METRONEWS
ERICJOHNSON
Red Tail Dreams
Local filmmakers’ documentary lands in Walmart
When you’re telling success stories, there’s always that one crisis point in the story after which everything starts falling into place. It’s one of those things we’re conditioned to expect, so when Bryan Williams and Denton Adkinson tell the story about how their documentary film about the Tuskegee Airmen got into Walmart stores across the nation and they get to the part about not having enough money to get to New York to interview one of the airmen, people always blurt out, “So that’s when you got the agreement with Walmart.” “No,” Williams will say. “That’s when we went into debt.” Or, “That’s when we got the smaller job where we made just enough to pay our rent for that month.” In other words, real life success is seldom a jackpot affair like it is in the movies, and when those rare jackpot V. 23 | NO. 01
moments do occur, they’re likely to be overlooked altogether, which is almost what happened in August of 2007 when the two were sitting in the 13th Street Huddle House planning their next project. There, they noticed an older black man walk in wearing a Tuskegee Airman cap and jacket, but
instead of having an earth shattering revelation, they turned back to their food and continued trying to figure out what they should do. In the end, of course, they went over and talked to the man, who was the Augusta chapter president of Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., an organization that preserves and promotes the legacy of the airmen. And after years of very incremental success, “In Their Own Words: The Tuskegee Airmen” is about to make an appearance on shelves in Walmarts across the country. Add in the fact that the George Lucas produced blockbuster “Red Tails” will be in theaters a couple of weeks later, and the circumstances couldn’t be better. Along the way they’ve rubbed elbows with some pretty influential people, including Bill Cosby, who
suggested they pose for a photo with him, which turned out to be instrumental in helping them promote the film. In the entertainment world, Cosby matters, and a photo with him holding a copy of your DVD can open a lot of doors. They met Cosby before his appearance at the Bell Auditorium in March 2010. “We were anticipating just a handshake and a few words, so imagine our surprise when we got to the Green Room and there were chairs set up in front of the couch Mr. Cosby was sitting on,” Adkinson says. “The first 45 minutes he grilled us,” Williams says. “He knows the airmen and wanted to know what we knew. But once we answered all his questions, he turned into Dr. METRO SPIRIT 01.05.12
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