Paul Williams (director): Difference between revisions

Paul Williams (born 1943 in New York City), often credited as P.W. Williams, is an American director, writer, producer and actor best known for directing a series of films in the late-1960s to early-1970s exploring counterculture life: Out of It (1969), The Revolutionary (1970) and Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972). He also directed Nunzio for Universal (1975), "Miss Right" (1981) for Sony, "Mirage" (1990), and "The November Men" (1994)

(This Paul Williams is not to be confused with Australian Animation Producer and Director Paul Williams, responsible for The Island of Nevawuz, The Black Planet, The Phantom Treehouse, and The Steam-Driven Adventures of Riverboat Bill - also Animation Director/writer on The Silver Brumby TV series and other material for the Australian Children's Television Foundation.)

As an undergraduate at Harvard College, his 1965 summa cum laude thesis, "The Expressive Meaning of Body Positions in the Male-Female Encounter," was published in 1970 under the title, "Messages of the Body," a seminal work in the area of expressive body communication. He read Fine Arts at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1966.

He was a founding partner in 1966 of Pressman Williams Enterprises, with Edward Pressman, that produced such films as Terrence Malick's first film Badlands, Brian DePalma's early films Sisters and Phantom of the Paradise, and others. As an actor, he appeared several TV movies, and a few films that he also directed, including The November Men (1994) and Mirage (1996) and he has collaborated with director Henry Jaglom "Tracks" and writer Stephen Eckelberry, as well as Eckelberry's wife Karen Black "Breaking Up with Paul".

Williams spent several years investigating the Milarepa "Thunderbolt Path" with the Sufi master, Oscar Ichazo; and later the vision teachings of Dilgo Khyntse Rinpoche (also, the current Dali Lama's principle teacher)

He produced Zoe Clarke-Williams' (his daughter) first film Men (2002, winner CineJove Spain festival and winner Hollywood Film Festival, selected for Athens, Porto, Manilla Film Festivals) and later directed The Best Ever. He directed "The Best Ever" in 2001. With John Briley (screenwriter of Gandhi), he spent several years (2001-2003) preparing And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, a film about Pope John Paul II and his role in the fall of Communism in Western Europe. That film was abandoned amidst turmoil in the Vatican.

In 2015, Waterside Press published a book about perception, extraordinary experience and the digital photographic process, Image of a Spirit.

In the fall of 2017, The Orchard (Sony) released his production of "The Amazing Adventure of Marcello the Cat", seven years in the making—the first dramatic feature film ever made with no cast other than live cats; featuring voices of Michelle Rodriguez, Jeremy Piven and Troy Garity.

Filmography

• Girl (1967) (short) - writer, director, producer
• Out of It (1969) - writer, director
• The Revolutionary (1970) - director
• Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972) - director, writer, actor
• Tracks (1976) - actor
• Nunzio (1978) - director, actor
• Miss Right (1982) - story, director, actor
• Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983) - actor
• To Heal a Nation (1988) - actor
• The November Men (1993) - director, producer, actor
• Mirage (1995) - director, producer, actor
• Movies Money Murder (1996) - actor
• Greater Than a Tiger (1997) (short) - actor
• Men (1997) - producer, actor
• Charades (1998) - producer
• The Best Ever (2002) - writer, director, producer
• A Cat's Tale (2008) - producer

External links

• Image of A Spirit
• Paul Williams at IMDb