'Rebel with a Clause,' the movie, with Ellen Jovin and Brandt Johnson

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Mignon Fogarty, Inc.

Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1048. Ellen Jovin set up a folding table on the street in all 50 U.S. states to talk with people about grammar, which led to the book "Rebel with a Clause." Now, her story, and the story of people who talked with her, is a movie by the same name. Mignon talked with Ellen and her documentarian husband, Brandt Johnson, about what they learned about both filmmaking and humanity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Grammar Girl here. I'm Minion Fogarty, and today I'm here with Grammar Table celebrity
0:10.7	Ellen Jovan and her documentarian husband, Brant Johnson. You may remember Ellen from her book
0:17.6	that came out a couple of years ago, but they actually have made a movie. And so we're
0:22.6	going to talk more about their experiences. And Ellen and Brandt, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.
0:28.7	Thank you for having us here, Mignon. Great to be here. Yeah. So, Ellen, I've always wondered,
0:34.3	I think we've talked about this before, but what possessed you to go out on the street and sit behind a table and invite people to come talk to you about grammar?
0:43.7	Well, I feel like I need some psychoanalysis to understand the motivations fully.
0:50.1	But I do know, and I still feel this way, actually.
0:54.0	I'm on the computer too much.
0:55.9	My life is too much technology.
0:58.8	And my whole professional life has always been dedicated to words.
1:02.6	I think the grammar table was it primarily, like significantly, when I first did it,
1:07.0	an opportunity for me to do sort of what I was doing online and chat groups, you know,
1:12.4	like grammar nerd groups on Facebook and stuff, to take it to the street and have at least some
1:18.5	have more public interaction and use language for the thing that's meant to be used for primarily,
1:23.6	which is communication. Do you consider yourself an extrovert? Because I'm an introvert and I feel like
1:28.8	I would probably like to have done what you do, like to sit out there. And after I talked to the
1:35.4	people, I'd be so excited that I had done it. But it would never even occur to me to go do it to
1:42.5	initiate the action. Like I find myself wondering if you're an extrovert and you're just like, I'm going to go do it to like initiate the action like are you I find myself wondering if you're
1:45.7	an extrovert and you're just like I'm going to go talk to people I feel as though I should ask
1:50.2	brand I don't think I'm an I don't think I'm an extrovert but I'm not an introvert can I be somewhere
1:54.7	in the middle I mean I know the the definitions are kind of more complicated than the simple
	...

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