Talk:Wash Westmoreland

Removing Career Timeline Header

@BriefEdits: I'm proposing the removal or change of the header "Career drought and resurgence." I don't believe that is accurate. They were working independent filmmakers and it's normal for half a decade to go by in-between projects. Their final two films, "Still Alice" and "The Last of Robin Hood" were filmed right after one another and had been in development sometime before then. In the article, the interviewer poses the question as to why the filmmakers are still working when others who had been interviewed at the same time by the magazine many years prior, are still working. Their response is that "We just have to keep working day jobs to pay the bills." That's a response as to a lifestyle for independent filmmakers, not in regards to a draught inbetween films.

Userinfocus, I'd like to challenge the notion that 5 years is normal between projects, because that seems too anecdotal. Most of Westmoreland's films since The Fluffer have been released 2-3 years apart from each other, 1-2 if you include the stuff on his imdb. Within this context, 4-5 years would be a pretty significant hole within his filmography. I think when I wrote the subheader, I was thinking of this phrase "After the Sundance win with Quinceañera we thought we’d hit the big time and things would get easier, but we were crawling through the desert for the next seven years looking for the next Indie-oasis." from https://filmmakermagazine.com/87369-five-questions-for-still-alice-writerdirectors-richard-glatzer-and-wash-westmoreland/ However, if you do believe the "drought" is too heavy-handed, I am open to substitutions. And you brought up a good point about the day job thing and I will remove it from the article. Thanks. — BriefEdits (talk) 05:05, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

@BriefEdits:Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I see what you're saying, but I'll also challenge the fact that while 5 years might've been longer than typical when contrasting against the rest of his credits, you could argue that 1-2 years was more frequent than most independent filmmakers. Not to mention, their "day jobs" were still in the field of directing (on America's Next Top Model). In addtion to that, they produced the film Pedro inbetween films they directed and not every film a writer/director is commissioned to work on gets announced or made. Certainly there are instsances where filmmakers are working steadily, yet haven't had a film go into production for years, despite the fact they are still developing projects, writing, and selling.Userinfocus (talk) 18:05, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Userinfocus, still, speaking within published works, there is a gap in his credits within the time frame of 2006 and 2012. (I'd ignore Pedro because I count producing as a separate matter entirely.) And I think that speculating on what was being commissioned/in production at the time isn't very reliable. I would like to redirect to the quote that I mentioned before wherein the Westmoreland said that period was a "drought." I think we can agree that he was still working in some capacity and, again, I'm open to rewording it to something else, like "slump", "downturn", or "slowdown." But it definitely wasn't business as usual. — BriefEdits (talk) 03:38, 14 March 2020 (UTC)