Akeelah and the Bee

Akeelah and the Bee is a 2006 American drama film written and directed by Doug Atchison. It tells the story of Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer), an 11-year-old girl who participates in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, her mother (Angela Bassett), her schoolmates, and her coach, Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne). The cast also features Curtis Armstrong, J.R. Villarreal, Sean Michael Afable, Erica Hubbard, Lee Thompson Young, Julito McCullum, Sahara Garey, Eddie Steeples, and Tzi Ma.

The film was developed over a period of 10 years by Atchison, who came up with the initial concept after seeing the 1994 Scripps National Spelling Bee and noting that a majority of the competitors came from well-off socioeconomic backgrounds. After completing the script in 1999, Atchison won one of the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting in 2000, which attracted producers Sid Ganis and Nancy Hult Ganis. After an initial inability to secure funding, the project got a second wind as a result of the success of the 2002 documentary film Spellbound. Lionsgate Films undertook the production in 2004 and in the following year it was filmed in South Los Angeles on a budget of over \$6 million.

Atchison remarked that his theme for the film, deemed an inspirational film, was about overcoming obstacles despite difficult challenges along the way. He also said that he wanted to portray African Americans in a manner that was not stereotypical and tried to show how African-American children incorporate some stereotypes. The film alludes to the importance of community as well as to problems black communities face. It also deals with esteem and stigma in school while criticizing the public school system. Cast members said that although the film was aimed at children, they considered it had important lessons for the parents as well.

Released in the United States on April 28, 2006, Akeelah and the Bee was positively received by critics and audiences. Reviewers praised its storyline and cast, lauding Palmer's performance, although a few critics panned the story as familiar and formulaic, and were critical of the portrayal of Asian-American characters. The film grossed \$19 million, and received a number of awards and nominations, including the Black Reel Awards and the NAACP Image Awards. Film critics highly praised it for avoiding African-American stereotypes common in Hollywood films, while scholars were less favorable, even saying it reinforces some clichés.

## Plot

Akeelah Anderson, an 11-year-old spelling enthusiast, attends Crenshaw Middle School, a predominantly black school in South Los Angeles. She lives with her widowed mother, Tanya, her three older siblings, Kiana, Devon, and Terrence, and her infant niece, Mikayla. Her principal, Mr. Welch, suggests that she sign up for the Crenshaw Schoolwide Spelling Bee, which she initially refuses. After being threatened with detention for the remainder of the semester, due to her skipping school numerous times, she enters the spelling bee and wins.

Dr. Joshua Larabee, a visiting English professor, who was watching the Crenshaw Schoolwide Spelling Bee gives Akeelah challenging words after she won her schoolwide bee and decides that she is good enough to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. However, Dr. Larabee later declines to coach her because Akeelah was rude to him when she went to his house to ask him to coach her. As a result, Akeelah studies on her own to prepare for the district spelling bee. Although Akeelah misspells her word during the final round of the bee, she gets another chance to qualify for the regional bee after Kiana catches one of the other finalists cheating. Akeelah also meets and befriends Javier Mendez, a 12-year-old Mexican-American boy and fellow speller. Javier invites her to join the spelling club at his Woodland Hills middle school.

At Woodland Hills, Akeelah meets Dylan Chiu, a Chinese-American boy who won second place at the past two national spelling bees and is in his final year of eligibility. Contemptuous after Akeelah misspells a word, he tells her she needs a coach. Afterwards, Javier invites Akeelah to his birthday party, while Tanya is depressed over Terrence's bad behavior, Akeelah's grades and frequent truancy, and her husband's death at the hands of a mugger five years prior. When she finds out about Akeelah going alone to Woodland Hills, she forbids Akeelah from participating in the regional bee and forces her to take summer school to make up for her skipped classes. To circumvent this prohibition, Akeelah forges her deceased father's signature on the consent form and secretly studies with Dr. Larabee.

At Javier's party, Akeelah nearly beats Dylan in Scrabble. Afterwards, Akeelah overhears Dylan's overly competitive, overbearing father insulting her and berating his son for nearly losing to "a little black girl". During the state bee, Tanya comes inside and interrupts her daughter before she can spell her word. Tanya chastises Akeelah for going to the bee without her permission but relents after a side discussion with Dr. Larabee and Mr. Welch. Javier protects Akeelah from disqualification by stalling until she can return. Dylan, Javier and Akeelah advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

As Christmas approaches, Akeelah goes out to buy Dr. Larabee a present, but when she meets him, he reveals that he is quitting being her coach because she reminds him of his deceased daughter, Denise; she died of an unexpected terminal illness when she was younger than Akeelah. Instead, Dr. Larabee gives Akeelah 5,000 flashcards to study. Without her coach, rejected by her best friend Georgia, and feeling the pressure from her neighborhood residents to make them proud, Akeelah loses her motivation. However, Tanya tells her that if she looked around her, she would realize that she has "50,000 coaches". Akeelah recruits her family members, classmates, teachers, friends, and neighbors to prepare in earnest. After reuniting with Dr. Larabee, Akeelah goes to Washington, D.C., with him, along with Tanya, Georgia, Mr. Welch, and Devon, unaware that her coach has paid for four of their tickets. Georgia rekindles her friendship with Akeelah after she invites her.

During the competition, Akeelah becomes a crowd favorite. Once all of the other contestants get out, there are only two left, the two being Dylan and Akeelah. The two finalists are allowed a break, during which Akeelah overhears Dylan's father harshly pressuring him to win, so Akeelah attempts to intentionally lose. Dylan, fed up with his father's competitiveness, intentionally misspells the word as well. Dylan tells Akeelah that he wants a fair competition. The two then proceed to spell every word listed by the judges until the two are declared co-champions. After Akeelah spells "pulchritude" (the same word she misspelled at the start of the film), she is officially declared a winner.

## Cast

- Keke Palmer as Akeelah Anderson:

Three hundred girls auditioned for the role of Akeelah in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta, with Palmer having auditioned five times to get the part. Atchison liked Palmer's acting, but the major factor in choosing her was the fact that at only age ten Palmer already had a profound interpretation of the script. He chose her as he did not want a kid whom he would command but instead someone with whom he could have a collaboration: someone who would understand the role and "would make this character her own." He just assisted her to fully ensure that she would understand the character's feelings and would make "the right emotional choices."

- Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Joshua Larabee:

Fishburne was pleased by the concept of the film, stating he was "really moved by it", so that he accepted to take his part "at an affordable rate", according to producer Michael Romersa. He first read the script in 2002 and moved by the fact that "there were very few people with the courage" to "make this kind of movie" he also accepted to be a producer for the film. About the character, Atchison said that Larabee is "vulnerable" and "a very sensitive guy" that has "a quiet moral authority". He also asserted that Fishburne made Larabee "a fairly buttoned-up, stoic type" and "subtly more animated" than how he envisioned the character. Larabee is based upon a teacher, Robert Larabell, Atchison had in Phoenix, Arizona.

- Angela Bassett as Tanya Anderson:

Bassett's agent sent her the script which she "just loved." Atchison praised Bassett's portrayal of the character, asserting she "made Tanya a real person" after understanding "the thought process of the character". The director said Tanya wants the best for Akeelah but is reticent because she thinks "the dream will fail and make things worse." Bassett stressed that her character has to handle the pain of her husband's death in addition to having bills paid but that Tanya "gain[s] some measure of courage herself" inspired by Akeelah.

- Curtis Armstrong as Bob Welch:

Atchison pointed Armstrong "was the perfect choice for the school principal." About his character role in the film, he said, "Welch is very excitable and provides a lot of the comic relief in our story."

- J.R. Villarreal as Javier Mendez:

Villarreal was chosen by scouts at the Sheraton Hotel in south McAllen to go to the next phase in Dallas. After doing well in Dallas, he was sent to auditions in California and finally got the part. He commented that "Javier is a very good friend to Akeelah ... And also like his charisma, his character, he can always put a smile on your face. He really doesn't care what people think of him that much and he helps Akeelah out with that little matter because she cares very much what people think about her."

- Sean Michael Afable as Dylan Chiu (Chinese: 邱德倫; pinyin: Qiū Délún):

Akeelah's rival who can be "sometimes harsh and seemingly cutthroat", but this is because of the pressure his father puts on him. Afable notes that Dylan's "true character" is seen at the end of the film.

- Sahara Garey as Georgia Carver

Garey did "about six auditions" to take the role. She commented that about her character: "she encourages Akeelah, because she sees so many qualities in her that she doesn't think she herself has. Georgia aims lower, but she encourages Akeelah to aim higher."

Erica Hubbard, Lee Thompson Young, and Julito McCullum portray Akeelah's sister and brothers Kiana, Devon, and Terrence, respectively. Dalia Phillips appears as Akeelah's teacher, Ms. Cross, and Eddie Steeples as Derrick T. Tzi Ma takes the role of Mr. Chiu, Dylan's father, while Wolfgang Bodison plays Tanya's unnamed husband.

## Production

### Writing

Doug Atchison first had the idea of making a film about spelling bees after watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee of 1994 and noticing that most of the contestants had "privileged backgrounds". Atchison also considered spelling bees to contain "all the drama and tension and entertainment value of a sporting event", and felt that this could be made into a film. From this, he got the idea to write a script following the story of a child who had talent for spelling bee but was from a low-income neighborhood so did not "have access to the resources or coaching to pursue it as these other kids had." He had the desire of making a "Rocky-like story" and although made it a "dramatic" plot, he declared it is "essentially a sports movie".

Atchison started his screenplay in 1999, when he wrote a five-page treatment in about a month. In addition to the fact he was working on other projects, Atchison said he waited years before starting to write because he "thought someone else would do it first." This did not happen, so he began to write by himself. Few changes were made in the process of transitioning from the original draft to the final product. One change was that at first, Akeelah's mother had a smaller role and Akeelah's father was alive. Also, Larabee had been an older man (72 years old), and a few characters were cut. However, Atchison has summarized that "the steps she goes through, the friends she's got, those were always the same."

### Development

In 2000, Atchison submitted his script to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences along with about 4,500 others, in hopes of winning the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Atchison's script ended up being one of five scripts selected, and he won the grant. Editor Glenn Farr, then a member of the committee, offered to edit Atchison's film as soon as it was finished. Producer Sid Ganis was also attracted to the story during the award presentation ceremony. Nancy Hult Ganis, Sid's wife who was interested in public education, encouraged him to follow through with the film.

The film was produced by Lionsgate Films, 2929 Entertainment, Starbucks Entertainment, Out of the Blue Entertainment, Reactor Films and Cinema Gypsy Productions, with a budget around \$6–8 million. However, the Ganis couple found it difficult to secure funding for the film. In August 2001, Danny Llewelyn's Panoptic Pictures acquired the rights of Atchison's script. In 2002, documentary Spellbound was released and attracted attention to spelling bees, which, according to Hult Ganis, "helped us in some way". In November 2004, Lionsgate Films announced they would fund and distribute the film; and in collaboration with 2929 Entertainment they would co-finance the production. In January 2006, Starbucks announced a partnership with Lionsgate to market it.

Another factor in not having a studio attached before was Atchison's desire to direct it as he wanted to ensure his story would remain the one he envisioned. Several studios wanted to turn Larabee's character into a white character but Atchison felt "it was important that Akeelah's mentor be someone that comes from her neighborhood, that looks like her." Lionsgate's President of Production Michael Paseornek agreed that Atchison should direct the script, claiming that he was the only person who could do it because the story "was in his heart and in his mind".

### Filming

Filming began in February 2005; the crew filmed for ten hours a day for thirty-one days. The eleven-year-old Palmer had to follow the United States' child labor laws, which necessitated spending at least three hours a day at school, one on recreation, and one at lunch. Nevertheless, Palmer appeared in almost every scene, about which Ganis commented, "I honestly don't know how we figured it out, but we did". To get the filming done on time, Atchison storyboarded the scenes ahead of time and chatted with cinematographer David Mullen, the production designer Warren Young, and Glenn Farr to compile a list of scenes. This way, the filming team began each day knowing what shots they would take, their order, and the performances scheduled for each day. Most of the filming took place in South Los Angeles, which Atchison picked as the filming location due to their low budget. Scenes were also filmed at the University of Southern California, Hollywood Palladium—which stood in for the Grand Ballroom of the Washington, D.C. Hyatt Hotel—and Venice High School.

### Authenticity

To bring authenticity to the film's portrayal of spelling bees, George Hornedo, who competed in spelling bees in real life, was hired to play contestant Roman and be "an unofficial technical consultant." Hornedo helped the actors to recreate "certain habits and idiosyncrasies they do on stage to help them spell." Thus, Akeelah skipping rope to memorize the words was added as "something that was normal for the spelling bee" but Atchison tried to create it in a "subtle" way as he thought the audience could consider this unrealistic. Hornedo and other children who had never acted before were cast because of their authentic portrayals of nervous contestants; other kids, in Atchison's eyes, were "too old in how they acted". Also, Jacques Bailly, who won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 1980 and is currently the contest's official pronouncer, since 2003, played himself in the film.

To further help the staff, Atchison asked Paige Kimball, director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, to be a consultant. Kimball "was amazed at not only at how precise it was in its recreation, but also how authentic the individuals and the casting for the event was." However, she and the organization did have some disagreements. Atchison has admitted that he originally created a more dramatic story than she wanted. However, he believed most of the disagreements were about technical procedures, "things you wouldn't even notice". For example, the children were originally sponsored by newspapers to compete, but Atchison felt this detail did not improve the story, so he removed it. There were some concerns about the screenplay, and Atchison changed some of them "because [he] thought it didn't matter one way or another so [he] just made them happy."

### Music

The film features a musical score by Aaron Zigman, who wrote 45 minutes of compositions in two and a half weeks. He had planned to score Akeelah and the Bee over the holidays, but Lionsgate pushed its release date up, so Zigman was pressed for time to write the score. He drew inspiration from Fishburne's performance to write it. A soundtrack album consisting of 16 tracks was released by Lionsgate Records in a deal with BMG's RED Distribution on April 4, 2006. It peaked at number 193 on the Billboard 200, and reached the 19th and sixth spot on the Billboard Top Independent Albums and Top Soundtracks respectively. The original score, consisting of 37 tracks, was also released on April 4 as an iTunes exclusive.

## Themes and analysis

Commentators on Akeelah and the Bee opined it dealt with multiple themes, including race and racism, poverty, educational system, competition and sportsmanship, self-esteem, self-image, stigma, community, friendship, gender and sexism, age, class and classism, and empowerment. Atchison affirmed that its focus is not the spelling but "a kid who learns what she's good at, becomes proud of that and doesn't want to hide it anymore. It's overcoming the fear of being great, before you can be great." Sid Ganis described it as a film "about hope and doing great things against all the odds," while a New York Press reviewer declared it "addresses the human condition".

After attending USC School of Cinematic Arts and working at a youth center in South Los Angeles, Atchison incorporated his experiences from the neighborhood into the film; among them, he heard that children who do well in school are said to be "acting white". As a result, Atchison tried to use the film to show what causes these children to doubt their own abilities. These doubts are shown through the preconceptions Akeelah and other community members have that "Spelling Bee is for someone else". She "must first overcome her feelings of inadequacy," and when she discovers Larabee comes from her neighborhood and is a successful man, it "empowers her to ... accomplish this task." Fishburne stated the film's treatment of race extends beyond the dichotomy of struggle and success, and goes into the prejudice that many people hold against black people competing in mainstream society. Atchison elaborated, "it's about this girl's insecurity about doing a thing that she hasn't seen people who look like her doing". The director affirmed that African-American children in film usually aspire to nothing other than being successful in sports, music or dance. He argued that the film industry has disseminated "lies about black inferiority", so he was interested in focusing on their intellect rather than let them succumb to the stereotypes. Atchison noted he had created the project for all audiences "but particularly for kids of color to see a little black girl who does something powerful."

The director also attributed Akeelah's low-esteem and doubt of her own capacities to the public school system, where she is bullied and "her intellectual curiosity is kind of crushed". As such, Akeelah is portrayed as an "undermotivated student", who "unwilling to be stigmatized as a freak or a brainiac," avoids showing her abilities. According to Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe, the film shows "the contradiction gifted students feel in an inhospitable environment." Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post opined that Akeelah's sentence "Why would I want to represent a school that doesn't even have doors on the toilets?" is "one of the film's many subtle critiques of the country's education policies." Writing in the English Journal, Amanda L. Hodges said it suggests a new approach on teaching with the "50,000 coaches" part; she declared it deconstructs the image of teachers "as those who keep order and disseminate knowledge" and shows that "teaching is not an isolated activity that begins and ends at the classroom door."

Villarreal commented that the film "teaches you not to let your friends down", while Fishburne and Hornaday highlighted its theme of community. Marrit Ingman of The Austin Chronicle said the film indicates "a community-based, cooperative model of group success," while Justin Chang of Variety said it "focuses ... on the bee's community-uniting impact." Hodges said Akeelah goes to the spelling bee because she recognizes it "proves that someone from their neighborhood can achieve success, and her achievement is, in a real sense, their own". In contrast, Bernard Beck wrote for Multicultural Perspectives that it depicts "the success of individual perseverance", while Red Feather Journall's Kathryn Linder expressed a similar opinion about individual success. Nevertheless, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times commented "it raises important points about the ... obstacles to success that kids from poor neighborhoods face." The New York Press's reviewer went further and said social class was its "real subject" as it "depicts the basics of class mobility that are routinely taken for granted". However, Chang asserted it shows the spelling bee contest as "a democratizing force", while Rob Asghar, for The Seattle Times, wrote it treats English as "the quintessential American tool for success."

Both Fishburne and Bassett also remarked that an important message of Akeelah and the Bee is to "speak properly" rather than strictly in vernacular, although Bassett emphasized the importance of the film's themes beyond spelling and spelling bees. Atchison added that beyond learning how to spell words, Akeelah must learn the importance of the words. He said that Larabee "looks at Akeelah as a potential leader. He wants her to understand her history. She needs to know the importance of language – and competition." In spite of knowing its importance, it "deconstruct[s] the 'competition' paradigm of learning", according to Ingman. Fishburne noted not only children but parents can learn from the film; in his opinion, the most important is that they should pay attention to their children's abilities. Villarreal also felt that, through Dylan's father, parents would be able to ponder if they are "push[ing] their kids to follow their own dreams and not the children's dreams."

## Release and reception

### Marketing and release

The film was promoted by coffee shop chain Starbucks as a result of a partnership between Lions Gate Entertainment and Starbucks Entertainment. In January 2006, approximately 8,300 Starbucks locations in the United States and Canada began a promotional campaign for the film involving spelling-related trivia games and promotions on cardboard cup sleeves. Variety stated that Lionsgate spent around \$20 million with its market only, while Los Angeles Times reported a \$25-million cost to both produce and market the film. Ford Motor Company also sponsored the film by providing a Lincoln Zephyr to chauffeur the cast and creators to and from a screening.

Akeelah and the Bee was first shown at the 2006 ShoWest on March 14, and later premiered as the opening film at the 30th Cleveland International Film Festival on March 16. On April 20, the film was screened at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, and it had a sneak preview in 900 theaters on April 22. With predictions of strong box-office returns by film critics, it was released nationwide in theaters on April 28, grossing \$6,011,585 in its opening weekend from around 2,195 American theaters and ranking eighth at the box office. The film closed its run on July 14 and 20 domestically and internationally respectively, with \$18,848,430 domestically and \$110,994 internationally. While the film received positive reviews, critics noted that it was not doing as well financially as they had predicted, and Lionsgate's Michael Burns characterized the film's gross with the word "only".

Outside the United States, the film debuted at the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children on April 23, 2006, where it was elected the best film by the kids in the ages of 10 and 11. In the United Kingdom, Akeelah and the Bee was first shown at the Cambridge Film Festival on July 7, and it premiered in the British theaters on August 18. The film was also screened in October 2006 at the Rome Film Festival, in which it competed at the Alicy in the City section.

### Home media

The film was released on DVD by Lionsgate Home Entertainment on August 29, 2006, becoming the first DVD offered for sale at Starbucks. Its bonus features on the single-disc DVD include seven deleted scenes and a 25-minute making-of video featuring Atchinson and the cast. DVD sales in the United States reached \$5,391,947 as 317,942 copies were sold after one week on sale. By December 2006, American consumers had spent a total of \$25,855,396 to purchase 1,512,498 copies, making it one of the three most profitable home video releases of Lionsgate in 2006.

### Critical reaction

The film received generally positive reviews from film critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 85% approval rating based on 141 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A warm, family-friendly underdog story, featuring terrific supporting performances from Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, and Angela Bassett". On Metacritic, the film has an average weighted score of 72 out 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare average grade of "A+"—a feat only 52 films reached between 1982 and 2011. National Board of Review elected it among the best ten independent films produced in 2006. Additionally, two film critics, Chris Kaltenbach of The Baltimore Sun and Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer, added the film on their list of the ten best films of the year. St. Petersburg Times's Steve Persall elected it the best family film of 2006. African American Literature Book Club elected it as the best black film of 2006, as well as chose Fishburne as the second best actor, and Palmer and Basset as the second and eighth best actresses, respectively.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote it is "an uncommonly good movie, entertaining and actually inspirational". Writing for Film Journal International, Doris Toumarkine praised its pace and how "Atchison takes spelling competitions and conveys the excitement of the 'sport,' the appeal of the 'game,' the thrill of the win, [and] the crushing blow of the loss". Hornaday from The Washington Post called the film "a triumph on many levels" and especially appreciated that South Los Angeles was presented without stereotypes. Jane Clifford of U-T San Diego felt the film would appeal to both children and adults, and stated that every time she tried to predict its plot "it took a sharp turn. A turn that leaves you facing your stereotypes and feeling a little sheepish". Dana Stevens, writing for The New York Times, asserted, "The innate suspense and charm of the spelling bee", and "a trio of crack performances" can turn "a formulaic sports picture" into a "tale that manages to inspire without being sappy". Shantayaé Grant of The Jamaica Observer wrote that "acting is spectacular, the emotions are real and this story of black triumph is simply phenomenal". A New York Press critic affirmed that Akeelah and the Bee "resurrects a nearly lost idea of what an art-movie really is" because it has "dramatic attention to character and place, psychology and existence".

Chang of Variety commented that it "plays like The Karate Kid with a pro-literacy agenda, pushing all the right emotional buttons yet hitting quite a few wrong ones in the process". The Evening Chronicle's review said it "conceals few narrative surprises" but contended that Atchison is also able to "defy our expectations". Turan of the Los Angeles Times criticized that the film "telegraphs its plot"; however, he praised it as "genuinely sweet and determinedly inspirational". PopMatters's Cynthia Fuchs stated it is formulaic as it has some "conventions that make so many other genre films feel stale", but that it "torques them slightly", emphasizing the "intellectual activities" Akeelah gets involved with. Furthermore, the film was described as "derivatively entertaining in a feel-good sort of way" by Rick Groen in an article for The Globe and Mail. Ingman of The Austin Chronicle described it as a typical sports film and felt it was heavy-handed at times. However, she praised it for its themes and called the film a "thoughtful, engaging" one and said it has a "cross-gender appeal". Morris of The Boston Globe argued, "If Akeelah and the Bee is a generic, well-oiled commercial contraption, it is the first to credibly dramatize the plight of a truly gifted, poor black child". Morris added, "Obviously, it's emotional propaganda. But it's just the kind of propaganda our children need".

Other reactions were more mixed. Anna Smith of Empire called it "formulaic and all-American", commenting that many scenes "appear functional rather than inspirational", and that the film focused on the racial issue "a little too heavily". Smith stated, "clunky plotting and characterisation mean it has 'telemovie' written all over it". Marc Mohan from The Oregonian stressed it can be compared to after-school specials due to its "lack of originality in plot and character". Time Out's Jessica Winter also drew a comparation to after-school specials, saying "on the big screen ... its clichés seem bigger and its characterisations broader than they would on the more forgiving telly". Nick Schager of Slant Magazine lamented that the "clichés are too numerous to mention", while Neil Smith from BBC asserted it has "as much ... fantasy as The Lord of the Rings". Jan Stuart of Newsday deemed it "virtually suspense-free", while Robert Hanks of The Independent stated it has an important message but that is a "shame it couldn't be encased in a less faked-up story". Commenting on The Times, Chris Ayres stressed that although it has good "visual flair" it "is ruined by its Oprah-style emotional manipulation". New York Post's Kyle Smith deemed it as "uplifting but unimaginative", suggesting that "Akeelah and the Bee is so warm and well-meaning that you may find yourself wanting to like it more than you really do".

In spite of criticism, cast members' performances were usually well received; in particular, Palmer's portrayal of Akeelah. Ebert said, "The movie depends on her, and she deserves its trust". Hornaday opined that "Palmer's Akeelah is that cinematic rara avis, the kid who is cute without being too cute, sympathetic without being cloying, and believable without being tiresome". Evening Chronicle stated Palmer does it "with effortless grace" and that she "carries the film and doesn't strike a single wrong emotional note". Fuchs felt that most of the film's strengths "have to do with Palmer's winning performance". Ingman declared Atchison's "ensemble is wonderful, and his star, Palmer, is a fantastically assured young actress who conveys Akeelah's maelstrom of 11-year-old feelings with no apparent effort". Turan complimented how Fishburne and Bassett's "presence and ability give this film a welcome integrity". Mohan stated, "Although Fishburne and Bassett can do these roles in their sleep, the kids are actually quite engaging". Tourmakine felt there were "fine performances all around" and that Fishburne and Bassett "lend fine support in utterly believable roles".

#### Racial issues

Chang called Dylan's father "a stiff Asian stereotype", while Mohan of The Oregonian found it contradictory for an anti-racist film to contain such depiction. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian even claimed that the line "If you can barely beat a little black girl" (spoken by Dylan's father) signifies that Atchison "thinks it's all right to bring in racism by making the Asians the racists". Metro Silicon Valley's Richard von Busack commented that "stepping around black stereotypes, the film squishes its two left feet right in the mire of Asian stereotyping". Beth Accomando of KPBS also criticized Dylan and his father's portrayal as "painful cliches", while Schager of Slant Magazine found it not authentic, even likening Dylan's father "dictatorial" style to Mao Zedong.

Scholars Charise Pimentel and Cathleen Sawyer from the Texas State University published an article titled "Akeelah and the Bee: Inspirational Story of African-American Intellect and Triumph or Racist Rhetoric Served Up On Another Platter?" on the May 2011 issue of journal Multicultural Perspectives. On a critical discourse analysis, the authors argue that despite appearing to be an "innocent enough" film, it has major approaches that make it racist. First, it implies that African-Americans need to be rescued by others; second, depicts African-American communities as "marked by homelessness, poverty, criminality, unemployment, and remnants of gang activity"; third, indicates that black people usually only achieve success through sports by "linking the very essence of Akeelah's phenomenal ability to spell to her rhythmic abilities"; and shows that African-Americans only can succeed outside their communities, "far from the oppressive clutches of their own".

Linder, on her September 2011 paper "Spelling Out Racial Difference: Moving Beyond the Inspirational Discourses in Akeelah and the Bee", also criticized it saying the film "acts as a platform for a racial melodrama through which ideals of whiteness are reinforced and strengthened". Using Linda Williams' categories of what constitutes a racial melodrama, Linder argues that it is described as an "inspirational" film because of "[its] portrayal of Akeelah's victimization by the black community that surrounds her" and of redemption only achieved "through the idealized discourse of young people's educational success as defined by dominant (white) culture". Linder said characters "are mostly represented as having 'no interest in escape' from societal oppressions and limitations" and that "there is no sign throughout the film of any kind of lasting change for Akeelah's school or her young peers".

Linder affirms that it creates a dichotomy between "success (whiteness) versus failure (blackness)". Pimentel and Sawyer, as well as Linder, identify Larabee as the one who makes this separation clear when he manifests his disregard of African American Vernacular English. The co-authors wrote that Larabee implies that "legitimate forms of intelligence can only be achieved through a Eurocentric perspective, thus advancing the message that Akeelah must be rescued from her African-American ways of knowing, in order to be considered intellectual". Another contraposition commented by scholars was "between the supportive Dr. Larabee and Akeelah's skeptical mother". Pimental and Sawyer said she is portrayed as "an African-American obstructionist", while scholar Gloria Ladson‐Billings asserted she represents the stereotype of "ignorant Black woman". Although Fuchs said the film was able to avoid the "white authority figure saves the underclass child" plotline by introducing Larabee, Ladson‐Billings, Linder, and Pimentel and Sawyer opined that it did not. After all, Larabee, as Linder described, is "a non-threatening black man who has assimilated to white culture and who can be depended on to help assimilate others".

### Accolades

The film was nominated for six Black Reel Awards, winning only Best Actress for Palmer. Out of five NAACP Image Awards nominations, Akeelah and the Bee won Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Writing in a Feature Film/Television Movie – Comedy or Drama. At the Black Movie Awards, it won the five awards it was nominated for. The same happened during the Young Artist Awards where it was nominated for two categories and won two awards, and at the CAMIE Awards where it was nominated for and won an award. The film was also nominated for but did not win any award from the BET Awards, Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, Chicago Film Critics, and Satellite Awards.

2006 film by Doug Atchison

Films about mother–daughter relationships


Pam Tillis

Pamela Yvonne Tillis (born July 24, 1957) is an American country music singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She is the daughter of country music singer Mel Tillis and ex-wife of songwriter Bob DiPiero. Tillis recorded unsuccessful pop material for Elektra and Warner Records in the 1980s before shifting to country music. In 1989, she had signed to Arista Nashville, entering top-40 on Hot Country Songs for the first time with "Don't Tell Me What to Do" in 1990. This was the first of five singles from her breakthrough album Put Yourself in My Place.

Tillis recorded five more albums for Arista Nashville between then and 2001, plus a greatest hits album. She charted 12 top-10 hits on the Billboard country music charts while on Arista, including the number-one "Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)" in 1995. Her other top-10 hits include her signature song "Maybe It Was Memphis", and "Shake the Sugar Tree", "Spilled Perfume", a cover of Jackie DeShannon's "When You Walk in the Room", and "All the Good Ones Are Gone". After exiting Arista, Tillis released It's All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis for Lucky Dog Records in 2002, and RhineStoned and the Christmas album Just in Time for Christmas on her own Stellar Cat label in 2007. Her albums Homeward Looking Angel (1992), Sweetheart's Dance (1994), and Greatest Hits (1997) are all certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, while Put Yourself in My Place and 1995's All of This Love are certified gold.

She has won two major awards: a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals in 1999 for the multiple-artist collaboration "Same Old Train", and the 1994 Country Music Association award for Female Vocalist of the Year. In 2000, she was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. In addition to her own work, Tillis has written songs for Barbara Fairchild, Juice Newton, and Highway 101, among others. Tillis's music style is defined by her singing voice, along with her influences of country, pop, and jazz.

## Early life

Pamela Yvonne Tillis was born July 24, 1957, in Plant City, Florida. She is the oldest of five children to country singer Mel Tillis and his wife, Doris. Because of her father being a country musician, she spent most of her early life in Nashville, Tennessee. When she was eight, her father invited her to sing "Tom Dooley" onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. She also began taking piano lessons at this age, and taught herself how to play guitar by age 12. At age 16, she was nearly killed in a car accident. She underwent five years of surgery, including facial reconstruction. Pam described her relationship with her father as "strict", and that she often felt "alienated" from him. She also stated that her father disapproved of her musical interests at the time, which included Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles.

Tillis enrolled at the University of Tennessee, where she performed in two different groups - a jug band called the High Country Swing Band, and a folk duo with Ashley Cleveland. She dropped out of college in 1976 and moved to San Francisco, California. There, she founded a band called Freelight, which played jazz and rock. Tillis also sold Avon products for additional income. She briefly worked as a backing vocalist in her father's road band, but later quit this role over creative differences. Despite this, she sang backup on his 1980 hit "Your Body is an Outlaw". Mel also hired her to work at his publishing company, which led to her writing Barbara Fairchild's 1978 single "The Other Side of the Morning".

## Music career

### 1983–1990: Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey and other early work

In 1981, Tillis signed her first recording contract with Elektra Records. The label released her debut single "Every Home Should Have One" that same year. Unlike her later music, "Every Home Should Have One" was a disco song. While this was her only release for Elektra, she remained with its parent company, Warner Records. The latter label released her debut album in 1983 called Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey. The album was co-produced by Dixie Gamble, then-wife of record producer Jimmy Bowen. Assisting her was the production team Jolly Hills Productions, which included session musicians Josh Leo and Craig Krampf. Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey featured the singles "Killer Comfort" and "Love Is Sneakin' Up on You". While neither single charted, the former received a music video that aired on MTV. Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe rated the album two stars out of five, stating that "Pam Tillis, even in her early days, is a smart songwriter with cutting insights on the human experience. To try and make her a carefree New Wave pop star is to undermine what makes her special in the first place."

Citing dissatisfaction with the pop music she was recording, Tillis returned to Nashville, while retaining her contract with Warner. She made her first entry on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts in 1984 with "Goodbye Highway", a song she co-wrote with Mary Ann Kennedy and Pam Rose. Her follow-up "One of Those Things" did not chart. Janie Fricke later recorded a version of the song, as well. After this came four other singles that made the lower regions of the charts between 1986 and 1987. One of these, "Those Memories of You", was later a top-five hit for Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt. Due to the poor performance of her singles, Tillis was dropped from Warner in 1987. Despite her lack of commercial success, the Academy of Country Music nominated her in 1986 for Top New Female Vocalist. She supported herself in this timespan by performing at various nightclubs and in her own local revues. These included Twang Night (where she sang covers of 1960s country standards) and Women in the Round (where she sang with other female songwriters). The latter featured writers such as Ashley Cleveland, Tricia Walker, and Karen Staley. According to Tillis herself, these revues led to her gaining increased exposure throughout the city. She also supplemented her career by singing advertising jingles for Country Time powdered drink mix, Coca-Cola, and Coors beer.

### 1989–1992: Put Yourself in My Place

In mid-1989, Arista Records' then-president Clive Davis announced the creation of the label's country music division titled Arista Nashville. Tillis was one of the first five acts signed to the label, alongside Alan Jackson, Lee Roy Parnell, Michelle Wright, and Asleep at the Wheel. Prior to releasing any material of her own, Tillis and Kix Brooks (who later signed to Arista Nashville himself as one-half of Brooks & Dunn) co-wrote the promotional single "Tomorrow's World", released on Warner to honor the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. Twenty different country music acts contributed vocals to the project, including Highway 101, Lynn Anderson, Vince Gill, Dan Seals, and Brooks and Tillis. The song entered the Hot Country Songs charts in May 1990, peaking at 74. Tillis also co-wrote Juice Newton's 1989 single "When Love Comes Around the Bend" (later covered by Dan Seals in 1992) and Highway 101's 1990 single "Someone Else's Trouble Now".

Tillis made her debut on Arista Nashville in late 1990 with "Don't Tell Me What to Do". It peaked at number five on the Billboard country charts in early 1991, thus becoming her first successful single release. The song also went to number one on the country music charts of the former Radio & Records. Marty Stuart also recorded the song for Columbia Records in 1988, although his rendition was not released until 1992. The song served as the lead single to her breakthrough album Put Yourself in My Place, which was issued in January 1991. Paul Worley (a producer and guitarist known at the time for his work with Eddy Raven and Highway 101) co-produced the project with Ed Seay. A re-recording of "One of Those Things" was the album's next single, also reaching top 10 on the country charts. After it came the album's title track, which Tillis co-wrote with Carl Jackson. The album's highest-charting single was "Maybe It Was Memphis", which peaked at number three in early 1992. "Maybe It Was Memphis" has since been described as Tillis's signature song. Tillis had originally recorded the song while on Warner, but did not release this version at the time. According to Billboard, Arista Nashville executives were initially reluctant to release "Maybe It Was Memphis" as a single until Tillis was "firmly established" as an artist, due to the song's more country pop sound. The album's fifth and final single was "Blue Rose Is", another song which Tillis co-wrote. This song was less successful on the charts. All of the singles from Put Yourself in My Place except "Blue Rose Is" also made top 20 on the Canadian country music charts then published by RPM. Another cut from the album, "Ancient History", was later a single for the Canadian band Prairie Oyster in 1996.

Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly gave Put Yourself in My Place a "B+" rating, saying that it "shows how well she can craft smart and sassy country material...and also sell it with a commanding, big-voiced presence". Kevin John Coyne wrote in a 2007 retrospective of Tillis, "It’s easy to overlook Put Yourself in My Place when discussing Pam’s body of work because of the much stronger albums that would follow...However, that’s more of a tribute to the quality of the music to come than any deficiency of the album itself." Brian Mansfield of AllMusic wrote that "The album that established Pam Tillis as a performer in her own right has a traditional country base cut with bluegrass, folk, and rock." The Country Music Association (CMA) nominated Tillis in both 1991 and 1992 for the Horizon Award (now called the Best New Artist Award). The same association nominated her twice in the category Single of the Year: for "Don't Tell Me What to Do" in 1991 and "Maybe It Was Memphis" one year later. She was also nominated by the Academy of Country Music for Top Female Vocalist five times between 1991 and 1995. "Maybe It Was Memphis" also gave Tillis her first Grammy Award nomination, in the category of Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, at the 35th Grammy Awards in 1993. Put Yourself in My Place was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in June 1992 for sales of 500,000 copies.

### 1992–1995: Homeward Looking Angel and Sweetheart's Dance

In 1992, Arista Nashville released Tillis's next album, Homeward Looking Angel. The lead single, "Shake the Sugar Tree", reached the top five on the country charts the same year. Tillis and Worley both enjoyed the sound of Stephanie Bentley's vocals on the demonstration track and chose to retain them on the final recording. The album charted another top-10 hit with the Gretchen Peters composition "Let That Pony Run". After it, "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" and "Do You Know Where Your Man Is" peaked in lower chart positions. Homeward Looking Angel also included a duet with Diamond Rio lead singer Marty Roe titled "Love Is Only Human". Tillis co-wrote half of the album's songs including "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" with her then-husband, songwriter Bob DiPiero. Worley provided backing vocals on "Do You Know Where Your Man Is". The album was certified platinum in 1995 for sales of one million copies. Alanna Nash rated Homeward Looking Angel "C+", calling Tillis's vocals "irritatingly in-your-face". Roch Parisien of AllMusic called it a "very solid" album, praising the songwriting of the singles in particular.

Tillis contributed to two collaborative singles in 1993: Dolly Parton's "Romeo" and George Jones's "I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair". The former was nominated that year for Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, while the latter won Vocal Event of the Year from the Country Music Association (CMA). The CMA organization also nominated her for Female Vocalist of the Year, while "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" was nominated by both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association for Video of the Year. In early 1994, several of Tillis's archived recordings for Warner were compiled into an album titled Collection. Included on this were the singles "There Goes My Love" and "Those Memories of You", along with the original Warner recordings of "Maybe It Was Memphis" and "One of Those Things". Also included was her previously unreleased rendition of "Five Minutes", a single in 1990 for Lorrie Morgan. Mansfield considered the inclusion of the latter three songs "interesting" in a review for AllMusic.

Sweetheart's Dance, Tillis's third Arista album, was released in April 1994. A year later, it became her second platinum album. It was also certified platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (now Music Canada). Tillis intentionally sought more songs by outside writers than on the first two Arista albums, stating that she "wanted to paint a landscape rather than a self-portrait". She also co-produced for the first time, doing so with guitarist and producer Steve Fishell. The album's lead single "Spilled Perfume" (which Tillis co-wrote with Dean Dillon) reached top five on the country charts after its release. Its follow-up was a cover of Jackie DeShannon's "When You Walk in the Room", which peaked at number two on Billboard and number one on Radio & Records. This cover featured backing vocals from Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kim Richey. After it came "Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)", Tillis's only number-one single on both the Billboard and RPM charts. The album's next single, "I Was Blown Away", made number 16 before Tillis requested that it be withdrawn as a single, as she thought the title would be insensitive to listeners after the Oklahoma City bombing. Its replacement was "In Between Dances", which became a top five hit by year's end. The album's closing track "'Til All the Lonely's Gone" featured bluegrass musician Bill Monroe on mandolin, plus backing vocals from Mel Tillis along with Pam's siblings Carrie, Cindy, Connie, and Mel Tillis Jr. Brian Mansfield rated the album four-and-a-half stars out of five, writing that it "found the magic blend of Nashville sound, California country rock, and post-Beatles pop." John D. McLaughlin of The Province called Tillis "clear-eyed and confident", while praising the inclusion of her family on the closing track. The CMA awarded her Female Vocalist of the Year in 1994, and she was nominated again in the same category again every year through 1997. "Mi Vida Loca" was nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards in early 1996.

### 1995–1997: All of This Love and Greatest Hits

During this time, Tillis played a benefit concert for Nashville Cares, a local association dedicated to support of those with HIV/AIDS. In late 1995, Tillis released All of This Love, her fourth disc for Arista and fifth overall. All of This Love produced top-10 hits with "Deep Down" and "The River and the Highway". Also included on it were the number-14 "It's Lonely Out There" and "Betty's Got a Bass Boat", her first Arista single to miss the top 40. She produced the album by herself. At the time, Tom Roland of The Tennessean noted the rarity of female producers in country music, citing Gail Davies, Rosanne Cash, and Wendy Waldman among the few. Tillis compared her role as producer to that of a film director and noted that all of the musicians involved were supportive. She also considered her role "ironic" because the song "The River and the Highway" contrasts how men and women perceive a relationship. Billboard rated All of This Love favorably, saying that Tillis "continues to mature as a singer". All of This Love became Tillis's second gold album. She supported the album by touring with Lorrie Morgan and Carlene Carter.

A Greatest Hits package followed in 1997, compiling her most successful Arista singles to that point. The album featured two new tracks which were both released as singles. These were "All the Good Ones Are Gone" and "Land of the Living", which both reached top five on the country charts in 1997. The former was nominated Song of the Year at the 1997 Academy of Country Music awards, Music Video of the Year and Single of the Year at the Country Music Association awards, and Best Female Country Vocal Performance at the 40th Grammy Awards. Greatest Hits became Tillis's third and final platinum album in 2001.

### 1998–2001: Every Time and Thunder & Roses

Tillis released Every Time for Arista Nashville in 1998. Unlike her previous albums, Tillis did not co-write any of the songs. She told The Tennessean at the time of the album's release that she thought her then-recent divorce from Bob DiPiero would make any song she co-wrote "dark and depressing". Contributing to the album were Beth Nielsen Chapman, Leslie Satcher, and Eagles member Timothy B. Schmit. Tillis co-produced with guitarist and producer Billy Joe Walker Jr., with additional production from Chris Farren on his composition "We Must Be Thinking Alike". One of Satcher's compositions, "I Said a Prayer", was the album's lead single. This song reached number twelve on the American country charts and number seven on the Canadian country charts. The title track was the album's only other single. Jana Pendragon of Allmusic praised Tillis's voice and song selection, although she criticized the "usual overproduction that characterizes Nashville in the '90s". Joel Bernstein of Country Standard Time was mixed toward the album as well. He thought that "I Said a Prayer" sounded like a "sixties girl group" and said that the rest of the album "lacks her usual playfulness."

Tillis was involved in multiple collaborative efforts after the release of Every Time. One of these was recording the original song "After a Kiss" for the soundtrack to the 1999 film Happy, Texas. This song charted at number 50 on Hot Country Songs that year. She was also one of several artists on the single "Same Old Train" from the 1999 Columbia Records tribute album A Tribute to Tradition. This song won the Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals that same year. The Academy of Country Music also nominated this collaboration for Vocal Event of the Year, her last nomination to date from that association. She and Jason Sellers covered George Jones and Tammy Wynette's 1976 duet "Golden Ring" on Sellers's 1999 album A Matter of Time. Also in 1999, Tillis played several concerts with her father. In 2000, country singer Little Jimmy Dickens invited Tillis to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Marty Stuart inducted her on August 26, 2000. Later that year she appeared at a ceremony honoring the Grand Ole Opry's 75th anniversary, which was televised on the former TNN (The Nashville Network). Kenny Chesney's 2000 single "I Lost It" featured Tillis on background vocals.

Restructuring of Arista Nashville's parent company Sony Music Nashville delayed release of Tillis's last Arista album Thunder & Roses. Originally slated for release in 2000, it was not issued until early 2001. The album included another duet with her father called "Waiting on the Wind". The pair had previously sung the song in concert several years prior. Walker and Worley alternated production duties with Dann Huff and Kenny Greenberg. The only chart entry off Thunder & Roses was "Please", which peaked at number 22 on the Billboard country chart. Kevin Oliver of Country Standard Time described "Please" as "one of those uplifting slice of life anthems that sounds great on the radio and connects with women on some level that men will never completely understand." He also thought the album as a whole had a "strong yet deft touch". Tillis herself cited the song as one that would appeal to single women.

### 2002–2003: It's All Relative

Tillis exited Arista Nashville in early 2002, citing both the expiration of her contract and her dissatisfaction with Arista executives prioritizing songs that had potential radio success over songs she wanted to record. After exiting the label, she began recording a tribute album to her father, consisting of songs that he recorded or wrote for other artists. Although she originally intended to record the project independently, she signed with Epic Records' Lucky Dog branch in 2002. Titled It's All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis, the tribute album was released through Lucky Dog that same year. Ray Benson, frontman of the Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel, produced the album. One of the songs covered was "I Ain't Never", a number-one single for Mel Tillis in 1972. It also featured covers of Patsy Cline's "So Wrong" and Bobby Bare's "Detroit City". Dolly Parton contributed vocals to a cover of "The Violet and a Rose", Mel Tillis's first chart entry in 1958. Trisha Yearwood and Rhonda Vincent sang backing vocals on a cover of "Honey (Open That Door)", a number-one single written by Mel Tillis for Ricky Skaggs. Other musicians on the album included Marty Stuart, Delbert McClinton, and The Jordanaires. Country Standard Time writer Eli Messinger praised Pam Tillis's vocal delivery on her father's songs, calling the collection "heartfelt".

In June 2003, Tillis was dropped from Lucky Dog following another label re-structuring. Despite this, she began performing her own shows in Branson, Missouri at a theater owned by comedian Yakov Smirnoff. These shows included both her and her father's hit singles, as well as stories about her childhood. Her sister Carrie contributed backing vocals to these shows. Smirnoff had offered her the opportunity to perform there, and she accepted because she thought it would allow for a different presentation style than her standard concerts. In particular, the use of a theater allowed her to incorporate costumes into her performance. She continued to perform in Branson in 2004 with Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers. In 2005, she replaced Linda Davis as the lead act of an annual Christmas concert held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville. She continued to tour at this point, and compiled both a concert DVD and a Christmas album sold exclusively at her shows.

### 2007–present: Founding her own record label

Tillis did not release another album until 2007, when she founded her own label called Stellar Cat. Her first album for her own label was RhineStoned. Co-writers on the album included Leslie Satcher, Lisa Brokop, Matraca Berg, Jon Randall, and Verlon Thompson. John Anderson sang duet vocals on "Life Sure Has Changed Us Around". Tillis thought that being on her own label allowed her more creative freedom than before, including her decisions to market the album to Americana music formats, and to make a music video for the track "Band in the Window" despite not officially promoting it as a single. She co-produced the project with singer-songwriter Gary Nicholson. Kevin Oliver of Country Standard Time found influences of rock music and jazz, stating that the album was "widely varied and enjoyable". The Christmas album previously available only at her concerts was released later in the year as Just in Time for Christmas. It featured a mix of Christmas standards and original content. Also in 2007, the Country Music Hall of Fame opened an exhibition called "It's All Relative", featuring artifacts from Mel and Pam's music careers.

Tillis started a tour in 2008 that included Regina, Saskatchewan dates in January. For this tour, she sang both her and her father's songs, along with album cuts and new material. She recorded no other albums until 2012's Recollection, which comprised re-recordings of her hit singles from Arista Nashville. She chose to do this when noticing how "dated" she thought some of her old songs sounded, and relied on her road band to provide instrumentation. After she booked tour dates with Lorrie Morgan, the two artists decided to record a collaborative album called Dos Divas in 2013. The album included a mix of solo songs from each artist as well as a number of duets. They also toured together to promote this album on a tour called Grits and Glamour. A second collaborative album, Come See Me and Come Lonely, followed in 2017. Also at this point she began performing acoustic concerts with two acoustic guitarists as the Pam Tillis Trio. Tillis, Morgan, and Terri Clark held a benefit concert in 2018 for country singer Anita Cochran after she was diagnosed with cancer. Tillis also revived Women in the Round in 2017 with Ashley Cleveland, Tricia Walker, and Karen Staley.

In 2020, Tillis announced that she had been recording a new album. On February 28, 2020, Tillis released the title track of the album, "Looking for a Feeling". The album itself was released two months later. It features twelve tracks, six of which were co-written by Tillis, as well as a cover of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings's "Dark Turn of Mind". On June 29, 2022, Tillis had been nominated for induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Kirk Franklin, Brad Paisley, and Shania Twain, though Twain ultimately received the honor.

## Musical styles

Colin Larkin wrote in the Virgin Encyclopedia of Country Music in 1999 that "her powerful vocal styling may not suit everybody". He also wrote at the time that "it still remains to be seen whether she can really establish herself with the hardline country traditionalists." The editors of the Encyclopedia of Country Music described Tillis as a "vocal stylist...pairing contemporary country lyrics with traditional country vocals, paving the way for such singers as Mindy McCready". Tillis described her own vocal style as "not the twangiest country singer out there", as she thought her voice also contained rhythm and blues and rock phrasings. Roch Parisien of AllMusic described her voice as "pure, full-bodied country" and a "genuinely throaty twang", despite considering it "exaggerated to the point of annoyance" on "Do You Know Where Your Man Is". Steven Wine, reviewing Looking for a Feeling for the Associated Press, said that she "has mastered the art of singing without raising her voice. She swoops and slides, yes, but most of all she smolders, an alto with a blue hue." Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly wrote of Sweetheart's Dance that "Moving beyond the attention she gained from her Kewpie doll face and piercing soprano, she’s gone the distance to incorporate all of her musical past into the country framework for an updated, '90s feel." Robert K. Oermann, in the book Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain: Tales of Romance and Tragedy, described Tillis as having a "torrid soprano", "vivid songwriting", and "enchanting wit".

Writers have taken notice of Tillis's use of wordplay in her material. Reviewing All of This Love for Country Standard Time, Joel Bernstein noted Tillis's affinity for wordplay in her song titles, such as on that album's "Tequila Mockingbird". Nash criticized the song for similar reasons, and Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe cited "Blue Rose Is" as another example of wordplay. Bernstein also thought of her decision to produce All of This Love by herself that "tastefulness continues to be Tillis' trademark". In an interview with Country Universe in 2020, Tillis stated that her later albums featured fewer songs she wrote than her earlier albums due to her own criticism of her work. She ultimately decided to start co-writing again on Looking for a Feeling because she considered her own writing to be "words out of [her] heart". Nash, reviewing Collection in 1994, thought that because the album contained material recorded earlier in her career, it lacked the "plucky personality and the supercharged vocals that now punch their way out of the radio". Both Nash and Larry Crowley of The Arizona Republic thought that "Spilled Perfume", which is about one woman confronting another over a one-night stand, displayed feminist themes. Coyne thought that Put Yourself in My Place showed an unusual amount of artistic freedom for a new country music act in the 1990s. He considered "Maybe It Was Memphis" to be her signature song, stating that its "fiery performance and the aggressive production still sound fresh today".

Being the daughter of a country musician, she was regularly compared to her father. Because of this, she told the Associated Press in 2017 that she felt the best advice to give to an aspiring musician was "be yourself". She also said that her father exposed her to other musical influences besides himself, such as Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. Despite this, she also noted that her father was very strict about what music she could listen to and what concerts she could attend as a child; specifically, she stated that her listening to The Beatles "alienated" him. In addition, she stated that differences in musical tastes were what ended her role as his backing vocalist. Of her attempts to establish a musical identity separate from her father, Colin Larkin wrote in 1999 that she "has made a promising start".

## Acting

Tillis holds several acting roles in television, film, and theater. One of her first was the 1993 movie The Thing Called Love, in which she and several other country music singers made guest appearances. She also had cameo appearances in the NBC crime show L.A. Law, along with episodes of Diagnosis: Murder and Promised Land on CBS. Of acting, Tillis said that she did not find it considerably different from singing, because both roles require "taking the raw material of emotion and making something out of it." In 1999, she appeared in the Broadway revue Smokey Joe's Cafe, where she and others performed various show tunes by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Of doing so, Tillis stated at the time that she "wanted to branch out", and took a role in the show when her agent found the position was available. She also appeared as herself on the American Broadcasting Company musical drama Nashville. Drag queen RuPaul, a fan of Tillis's, invited her to appear on an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race.

## Personal life

Pam Tillis' first marriage was to Rick Mason in 1978. The couple had one son named Ben, with whom Tillis was pregnant when the couple divorced that same year. She told Closer Weekly in 2019 that she divorced Mason due to his alcoholism and her concerns that she "was not ready" to be in a relationship. She assumed custody of Ben after the divorce. As of 2019, Ben works as a wilderness guide.

In 1991 Tillis married songwriter and guitarist Bob DiPiero. He occasionally toured as a member of her road band Mystic Biscuit. DiPiero co-wrote "Blue Rose Is", "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial", and "It's Lonely Out There". In 1996, the couple bought a house in Nashville which was previously owned by Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash prior to those two singers' divorce. Tillis and DiPiero divorced in 1998. In 2019, she told Closer Weekly that the two divorced because she felt that their musical careers were overtaking their personal lives, although she also stated that she still considered DiPiero an "awesome person". Tillis began dating musician, photographer, and record producer Matt Spicher in 2001. The two married in 2009.

Tillis' brother Mel Tillis Jr., often credited as Sonny Tillis, is also a singer and songwriter. He co-wrote Jamie O'Neal's number-one single "When I Think About Angels" along with singles by Clinton Gregory, Tammy Cochran, and Ty Herndon. Mel Tillis died at age 85 in 2017, after which Sonny began touring as a tribute act to him. Mel's widow Doris died at age 79 in 2019.

## Discography

Studio albums

- Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey (1983)
- Put Yourself in My Place (1991)
- Homeward Looking Angel (1992)
- Sweetheart's Dance (1994)
- All of This Love (1995)
- Every Time (1998)
- Thunder & Roses (2001)
- It's All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis (2002)
- RhineStoned (2007)
- Just in Time for Christmas (2007)
- Recollection (2009)
- Dos Divas with Lorrie Morgan (2013)
- Come See Me and Come Lonely with Lorrie Morgan (2017)
- Looking for a Feeling (2020)

## Awards and nominations

Notes

## Filmography

American country music singer-songwriter

Members of the Country Music Association


Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI International, which resulted in creation of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces. These were demonstrated at The Mother of All Demos in 1968. Engelbart's law, the observation that the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential, is named after him.

NLS, the "oN-Line System", developed by the Augmentation Research Center under Engelbart's guidance with funding primarily from ARPA (as DARPA was then known), demonstrated numerous technologies, most of which are now in widespread use; it included the computer mouse, bitmapped screens, hypertext; all of which were displayed at "The Mother of All Demos" in 1968. The lab was transferred from SRI to Tymshare in the late 1970s, which was acquired by McDonnell Douglas in 1984, and NLS was renamed Augment (now the Doug Engelbart Institute). At both Tymshare and McDonnell Douglas, Engelbart was limited by a lack of interest in his ideas and funding to pursue them and retired in 1986.

In 1988, Engelbart and his daughter Christina launched the Bootstrap Institute – later known as The Doug Engelbart Institute – to promote his vision, especially at Stanford University; this effort did result in some DARPA funding to modernize the user interface of Augment. In December 2000, United States President Bill Clinton awarded Engelbart the National Medal of Technology, the U.S.'s highest technology award. In December 2008, Engelbart was honored by SRI at the 40th anniversary of the "Mother of All Demos".

## Early life and education

Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon, on January 30, 1925, to Carl Louis Engelbart and Gladys Charlotte Amelia Munson Engelbart. His ancestors were of German, Swedish and Norwegian descent.

He was the middle of three children, with a sister Dorianne (three years older), and a brother David (14 months younger). The family lived in Portland, Oregon, in his early years, and moved to the surrounding countryside along Johnson Creek when he was 8. His father died one year later. He graduated from Portland's Franklin High School in 1942.

Midway through his undergraduate years at Oregon State University, he served two years in the United States Navy as a radio and radar technician in the Philippines. It was there, on the remote island of Leyte in a small traditional hut on stilts, that he read Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think", which would have a large influence on his thinking and work. He returned to Oregon State and completed his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1948. While at Oregon State, he was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon social fraternity. He was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at the Ames Research Center, where he worked in wind tunnel maintenance. In his off hours he enjoyed hiking, camping, and folk dancing. It was there he met Ballard Fish (August 18, 1928 – June 18, 1997), who was just completing her training to become an occupational therapist. They were married in Portola State Park on May 5, 1951. Soon after, Engelbart left Ames to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he studied electrical engineering with a specialty in computers, earning his MS in 1953 and his PhD in 1955.

## Career and accomplishments

### Guiding philosophy

Engelbart's career was inspired in December 1950 when he was engaged to be married and realized he had no career goals other than "a steady job, getting married and living happily ever after". Over several months he reasoned that:

1. he would focus his career on making the world a better place
2. any serious effort to make the world better would require some kind of organized effort that harnessed the collective human intellect of all people to contribute to effective solutions.
3. if you could dramatically improve how we do that, you'd be boosting every effort on the planet to solve important problems – the sooner the better
4. computers could be the vehicle for dramatically improving this capability.

In 1945, Engelbart had read with interest Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think", a call to action for making knowledge widely available as a national peacetime grand challenge. He had also read something about the recent phenomenon of computers, and from his experience as a radar technician, he knew that information could be analyzed and displayed on a screen. He envisioned intellectual workers sitting at display "working stations", flying through information space, harnessing their collective intellectual capacity to solve important problems together in much more powerful ways. Harnessing collective intellect, facilitated by interactive computers, became his life's mission at a time when computers were viewed as number crunching tools.

As a graduate student at Berkeley, he assisted in the construction of CALDIC. His graduate work led to eight patents. After completing his doctorate, Engelbart stayed on at Berkeley as an assistant professor for a year before departing when it became clear that he could not pursue his vision there. Engelbart then formed a startup company, Digital Techniques, to commercialize some of his doctoral research on storage devices, but after a year decided instead to pursue the research he had been dreaming of since 1951.

### SRI and the Augmentation Research Center

Engelbart took a position at SRI International (known then as Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park, California in 1957. He worked for Hewitt Crane on magnetic devices and miniaturization of electronics; Engelbart and Crane became close friends. At SRI, Engelbart soon obtained a dozen patents, and by 1962 produced a report about his vision and proposed research agenda titled Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. Among other highlights, this paper introduced "Building Information Modelling", which architectural and engineering practice eventually adopted (first as "parametric design") in the 1990s and after.

This led to funding from ARPA to launch his work. Engelbart recruited a research team in his new Augmentation Research Center (ARC, the lab he founded at SRI). Engelbart embedded a set of organizing principles in his lab, which he termed "bootstrapping strategy". He designed the strategy to accelerate the rate of innovation of his lab.

The ARC became the driving force behind the design and development of the oN-Line System (NLS). He and his team developed computer interface elements such as bitmapped screens, the mouse, hypertext, collaborative tools, and precursors to the graphical user interface. He conceived and developed many of his user interface ideas in the mid-1960s, long before the personal computer revolution, at a time when most computers were inaccessible to individuals who could only use computers through intermediaries (see batch processing), and when software tended to be written for vertical applications in proprietary systems.

Engelbart applied for a patent in 1967 and received it in 1970, for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse – ), which he had developed with Bill English, his lead engineer, sometime before 1965. In the patent application it is described as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". Engelbart later revealed that it was nicknamed the "mouse" because the tail came out the end. His group also called the on-screen Cursor a "bug", but this term was not widely adopted. Engelbart's original cursor was displayed as an arrow pointing upward, but was slanted to the left upon its deployment in the XEROX PARC machine to better distinguish between on-screen text and the cursor in the machine's low-resolution interface. The now-familiar cursor arrow is characterized by a vertical left side and a 45-degree angle on the right.

He never received any royalties for the invention of the mouse. During an interview, he said, "SRI patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later it was learned that they had licensed it to Apple Computer for something like \$40,000." Engelbart showcased the chorded keyboard and many more of his and ARC's inventions in 1968 at The Mother of All Demos.

### Tymshare and McDonnell Douglas

Engelbart slipped into relative obscurity by the mid-1970s. As early as 1970, several of his researchers became alienated from him and left his organization for Xerox PARC, in part due to frustration, and in part due to differing views of the future of computing. Engelbart saw the future in collaborative, networked, timeshare (client-server) computers, which younger programmers rejected in favor of the personal computer. The conflict was both technical and ideological: the younger programmers came from an era where centralized power was highly suspect, and personal computing was just barely on the horizon.

Beginning in 1972, several key ARC personnel were involved in Erhard Seminars Training (EST), with Engelbart ultimately serving on the corporation's board of directors for many years. Although EST had been recommended by other researchers, the controversial nature of EST and other social experiments reduced the morale and social cohesion of the ARC community. The 1969 Mansfield Amendment, which ended military funding of non-military research, the end of the Vietnam War, and the end of the Apollo program gradually reduced ARC's funding from ARPA and NASA throughout the early 1970s.

SRI's management, which disapproved of Engelbart's approach to running the center, placed the remains of ARC under the control of artificial intelligence researcher Bertram Raphael, who negotiated the transfer of the laboratory to Tymshare in 1976. Engelbart's house in Atherton, California burned down during this period, causing him and his family further problems. Tymshare took over NLS and the lab that Engelbart had founded, hired most of the lab's staff (including its creator as a Senior Scientist), renamed the software Augment, and offered it as a commercial service via its new Office Automation Division. Tymshare was already somewhat familiar with NLS; when ARC was still operational, it had experimented with its own local copy of the NLS software on a minicomputer called OFFICE-1, as part of a joint project with ARC.

At Tymshare, Engelbart soon found himself further marginalized. Operational concerns at Tymshare overrode Engelbart's desire to conduct ongoing research. Various executives, first at Tymshare and later at McDonnell Douglas, which acquired Tymshare in 1984, expressed interest in his ideas, but never committed the funds or the people to further develop them. His interest inside of McDonnell Douglas was focused on the enormous knowledge management and IT requirements involved in the life cycle of an aerospace program, which served to strengthen Engelbart's resolve to motivate the information technology arena toward global interoperability and an open hyperdocument system. Engelbart retired from McDonnell Douglas in 1986, determined to pursue his work free from commercial pressure.

### Bootstrap and the Doug Engelbart Institute

Teaming with his daughter, Christina Engelbart, he founded the Bootstrap Institute in 1988 to coalesce his ideas into a series of three-day and half-day management seminars offered at Stanford University from 1989 to 2000. By the early 1990s there was sufficient interest among his seminar graduates to launch a collaborative implementation of his work, and the Bootstrap Alliance was formed as a non-profit home base for this effort. Although the invasion of Iraq and subsequent recession spawned a rash of belt-tightening reorganizations which drastically redirected the efforts of their alliance partners, they continued with the management seminars, consulting, and small-scale collaborations. In the mid-1990s they were awarded some DARPA funding to develop a modern user interface to Augment, called Visual AugTerm (VAT), while participating in a larger program addressing the IT requirements of the Joint Task Force.

Engelbart was Founder Emeritus of the Doug Engelbart Institute, which he founded in 1988 with his daughter Christina Engelbart, who is Executive Director. The Institute promotes Engelbart's philosophy for boosting Collective IQ—the concept of dramatically improving how we can solve important problems together—using a strategic bootstrapping approach for accelerating our progress toward that goal. In 2005, Engelbart received a National Science Foundation grant to fund the open source HyperScope project. The Hyperscope team built a browser component using Ajax and Dynamic HTML designed to replicate Augment's multiple viewing and jumping capabilities (linking within and across various documents).

### Later years and death

Engelbart attended the Program for the Future 2010 Conference where hundreds of people convened at The Tech Museum in San Jose and online to engage in dialog about how to pursue his vision to augment collective intelligence.

The most complete coverage of Engelbart's bootstrapping ideas can be found in Boosting Our Collective IQ, by Douglas C. Engelbart, 1995. This includes three of Engelbart's key papers, edited into book form by Yuri Rubinsky and Christina Engelbart to commemorate the presentation of the 1995 SoftQuad Web Award to Doug Engelbart at the World Wide Web conference in Boston in December 1995. Only 2,000 softcover copies were printed, and 100 hardcover, numbered and signed by Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee. Engelbart's book is now being republished by the Doug Engelbart Institute.

Two comprehensive histories of Engelbart's laboratory and work are in What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff and A Heritage of Innovation: SRI's First Half Century by Donald Neilson. Other books on Engelbart and his laboratory include Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing by Thierry Bardini and The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart, by Valerie Landau and Eileen Clegg in conversation with Douglas Engelbart. All four of these books are based on interviews with Engelbart as well as other contributors in his laboratory.

Engelbart served on the Advisory Boards of the University of Santa Clara Center for Science, Technology, and Society, Foresight Institute, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, The Technology Center of Silicon Valley, and The Liquid Information Company.

Engelbart had four children, Gerda, Diana, Christina and Norman with his first wife Ballard, who died in 1997 after 47 years of marriage. He remarried on January 26, 2008, to writer and producer Karen O'Leary Engelbart. An 85th birthday celebration was held at the Tech Museum of Innovation. Engelbart died at his home in Atherton, California, on July 2, 2013, due to kidney failure. A close friend and fellow internet pioneer, Ted Nelson, gave a speech paying tribute to Engelbart. According to the Doug Engelbart Institute, his death came after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, which he was diagnosed with in 2007. Engelbart was 88 and was survived by his second wife, the four children from his first marriage, and nine grandchildren.

### Anecdotal notes

Historian of science Thierry Bardini argues that Engelbart's complex personal philosophy (which drove all his research) foreshadowed the modern application of the concept of coevolution to the philosophy and use of technology. Bardini points out that Engelbart was strongly influenced by the principle of linguistic relativity developed by Benjamin Lee Whorf. Where Whorf reasoned that the sophistication of a language controls the sophistication of the thoughts that can be expressed by a speaker of that language, Engelbart reasoned that the state of our current technology controls our ability to manipulate information, and that fact in turn will control our ability to develop new, improved technologies. He thus set himself to the revolutionary task of developing computer-based technologies for manipulating information directly, and also to improve individual and group processes for knowledge-work.

## Honors

Since the late 1980s, prominent individuals and organizations have recognized the seminal importance of Engelbart's contributions. In December 1995, at the Fourth WWW Conference in Boston, he was the first recipient of what would later become the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award. In 1997, he was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize of \$500,000, the world's largest single prize for invention and innovation, and the ACM Turing Award. To mark the 30th anniversary of Engelbart's 1968 demo, in 1998 the Stanford Silicon Valley Archives and the Institute for the Future hosted Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution, a symposium at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, to honor Engelbart and his ideas. He was inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1998.

Also in 1998, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGCHI awarded Engelbart the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award. ACM SIGCHI later inducted Engelbart into the CHI Academy in 2002. Engelbart was awarded The Franklin Institute's Certificate of Merit in 1996 and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1999 in Computer and Cognitive Science. In early 2000 Engelbart produced, with volunteers and sponsors, what was called The Unfinished Revolution – II, also known as the Engelbart Colloquium at Stanford University, to document and publicize his work and ideas to a larger audience (live, and online).

In December 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded Engelbart the National Medal of Technology, the country's highest technology award. In 2001 he was awarded the British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal. In 2005, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for advancing the study of human–computer interaction, developing the mouse input device, and for the application of computers to improving organizational efficiency." He was honored with the Norbert Wiener Award, which is given annually by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Robert X. Cringely did an hour-long interview with Engelbart on December 9, 2005, in his NerdTV video podcast series.

On December 9, 2008, Engelbart was honored at the 40th Anniversary celebration of the 1968 "Mother of All Demos". This event, produced by SRI International, was held at Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University. Speakers included several members of Engelbart's original Augmentation Research Center (ARC) team including Don Andrews, Bill Paxton, Bill English, and Jeff Rulifson, Engelbart's chief government sponsor Bob Taylor, and other pioneers of interactive computing, including Andy van Dam and Alan Kay. In addition, Christina Engelbart spoke about her father's early influences and the ongoing work of the Doug Engelbart Institute.

In June 2009, the New Media Consortium recognized Engelbart as an NMC Fellow for his lifetime of achievements. In 2011, Engelbart was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame. Engelbart received the first honorary Doctor of Engineering and Technology degree from Yale University in May 2011.

## See also

- Dynamic knowledge repository
- Global brain
- List of pioneers in computer science

American engineer and inventor (1925–2013)

Franklin High School (Portland, Oregon) alumni

Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering

UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni

United States Navy personnel of World War II