Trinidad and Tobago-born actor, producer, and writer G Anthony Joseph has been riding a wave of success in recent months. His classic action films Men of Gray and Men of Gray II: Flight of the Ibis are now streaming on PAVILION+ via the Roku Channel and he has secured new television and film roles.
In 1990 the first Men of Gray, created and produced by Joseph, and co-written with his wife, Ria Roebuck-Joseph, and the film's director Ric Moxley, was released on TTT (Trinidad and Tobago Television).
It is an action-packed thriller about a former police officer Joe Cameron (Joseph) who returns to action when his old partner discovers the reason their best efforts to fight the drug war in Trinidad is because their former captain is on the take.
"Joe and his partner work beyond the law – with Joe’s martial arts skill frequently put to the test – to prove the government scandal and to bring down the drug lord behind it all."
Early days
Joseph, speaking to Newsday in a Zoom interview, recalled the first film was supposed to be a college graduation project. He was unhappy with the college he was attending and asked if he completed a film whether it would graduate him. His request was met with laughs.
But Joseph moved ahead with his film. He contacted Moxley, who had hired him when he came to Los Angeles to be in his student film at the University of Southern California, to direct the film.
He also spoke to the late Horace James who was head of production at TTT. James told him to come with what he had and he would supply the rest. He and his wife invested about US$7,000 of their money into the project. The deal was TTT would release it, and it came out in 1990.
[caption id="attachment_894453" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Men of Gray and Men of Gray II: Flight of the Ibis produced by Trinidad and Tobago's G Anthony Joseph are now streaming on PAVILION+ via the Roku Channel -[/caption]
"I went back to LA afterwards and they released it and that's when it blew up and became this thing that I never knew was even possible."
He returned with the film, but it was on three-quarter-inch VHS-like tape and he could not do much with it except enter film festivals, which he did. It won first place at the Pegasus Film Festival in Oklahoma and kept rerunning in Trinidad and the Caribbean for years.
When Joseph and the team saw all the press, they decided to return to Trinidad and make a sequel.
"We had so much heat from the press we thought when we came down getting the funding would be much easier. Well, that ending up taking like six years. That was heartache."
Men of Gray II: Flight of the Ibis was released at the Globe Cinema locally in 1996 and then across the Caribbean.
"So of course, that blows up all over the place."
Flight of the Ibis, which Joseph produced and co-wrote with his wife, and which Moxley returned to direct, follows police hero Cameron as he descends into the Caribbean drug underworld to clear his na
