Dava Whisenant: Finding Creativity Outside Her Comfort Zone

No Time to be Timid

Dava Whisenant, founder and president of Cactus Flower Films, is a master storyteller who has stories to tell, and she tells them with honesty and humor. For more than 20 years, she’s worked in narrative and nonfiction film as an editor — from The Late Show with David Letterman to the Emmy-winning and Oscar- short-listed documentary short The Flagmakers — and now as a director. The award-winning documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway, was her directorial debut, for which she won Best Director at the Tribeca Film Festival and a Writer’s Guild Award for Best Documentary Screenplay. We talk about her creative process, the necessity of a team, the financial challenges of a creative life, the value of being scared, and the importance of inspirational mugs!

Takeaways

• Surrounding yourself with a team of good-hearted people, helps you get you through the hard times
• The creative process requires resilience —particularly with those big dreams that take a while to realize.
• It may not always be comfy, but sometimes it pays to keep your overhead low so you can take more creative chances.
• And the greatest rewards lie outside your comfort zones.

Resources:

Learn more about Dava:

www.cactusflowerfilms.com

Completed films:

Bathtubs Over Broadway

Take That Step (finale song in Bathtubs Over Broadway)

The Flagmakers

Two Trains Runnin’

Butterfly in the Sky

Diane Warren: Relentless

The subject of her work in progress:

Thomas Jackson

Learn more about her co-writer Steve Young

Steve Young

And listen to him on No Time to be Timid!

My attempt at a film short:

How to Dye Your Hair at Home (During a Global Pandemic)

A useful book to discover where your gifts are:

The Genuis Zone by Gay Hendricks