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Bill Wynn, with his 5-year-old granddaughter.
Once in your life, never more than twice, you will encounter a kind, gentle, collegial, entirely unflappable person who makes you wonder why none of those qualities, much less the whole bundle, was bestowed on you.
In values and gifts, he seems to have all that is desirable.
Bill Wynn, the proud son of an accomplished single mother – long before single mothers became fashionable – has demonstrated to his mature generation what private initiative can achieve, was the original model for a Mr. Nice Guy image.
A high school dropout in his hometown of Camden, NJ, he joined the Marines Corps and gained the required training that polished to a high gloss his incomplete credentials.
Almost but not quite armed for life when he left the Corps, he moved to Los Angeles nearly 50 years ago to be reunited with his beloved mother.
At the time of the 1965 Watts Riots, in search of a career path that would support a family, he discovered a technical training school.
Upon graduation, he launched a (remunerative) lifelong love affair with computers, which eventually led him to films, his most recent working commitment.
Even though he is the second-year President of the Culver City Democratic Club and a major organizer of the community’s Dr. Martin Luther King birthday celebrations, only a peek at his life story has been shown.
Not the ticking part.
When he moved to Culver City eight years ago, it was as if the community were a glove, waiting for the right person to fit into it.
He did and does.
Our interview date was set for 1 in the afternoon to accommodate the slightly unusual schedule of Mr. Wynn, who is rounding the bend with his 74th birthday plainly in sight.
Routinely, he arrives home from his work late in the evening. But he doesn’t retire.
“I jump on the internet when I get home, and often I am there until the sun comes up,” he says. “My back is to the window. I don’t really notice the time until the sun comes up, and I realize I have been there for awhile.
“I am in the film business, and I am very interested in what is happening in the news of the world.”
Presently, Mr. Wynn is promoting a Jamaican film, “Better Must Come.” He found it last year when he was a juror at the Pan African Film Festival, and it won “Best First Feature.” He helped place it at the Downtown Independent Theatre, at 3rd and Main streets.
“It is being released the old-fashioned way, city by city,” he says. “It opened in New York and in L.A. on March 15.”
A film marketer, Mr. Wynn calls himself a PMD, producer-marketer-distributor “of these little films.”
(To be continued)
