| Gregory Allen Howard | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1962 Norfolk, Virginia, United States |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
| Website | |
| http://www.gregoryallenhoward.com/bio.html | |
Gregory Allen Howard (born 1962) is an American screenwriter best known for writing the screenplay 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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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.
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 the 1990 short-lived FOX series 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.
Howard was then selected for the assignment to write an original screenplay for the biopic of 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, 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 difficulty in getting his script produced. Eventually Jerry Bruckheimer agreed to produce the film.[2] Starring Denzel Washington and Will Patton, Remember the Titans become a box office hit, grossing over $100 million domestically.[3]
Since the release of Remember the Titans and Ali, Howard has been working on a number of other projects. He 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.[4]
Howard has also been working on the script for a film project with Morgan Freeman based on the 761st Tank Battalion, the first black armored unit to see combat in World War II.[5] Howard has also written the screenplay for the film Factor X, which will be produced by Ridley Scott and star Eric Bana.[6]
| Year | Award | Result | Category | Film or series |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Black Reel Awards | Won | Theatrical - Best Screenplay (Original or Adapted) | Remember the Titans |
| 2002 | Nominated | Theatrical - Best Screenplay (Original or Adapted) | Ali |