Michael Williams, Star of "The Blair Witch Project" and SUNY New Paltz Graduate, Visits His Alma Mater
September 12, 1999

    NEW PALTZ -- A couple of months ago, Michael Williams could have walked down the halls of his alma mater without turning a head.

Yesterday, the former SUNY New Paltz acting student sat onstage before an SRO crowd of fans at McKenna Theatre, fielding questions about how his life has changed since he's become the co-star of the year's biggest cinematic sleeper, "The Blair Witch Project."

How does it feel to wake up one day and have your face on the cover of Newsweek Magazine?

"It's like someone lit a match under my life," the 26-year-old actor said.

'Witch' way to success for SUNY grad
By Jeremiah Horrigan, The Times Herald Record
September 13, 1999

SUNY grad Michael Williams was just another struggling young actor when he answered a casting call for a movie that turned out to be the sleeper hit of the year.

You remember Michael Williams. He was in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at SUNY New Paltz a couple sessions ago.

Maybe you caught him in "Eastern Standard," or hoofing it up in "A Chorus Line" back when he was an undergrad.

Maybe you caught his act earlier this summer, when he was making a living moving furniture in New York City.

Or maybe, just maybe, you saw him in his movie debut, playing a sacred-stiff documentary filmmaker in the summer's hottest movie, "The Blair Witch Project."

Williams, a theater arts major who graduated in 1996, came home to his alma mater last night to tell an SRO crows of students and fans at McKenna Theatre how great it feels to be an overnight success.

His verdict:

"It's the strangest thing in the world... it's like someone lit a match under my life."

The overnight part of his success lasted two years, which was how long ago filming stopped on "Blair Witch."

The film is a pseudo-documentary of what happens when three young filmmakers go into the scary woods in search of a film project. The movie records the results of their misadventures in tracking down the mysterious Blair Witch in Maryland's Black Hills Forest. Williams plays the video crew's soundman.

Wearing a white T-shirt and khaki pants, the ebullient actor praised his mentor, professor Beverly Brumm, who gave him enough improvisational experience to win the role.

Williams took almost as much relish in offering theories about what "really" happened in the film as did the hundreds of students who hung on his words.

He was still wide-eyed from being on the MTV Music Awards ceremonies:
"I'm sitting there and you know, Magic Johnson's sitting over there, and Will Smith is over here, and it's like, 'What the hell am I doing here?'"

It was even great, he said, to be "ripped" by awards show host Chris Rock.

As for the inevitable sequel, he said he hasn't been approached and hopes he's not. "It's silly, but they're obviously going to do it."

Filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, he said, want to do a comedy next, "and their feeling is they want to let someone else screw (the sequel) up."

Williams signed on to the project two years ago for bus fare and $1,000 for two weeks' work. He said he's getting a small slice of the humongous financial pie the movie has generated.

"I'm not gonna be a millionaire," he said. But at least now he won't have to answer casting calls for his next job.

Wanna see something really scary?
Asked yesterday what his favorite scary movies are, Michael Williams name Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," Roger Corman's "The Fall of the House of Usher," and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist," which he called "by far the most terrifying movie I've seen."