How Amy Jo Johnson’s tragic past helped her understand ‘Tammy’s Always Dying’

TORONTO — Even before reading the script for her new film “Tammy’s Always Dying,” Amy Jo Johnson was well familiar with the protagonist.

The Toronto actress-turned-filmmaker directed the comedic drama, which stars Oscar-nominated Felicity Huffman as a self-destructive alcoholic mother and Canadian actress Anastasia Phillips as her exasperated daughter in a working-class community in Hamilton.

“I grew up in a very similar situation as the film, with my father being, at this point in his life, a non-functioning alcoholic,” said Johnson, whose acting credits include “Flashpoint,” “Felicity” and the “Power Rangers” franchise.

“He is Tammy, so I connected to this script on a core level.”

Making its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, “Tammy’s Always Dying” follows Kathy as she constantly rescues her mother while also dealing with her own personal drama.

When Tammy drinks too much, Kathy takes her to the local diner to sober up. When Tammy frequently stands on the ledge of their community’s main bridge in a half-hearted threat to jump off it, Kathy is there to talk her down.

And when Tammy is diagnosed with cancer, Kathy once again is there for her. That is, until Kathy is offered a chance to sensationalize her life story for money on a TV tabloid talk show.

Joanne Sarazen wrote the film, which explores issues of addiction, mental health, co-dependency, how society treats those living in poverty, and moving on from a difficult relationship.

“Within the last two years I’ve really found how to let go, because I can’t change him, and how to still love him from afar but not have to be in the middle of it or have it affect me directly,” Johnson said of her father, who also suffers from depression and lives in Cape Cod, Mass., where she grew up.

“That took a long time to get there. I really don’t mind talking about it, because it’s how I found my way in the door of figuring out the story and how to tell it, and to find the absurd humour within all of it.”

Reached by phone at his home, Johnson’s father, who is in his 70s, confirmed he struggles with alcohol.

Johnson had another tragic emotional connection to the film’s script: Her own mother died of cancer almost 20 years ago.

“That was another footing I had in the door (to the script), of just watching your mother die, basically, get sick,” Johnson said. 

After her mother’s death, Johnson’s father was left to raise her.

“He was a functioning alcoholic for the majority of his life, and it was after my mother passed away that he started to spiral out of control,” she said.

This is Johnson’s second directorial effort after 2017’s “The Space Between.” She came into the new project that same year after watching Sarazen do a reading of the script in a writers’ lab at the Canadian Film Centre, where Johnson was studying directing.

“I just remember sitting there watching it crying hysterically and laughing,” Johnson said. “It was just such an absurd, beautiful, funny, sad script. When it was finished I was so moved to the core.

“I walked outside and Joanne was out there, and it’s so silly but I just kind of fell into her arms crying, going, ‘I get this. I totally get this.'”

But Johnson said she didn’t have the courage at first to ask Sarazen if she could direct it.

“I didn’t even want to touch it, it was so good,” she said. “But I could not let it go for two or three months.”

She sent the script to Jessica Adams, who produced her first feature. Adams told her: “This is your next project.'”

They shot the film in 19 days in Hamilton last November, with Sarazen on set to provide support.

Huffman “showed up 150 per cent in character,” said Johnson, noting the American actress nailed the Canadian accent by listening to voice recordings of the director’s mother’s friend who lives in Niagara Falls, Ont.

“She had her teeth all yellowed out and her greys grown out,” Johnson said. “Tammy is an intimidating human being, so I feel like I never really got to meet Felicity until the very end when we went out to dinner and I was like, ‘Oh, this is a really nice, cool woman! Because that lady on set was scary!'”

Huffman is among several parents who recently pleaded guilty for participating in a college admissions bribery scheme south of the border. Asked whether the news is affecting the marketing of her film, Johnson said she’s just grateful for Huffman’s “wonderful” performance, adding: “We are all human and all make our own mistakes. I am in no place to judge.”

The cast of “Tammy’s Always Dying” also includes Clark Johnson, Aaron Ashmore, Kristian Bruun, and Jessica Greco.

Johnson plans to further explore her relationship with her parents in her next feature, the comedic drama “Crazier Than You,” in which she’ll also star as her mother. She wrote the first draft in 2012 and just finished her second pass at it.

The story will look at her parents’ “crazy relationship,” how her mother joined a religious cult for 12 years, and how she got herself out of it.

“Any project I want to make at this point in my life, I’d like to take the sad subjects,” Johnson said, “the hard things that we have to go through and find the humour within them and tell just human, honest stories that people can identify with, to help maybe laugh a little bit at some of the pain.”

Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press