A World Gone Crazy: The Trials of John Gary Williams

As his contemporaries pass away in droves and the era of sweet American soul music fades further into history, aging Memphis R&B singer John Gary Williams seeks inspiration to restart his long-dormant career. But to sing again is to feel again -- and both prove highly complicated.

Long hampered by a quick temper and bouts of depression, John Gary Williams moves to address the post-traumatic stress disorder at their root since the Vietnam War first derailed his music career. But therapy reveals even deeper pain: unaddressed trauma from the long-ago murder of his mother by his father, and guilt over his role in the nonfatal shooting of a city police officer during his brief but fateful involvement with the Black Power Movement. To write and sing again, Mr. Williams finds he must conjure the tender teen he was at the height of his fame and before violence framed the man he would become. To heal his heart, mend his reputation and gain a long-elusive peace, Williams’ therapist prompts him to embark on a series of highly personal quests. As he forms a new version of The Mad Lads and etches out the beginnings of a ballad, Williams locates and reunites with master tapes containing long-lost, unreleased recordings, which offer bittersweet testimony to what might have been. He writes his deceased father a letter of forgiveness and burns it ritualistically on the banks of the Mississippi River. And he memorializes his slain mother with a headstone long absent from her neglected grave. Through these acts, Williams unlocks what he needs inside to write and record an uplifting love song after decades of creative paralysis. But the burdens of advancing age are omnipresent, and when Williams’ health becomes grave, the transcendent meaning of his atonements is underscored.

Directors | John Hubbell & Robert Gordon
Website | www.johngarywilliams.com