Jorgensen Guest Filmmaker Series, Kevin Willmott: By Any Means Necessary!
A conversation with Oscar-winning screenwriter, producer, and director Kevin Willmott.
Kevin Willmott is an Oscar-winning screenwriter and University of Kansas professor emeritus who grew up in Junction City, Kansas. He received his BA in Drama from Marymount College in Salina, Kansas, and after graduating, he returned to Junction City where he worked as a peace and civil rights activist. Willmott made important strides for the town, fighting for the rights of the poor, creating two Catholic Worker shelters for unhoused people, and forcing the integration of several long-standing segregated institutions. He attended graduate school at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, receiving several writing awards while completing his MFA in Dramatic Writing.
Willmott has written for the stage, television, and the big screen, penning T-Money and Wolf, Shields Green and the Gospel of John Brown, and the NBC miniseries The ‘70s, among a host of other projects. In 2019, he earned the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for co-writing Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018). His directorial work includes two Sundance Film Festival selections—C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and The Only Good Indian (2009)—as well as Destination Planet Negro (2013), The 24th (2020), and most recently, the documentary No Place Like Home: The Struggle Against Hate in Kansas (2023).
Willmott is currently working on Peacock’s 8-episode miniseries Excellence: 8 Fights, which chronicles eight defining moments in Muhammad Ali’s life. Willmott wrote the miniseries and is co-producing it with actors Morgan Freeman and Regé-Jean Page.
This program will be in the form of an onstage conversation between Willmott and Black Film Center & Archive Director Dr. Novotny Lawrence.
