Gregory Allen Howard
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Gregory Allen Howard is an African-American screenwriter most famous for Remember The Titans, a Disney movie about an undefeated high school football team credited with healing the racial divide in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971.[1]
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[edit] Before screenwriting
Gregory Allen Howard was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1962, but his family moved around often due to his stepfather's career in the Navy. Between the ages of 5 and 15 his family moved ten times, eventually settling in Vallejo, California.
After attending college at Princeton University, graduating with a degree in American History, Howard briefly worked at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street before moving to Los Angeles in his mid twenties to pursue a writing career.
[edit] Writing for television and stage
Over the next few years Howard worked as a freelance writer and on a number of television shows, including being a story editor for Where I Live and working on True Colors.
Howard also wrote a stage play, Tinseltown Trilogy, that garnered him awards and a major agent. Tinseltown Trilogy weaves together three interconnected one-act plays that focus on three men in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve.
[edit] Writing about the G.O.A.T.
Howard was then selected for the assignment to write an original screenplay for a movie about the life of famous boxer Muhammed Ali, widely hailed as the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time). Having finished the first draft, and then moving back to his native Virginia, Howard discovered the story of the 1971 TC Williams Titans. Studio delays and rewrites meant that his first feature film, [[Ali, was not released until after his next script. It was this next script for which Howard would become well-known.
[edit] Remember The Titans
Remember the Titans was a spec script written by Gregory Allen Howard after he discovered the unique story of the integrated high school football team that the town of Alexandria, Virginia credited for the town's positive race relations.
Having based the script on extensive research, including discussions with Coaches Herman Boone and Bill Yoast, Howard initially encountered a lot of difficulty in getting his script produced. Eventually Jerry Bruckheimer agreed to produce the film.
Starring Denzel Washington and Will Patton, Remember the Titans become a box office hit, grossing over $100 million domestically.
[edit] The story of the 1971 T.C. Williams Titans
Following the Supreme Court ruling in Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the legalisation of busing allowed T.C. Williams to become fully integrated, sparking racial tensions in Alexandria.
However, the play of the integrated football team is credited by many in the town as easing those tensions.
The Titans went through the season undefeated, winning the state championship.
[edit] Recent projects
Since Remember the Titans, and the later release of Ali, Gregory Allen Howard has been working on a number of other projects.
Howard was an uncredited writer for Glory Road, a sports drama released in 2006 that focused on Texas Western coach Don Haskins leading the first all-black starting line-up for a college basketball team to the NCAA national championship in 1966.
Howard has also been working on the script for a film project with Morgan Freeman based on the A drama focused on the 761st Tank Battalion, the first black armored unit to see combat in World War II.
Howard har written the screenplay for the upcoming 2008 film Factor X, which will be produced by Ridley Scott and star Eric Bana.
[edit] References
- ^ ENPRIMEUR.CA. www.enprimeur.ca. Retrieved on 2008-01-22.
