A Conversation With Amy Jo Johnson, Director Of TAMMY’S ALWAYS DYING

Many of us were introduced to Amy Jo Johnson in her breakout role as Kimberly Hart, the Pink Ranger, in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. Johnson has enjoyed a long career in television acting, but truly shines as a dynamic writer and director. Amy Jo Johnson has written and produced two highly acclaimed shorts, Bent and Lines, and a feature film, The Space Between.

Her latest feature, Tammy’s Always Dying, sees Johnson out of the writing role and firmly in the director’s seat at the helm of this fascinating film. Tammy’s Always Dying stars Felicity Huffman and Anastasia Phillips and enjoyed a premiere at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival. In Tammy’s Always Dying, Catherine (Anastasia Phillips) gets the opportunity to sell her miserable life story when the financial and emotional burdens of caring for her manipulative and dying mother (played by Felicity Huffman) become too great. Film Inquiry caught up with Amy Jo Johnson to discuss this film as a departure from her usual process and a masterclass in emotion and drama.

Caitlin Kennedy for Film Inquiry: I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me about your film Tammy’s Always Dying. What really drew you to this script initially? 

Amy Jo Johnson: I went to the Canadian Film Centre, through the Director’s Lab, and while I was there I met Joanne Sarazen, who was in the Writer’s Lab and actually writing Tammy’s Always Dying at the time. I went to a reading of the screenplay and just fell in love with it in this really cathartic way. My father is really a male version of Tammy in a lot of ways, so it just struck a chord in me with Joanne’s wicked sense of humor as well as the heavy issues the screenplay deals with. So I asked her if I could make her movie and she was lovely enough to say yes. By the next year, we were shooting it.

Previously, you’ve come at most films as both a writer and a director. How did you approach Tammy’s Always Dying differently, coming at it from strictly a directing perspective?

Amy Jo Johnson: It was a very different process for me, for sure. Looking back, I loved it and I would do it again! I was very nervous about finding my way into the script and really trying to figure out how to tell the story. As you’ve said, all the other films that I’ve done – the three shorts and the one feature –  I wrote those. But I had Joanne on set, I brought her in the editing room once or twice, and she held the keys I needed to have access. She and I became very good friends and I’m sure we will collaborate again. She wrote this beautiful screenplay called Conception that she asked me to star in. I don’t act anymore but, for her, I would!

I feel like the relationships between mothers and daughters, under any circumstances, are very difficult and nuanced relationships to capture. Especially a relationship as fraught as the one portrayed in Tammy’s Always Dying. Can you speak a little bit about what it was like to depict such a complex relationship?

Amy Jo Johnson: The essence of the story really is about letting go. These women have this very codependent relationship and, as I said, my father struggles from alcoholism and depression. So I understand that codependency. When I was shooting my first feature, The Space Between, Michael Ironside said to me, “Are you the child of an alcoholic?” And I said “I am! Why?” He said that he knew it because “children of alcoholics make the best directors.” So, I understood that relationship and codependency and that’s Cathy’s journey. She’s figuring out how to let go.

Beautifully said. Moving along to the creation of the film, beyond just how you connected with it. What was it like working with these two incredibly dynamic actresses, Felicity Huffman and Anastasia Phillips?

Amy Jo Johnson: When Felicity Huffman came on board that was such a huge gesture from her. I mean, she came to Canada and shot our tiny little $2 million movie, without knowing us, and truly brought her “A-Game.” She works very differently than Anastasia. It’s really interesting to see the two of them work. Anastasia is just so good and she was able to connect with this in a very cathartic way, as well. Her mother had passed away from cancer. She really works from the inside out, whereas Felicity is a stage actress who has a very different process but one that is very detailed. She does all of her work that needs to be done beforehand. The two met in the middle and I truly think they collaborated in such a beautiful way. Felicity actually requested that we have no scripts on set, which I thought was a great idea. So everybody had to be off-book when they came to set and in doing that I really think it freed everybody up, especially Anastasia, she had never worked that way before. It gave her all this freedom to just really play and go head-to-toe with Felicity.

You’ve now mentioned collaboration a few times. I think that really shows in the film, with these two women and this relationship between them. Do you consider the film a feminist piece?

Amy Jo Johnson: Joanne, the writer, is quite a feminist herself but I don’t consider the film feminist, myself. I don’t necessarily label myself as a feminist. The film is about the struggles of these women and Joanne wrote this script because she has a lot of these women in her life and she wanted to give them a voice.

Watching this film, there are so many themes that come through. The connection between these women, that you just spoke about, and letting go, as you mentioned earlier. There are so many threads that pop out as you’re viewing. If you had to identify the thesis statement of the film, what would that be? What is this film about, truly?

Amy Jo Johnson: You know, we went through a lot of really trying to define that and there was a moment before shooting where Felicity was working with me and Joanne on honing the script. She made it very clear that she wanted it to be a story of redemption and it is, at the end of the day. It’s complicated and it’s not an obvious arc. It’s sensitive, especially with the ending. But the meaning lies within that last scene of the movie, which is about love… selfless love. Also about growing and letting go.

So well put! What scene is the most significant to you, personally? 

Amy Jo Johnson: Probably that last scene, to tell you the truth! It was this great conversation through the editing process, and there was a moment when there were too many “cooks in my kitchen” and that ending is quite sensitive. There was a time where some of the producers or financiers didn’t want the ending and I had to rediscover it and come back to it. I mean that was the ending that was on paper and that was the ending we found in the editing room. Also, that’s my friend’s band (Remy Zero) that has that song throughout that whole sequence. His voice is just so beautiful.

I have to ask, what’s next for you? Is there a project that you’re especially excited about?

Amy Jo Johnson: Yeah, I have a few things! I’m in the process of writing a script called Somewhere, Someone, and it’s a fictional story but based on true events. It’s a love story about a woman who was on one of the planes that landed in New Foundland during 9/11 and she falls in love with a local. So I’m working on that and then this really wonderful script fell into my lap! It’s called A Hypochondriac and a Germaphobe Walk Into a Bar. With everything that’s going on right now, it’s crazy that he had already written this. But it’s beautiful and funny and it’s a father and son story.

Sounds like you’ve found this natural niche of being able to really dig into these complicated relationship narratives!

Amy Jo Johnson: Yeah, those are the stories that I like to watch so that’s what pulls me as a filmmaker, right now!

I so appreciate you taking the time to talk with me about your film! 

Amy Jo Johnson: Thank you, Caitlin! Tammy’s Always Dying comes out on May 1! I’m doing a contest right now because I still decided to do a premiere. I wanted to make a celebration of it because everyone put so much work into the film. So, we have this contest going where you can post a picture of what you’d wear to the premiere and then tag @tammysalwaysdying and me, @atothedoublej, on Instagram and then the hashtags, #TammysAlwaysDying and #PremiereFromHere. That’s your entry into the contest and we’re gonna pick 50 people to screen the movie and so a Q&A.

Fantastic! I love seeing that dedication to connecting the film with an audience. 

Amy Jo Johnson: If we can’t gather at a movie theater, we might as well gather online. I would love for people to see this film because I really think people are going to be able to identify. Everyone knows a Tammy.

Film Inquiry thanks Amy Jo Johnson for so warmly sharing her film and taking the time to speak with us!

Tammy’s Always Dying will be available digitally and on-demand on May 1, 2020.