Biographie
William Riead completed both his high school and college education in Illinois, earning a communications degree from Western Illinois University. During college, he worked as a news cameraman for CBS affiliate KHQA-TV in Quincy, Illinois, and later as a radio reporter at its sister station WTAD. In 1968, he joined NBC affiliate WGEM-TV as a television reporter and co-anchored the weekend news program, the Bill Riead/Jim Young Saturday Night Report. The following year, he returned to KHQA-TV as a full-time anchor and remained there through the rest of his college years. In 1972, Riead joined CBS News in New York and was assigned to the network's chief European bureau in London, where he became the Foreign News Editor. Later, he covered the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Miami, Florida, where TVN, the predecessor to CNN, recruited him as their West Coast correspondent. While part of the White House press corps, he witnessed two assassination attempts on President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California—first by former Manson follower Lynnette "Squeaky" Fromme, capturing footage that aired nationally, and three days later by Sarah Moore, being in close proximity to the President on both occasions.
In 1975, aiming to shift toward production, Riead left network news and founded CinemaWest in Los Angeles, producing corporate videos for major companies across the U.S. and Europe. One project, hosted by Regis Philbin, led to a recommendation from Philbin to Columbia Pictures, which offered Riead the opportunity to write and direct promotional films for their studio. He accepted and produced behind-the-scenes features for films such as "Casey's Shadow" starring Walter Matthau, followed by similar projects for "Midnight Express," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Front," "Absence of Malice," "The China Syndrome," "The Goodbye Girl," "Gorky Park," "First Blood," "Lone Wolf McQuade," "Easy Money," "Summer Lovers," "The Woman in Red," "The Bounty," "Mrs. Soffel," "Never Cry Wolf," and "Something Wicked This Way Comes," among others. Over a twelve-year span, he produced 47 such films not only for Columbia but also for MGM/Warner Bros., Disney, Orion Pictures, and Avco-Embassy.
In 1981, Riead traveled to Ahmedabad, India, to direct "Land of Hunger, Land of Hope," marking his transition into producing informational specials for television. He wrote and directed "On Borrowed Time," featuring Walter Matthau and Brooke Shields, which aired on the Discovery Channel and earned multiple awards, including a CableACE Award nomination. Following this, he produced "One For The Road," the second informational special in the series, released through Pyramid Media, and then "Dying For A Smoke," the third, which garnered top honors such as First Place at the HeSCA International Film Festival and the Gold Award at Worldfest Charleston. Additional accolades for this film included the Silver Plaque at Intercom, the Golden Eagle from the Council of International Non-Theatrical Events in Washington, D.C., the Silver Certificate at the John Muir Film Festival, the M.I.P. Award from the World Health Organization, the Magna Cum Laude at the Province of Parma, and Honorable Mention at the Columbus International Film Festival.
Riead then wrote, produced, and directed the feature film "Scorpion," which saw national theatrical release through Crown International Pictures and home video distribution by RCA/Columbia domestically and Warner Home Video internationally. He subsequently wrote and directed "The Letters," a feature based on the correspondence of Mother Teresa to her spiritual director, revealing her feelings of isolation and abandonment during her last forty years of service to the poor. The film stars acclaimed British actress Juliet Stevenson as Mother Teresa, twice Academy Award-nominated European actor Max von Sydow as her spiritual director, and popular European actor Rutger Hauer as the Vatican postulator for her sainthood cause. Shot on location in England and India, the story is fact-based and was written and directed by William Riead.
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