Listing Martin Scorsese, Gordon Parks and Spike Lee as influences, writer-director George Tillman Jr made short, experimental video projects as a Milwaukee teenager before creating a public access cable show "Splice of Life", using local talent. He established himself as a filmmaker of original vision with an award-winning 30-minute short "Paula", which followed the story of a 17-year-old single black mother who works in a diner and inspires the people around her. Bolstered by that success, Tillman wrote and directed the feature "Scenes For the Soul", financing it with $150,000 he and producer Robert Teitel raised through a group of Chicago investors. When he and Teitel drove to Los Angeles, they sold the film to Savoy Pictures for $1 million, though Savoy's subsequent bankruptcy prevented its release. (It was subsequently sold to HBO.) Inspired by the Sunday dinners prepared by his grandmother, Tillman wrote a script that Tracey E Edmonds and her husband Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds felt would be the perfect choice for their new production company's feature debut. The result, "Soul Food" (1997), was the kind of feel good, family story that doesn't get made often in Hollywood and proved to be a sleeper hit.
Family
Significant Others
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Wife: Marcia Wright.
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Companion: . married
Education
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Columbia College, Chicago, IL, film and video, 1991
Milestones
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1992 Directed first short film, Paula, about a 17-year-old single back mother, starring future wife Marcia Wright
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1994 Wrote and directed first feature film, Scenes For the Soul, which combines three different dramatic stories from urban Milwaukee
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1997 First released feature, Soul Food ; Tillman based the story on his own childhood experiences; also co-produced with Tracey Edmonds
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2000 Served as an executive producer of the Showtime series adaptation of Soul Food
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2000 Directed Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carl Brashear, the Navy s first African-American Master Diver in Men of Honor
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2002 Produced the ensemble African American film, Barbershop
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2004 Produced the sequel, Barbershop 2: Back in Business
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2005 Produced the spin-off of the Barbershop film franchise, Beauty Shop
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2009 Directed the biopic Notorious, about the New York-born rapper Notorious B.I.G.
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Created a public access cable series called, Splice of Life
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Formed a partnership with Robert Teitel and founded Menagerie Films
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Made short experimental video projects as a teenager in Milwaukee
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Menagerie Films signed a first-look production deal with FOX 2000
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Sold Scenes For the Soul to Savoy Pictures, before they went bankrupt; film purchased by HBO, but never released