Paul Williams

Paul Williams (born 1943, New York City), often credited as an actor as P.W. Williams, is a 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)

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".

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.

He recently published a book about perception, experience and the digital photographic process, Image of a Spirit.

In 2017, The Orchard (Sony) acquired his production "Marcello Takes A Walk", seven years in the making--the first film ever made with no cast other than live cats.