Paul Williams

Short Biography

Paul Williams (born 1943, New York City), often credited as an actor as P.W. Williams (to avoid confusion with actor/musician Paul Williams), is an director/writer/producer/actor best known for directing a series of films in the late '60's/early '70's exploring countercultural life: Out of It (1969, United Artists, U.S. entry at the Berlin Film Festival), The Revolutionary (1970, United Artists, U.S. entry and winner at the Sorrento Film Festival) and Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972, Warner Brothers), Nunzio (1975, Universal Pictures, closing film at the Toronto Film Festival). 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 t.v. movies, and a few films that he also directed, including The November Men (1994, selected for Chicago Film Festival) and Mirage (1996, Universal) and he has collaborated with director Henry Jaglom and writer Stephen Eckelberry, as well as Eckelberry's late wife Karen Black. 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. With John Briley (screenwriter of Gandhi), he spent several years 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.