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Trevor Johnston
Trevor Johnston
While studying English Literature at Edinburgh University, Trevor started writing film reviews, and was the founding film editor at ‘The List’, the Glasgow and Edinburgh Listings magazine. Since then he has contributed reviews and features to numerous publications, including ‘Sight & Sound’ and ‘The Independent on Sunday’, has been the weekly film critic of ‘The Scotsman’ newspaper, and these days writes regularly for ‘Time Out London’, 'The Times' and the Irish Film Institute.
Over the years he has also interviewed many of the world’s great film-makers on print and on stage, including Michael Powell, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Quentin Tarantino, Wong-Kar Wai, Terence Davies, Neil Jordan, Atom Egoyan, Terry Gilliam and Errol Morris.
Having carped too many times about the quality of British screenwriting, he has also been pursuing activities in the development sector, training at The Script Factory through both script reading courses and the Script Development Diploma taught in partnership with the National Film and Television School. He has since worked as a script editor for Grand Pictures in Dublin, and an industry reader for the UK Film Council and Skillset as well as Element Pictures, Universal Pictures International, Little Wing and The Script Factory itself.
He presented Scottish Television’s Festival Cinema programme, has taught A-Level Film Studies, and once gave Carlos Reygadas a John Tavener CD whose music he ended up using in his next film. Having studied (and tasted) at the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, he also knows his way around a wine list, but that’s another story…
Andrew Stanton's Wall-EIn summer 2008, Trevor began to write a regular review column here on The Script Factory site, looking at films from a script-centred perspective. The column has picked up some effusive praise - not least from the great Andrew Stanton himself, creator of Wall-E, who stumbled upon Trevor's analysis and had this to say:
"I cannot describe the depth of satisfaction it gives me to read your "spot on" analysis of WALL-E. All those years of hard work, endless rewrites, and headaches really did pay off. SOMEBODY GOT IT! Now, if I only I could take you on the road when people ask me to explain my movie. FYI, the premise I was working from, that you so aptly found your own words for, was "Irrational love defeats life programming." This sentence guided every decision we made with the story. Keep up the great work."
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