A Pilgrim’s Progress
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Ben Johnson
Latest posts
My Testimony: Fury & Grace
Come one, Come all! Let’s go back to about 1984, 40th & Pennsylvania Avenue in Oklahoma City. That’s the rough side of a tough city, in a mean state. Hear a tale of life lived and love lost and found again, right where it all started. The way to the depths is through the surface…the surface of a nasty little tomato that’s got the secret of life locked inside it. Set your phasers to stun!
When the Going Gets Weird…
…the weird turn pro. Thank you, Hunter S. Thompson! I patterned myself after him more than has been exactly healthy, but I’ll stand by that quotation. Now that the rest of the culture has fully adopted the grubby squalor that is my normal work environment as a professional campaigner in the world of organized labor campaigns in the United States, let me give y'all some tips for how to use the…
Three Legged Stool
My name is Ben, and I've been enmeshed. At forty-eight years old I don't know if I'll make it out in time. I'm trying hard, because I'm responsible for someone else now too. I spent eighteen years with my parents in a psychic igloo, taking care of their emotional needs, and providing them with entertainment. As they grow frail now and are most in need of me, I find I can no longer perform my role.…
The Persuaders
The Persuaders is a pilot for a serial drama set in the world of union organizing campaigns. Longline: “Persuaders and union organizers must find the humanity in themselves before they become the enemies they fight.” This was the first screenplay I wrote, and man did I spend a ton of time developing material for the show. I’ve got a bible, beaucoup characters and storylines, and a unique…
Charlie Among Us!
My father started wearing a Vietnam Vet baseball cap a few years ago. I'm a Gen-Xer raised by and among Vietnam Vets, and I can't put off commenting on that cap any longer. My father bought those caps and had them embroidered with the name of three outfits he served in, and gave one cap to me and each of his grandchildren. The war was over a long time ago, according to the calendar. Based on my…
Surprise!
The best thing about putting scripts in contests is that there’s a decent chance you’ll forget you did it and then be pleasantly surprised to place. I had two feature scripts in the LA International Screenplay Awards and both made semifinalist! I’m especially pleased because both deal with challenging subject matter, and the judges seem not to have choked on it.
Hey, a little external validation never hurt anyone!
The tagline on the website is “Learn and become what you are.” It’s a line from the Greek Poet Pindar. Genoi hoios essi mathone. That’s an admonition to myself, a kind of personal mission statement. It helps me remember why I write and perform, to find and express myself in a way that connects with my fellow creatures. If I can sell a script or a book, great. If I can sell enough tickets to do my…
Excerpt from Fury & Grace
It was time for me to start the event. I walked through the back doorway of the Capital Plaza Hotel, just across the street from the gold-domed capital building, and into the banquet room. This was a political fundraiser for the Vermont AFL-CIO and the Teamsters, and as the AFL-CIO president, I was the emcee. I saw the lovely and tempting open bar that I stayed away from and the hors d’oeuvre that…
Among Us
I walked into the Statehouse a few weeks ago for the first time in about seven years, and talked to legislators and lobbyists I knew. It sounded like “We the People” have changed quite a lot in that time. What lobbysists told me about many of the folks they deal with, legislators and advocates and the rank-and-file citizens alike, reminded me of my kids’ favorite videogame, Among Us, where teams…
The Elgar Sanction
It says up there at the top of the page ‘Learn and become what you are.’ In a surprise twist I love music, it turns out. I’m following the trail of why I’m so captivated lately by watching classical performances and boning-up on my appreciation of string quartets, which is rudimentary. I thought that the thirty year hiatus I took from it after I quit the saxophone in eighth grade meant music…
Three Tales of Perseus and Medusa
He breathed in the musty air that tasted like hundred-year-old stump-water dripping on sauna rocks. If the boy had heat-sensitive pits like a viper, the source of the cavern’s sweltering heat would have been clear enough, however far back into the darkness it lurked. But he had none. The boy’s own burning face would have overloaded his viper-pits anyway. Allowing himself take the first step inside…
Fury & Grace is out on Audible!
I recorded the narration over at Voice Over Vermont, and learned that sitting in a dark room reading into a microphone is an excellent way to spend a few days.
Abram and the Dug Well
A true tale, taken from Fury and Grace, my memoir of love, death, art, politics, and the terror of tomatoes. In Blount County, Alabama, the sun pushes down from above while the waterlogged air ensures no evaporating sweat will cool you. In 1906, my grandfather Abram’s mind wasn’t on the water in the air but the water under the dirt he was standing on. Of particular interest to him was how far he…