TV Talk: Vibrant lead performance, meaty script elevate filmed-in-Pittsburgh biopic ‘Rustin’

It seems likely the Oscars will have at least one other biopic best picture nominee alongside “Oppenheimer:” Netflix’s filmed-in-Pittsburgh “Rustin” easily earns a spot among the superior films of 2023.

Streaming Nov. 17 on Netflix and playing at Waterworks Cinema Friday, Colman Domingo (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) delivers a studied, nuanced and often explosive performance as the astute, witty, defiant Bayard Rustin, a Quaker civil rights leader who spearheaded planning for the 1963 civil rights March on Washington.

But even as Rustin led the charge for greater acceptance for African Americans, he found himself discriminated against because of his sexuality.

“On the day that I was born Black, I was also born homosexual,” Rustin says. “They either believe in freedom and justice for all or they do not.”

And it’s not just Rustin who’s made to feel lesser than. The women in the movement aren’t given a seat at the table with the male civil rights leaders, much to the dismay of Anna Arnold Hedgeman (CCH Pounder, “NCIS: New Orleans”), a founding member of the National Organization of Women.

“Each of us are taught in ways both cunning and cruel that we are inadequate and incomplete,” Rustin notes. “And the easiest way to combat that feeling of not being enough is to find someone we consider less than — less than because they are poorer than us or because they are darker than us or because they desire someone our churches and our laws say they should not desire. When we tell ourselves such lies, start to live and believe such lies, we do the work of our oppressors by oppressing ourselves.”

There’s not a lot of speechifying in the “Rustin” script by Julian Breece (“Harlem,” “The First”) and Dustin Lance Black (“Milk,” “Under the Banner of Heaven”) but the two examples above give a sense of the themes at the heart of “Rustin.”

A smart, compact script (the movie runs just 106 minutes) coupled with Colman’s empathetic-yet-wily performance and the steady hand of director George C. Wolfe (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) ensure that “Rustin” largely avoids biopic cliches as it narrows its focus to a three-year period in the life of a civil rights figure largely forgotten to mainstream American history probably due, at least in part, to his sexuality.

In addition to Domingo and Pounder, “Rustin” stars Glynn Turman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) as a union leader in Rustin’s corner, Chris Rock as an NAACP leader who starts out as a Rustin antagonist, Audra McDonald (“The Good Fight”) as human rights activist Ella Baker, Aml Ameen (“I May Destroy You”) as Martin Luther King Jr., Jeffrey Wright (“Westworld”) as U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, who wants to sidetrack King and Adrienne Warren (“Women of the Movement”) as Claudia Taylor, a fictional character who has a tangled relationship to Rustin.

‘Rustin’ in Pittsburgh

A lot of “Rustin” was filmed in fall 2021 on sets inside soundstages in Warrendale but recognizable portions of Pittsburgh show up in the film, including Craig Street at Fifth Avenue in Oakland (about eight minutes into the movie as Rustin walks home to his apartment building in New York City) and Sixth Avenue in Downtown near the Duquesne Club with Trinity Cathedral in the background.

In a phone interview last month, Wolfe said “Rustin” shot on location more than when he filmed “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” adapated from the August Wilson play, in Pittsburgh.

“We were capturing the many varied and different looks of 1960s New York [in ‘Rustin’] and that was challenging but fun,” Wolfe said. “What I did not enjoy is that there were two damn trees in front of Bayard’s apartment and those leaves would not drop. I said, ‘I’m not filming there until the trees are barren. I want it to be the winter look.’ And those damn leaves just would not fall.

“I took it very personal,” Wolfe said, laughing. “They would not engage just to annoy me. There were things that we were able to do with CGI to make it feel a bit more winter.”

Other locations included James Laughlin Music Hall at Chatham University, Manchester on the North Side, the Frick Building in Downtown Pittsburgh for a phone booth scene, the Lower Panther Hollow Trail, South Side streets and several spots in Wilkinsburg.

While the March on Washington filmed largely in Washington, D.C., Wolfe said the steps of the Lincoln Memorial were built in Warrendale.

“We recreated the steps because there were very, very specific rules and lengths of time that we could shoot there [in D.C.],” Wolfe said. “So the speeches and the confrontations that [Rustin] had with the protectors of D.C. were filmed in Pittsburgh. And it’s good that we did because by the time we filmed [in D.C.] in August [2022], it was 120 degrees on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Rustin” used many extras cast in Pittsburgh and 11 were upgraded to cast members by the end of filming.

“They were really great, wonderful actors,” Wolfe said. “They fleshed out the team who were working with Bayard. We wanted to celebrate them and thank them for all their incredible work.”

“Rustin” was produced by Higher Ground, the production company of former U.S. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, who are executive producers on the film.

“They gave script notes and they had notes and comments on the final cut,” Wolfe said. “If they gave me 10 notes, I can’t say I did all of [their suggested changes] but I did some. They were very good [notes] because they’re both smart writers and therefore they’re both smart storytellers.”

I asked Wolfe if he might direct another film based on an August Wilson play. (Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” directed by Malcolm Washington, filmed in Atlanta earlier this year.)

“We’ll see,” Wolfe said.

And if he did direct another movie based on a Wilson play, would he try to film it in Pittsburgh?

“We’ll see,” he said. “That’s my second evasive answer.”

Canceled

Paramount+ canceled “Fatal Attraction,” “Rabbit Hole” and “Joe Pickett.”

CBS canceled low-rated game show “Loteria Loca.”