By Margie Smith Holt
Got a grammar emergency?
If so, and if you were planning to reach out for expert advice, you should know that it’s getting a little harder to track down the Upper West Side’s favorite grammar guru, Ellen Jovin. Sure, you can refer back to one of her witty columns in the Rag, or you might get lucky and find her in Central Park or Verdi Square, manning her now-famous Grammar Table. But these days she and her filmmaker husband, Brandt Johnson, are more likely to be on the road—in Tulsa, or Cleveland, or Bozeman, MT—screening and promoting their critically acclaimed (and hilarious) documentary, “Rebel with a Clause.”
“I love life on the road!” said Jovin from Iowa City, where the Rag caught up with the couple last week.
“We’re having a blast,” said Johnson.
“Rebel with a Clause”—a “grammar road trip docu-comedy” which follows Jovin as she carts her table across the country, meeting the locals and settling debates about split infinitives and the Oxford comma, all while providing a hopeful portrait of American community and discourse—is Johnson’s first film. Since the documentary premiered in January 2025, the couple has (have? This reporter failed to clarify while she had the expert on the phone.) screened the film in 35 states, often to packed audiences; held some 150 Q&As; and racked up eight festival awards from San Francisco to Boston to Kansas City — including best documentary feature, best director, and audience choice awards.
“We have sold out lots of cinemas all over the country. That’s been rather remarkable. Grammar fans coming out in force to see this film!” said Johnson. “And people come again and again. There’s one couple that has come 10 or 11 times now.”
How do they stay fresh after so many events?
“We both are experienced in really being in the moment,” said Jovin. “Like at the Grammar Table, someone asks about the Oxford comma. I mean, I’ve heard that question probably hundreds of times, but there’s always a different person, there’s a different tone of voice, the motivation is different. There’s always a lot of subtle detail coming from the situation that doesn’t make things feel like the same question to me. And I really just try to listen.”
The whole operation is a surprise success. Jovin told the Rag she thought up the Grammar Table idea just sitting around her UWS apartment eight years ago. She thought it would be fun to put up a table with a sign and see what would happen next.
“Ellen plopped her Grammar Table out on the sidewalk in September of 2018 without any expectation of anything. She likes to call it grammar hedonism,” said Johnson. “I would go out and watch what she was up to. Just for fun, I’d sit on a park bench nearby, and after some weeks of that, I felt like I really needed to start filming…Neither of us had any expectations of anything.”
“I personally believe in the power of our individual acts,” said Jovin. “No matter how small they are, they are worth pursuing tenaciously, and you don’t know, necessarily, what the outcome will be…We’re just sort of spontaneously rolling with what comes of this.”
Johnson and Jovin are distributing the film themselves, a significant undertaking which means they do all the work: booking the movie theaters; marketing; and traveling to festivals for in-person events where they set up the Grammar Table for book signings, grammar quizzes, and meet-and-greets.
Johnson said there are three reasons they decided to do it on their own. “We keep the rights to the film. That’s huge,” he said. “Second element: We keep the control of the distribution…We own every part of it. And the third is financial. Distribution deals are notoriously unfavorable to the filmmaker.”
“I would lose my mind if we lost control of this project in any way,” said Jovin. “[It] is so incredibly dear to my heart, and so personal, and in every one of my cells.”
While, so far, the concentration has been on showing the film at festivals and in theaters, they’re about to roll out a new phase of distribution: licensing. Johnson said they’ve had hundreds of inquiries from schools, universities, and other organizations that want to bring the film into their classrooms or communities. They’re even doing that aspect on their own, setting up their own platform rather than working with an existing distributor.
In addition, Johnson is working on both open and closed captioning for the film “so it will be as accessible as it can be to audiences,” he said.
“That’s important to us,” added Jovin.
All of that equals a couple of full-time jobs on top of the one they already have: their consulting business, Syntaxis, a communications skills training firm.
“It has consumed our lives,” said Johnson. “It started with six-and-a-half years of editing the 400 hours of footage that I had, and it has continued with the figuring out of the business elements of it, and the licensing and distribution, and continued editing of some elements. But it has been wonderful, because I feel such a love for what this project is…and what it feels as though we’re bringing to audiences.
“One person said it has restored her faith in the United States. Another one said it made her like people again,” said Johnson. “That is just so moving. It makes me tear up when people say that. And sometimes they hug us.”
“And they cry,” said Jovin.
“They cry,” agreed Johnson. “And thank us for the joy that it brought them in the midst of a very difficult, divided time that we’re all living through. I made this film with the intention of its being entertaining. I wanted people to laugh, to enjoy the experience, to feel moved—and so it is that. But at its heart it is about human connection.”
Jovin took her Grammar Table to all 50 states during the shooting of the film. The goal now is to screen in all 50 states…and beyond. The film has also begun to show internationally; screenings in Canada and Germany are upcoming. But often, they can be found here on the UWS, where New Plaza Cinema has screened “Rebel” approximately 47 times since its debut a year and a half ago.
“We’ve been so appreciative of that Upper West Side home for the film, right in our neighborhood, right down the street from the birthplace of the Grammar Table,” said Johnson. “They’ve been wonderfully supportive.”
And fear not, fans. For Jovin and Johnson, who have been together for 32 years and got married in Central Park, the UWS will always be home.
“Although there are grammar nerds everywhere, there are probably even more on the Upper West Side,” said Jovin. “I think it is highly unlikely we will leave the UWS, ever!”
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