Paris Barclay’s doc Billy Preston: That’s The Way God Planned It makes debut at 2024 SXSW
Among the film that recently premiered at SXSW was the documentary Billy Preston: That’s The Way God Planned It, directed by multi-Emmy award winning director and filmmaker Paris Barclay. He co-wrote the film with Cheo Hodari Coker (Luke Cage, Southland, Creed 2).
The Producing Team includes Stephanie Allain from Homegrown Pictures, and Nigel Sinclair and Jeanne Elfant Festa from White Horse Pictures.
Billy Preston was prodigy-turned-superstar and one of the great unsung performers of the 20th century. The film invites the world to see why he was beloved by the greatest artists of his time – because he elevated their sound with his signature Gospel soul from the Hammond B3. He worked with a who’s who of superstars including Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, Sly Stone, Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Eric Clapton, and Barbra Streisand.
Billy, who died in 2006, became a Grammy award-winning artist, an inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was a B3 player, collaborator, songwriter, singer, and man with incredible talents who also struggled with his identity.
Billy Preston recorded and produced several of his own number 1 hits including Outa-Space, Will It Go Round in Circles, Nothing From Nothing, I Wrote a Simple Song and You Are So Beautiful, as well as That's The Way God Planned It and the hit collaboration with Syreeta, With You I’m Born Again.
The film features rarely seen archival footage from performances with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Ray Charles, and new Beatles footage from Peter Jackson. The documentary also includes incredible interviews with Ringo Starr, Suzanne De Passe, Blinky Williams, Gloria Jones, Sandra Crouch, Eric Clapton, Merry Clayton, and more.
Executive producers are Barclay, Daniel Shaw, G. Marq Roswell, Olivia Harrison, Jonathan Clyde and White Horse Pictures’ Nicholas Ferrall and Cassidy Hartmann. Coker is co-producing and Erikka Yancy serves as the film’s supervising producer.