'Hell no,' 'Rustin' director George C. Wolfe doesn't read reviews: 'It's giving away power'
TORONTO — Bayard Rustin mentored the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War II, lived a relatively open gay life in midcentury America, recorded an album, appeared on Broadway and organized the 1963 March on Washington. Despite his remarkable resume, though, his role in the civil rights movement has often been treated as a footnote in the stories of other men.
George C. Wolfe intends to change that.
With "Rustin," written by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, the director of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" returns to Netflix to correct the record. Starring Colman Domingo as Rustin (in a performance already generating Oscar buzz), the film makes its subject the fulcrum of a turning point in the movement, marshaling the fractious energies of the NAACP, CORE, SNCC, SCLC and labor unions to stage the largest peaceful demonstration in U.S. history at the time.
In conversation at the L.A. Times Studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, Wolfe discussed "Rustin," the charismatic political radical and logistical genius who inspired it, the ongoing Hollywood strikes and more. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why do you think Bayard Rustin is not a household name of American history?
A: At the end of the March on Washington, a person, a personality, a figure, a leader was launched into the international stratosphere. And that was Martin Luther King. So that's a fact. And we tend to have very simplistic understandings of history. A community makes something happen, but we choose a star. And Martin Luther King was, without question, worthy of being chosen as a star ...
The thing that makes [Rustin] an extraordinary figure for a film makes him a complicated figure for history. He was the most out version of an out gay person that probably existed in the streets of New York City in 1963. So I think that was at play. And I think that he did not fit easy into a
