Mark Steven Johnson has Minnesota to thank for his Hollywood career. In the early 1990s, Johnson was a struggling screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He worked as an assistant by day and spent his free time writing scripts he thought would sell but didn’t have any emotional investment in. “I realized I wasn’t very good at that,” Johnson says. “Also, there were a million other people trying to rip off ‘Lethal Weapon.’ That’s when I thought, ‘What do I know that no one else does?’”
Photo by Mika Cotellon
The answer was Minnesota—the state where Johnson was born and raised. Over the course of a few weeks, Johnson wrote “Grumpy Old Men,” a romantic comedy about two feuding senior citizens in Wabasha, Minnesota, who spend their time ice fishing, pulling pranks on each other, and flirting with their new neighbor, Ariel. While he was delighted with the final result, Johnson was well aware it was “the least commercial script on the planet.”
But it was so distinctive, relatable, and full of heart, that Warner Bros. took a risk—casting Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Ann-Margret in the film. When “Grumpy Old Men” was released on Christmas Day, 1993, it proved to be a box office hit, kick-starting Johnson’s life as a writer and director.
From writing the sequel “Grumpier Old Men” and the dark Christmas fantasy film “Jack Frost,” to producing Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone’s boxing movie “Grudge Match,” as well as writing and directing the superhero movies “Daredevil” and “Ghost Rider,” Johnson has gone on to excel in a variety of genres over his 30-plus-year career.
Most recently, Johnson has become Netflix’s go-to director for romantic comedies. His latest for the streamer, “Champagne Problems,” stars Minka Kelly as an American executive who travels to France to buy a renowned champagne brand, only to fall in love with the founder’s son. Once again, Johnson can link his Netflix connection to Minnesota.
Photo by Mika Cotellon
The first romantic comedy he rewrote and directed for Netflix—“Love, Guaranteed”—starred Rachael Leigh Cook, another Minnesotan, whom Johnson initially met at the premiere of “Grumpy Old Men.” Even though the pair hadn’t seen each other for over 25 years, the Minnesota in them made sure they had a great time making “Love, Guaranteed.” “That made me want to write another original romantic comedy. So, I came up with ‘Love in the Villa,’ basically because I wanted to live in Verona, Italy, for four months,” Johnson says. “That was a No. 1 movie for them. So, they asked me, ‘Where do you want to go next?’ I picked France—Paris and Champagne.”
Johnson isn’t just using Netflix as a glorified travel agent to tick off his vacation bucket list. Netflix told Johnson he had to set “Champagne Problems” at Christmas to appeal to a festive crowd, make the lead character female, keep it within a certain budget, and make it as sweet and funny as possible. Johnson managed to deliver on all these fronts, and he can’t help but smile and practically pinch himself, as he says, “This is the best job in the world.”
It was while watching the thrills and terrors of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” as an 11-year-old in Minnesota that Johnson knew he wanted to make movies. “I just remember watching people screaming and laughing. Right then, I knew I wanted to make people feel like this.” In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were no screenwriting classes where Johnson could learn the basics, let alone the craft. After taking a few classes at Winona State University, he packed his bags for Los Angeles, finished his degree at California State University, Long Beach, and then dedicated himself to writing scripts and worming his way into the film industry.
“I worked as an assistant at Orion Studios for 40 hours a week. Then I’d come home and write. I’d get up early before work and write,” Johnson says. “I’d always tell myself, ‘You’re not the best writer in Hollywood. But they’re asleep right now. You’re working.’” After a few years of writing scripts that were ignored, Johnson took the plunge with “Grumpy Old Men.” But even that ended up in the hands of Warner Bros. executives only through chance. His wife at the time randomly met someone whose cousin used to be an agent. “I made a horribly awkward phone call to him. He looked at my script and liked it. He passed it on to producer John Davis, who gave it to Warner Bros., and they bought it. It was this tiny opening.”
But while Johnson acknowledges the luck involved for him to get his big break, he notes that he had put himself in a position to succeed. He’d had enough positive feedback to know that his script was finished and ready to be made. Even Johnson was shocked when cinematic luminaries Lemmon and Matthau signed up to appear in “Grumpy Old Men.” “I was 25 years old. I remember for a brief moment thinking, ‘This isn’t that hard.’ But I quickly realized how fortunate I was and then it was back into the struggle.”
After 32 years and 17 films as either a writer, director, or producer, Johnson still has the same hunger to come up with ideas and tell as many different stories as possible. The state of the industry has never been tougher, as studios reduce their output, productions move out of Los Angeles, and film is competing with television, video games, and the internet for eyeballs. “People always say I’ve had the weirdest career. But I love all kinds of movies,” Johnson says. “Whether it was writing or making a comedy, action, or romance, it didn’t matter to me. It’s always fun to change it up.”
Whatever happens in the future, Johnson’s status as a Minnesota folk hero is forever etched in stone. Not just because of the “Grumpy Old Men” films, but also the Grumpy Old Men Festival it inspired, held the last weekend of February in Wabasha since 1993. Johnson made a guest appearance at the 30th anniversary of the event in 2023 and was left astonished at the impact the film still has.
“There are thousands of people there to celebrate the movies,” he says. “They told me these are the films that bring their families together every year. Considering so many people told me as a kid in Minnesota that I’d never make it in Hollywood, to see that they are still going strong 32 years later, it was really touching, because all I ever wanted to do was entertain people.”
