Oscar-winner Willmott turns to Langston Hughes documentary

Oscar-winner, University of Kansas professor Kevin Willmott, is hard at work on his next project which is of particular interest to the Joplin area..

Willmott won the award for best adapted screenplay Sunday night for his contribution to the film “BlacKkKlansman.”

Willmott is currently raising funds for a two-part documentary on Joplin-born poet Langston Hughes who spent part of his childhood in Kansas.

The effort has already received a 50 thousand dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with more fund-raising ahead.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Willmott is the second Oscar winner connected to the university. Spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said William Inge, who graduated from Kansas in 1935, won a screenplay writing Oscar for the film “Splendor in the Grass” in 1962.

This was the first nomination for Willmott, who has been involved in several independent films.

Set in the mid-1970s, “BlacKkKlansman” is based on the memoir of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer in Colorado Springs who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan.