Free at last! Free at last!
In today’s Oscar noms, in between the Barbies and the Oppenheimers and the Killers of Flower Moons is a film you might not have heard of (you might, we’re not sure how on top of things you are what with the busy lives we’re all leading).
It’s called Rustin. Yeah, that’s it up there.
And nominated in the Best Actor category among your Bradley Coopers and your Cillian Murphys is one Colman Domingo who plays Bayard Rustin in that very film.
A true story, co-written by Tom Daly’s old man Dustin Lance Black and produced by none less than Barack and Michelle Obama, Rustin tells the story of the 100,000-person march on Washington that ushered in equality legislation in the US back in the 1960s. Baynard, an inspirational activist with swishy tendencies, multiple boyfriends and a tooth missing from the time he refused to move back on a bus and was attacked by police, was the man behind that march despite opposition from pretty much everyone up to and including - for a moment - his good friend Martin Luther King Jr.
Other black activists, considering his barely concealed homosexuality bad PR for the movement, attempted to suppress him, shame him and sack him… but they should have known Baynard better than that. ‘On the day I was born black, I was also born a homosexual,’ he says to Martin Luther King Jr. on the day black civil rights association the NAACP tried to dump him. ‘They either believe in freedom and justice for all. Or they do not.’
With a snazzy, jazzy soundtrack and words of wisdom you’ll actually want to write down, it cracks along apace with great performances by the likes of Audra McDonald, Chris Rock and CCH Pounder while Mr. Domingo’s performance is so highly enjoyable you almost forget he’s a gay icon, post-humous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and pillar of our community. Oh and you can see the whole thing on Netflix, right now!
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