George Johnson/1983 interview

## Transcript

* INTERVIEWER: Hey, George, tell me about yourself.
* GEORGE: My name is George Johnson; I'm 45 years old, and I've been an actor and filmmaker since 1952.
* INTERVIEWER: So tell me why you started acting.
* GEORGE: Well, in 1952, two years after my family and I moved to Brooklyn, New York, from Wildwood, New Jersey, a city where I was born, my parents had to choose whether to start acting or start an amusement park business, which my older brother did. So I said "Well, since New York City was where they started making movies, I'm going to choose to start acting", That's where I got it started.
* INTERVIEWER: How old were you at that time?
* GEORGE: I was 14 when it started.
* INTERVIEWER: 14?!
* GEORGE: Yeah. And after that, I changed my name from Georgy Thomas Anderson to George Johnson. It's like Jerry Silberman changed to Gene Wilder.
* INTERVIEWER: Ok. How did you meet Emily Matthews?
* GEORGE: Well, in late 1964, I was at the airport to see Emily Matthews, an English actress who appeared in UK movies in the 1960s. I met her, and I moved to a new Brooklyn apartment. We later married in March 1965, and we were still together until the day I died.
* INTERVIEWER: Ok. So who inspires you to become a filmmaker?
* GEORGE: Well, in 1966, when I was 26 years old, I walked to the movie theater to watch The Thrill Killer, which had been released two years earlier. The director who made this movie is Ray Dennis Stecker. I like his work, and he inspired me to become a filmmaker. I didn't have my production company until 7 years later, in 1973, when I named it "Johnson Studios".
* INTERVIEWER: Recently, you played the role of the bad guy who destroys the magical Pendant with a single pistol bullet in the show Minky Momo.
* GEORGE: Yes, that's me playing the role. In fact, I'm wearing the same fake mustache I originally wore for Vince Rogers from The Abused Dad movie because I wanted to play the part so badly. But my wife, Emily, won't let me play the role of Vince. So instead, I played the role of the Bad Guy from Minky Momo. At the time when this episode was filmed, my wife, Emily, and my daughter Hailey were on the set but they didn't appear on screen. After filming the scene where a bullet destroys Momo's pendant was complete, I took out my fake mustache and told my wife, "I'm not going to play villain roles anymore." She hugs me after I say that.
* INTERVIEWER: When was it filmed?
* GEORGE: Oh, I think it was filmed in mid-September 1982 if I remember correctly. Anyway, I feel so bad for her Minky Momo actress for her pendant.
* INTERVIEWER: You said that one day after the filming of episode 45 of Minky Momo wrapped, you took Minky Momo's actress to dinner at your house.
* GEORGE: Yes, I did, I did take her to my house for a family dinner a day after that, and I had a great time together with my wife and my children, and then after dinner, I gave her a real working pendant that I kept in my pocket to 12-year-old Minky Momo actress while a fake one was destroyed for the destruction scene in episode 45 which we did earlier, and I told her, "Don't worry I kept the real one in my pocket before filming a pendant destruction scene." She was relief when I said to her. After that, the 12-year-old Minky Momo actress told me that she had an idea for a movie about turning an old abandoned house into a wild house party, and that idea got turned into the movie titled "The Wild House Party".
* INTERVIEWER: Oh, I didn't know that.