On his 49th birthday Westmoreland gave an interview to Radio Leeds telling many personal stories about his life.
Wash Westmoreland was born Paul Westmoreland in Leeds, England, on 4 March 1966. His father was a maintenance Engineer for the CEGB and his mother worked as a receptionist at a local hair salon. Westmoreland earned his college degree in Politics and East Asian Studies at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Fukuoka University in Japan, graduating in 1990. He moved to the United States in 1992, initially living in New York City, then moving to New Orleans and finally to Los Angeles in 1995.
Glatzer and Westmoreland's first collaboration was The Fluffer, a look at obsession, addiction and power relationships in the gay porn industry. It premiered at Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals in 2001 and secured US distribution from First Run Features. It received mixed positive reviews and gained almost instant cult status, John Waters including it in his famous series Ten Movies That Will Corrupt You. The film starred Michael Cunio, Roxanne Day, Scott Gurney, and Deborah Harry. Around this time, he gave a candid interview about his experiences in the industry to Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air.
Glatzer originally heard of a book about Errol Flynn's last love affair The Big Love through his mentor, Jay Presson Allen, the Screenwriter of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cabaret. The story is told by Flynn's girlfriend's mother, Florence Aadland with co-writer Tedd Thomey and has been praised by the likes of william Styron and W.H. Auden as the ultimate unreliable narrator story. Glatzer and Westmoreland started researching the screenplay in 2003, earning the trust of Florence's daughter, Beverly, and the friendship of author Tedd Thomey and Flynn's chauffeur in his final years, Ronnie Shedlo. They wrote the first draft of the screenplay in 2007 but it was not until 2011, and the attachment of Kevin Kline, that things started to move forward. Killer Films' Christine Vachon and Pam Koffler came on to produce, and Susan Sarandon and Dakota Fanning signed on for the mother-daughter team of Florence and Beverly. Production took place in Atlanta Georgia in 2013. The city's various locations were used to represent Los Angeles, New York, French Equatorial Africa, Cuba and Vancouver.
Working alone, Westmoreland made a documentary during the 2004 election season, following four Log Cabin Republicans as they responded to President George W. Bush's initiative to alter the US Constitution to ensure that marriage was only legal between a man and a woman. The documentary was produced for Andrew Cohen at Bravo, and Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato at World of Wonder. An extended version of the film premiered at the AFI festival in 2004 to a riotous response. It ended up winning the festival's documentary prize and gaining a distribution deal on DVD.
Made for a budget of under $500,000, and featuring many first-time actors, Quinceañera ended up winning both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. It went on to win the prestigious Humanitas Prize, the John Cassavetes Prize at the Spirit Award in 2007, and many other film festival prizes all over the world. It was picked up for the US by Sony Pictures Classics and distributed in over 25 countries worldwide.
Based on a book written by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is a movie about a fifty-year-old linguistics professor who develops early onset Alzheimer's disease. Glatzer and Westmoreland were hired to adapt the book in 2011 by UK-based producing duo Lex Lutzus and James Brown. Killer Films' Christine Vachon and Pam Koffler then came on as US production partners and Maria Shriver and Elizabeth Gelfand Stearns came on as executives and co-executive producers. Julianne Moore was Glatzer and Westmoreland's first choice to play Alice. She was soon joined by Kristen Stewart and Kate Bosworth, who had been a long time fan of the book. Alec Baldwin then came on to round out the cast, he and Moore having worked together on the TV show 30 Rock.
The movie premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2013 to a mixed critical response. Several critics praised Kline's performance as Oscar worthy, whereas other seemed confounded by the movie's lack of a moral stance. Glatzer and Westmoreland's intent had always been to focus on the permission for the relationship, afforded by the mother, rather than its morality.
The movie was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, and released in December 2014. Some critics have suggested a connection between Glatzer's own battle with illness and the raw, honest depiction of illness in the film. Glatzer died from ALS in March 2015. Moore won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. To date, the movie has grossed just under $42 million in its worldwide box office.
