and actress. She recently directed her second feature film, Tammy’s Always Dying, starring Felicity Huffman and Anastasia Phillips, which held its world premiere at TIFF 2019. In 2016, Amy Jo wrote, produced, and directed her first feature film, The Space Between. Financed in part through a successful crowdfunding campaign, The Space Between had its world premiere at the Shanghai International Film Festival. Following the film’s grassroots theatrical release, Amy Jo (now a proud Canadian citizen) graduated from the Canadian Film Centre’s director’s program. Before turning her attention toward directing, the Cape Cod native worked for over 20 years as an accomplished actor, starring in popular television shows such as Felicity, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Flashpoint.

CHAD KENNERK