Williamson also served as co-executive producer of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). He was originally hired to write the script for this sequel (also known as Halloween 7) directed by Steve Miner. Although his script was not used, a treatment he wrote for the film heavily influenced the final version.

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Williamson next wrote the script for The Faculty (1998), a science-fiction send-up directed by Robert Rodriguez, in which a group of high school students are convinced that their teachers have been taken over by evil space aliens. The film received rather tepid reviews, but found moderate success at the box office nonetheless.

The following year Williamson was given the opportunity to direct one of his own scripts, Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), which he had written while still a screenwriting student. The movie, a revenge fantasy centered on a group of high school seniors and their malicious history teacher, was scheduled for release shortly after the 1999 shooting deaths of students and teachers at Columbine High School. In deference to that event, the film's original title, Killing Mrs. Tingle, was changed. The film, however, met with derisive reviews and low ticket sales and was Williamson's first professional failure.

Looking to enter the lucrative world of television, Williamson had been working for several years on the creation of a television series that he had named Dawson's Creek. The show chronicled the complicated love lives of a group of teenagers in a small coastal town in North Carolina. In December 1995, Williamson pitched the idea to executives at the Fox Network, but it was rejected. Several months later he pitched the same idea to Time Warner's fledgling WB network, which immediately bought the show.

Dawson's Creek premiered on January 20, 1998 and was an immediate hit with its young core audience. Many reviews noted the show's sharp, smart, nearly hyper-articulate dialogue. As one critic remarked, "Instead of talking down" to the show's viewers, Williamson "compliments them. [He] shows teens a reflection of how they want to be seen: witty, urbane, and always armed with a perfectly barbed, sarcastic comeback."

Williamson introduced a gay theme into his semi-autobiographical series in October 1998 with the character Jack McPhee (played by Kerr Smith). Williamson explained in interviews that he did not want to make the gay theme "an open-and-shut one-episode situation." Instead, he wanted "to explore the complexities of a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality, very much the way I did in a small town."

Williamson left Dawson's Creek after its second season--although he returned to write the two-hour series finale which aired on May 14, 2003--to create a new show for ABC.

Williamson's new series, eventually titled Wasteland, premiered on October 7, 1999 and focused on a sextet of recent college graduates living in New York City. The group of friends included a character named Russell Baskind (played by Dan Montgomery Jr.), a gay soap opera actor struggling to come out of the closet. After airing only four episodes, the network canceled the show, due to low ratings and harsh reviews.

Williamson returned to television in 2002 with the mystery drama series Glory Days, set on a Northeastern vacation island. The show debuted on the WB network as a mid-season replacement on January 16, 2002, but was canceled two months later.

In 2005, Williamson wrote the screenplay for Cursed, a Wes Craven-directed horror film about young Los Angeles werewolves. The film was reportedly recast, reshot, and recut before being released to lackluster reviews.

Also in 2005, Williamson wrote the script for Venom, directed by John Gillespie, which tells the story of teenagers lost in the bayous of Louisiana, beset by a mysterious evil and voodoo spells. Released shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated south Louisiana, the film seemed unfortunately prescient.

Williamson's latest project is the writing and producing of Hidden Palms, a television series for the CW network. Set in Palm Springs, the show is described as a coming-of-age drama about a troubled teen who moves into a gated community with his family and discovers several dark secrets about the neighborhood. The series is planned to be a mid-season replacement in 2007.

Williamson currently resides in Los Angeles.

American television has made significant strides in its portrayal of homosexuals in dramatic series and movies, but cable networks have been more daring than the "big three" broadcast networks.

Since cinema began, Hollywood has been fascinated with finding ways of representing homosexuality.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual film directors have been a vital creative presence in cinema since the medium's inception over one hundred years ago.

The monsters of horror films may frequently be read as mirrors of societal views of homosexuals as predatory, amoral, perverse, possessed of secret supernatural powers, and threatening to "normal life."

Although film may be a director's rather than a writer's medium, gay and lesbian screenwriters have made significant contributions to both mainstream and independent film.