Johnson spent much of his youth in Madrid, Spain, where many American and British movies were being filmed at the time.

“I acted in a couple, but I was never really an actor. Nor did I really want to be one,” Johnson says.

During his final year earning an undergraduate degree in drama from the University of Virginia, he took his first film course.

“I didn’t know you could study film the same way you could, for instance, literature,” Johnson says. “I didn’t know you could explicate a movie much the same way you could a book. I loved the idea, and wanted to know where to go from there.”

He discovered that Iowa’s film department focused not only on film production but on film history, theory, and criticism as well. After spending his life in Spain and Virginia, Johnson says the move to Iowa was a bit jolting, but in a good way.

“I might as well have been on Pluto,” Johnson says. “I knew nothing about Iowa before, but I fell in love with Iowa City and, specifically, the university. I tell people all the time that I did my best thinking and was surrounded by the smartest people during my two years at Iowa. It was such a wonderful academic and intellectual atmosphere.”

Johnson remembers two people in particular at Iowa who made an impression on him and his future work: then-PhD candidate David Bordwell, now a respected film theorist and historian and emeritus professor of film at the University of Wisconsin; and Dudley Andrew, now a professor of film studies at Yale University, who received his PhD and taught for 30 years at Iowa.

“They were studying and teaching all sorts of very esoteric things that I was fascinated with,” Johnson says. “But there were a number of people who had a real impact on me and whom I was somewhat in awe of.”

Since leaving Iowa, Johnson has produced dozens of critically acclaimed and highly honored films and series for the big screen, small screen, and streaming services, and worked with the biggest names in the industry. He’s also championed the work of numerous up-and-comers over the years—including many Hawkeyes.

Among the Iowa alumni Johnson has worked with in the past are David Kajganich, Josh Miller, Lila Byock, Sam Shaw, Vinnie Wilhelm, and Mark Lafferty. The latter four received a Writers Guild of America award for the Hulu series Castle Rock, and Kajganich is currently collaborating with Johnson on a project.

University of Iowa students and alumni aren’t the only ones who get Johnson’s attention. He’s also highly involved with his other alma mater, the University of Virginia. There he has led classes and serves as chair of the Advisory Board for the Virginia Film Festival, for which he has worked in some capacity during the majority of its 30-year run.

It was while judging a screenwriting contest at the Virginia Film Festival that Johnson discovered a young writer by the name of Vince Gilligan. The two went on to create the television series Breaking Bad and its spinoff, Better Call Saul.

Johnson says he knows that for college students in Iowa City, the film and television industry can seem exotic and far away.

“But the truth of the matter is that you’re much closer to it than you think,” Johnson says. “If you’re talented and you’re a hard worker, the industry wants you as much as you want it. We’re constantly looking for talented, original voices. Practice your art and craft. When it’s time, come out, and if you’re talented and you have the resolve, you will get discovered and become a part of it.”