Brent Allan Johnson — he prefers to be introduced with his middle name, for whatever reason – is an editor at the PC Prospector, and he wanted to shed some light on the achievements of the artistically inclined of Park City High School’s student body. He wrote one about a local rock band–Portraits–and has since been left the Student Spotlight un-updated. Brewster Hutchinson–the editor-in-chief here at the Prospector–thought it would be funny for me to interview Brent Allan Johnson for the Student Spotlight section. I reminded Mr. Hutchinson that interviewing Mr. Johnson would be “incest”–a term used by the Prospector staff to describe covering itself–but he insisted that I write it.

During Mr. Johnson’s interview, I found that most of his answers were filled with useless profanity in place of filler words like “um.” So forgive my censoring of his quotes, this article wouldn’t be published if I kept the profanity intact.

“I’m a writer, but I’m mostly known for my [gosh darn] films.”

By films, Johnson only means one: Vinny & The Boss, which follows a gangster as he cooks an egg for his boss.

“It was hard for a lot of people to follow,” he said.

It was, indeed, wildly confusing. Why in a film about gangsters and eggs is the philosophical question, “what was the point of life?” posed?

I pressed him on this.

“I think it was something about me not knowing what the film was about. My point was that you shouldn’t [freaking] ask me what the film meant. But that didn’t really work out. People were still confused by the film.”

“Were there any religious connotations to the film?” I asked

“I guess so. I’ve always been the most religious athiest.”

“What do you mean by that?”

After several minutes of incoherrent mumbling and cursing beneath his breath, Mr. Johnson finally replied.

“I’ve got the weirdest [freaking] relationship with the old man, you know what I mean? I’ve never seen him like a guy who cares about the fate of the [darn] universe, let alone specific individuals of the human race, of all [freaking] things. I’ve always seen him as a kid with an ant farm, like a kid that created the universe to see what would happen.”

“Why are you so passionate about this?”

“I don’t know.”

That was the gist of a lot of his answers.

“So, how did you get into journalism?”

“Hemingway. He’s one of the finest American writers, and he started as a journalist for the Kansas City Star. That’s where he learned to write as good as he did. He learned that the news should have little to no fluff, just straight fact. His writing is so naturally beautiful because of that.”

Anyway, this article is getting absurdly long, mostly due to the length of Mr. Johnson’s dialogue–ironic, isn’t it? I asked Mr. Johnson if he had any closing remarks.

“Well… I guess look out for my films at the Miner Film Festival. I guess you’re already reading the Prospector if you see this interview, so keep reading my stuff. I also write film reviews separate from the Prospector on Letterboxd, you can find me as Brent, I think. Don’t go too far back in my review history, though. The old ones are bad.”

Here is a link to his account: Letterboxd.

And yes, the reviews do get bad the further back you go.