GregAlan Williams

GregAlan Releases Boys to Men: Map for the Journey

2010-06-26T23:52:00.007-04:00

GregAlan's message cuts across race and class to help us guide our sons and to strengthen our courage as parents. An important resource in the struggle to save our sons.

In today's crazy world, it's sometimes hard to find the time and the words to talk honestly with our children about what they're thinking. Boys to Men: Maps for the Journey is a moving and honest, man-to-man, conversation between GregAlan and your son. A wise and insightful chat you can use to open a dialogue with your growing young man. Powerful and easy to read, Boys to Men will help prepare your boy and many other men of tomorrow for the road they must travel today.

Purchase Boys to Men

LeToya Luckett’s Preacher’s Kid Allure Is No Luck

2010-01-12T10:33:00.005-05:00

Giving the starring role in the new movie Preacher’s Kid to platinum-selling recording artist, Letoya Luckett, was not part of anyone’s plan, not even Letoya’s. Nonetheless, to my mind, there was a plan, a destiny, a design, set in motion by the grand designer himself.

Letoya, a founding member of Destiny’s Child, was initially set to play a substantial, yet, supporting role, in the film. A couple of days before production was scheduled to begin in Atlanta, the young actress originally chosen for the starring role; the one the studio, the producers, even the film’s writer/director, Stan Foster, had been raving about, tearfully withdrew from the project. The next day, Stan phoned Letoya and offered her the title role.

Forty-eight hours later, just a day before the cameras rolled, the entire cast sat down to read through the script. I remember the moment Letoya took her place at the table; quiet, humble, smiling nervously. It was the chance of a lifetime and she knew it. A star-making vehicle if ever there was one-- especially for a talented young artist who had been jettisoned from the successful singing group she co-founded just as the trio was about to warp into super-stardom.

Preacher’s Kid is Letoya’s first big movie, but you wouldn’t know it. Her performance is nothing less than wonderful. She takes her character from youthful innocence to full-grown, love-sick, lasciviousness, and back again. The role of faithful, dutiful, preacher’s daughter, Angie King, would demand the best of even the most seasoned young actor. Yet, on-screen, Letoya makes you love Angie and want the best for her-- when she’s doing right, and even…when she’s doing wrong. Angie King is Letoya’s role. It was meant only for her. And, despite the fact that, in the beginning, no one knew, so it is.

I know how Letoya felt as she took on her role that day at the table. She wasn’t the only cast member benefiting from God’s grace. Originally, I had been cast in a small supporting role, until I got a call that Stan wanted me to come back and read for the part of Letoya’s father, Bishop King. During the preceding weeks, Stan had auditioned many of black Hollywood’s best—certainly bigger names than mine, more recognizable faces—the kinds of actors that bring people to the theaters. Was I better than all those other actors? I doubt it. In fact, I wasn’t submitted for the role in the first place, or for any role in the film. Later, after I had been cast as the Bishop, I asked my LA agent why I’d not been submitted for the film from the beginning. He insisted that the producers had only been interested in casting from a list of “name” actors. Were it not for another agent (a much smaller agent) in North Carolina, I would never have made it into the audition mix at all. Or would I?

If you believe in divine order, in grace, in undeserved merit, as I do, then you understand, as I do, that a power greater than the agents, the producers, and, the all powerful studio, was in motion from the beginning-- moving not only on behalf of Letoya and myself, but on behalf of Stan Foster’s brilliant script, magnificent cast, and crew.

Preacher’s Kid is anointed cinema, powerful, uplifting, and true to life. I’ve performed in more than 150 films and television episodes, everything from the Sopranos to Remember The Titans and the West Wing. Yet, I have never been so grateful to be part of such an important work.

A good portion of that gratitude has to do with the saints of the New Jerusalem Church of God in Christ, at 14th and University, in Des Moines, Iowa-- the church where I grew up--where my mother taught Sunday School for more the forty years. Some of my thankfulness has to do with the members of Morning Star Baptist Church, another beloved hometown congregation. An additional portion of gratitude is associated with the preacher’s of my childhood; Rev. Alex Crawford, Bishop Goodman, Bishops Tindrell, Carter, and Patterson. It was the voices and the images of these good shepherd’s that both guided and inspired me as I worked on Preacher’s Kid.

In addition to being an attempt to do the best with the rich blessing I was given, my performance is a tribute to the people in the pews of those old churches, and to the men in the pulpit, to their faith and to their lives.

African American Women's Fiction - Heart of a Woman

2009-12-26T21:08:00.002-05:00

Eight years, three editors, and a world of writing and research later, it's finally finished; the book I began writing a year before my mother died.

Though not my first book, it is the first novel. Did it really take me nearly a decade to create two-hundred and twenty-four pages of historical, relationship-based, fiction? Probably not. It did, however require at least half that time to learn how to write a novel worthy of being read.

I've been writing seriously, since middle-school. (we called it Junior High back then). Mom made me write orations for speech contests in the hope that I'd win a few scholarships for college. I did win a couple of those contest but most importantly, I stopped being afraid of writing.

Over the years, while building my acting career, I've worked as a journalist, commercial copywriter, ghost speechwriter, and television script writer. During that time I've met a slew of people, including some of my children, who are terrified at the prospect of having to convey their own thoughts via the written word (text messaging excepted). I was scared too. Slouched at our kitchen table at thirteen, surrounded by writing tablet, dictionary, and thesaurus, mom perched on her metal, vinyl-topped stool, sipping coffee, “I don't know how to write.” I moaned. And, for the life of me, it never occurred to my, I'd-rather-being-playing-basketball, brain, how I might learn. Still, she insisted, no, demanded, that I try.

My first book was about my involvement in the LA Riots of 1992. After rescuing a fellow citizen at the intersection of Florence and Normandie, the media spoke of me as some kind of special black man, one different from the brothers and sisters whose pain and outrage had driven them to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the Latino, Asian, and white victims of the day's violence. Compelled to set the record straight, I wrote, A Gathering of Heroes-- not a recollection of my own, so-called, heroism, but a testament to the heroes and sheroes who had gathered throughout my life to save me from myself. For as surely as I write these words, there was a time, prior to that fateful day in '92, when I would have shown up to harm instead of help.

In 2001, While working with the brilliantly talented Lynn Thigpen on the television series The District, I came to realize just how invisible women “of a certain age” often become. Lynn, in her fifties, was the show's second lead, next to Craig T. Nelson. It was the first time in the history of prime-time television that a middle-aged woman of color had been depicted as having a successful shot at a real relationship; romance, commitment, sex, and all! For three grand seasons, the series was a hit, until the spring when Lynn died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. For a time, however, millions of “grown”African-American women flocked to the tube each week to see the smart, professional, Ella, (Lynn's character), find love, motherhood, and a damn good, successful, sexy black man. ME!

I'd be in airports and sisters would come up to me wagging perfectly manicured fingers, “You'd better not hurt Ella,” they'd smile playfully. One of the shows young black writers used to check in with the forty-plus women in his parent's church to make sure he was on point with Ella's story lines. Ella was something new, that's for sure. In an industry that went from celebrating white folks only, to one which celebrated only young folks and flawlessness (regardless of color), the full, rounded, TV life of Lynn's character was, though short-lived, a miracle in itself.

Lynn and The District reintroduced me to the women I would spend so many days and nights thinking of and writing for- women of my own generation. Women who danced to the same songs I danced to. Woman for whom the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, were times of growing up, great discovery, romance, and high times. Women who are as beautiful and as worthy of celebration now, as ever they were.

So, here it is, Heart of a Woman. Mamma's not here to read it...but you are (she'd probably skip the good parts anyway).

Enjoy,

GregAlan

P.S. Don't forget to visit the website and listen to, or read the first two chapters for as my guest! http://www.heartofawoman.us/