‘Finding Tyler’ to air on PBS stations across the country

“It’s finally happening, the 20-minute documentary, ‘Finding Tyler: A Journey with an Unpredictable Past,’ has been picked up for national syndication,” Patrice Johnson announced.

by Judy Williams

“It’s finally happening, the 20-minute documentary, ‘Finding Tyler: A Journey with an Unpredictable Past,’ has been picked up for national syndication,” Patrice Johnson announced with a smile. This short documentary was selected from more than 1,500 films that vied for one of the 134 slots in the 2021 RiverRun Festival.

The film was directed by Chris Brannan and Diana Reichenbach, both on faculty at the Savannah College of Art and Design. To earn a spot in the festival, “Finding Tyler” competed against submissions from 24 countries. The RiverRun Festival, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is an Academy Award qualifying festival in the Documentary Short and Animated Short categories.

The director, Brannan stated, “The film will be shown over the next two years (or longer if the contract is extended). It will be airing on PBS stations across the country. A segment of the film was shown to programmers from all the PBS stations across the country, and 75% of them voted that they would want to air it (including WKAR in East Lansing and most major markets), with another 11% or so being ‘maybes.’ This is an extremely high number of acceptances from what I’m told. These ‘yeses’ are tacit agreements to air the film, so we should be reaching an extremely wide audience.”

The documentary, based on Tyler Johnson’s life as a fugitive, starts as a single act of recklessness that ends a promising life. Tyler is the deceased son of Stockbridge natives, Jim and Patrice Johnson.

The film follows Tyler’s struggles on the run as he fled the U.S. and finally ended up on the island of Corsica off the coast of France. The majority of the film concentrates on Tyler’s time there.

The director, Brannan, made multiple trips to France and Corsica to meet with those who knew Tyler and to see where he lived and how he survived as a fugitive without papers. The documentary showcases beautiful photos of the mountain peaks where Tyler spent much of his time exploring.

The directors also traveled to Stockbridge to meet with mom, Patrice, dad, Jim, and sister Kelsey. There are touching moments of an interview with Patrice and Kelsey that will tug at your heart as you hear firsthand the sadness in their voices about their loss.

“Finding Tyler” also deals with the roller coaster of emotions his family was going through. “We felt helpless,” Patrice said. “We were desperate for news about his location. Was he well? Did he have food? Not knowing about his welfare was a constant worry for us.”

Tyler’s journal entries served as a window to his life on the run. The once accomplished physicist, who earned the Presidential Merit Scholarship from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), changed the course of his life with one ill-advised incident over a celebratory weekend. In a single evening, Tyler went from a promising physicist to an alleged eco-terrorist.

After viewing the documentary, you will want to read “The Fall and Rise of Tyler Johnson” by Patrice Johnson. Patrice is a first-time author, Stockbridge High School graduate, former Stockbridge teacher, and founder of the nonprofit Stockbridge Community News. She details an in-depth look at Tyler’s life as a fugitive. The nonfiction book is based on entries from Tyler’s journals. This book has been selected winner of the National Indie Excellence Award for new nonfiction. Plus, the National Federation of Press Women’s 2018 National Communications Contest awarded the book First Place At-Large and Honorable Mention U.S. in the category of nonfiction books for adult readers—biography or autobiography. The book now is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.

Currently, Patrice is finishing her second book, a stand-alone sequel titled “Tyler’s Ledge,” about Tyler’s last two years living as a fugitive. The book is scheduled for publication early next year.

Until then, those wishing to discover more about Tyler’s story should be on alert for showings of the film on PBS channels.

Brannan concluded, “The less-than-ideal news is that there will not be advance notice of where or when the film does show, only retrospective reports. So, keep an eye out!”