Mark Johnson on Diverse Storytelling, Discovering Talent, and a Lifelong Passion for Filmmaking

From script to screen, every film is brought to life by visionary creatives and executives, all sharing one mission, to captivate the audience. Hosted by award-winning movie strategist Kevin Goetz, our podcast, Don't Kill the Messenger, offers a filmmaking masterclass through intimate conversations with Hollywood's most influential voices. And now, your host, Kevin Goetz. Some producers specialize in one lane. My guest today apparently decided that would be boring and wants a new challenge each time out. Drama, comedy, romance, crime, prestige television. Somehow, this producer has been instrumental in all of it, helping others bring their stories to screens of all sizes. He won an Academy Award for Rain Man. He won an Emmy Award and helped shape one of the most influential television series of all time in Breaking Bad. His list of accolades is long, and yet he's built a reputation for something far rarer in this business. Decency, kindness, and deep respect for the people with whom he works. He's also proof that great producers don't chase formulas. They strive for authenticity and emotional truth. That man is Mark Johnson, and I am thrilled to have him here. Mark, welcome to the show. Oh my gosh, what an introduction. First of all, thanks for having me. Somebody once asked me when I was looking for money for my small little production company, they complained. They said, you know, the problem is you don't really stand for anything. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, you know, there's certain producers who make action movies and other ones who make comedies and you're all over the place and you're really hard to sell that way. Not untrue though. No, he was actually quite correct. Joe Silver has a movie he makes. That's exactly right. I think you'd be more like, in a way, Imagine, you know, Brian. Right. Or like Mark Gordon, because both had great success in movies and in television. That's exactly right. And I don't want to repeat myself. I don't want to do the same movie twice. So why do a comedy like Galaxy Quest? Well, let's go from there and do something really stark and dramatic and completely different. Or The Notebook, people keep saying, why don't you keep doing The Notebook? You know, the romances. And I was thinking, I really enjoyed doing Notebook. I'm very proud of it, but I'm not sure I want to do it again. You know, I retread that territory. But Mark, you and I met when now? Let's go back in time. It must have been... Probably was Good Morning Vietnam. I think so. Which was an incredibly important movie to me in terms of audience and surveys and, quite frankly, the studies that you did. Tell us. And the screenings. Because, first of all, up until then, with Barry Levinson, I had done smaller, very character-driven shows. You were partnered with Barry in a company called? Eventually called Baltimore Pictures. And Barry and I did 12 or 13 movies together, starting with Diner. And then we did everything from Good Morning Vietnam to Rain Man to Bugsy to... Natural, Young Sherlock Holmes, Tin Man, a whole bunch of, I think, really good movies. Avalon, exactly right. Many of those movies, Barry wrote himself. He started as a writer. And I think that was really instrumental for me to understand how a writer approaches his or her movies. And Barry was always driven by character. So I always looked at the movies that we did and said, well, we don't do bank robberies or huge explosions, but we do characters in some sort of quiet or at sometimes not so quiet crisis. How did you and Barry get involved in the first place? And then we're going to go back because I don't want to lose focus on Good Morning Vietnam. Good. Barry Levinson and I met on the set of High Anxiety, a Mel Brooks movie. And I was in the production team, and Barry was one of four writers, including Mel Brooks. And at the time, Mel was acting and directing, and he had the three other writers on the set the whole time so that they could comment on everything from Mel's performance to how it was playing, whatever. And so Barry and I had a lot of time on that set to get to know each other. You had four writers just sort of hanging around? Yeah. Like a television show. That's exactly right. And keep in mind also, we didn't have a playback then, so that they needed to watch his performance and comment on it. And it was, don't do that anymore. What was it like working with Mel? Oh, my God. There were two people I think are most responsible for my career or certainly encouraged me in my career path, Billy Friedkin and Mel Brooks. And Mel was just a delight and believed in me for the craziest reasons. And he used to stop and introduce me to people and say, Mark Johnson is an American boy. As opposed to a nice Jewish boy from the Lower East Side. That's right. He used to do that with Stuart Cornfield. They'd say, Stuart, come over here. Here's Mark Johnson. He's an American boy. Oh, I thought, and Stuart was not. May he rest in peace, by the way. No, he loved us both. Yes, absolutely. So Barry is a very successful writer. He'd been nominated for an Oscar for Injustice for All. That was prior to Diner? Yes. And he got the opportunity to direct his first movie, Diner, and he asked me to produce it. And he had never directed before and I'd never produced before. So we learned by... Was it an agent that connected you? You just found each other on set? Well, what happens is I was working for the producer, Jerry Weintraub. I did not know that. So that was prior to High Anxiety? No, after High Anxiety. So Barry and I knew each other. I had an opportunity to go produce movies for Jerry's company. Which was amazing, right? Because he was a very formidable producer. Oh my gosh. At the time, Jerry Weintraub and I met, he was a mega manager. Music manager. Yes, a music manager and came from promotion. He had promoted concerts with Elvis Presley, but he was a gigantic manager when we met. At the time, he was managing the three Ds, John Denver, Neil Diamond, and Bob Dylan. That's just the Ds. What happens when you get to the Es? That's right, exactly. I don't know how many of those. So what'd you learn from him? A certain amount of tenacity. And I always admired the classic Hollywood producer. That's not who I am, but I always admired those people, the bigger-than-life people. All of the men, certainly, in terms of the early history. And with bluff and a certain amount of probably lying, they would sort of get their way and force some of these movies, bring them into being by just the dent of their personality. It's so funny, I would cast you as probably a Harvard professor or somebody that was in The Holdovers. Yeah, exactly. But he left for the holidays. That's right, that's right. But I see you in that role, or even of a business executive, something that would be more a traditional, in a way, because you have a preppy kind of look, you've always had that demeanor. But there is a fire under Mark Johnson that I've always loved, and I've always gotten, because you're the kind of guy that you remember everything. So you'll follow up on everything. And that, to me, is one of your many, many gifts. Oh, well, thank you. I hadn't even thought about that in terms of following up on things. I try to. Every now and then, somebody will come to me or say, you have the reputation for being one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, and it drives me crazy, because I think, what good is being nice? Who wants to be the nice guy? It would be the SOB who somehow gets that. Well, would you rather be an SOB? I can't. I don't have an inmate. Also, listeners, don't confuse niceness with weakness, ever, with Mark Johnson. Now, have you ever really just lost your ----? Oh, sure. Where do you lose your ----? Once a year, I lose my ----. Is it usually on set? No, it's not on set, and it's usually with one person. And unfortunately, then, I undercut it, because I then apologized for the next week and a half. Give me an example of what was the last time you can remember you just lost it. I was on the phone with somebody who was asking for something inane, and I just, maybe it was, you know, I had a bad piece of fish at lunch or something, but I just— But it was an inane request. Yes, and I just exploded. Because they were being relentless? Yes, and ultimately, wasting my time. Got it. What did you consider the biggest—that's one of my bugaboos—wasting my time? I have so limited and precious time. That's exactly right. You, I mean, have two—not two—newborns. You have a newborn, and you have a four-year-old. Right. And your second family. Right. And two older children. That's right. And so, you need to have energy for them, and any additional bandwidth you have, you want to, I'm sure, give to them. There are a lot of petty conversations and requests, and I'll do them gladly up to a point. It's like anything else. We all have our boiling point. But I have found, as busy as we are, both in television and movies right now, and of course in my personal life, I just don't have time anymore. And it's unfortunate, because there are a lot of people I've come in contact with in the past couple of years I'd like to have friendships with, but I don't know how. What does that mean? Friendships, like anything else, like any relationship, it's got to be worked on. You've got to give it time. You bet. Can't be manufactured. No. And it was a very early lesson. The second movie I produced was The Natural, and I fell in love with everybody, the cast, the crew, and when it wrapped, I was destroyed. Because the word on the street is, you love family. You love putting together families, and that seems to be a leitmotif in your life. If there is a recurring theme in my movies, or even television for that matter, it's about family. It's about the family you create, not necessarily the one you're born in, but where you get your strength and where you get your protection. And I think that's true in terms of what we put together. I would be devastated if somebody talked about one of my productions and said, oh, I hear it was a really unhappy set. It was chaos, and nobody was taken care of, or it was dangerous, or whatever. That would devastate me, because it's very important that everybody be treated well and feel secure, and quite frankly, walk away thinking it's one of the best experiences of his or her life. Where does that come from? Probably, I came from a broken family. When I was young, my mother took my brother, sister, and me, got on a boat in New York, and got off at Gibraltar, and then we lived in Spain for eight years. Wait a minute, hold on. You were born in? Chevy Chase, Maryland. Okay, and at what age did mom do this? About seven or eight. I then went to Europe, and I went through high school in Madrid. Why did she move to Spain? It was very brave at that time for a single American woman, any woman, with three young kids to just move to Europe and not speaking a language. She didn't know if she was going to go to Spain or Italy, but we fell in love, or she fell in love with Spain. Where were you in the pecking order? I was the oldest. So there's a certain responsibility when you're the oldest, too. Right. Caring for the young. That's exactly right. You close to your siblings today? Yes, I am. We don't see each other enough. I'm much closer to them than I was in my 20s and 30s. So let's go back to Good Morning Vietnam, because I got us into another tangent, which is an interesting one. But I do want to hear about how you view that as a seminal movie for you, why it was so important for you and Barry at the time. And you also mentioned that research had a very important part in that. Can you unpack that for us? Yes. I think the only time that I was aware of research was in our very first movie, Diner, which we tested in New York and then once, actually, on the West Coast. I didn't know what to make of it. It was my first time. I think it was fairly crudely done. It was not done by the great Kevin Katz, I can say that. I don't think we ever tested The Natural. Well, that was a little before my time. Yes. Right, because that was in early 80s? Yes, 84. And I didn't come into the business until 87. Right. So Good Morning Vietnam is the first one we did together, and it was an out-and-out comedy. Barry Levinson and I learned so much from the testing, because it helped us understand what the audience was reacting to and what they were enjoying. And there was a character, played by J.T. Walsh, who the audience loved to hate. And we realized they were so happy when he was on the screen, because he always got his comeuppance. And we thought, wait a minute, there's a scene with J.T. we didn't have in the movie we cut out, because we didn't need, and put it back in. And lo and behold, our numbers went up. Up till then, I lived in fear of testing, because I was assuming we always wouldn't test well, and the studio would then relegate us to some second-tier position. And Good Morning Vietnam, in a comedy, it was so helpful. And it was so helpful, not just to— obviously, it's very helpful in a comedy. You can sit in a theater, and you can hear the laughs and how they're responding. But to actually see it on paper, and to see they like this moment, and they really like this character, and say, why did they like that character? And start to understand it. It was instrumental in the filmmaking process. What did you make, change-wise, that you can remember based on the audience feedback? Well, adding a scene with J.T. Walsh that we had taken out, because we didn't think we needed it. I guess what I'm asking is, by adding that scene back with J.T. Walsh, what did it add that you didn't know was needed? Right. We took it out for dramatic reasons. We didn't need it. It all made sense. But then we discovered that the audience loved this character. They loved to hate this character. So it just reinforced the stakes? Reinforced that, and it gave us a huge laugh. Probably a couple of laughs, which in a comedy, you want to chase. You called Good Morning Vietnam a comedy. I call it a serial comedy. Right. Wouldn't you? At the time, Vietnam was not something you made fun of. Good point. And the other thing about Good Morning Vietnam was Robin Williams, up till then, had done a couple of movies, but was not a movie star. But Good Morning Vietnam made him a movie star. Had he done Dead Poets Society? He had done GARP. He had done a couple of smaller movies. And Forrest Whitaker. Right. Forrest Whitaker, exactly. And then we had Bruna Kirby and Robert Wall, a whole host of people. And Disney really got behind it, didn't they? Yes. And in large part because testing. Testing is important for all movies in different ways. You've always had a great respect for testing, which I really appreciate. A great fear of testing, too. Because, let's face it, more of our movies have tested not as well as we would have liked than have. It's a whole nature of very hard to make something that works for an audience. And you also said that Good Morning Vietnam was the first movie that really was successful. Oh, it was a huge success. So we sold Robin Williams the way you wanted to see him. Because he had those moments when he's behind the microphone and he's allowed to just riff as the way Robin Williams does. And an audience just said, oh, we want to see that. What was it like working with Robin? Fantastic. I'd never met him before. He was one of the kindest people I've been with. And it was interesting because we shot it in Thailand with a crew of a number of Thai crew members and a number of British crew members. And Robin's humor is, certainly at the time, was uniquely American. And so sometimes he would do bits that were so funny and the Thai and British crew would just sit there. Okay, let's go on to the next. Robin was devastated because he just assumed he wasn't being funny because he's used to everybody in front of him, listening to him, roar and laughter. And so Robin would tell a joke about Lyndon Johnson's daughters who were famous for being homely. And the British crew would just sit there. Okay, fine. Robin, he literally would call me sometimes two, three in the morning and say, we got to reshoot today's work. It didn't work. I'll pay for it. Said, no, no, what are you talking about? Of course, you know how well it worked. Barry Levinson and I, two Americans, would be having to stuff something in our mouths to keep from ruining the take out of laughter. Now, Barry would just have to let him go, I imagine. Let him do his thing. Well, there were certain dramatic moments that he had to hit. He had to make it clear that this happened or acknowledge this or did something over here just to move the story forward. But beyond that or around it, Robin can do anything he wanted. Now, you and Barry stayed partners for several years after that. We were partners for 12 or 13 movies. And Rain Man was probably the pinnacle of that relationship, that partnership. How did that come to be? It's interesting because I won an Academy Award from Rain Man, but in many ways, it's one of the movies that I had least to do in terms of putting together. Because, you know, Rain Man was together as a movie project with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise before Barry and I even got to. I did not know that. In fact, before Tom Cruise was on, because Paula Wagner and Rick Nesito were guests on the show, Paula told me how she sort of came up with the idea to suggest Tom Cruise for it because it was written for a far older guy. Right. Also, everybody kept on saying, that's sort of a stretch that Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman are brothers. But not really in some way. I'm looking at it right here, which is the one she just came from behind you. Yeah, and you can sort of see the nose. There's something about, right? I think they fit perfectly together. But anyhow, Martin Brest was the first director of Rain Man, then Sidney Pollack, then Steven Spielberg, and fourth, Barry Levinson. You mean they were all developing it? Yes, all attached to the director. So Barry got the job. You came along with Barry on that one. And then you ended up being on set every day. Oh yeah. It just wasn't something you yourself developed. Right. But Barry also received the Academy Award for Best Director. Best Director, yes, that's right. What was it like that night getting that award? Oh my God. Well, I was sitting next to Robin Williams. He claims that I was so tense that my fingers went through the armrest of my chair. And the winner is Mark Johnson, Rain Man. What did you do? The little boy in me just went wild. You with your wife at the time, Leslie? Right. What was that like? Did you turn around and kiss her? I think I kissed a lot of people. I was gonna say. No, my speech was, it was a terrible thing. You realize how important it is. I went out of my way to thank everybody I could possibly thank. And I forgot Jerry Molan, who was our line producer, our executive producer and plays a significant role in the movie as a doctor. And I forgot him. I hear that from so many people. And I heard after the fact how hurt he was. And I was terrible because he, Jerry Molan was the nicest man and really good at his job and wonderful as an actor. I'm sure you probably won additional awards and were able to thank him at additional times. I hope I did. And I'd certainly apologize. But that's one of the, I'm sure what happens when this is done and I listened to it and I said, how could I not have mentioned so-and-so or whatever? Did you think that you were gonna win? Well, that's the problem. Yes, everybody told me we were gonna win. To the degree that if we hadn't won, we would have been a gigantic failure. We would have done something so wrong. And Dustin won. Yes, Dustin. And Tom was nominated, wasn't he? No, no, he wasn't. And he should have been. Oh my God. Tom Cruise is extraordinary. He just lured that movie in some way, isn't he? He's extraordinary in that movie. He really doesn't have that moment, that big character, dramatic moment that people remember. Oh, it's a movie though. He just has this really subtle change to this character. And if he starts the movie one way and becomes the other and he has this humanity and this generosity that he never had before. Tom is subtly brilliant in the movie. How did your life change after the Academy Award or did it? It did and it didn't. People say, oh yeah, Mark Johnson won Academy Award or you won Academy Award. And that's wonderful, but it is very much like, all right, what are you doing now? What's your next movie? Well, we're not crazy about that one. It sure got you into every room. Harvey Weinstein made a big point whenever he would see me for years and years, he'd say, I remember watching you win the Academy Award. You won the producer for the best movie of the year and then wait an hour and 15 minutes for your car to come out of the parking lot. So it's sort of at some point, and it's true. I'm sure in the morning I took the trash out. That's great. When we come back, we're going to continue our discussion with Mark Johnson. We'll be back in a moment. Listeners, the Motion Picture and Television Fund is a nonprofit charitable organization that supports working and retired members of the entertainment community. This wonderfully run organization offers assistance for living and aging with dignity and purpose in the areas of health and social services, including temporary financial assistance, case management, and residential living, and has been a crucial lifeline to thousands during and beyond critical times that our industry continues to experience. To learn more, visit mptf.com. Please join me in helping others in our industry during times of need. There are so many ways to offer support and get involved. Thank you. We're back with Mark Johnson. Mark, we just talked about Rain Man. We've talked about Good Morning Vietnam. I have to talk about a couple of your other movies because they're so seminal. The Notebook is one that comes to mind. How did that come to be? I had a production company. I can't remember what I'd done, but we got the book in galley form from The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks, who was not Nicholas Sparks. I was just going to ask, wasn't that his breakout? Yes. So he was not a best-selling author and really had no profile, but we got this in galley form. And I love the idea of it. I love the idea that somebody could be, for a variety of reasons, this is very severe, health reasons, could basically be so in love with somebody that he wooed her anew every single day. So he would woo this woman he was married to and had this love affair with, but she no longer remembered and he would come back. And it was so important to him to have those moments so that he might dance with her for a minute or five minutes and reclaim their love affair. And then the idea of how this all started, how we start with two young, healthy lovers who combat whatever it is they need to, to become these two older people. And it obviously resonated to a large audience. I mean, I can't watch the movie for personal reasons because Jenna Rollins is one of our best friends. That's right. I miss her so deeply, I can't even express to you. But Nick Cassavetes did an extraordinary job directing it. Nick Cassavetes, whose mother is Jenna Rollins, cast his mother in the movie and so probably the only time I will ever hear a director say, an action mom. Oh, genius. Son, can I talk to you off? I want to go over, and she would never. She was so deferential because she was such a pro and just the best. I'd like to ask you what one of your favorite movies is other than those three. What's special to you? I think the closest I'll ever get to a perfect movie, and it's not perfect, is Alfonso Cuaron's A Little Princess. It is the confluence of some incredibly gifted craftspeople all working together. It's a singular piece, and I give Alfonso all the credit. He was able to orchestrate this movie that is in every way a manifestation of what he wanted, of his aesthetic, but it was done through Emanuele Lubezki, Chivo the cameraman, Bo Welts the production designer, Giuliana Mikovsky the costume designer. It's quite remarkable, and that's a movie that I have trouble watching because it's so emotional for me, and it's on one hand so simple, but expertly made, and it's an amazing story because it too scored incredibly well when we tested it. This is at Warner Brothers, and it was a very small movie we made it. I think we made it at Warner Brothers for $10 million. At one point, we were going to go to India and shoot the India sequences there, and we all got our very painful vaccinations, and then we found out that we didn't have enough money to go to India. So we invented India, imagistically rich India on the Warner Brothers backlot, which worked even better than real India would have. So it's very important to me. First of all, we developed it at the same time that I had adopted my daughter, and I saw it as a gift to her. That's so beautiful. It was a movie that was released quickly. It was not a big high-profile Warner Brothers movie, and it did not do well, despite the fact that it was the best or the second best reviewed movie of the year. And Warner Brothers, Rob Friedman, who was the head of marketing at the time, was really great about going back, and they re-released it. That's almost never done. No, I know. The second try. We never did the business that we should do. It's a tough one, and I learned something about audiences and especially about boys and girls, because boys, unfortunately, we're such block-edge boys that there's a movie called A Little Princess, and it's very hard for a boy to go to a playground and tell another boy, hey, I gotta go see that movie called A Little Princess. And yet, when we tested it with boys and girls, boys loved it. Yeah, they just wouldn't admit it. Exactly right. Yeah. So tell me about the transition that you decided to make into television, because you are pretty agnostic in the genres in which you work. But television was a new frontier for you. What made you say, I'd like to now get into maybe producing a series? Before Breaking Bad, I executive produced a couple of other shows that were actually- Which ones were they? One called L.A. Doctors that was at CBS, and The Guardian with Simon Baker ran for two or three seasons on CBS. But to be totally honest, it's unfair, and please forgive me whoever hired me or gave me the go-ahead. I didn't give it my all. Quite frankly, I think I'm looked down on television at the time, which I apologize for because I never should have. Depended on a different showrunner? Right, and well, and it was- The requirements were different, and I wasn't watching. No, I wasn't technically. I was an executive producer, and I did L.A. Doctors with one of my good friends, John Lee Hancock, who was a feature writer and director, and neither of us quite knew what we were doing in terms of television. I think if we were to go back with what we now know, we could have made the show much more successful. And how did Breaking Bad come to be? In 1988, I was part of a Virginia Film Festival screenwriting jury, and I read a script by a guy named Vince Gilligan, and I said, this is extraordinary. Like a feature script? Yes. I sought him out, and we became fast friends, and I developed a number of scripts with him and ended up making a three-picture deal for him as a writer. Where? Through Grand Via, your company? At Tristar, through our company, and we made the first movie script of his was directed by a guy named Glenn Gordon Caron that we did at Tristar called Wilder Napalm. And we also did another one with my good friend, Dean Pariseau, who ended up directing Galaxy Quest later on. We did Home Fries. What did you notice about Vince's writing that was so particular or singular? Oh, I'm glad you asked that. He is the most original writer I've ever come across. In what respect? By the way, his new show, Pluribus, which I'm not involved in, is the most original thing I've seen on TV in years. And it's not just originality for the sake of originality. You just sit there with your mouth open and say, oh my God, I can't believe I'm, you know, where did this come from? And it's so captivating and engaging and just a remarkable writer. But was it a sense of story, character? I think characters and the setup of the characters. In fact, I would introduce Vince to people in Hollywood, including Steven Spielberg. And everybody loved his writing and loved the sort of originality of it. But at that time, they sort of felt that he would write himself into a corner. So they had trouble ending his movies. And I think that's probably true for both Home Fries and Wild in Napalm. And I think this is sort of a simplistic way to look at it. But Vince went on staff at the X-Files and learned very much the structure of how a screenplay or how a teleplay worked and what you had to do at particular points in order to lead to a satisfying ending. And he seemed to like it. Yes. But Vince is just one of my closest friends and somebody who I'm just in awe of. So really proud of him. And I said to somebody the other day, and I'm proud of myself for recognizing this genius so early on. It's really fun when you do that. I mean, has there been other talents where you feel like, if I didn't give them a chance, they would not have perhaps gotten to where they were, at least as fast as they did? Perhaps. But I think Vince at a WGA Awards event called me, singled me out as the person who discovered it. I didn't discover Vince Gilligan. Vince Gilligan existed. You brought him to Hollywood's attention. I started his first thing, but Vince was just such a force of creative energy that he was going to have. We would like to think that if they're that talented, they're going to find their way. But not everyone does. We both know a lot of people who are so gifted. How could that person never have gotten the break? Because we really are only one project away from success. An actor, one role away from stardom, potentially, right? A producer, one movie away from Good Morning Vietnam. You had done several movies before. By the way, The Natural came before that. It wasn't a hit? It was not a gigantic hit. It was a hit. And I'm not to this day sure why. Maybe it was baseball at a time when baseball wasn't a particularly sexy topic. I don't know. The music in The Natural is used in every temp score I know. on every movie that I've worked on since. I'll bet that's true. What was it like to get Bryan Cranston, or how did you hire Bryan because he is so associated with Breaking Bad? Bryan was actually Vince's idea because he had written an episode of The X-Files. I believe it was The X-Files or maybe The Lone Gunman. Anyhow, he had worked with Bryan. I thought you were going to say Malcolm in the Middle. Yeah. By the way, there were a number of people, nobody put up a great barrier to Bryan, but everybody said, isn't he the guy from Malcolm in the Middle? Or you sure you want the guy from Malcolm in the Middle? And Vince knew exactly what Bryan could do. You can't imagine Breaking Bad without Bryan Cranston. Correct. That's why I brought that up. So many people talk to me who are starting the business say, well, I hear it's really cutthroat and there's some terrible people and people are going to take advantage of you and use you. Overwhelmingly, I've been surrounded by great people, really nice people who mean well and take their craft seriously. That's a reflection of you, Mark. It's not false praise. When I say that, I mean, if you were the asshole that you said you could have been or even envied in some way or looked up to in some way, you would have attracted a different kind of person in your life, I imagine. That sounds right. I think that gives me too much credit. And you're right. There are certain people, there are certain directors who I actually admire, I just won't work with because I think the experience would be too difficult. Especially when you get to a certain age, you're like, you know what? Right. New family, life's too short, et cetera. What was the hardest project that you ever had to push up a hill to get made? The one when you could see it, plain as day, I am not going to say no, but for the fact that you were the person doing that lifting, it would not have happened. I have a number of movies on my shelf that they are going to get made. I know they're going to get made. I've had those for years. Donnie Brasco is one of them. And we started off trying to get Donnie Brasco made and Al Pacino was going to play the Johnny Depp part. The Little Princess. Yes. And Donnie Brasco. Right. I'm just saying, Mark Johnson. Oh, I see, I see. I mean, that is- They have a lot in common, huh? Yeah, Mark Johnson. Because as I said earlier in the introduction, you are so diversified in your tastes. But it stems from the fact, it's me as a moviegoer. I see everything. I couldn't be happier at a screening of Mission Impossible. I couldn't be happier at a performance of Sorry Baby. So it depends. We wake up in the morning and say, do we want eggs and we're in cereal or shall I get pancakes? I have gotten satisfaction and so much enjoyment from every kind of movie. So that's how I want to make them too. I don't want to just keep seeing the same thing. Again, I just keep going back to the fact that you have such good taste and you really have a respect for the audience. And, you know, as an audience advocate myself in how to score in Hollywood, by the way, thank you for attending a recent get-together. That was- For your audience, I went to an event at Sherry Lansing's house for Kevin in recognition of his book. It was a real celebration and some of the biggest names in Hollywood were there. And people who all of us were talking, all of us have strong ties to you and to what you've done for us and how you've helped us. And Kevin, speaking of my monastery, Kevin has no idea, or maybe he does quietly, how important he has been to so many of us in terms of how we presented and how we approach our movies. Oh, that's lovely, lovely. This was an event. How to Score in Hollywood is essential and it'll tell you things about some of your favorite movies and how they got there and quite frankly, how you happened to see them. Well, that's beyond kind and I am grateful for you saying that. And it meant so much to have me and so many of my friends who have worked together for decades now. I think what we just said is we're 39 years in, you and I, which is when Good Morning Vietnam- Isn't that right? Isn't that crazy? It came to be. What do you want people to know about you, Mark, that they don't know? And when I asked that question, you've done tons of interviews over the years and I'd love to think that you're going to walk out of this one going, oh, I think I've never really said that in an interview. What do we need to know about Mark Johnson? What's a secret or something that would be very telling to our audience? I think I enjoy producing. I enjoy moviemaking as much today as I did when I started. I wake up every day saying, okay, today we've got it. Today we're going to move this forward. Today we're going to get this movie made. I know we've fallen behind every single day of the shooting this past month, but today we're going to get ahead. All because I love movies. Tom Cruise said the other day at the honorary Oscars, I don't make movies. Basically, I am movies, movies in my life. And I feel that. There's a wonderful book by Walker Percy called The Moviegoer, and it basically is the most satisfying, the glorious moments in my life have often come through the movies and enjoying moments of movies. So as a producer, I'm still the little kid who can't believe, by the way, every time I go in the studio a lot and the security guard waves me through, I can't believe they're letting me in. So I love what I'm doing. I can't imagine if somebody came to me, I shouldn't say this, and said, Mark, we're going to have to pay you half of what we've been paying you. I'd still do it because that's not why I do it. The other thing is that I think it's really important for all producers to know that it's not our movie. Ideally, in terms of a movie, we're helping a director make her or his film in the best possible way. And the moment we think that it's my movie and I got to do this and got to do that, I think we're missing the point because it's the director, it's the showrunner, it's the writer, it belongs to everybody. But that vision of the filmmaker that is the director is of paramount importance to you. Who are you excited by today, a new voice that you'd like to maybe work with in film and in television? I look at, sorry baby, I look at Marty Supreme, I look at a number of movies and just say, oh boy, I'd love to work with that director, with that writer, with that team. Paul Thomas Anderson. Oh my gosh, of course. What a talent, huh? Extraordinary. Have a Chloe Zhao. Did you see Hamnet? Absolutely. I was so blown away by it and that performance by Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal and that kid. Unbelievable. I know. But she got that out of them. You can feel it in the awards that are happening right now. You can feel the love of that community, that family that the producer built. But when I saw the writer, I said, who is this person? My God, this is an extraordinary director. I came to her somewhat late and just, anyhow, we're weighed down by so much negative writing journalism about our business and about moving forward. And yet it's balanced by the fact that there are so many really imaginative, gifted directors' voices. So, somehow they're going to get out there. It's not like there's a dearth of talent. That's not going to change. What's going to change are the platforms, the windows, but not the expression of the art form. Thank God, right? That's exactly right. On that note, I have to say, man, it's been a pleasure visiting with you. I just want to thank you for entrusting me with so many of your wonderful, creative babies over the years. Every time we see each other, I feel like I'm seeing a true old friend. Even though we don't pal around with each other because we're both so busy with our careers, you mean so much to me. And I really thank you very much for being here. Kevin, it is so lovely to hear you say that. It's my pleasure to be here. And I have to say this, I will remember this moment not that long ago. Three years ago, we tested the holdovers and Alexander Payne cautioned me beforehand. You know, my movies, and he has some wonderful movies, always test in the fifties. It's just the way they test. So don't be disappointed. And then we did our first test and Kevin came in and we tested somewhere in the mid eighties and he announced it in such a way, such a reassuring way that both Alexander and I looked at each other in just a different way that we've ever connected. I associate Kevin, you with so many of those moments. I'm sure there's a couple of ones that I say, no, Kevin, go back out the door and come back with something else. There were, but you always listened. That's right. Made the changes that we got to better numbers the next time. Mark, again, congratulations on your newborn baby. And of course, on your lovely partner, Gina Welsh and your four-year-old. It's a marvelous thing. Thank you, Kevin. It's been a delight. Thank you. To our listeners. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. For more insights into filmmaking, audience testing and the business of Hollywood. I invite you to check out my books, audienceology and how to score in Hollywood at Amazon or through my website at kevingets360.com. You can also follow me on my social media. Next time on don't kill the messenger. I'll welcome producer and former vice chairman of Warner brothers and chairman of Columbia pictures, Mark Canton. Until then I'm Kevin gets, and to you, our listeners I appreciate you being part of the movie making process. Your opinions matter.