Erik A. Williams

Erik A. Williams (born December 10, 1984) is an American actor and film producer. He began in theatre where he performed in over forty productions up through college. In July 1999, he traveled for one year in Cast A of the international group Up with People. In the spring of 2003, he briefly attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. West then later returned to IL to pursue a degree as a Theatre Performance major at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. During his fifth semester there, he auditioned for and landed his first film role as Lewis in The Book. Since then he has worked on over one hundred films as well as a number of television, web series, and commercial projects. Besides acting, Erik has also worked as a producer, casting director, and voice over talent.

Career
After beginning work in film and TV in 2005, Erik worked on a number of indie fare including several projects with the offensive horror comedy company Hack Movies (much in the vein of Troma) then went on to work in the Fox TV movie Jackson Horn, held the lead in The Man in the Maze which released across India , and currently hosts his own talk show It's About Time.

Trivia and Other Works
Erik has worked as an extra many times including appearing as a campaign party guest in The Dark Knight. He has also worked in a number of commercials, music videos, and web promos including a commercial with Mike Birbiglia and a web promo for Demi Moore's fragrance Wanted.

Rock Your Socks Productions
This company was created in 2007 to expand the acting opportunities for Williams and his partner Joe Hammerstone. In 2009 the sister company RYS Entertainment was created to be the distribution and talent arm of the parent company.

Scalpel was the first project completed and released through the company. It was originally produced for St. Louis local access TV KDHX's bi-annual Coming Up Shorts Program but went on to travel the country in the film and convention circuit even playing in the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, Tromadance, and at Monstrous Weekend - St. Louis's first horror convention. It was later picked up by distributor IndieFlix and is available on DVD or as a digital download.

IMDb Controversy
It all began after the title page for The 1 Second Film was removed from the database in 2008. Williams was one of many producers who joined not only to help aid the project but so that he could earn a producer credit on the database alongside a number of known talent including John C. Reilly, Stephen Colbert, and others. After including a video with a number of the continually-incoming celebrity producers in the submission, the title was granted live status on the site. Later, arrangement was been made between Jon Reeves (head of IMDb data management) who allowed all incoming producers to have a credit on the title page. After it caught on that everyone who became a producer of the project (even those who donated only a dollar) could have their own credit on the database, thousands upon thousands of them began to pour in which was much more than the database staff cared to handle. The staff then bulked all of the producers into a hyperlink that simply stated "producers of the 1 Second Film." A few weeks later, the entire film title was removed from the database because it "no longer qualified for general public interest" and was "no longer making strides in foreseeable release." The fact was that the staff was abundantly tired of adding the numerous amounts of credits daily.

To that end, Williams began a thread on the contributor help message board on the staff's lies, unprofessional behavior, lack of morals, and blatant disregard for their own rules, regulations, and guidelines. The staff responded by deleting Erik's message board posts, flagging his username, and began ignoring many of the content he contributed.

Since that time, the situation has only continued to escalate between the staff and Williams culminating in the complete disregard for all content submitted from his username, deletion of verified credits that were already listed on existing titles, and even direct manipulation of his IMDbPro Starmeter. Williams has since created a number of resources to convince staff members of needed site updates, policy changes, and get the word out on how the staff truly deal with content contributors like himself including the Facebook group Occupy IMDb based on the various Occupy Wall Street campaigns.