Aiming for the Heart

By Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

Saul Williams is rarely at a loss for words. Aside from giving a vital voice to the newly revived spoken-word scene, the Slam star has talked nonstop about the movie at film festivals since it won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance last January. Nevertheless, the actor was nearly dumbstruck at Cannes, where the picture scored two more awards. As he walked with director Marc Levin, an elderly Frenchwoman approached him and started to cry. "It was amazing," recalls Levin. "She said she had been in the Resistance as a teenager and had already seen the movie twice because it showed the struggle for freedom."

It's not the first time Williams, 26, has moved an audience to tears. The son of a pastor and a teacher, he began acting in a third-grade production of Julius Caesar and knew he had found his calling. Two years later, he wrote his first poem, influenced by early "big word" rapper T La Rock. But it wasn't until grad school that he attempted to meld his dramatic training with spoken-word performances. Kicking around the improv poetry circuit in Manhattan, he met Levin and landed the main role in Levin's loosely scripted, no-budget feature about victims of unjust drug laws.

With Slam's surprise festival success, Williams has been flooded with offers--unfortunately, most of them calling for him to play dope dealers. Instead of cashing in, he is writing a new book of verse and his own script. Following the lead of actor-singer Paul Robeson, Williams hopes to become a multimedia sensation. "Robeson followed his heart to get closer to the hearts of other people," he says. Good words to live by.

--By Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles