In conversation at the L.A. Times Studio at the Toronto International Film Festival, Wolfe discussed his new Netflix movie, his approach to the platform's viewership metrics and more.
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.
Yes, it was. I had been on the President’s Committee for Arts and Humanities for the two terms that he was there. So I had had some association. It was very interesting because everybody that I like to work with... it’s really wonderful and thrilling for me if you are also a storyteller — if you don’t just come up with the perfect shot, but you’re invested in making sure that the story and character [are] revealed in every single thing.
He took this group of people who were so young and said, “All right, every night, I want you to think about this march. Think about every second of it from the beginning. Are you excluding anything?” He was training young minds. So that when people were driving to D.C., when they stopped at a tollbooth, they were given a piece of paper, told where to go, where to park, what to do.
As it was all coming together, I was reading a scene or making adjustments or talking with the production designer. It was like, “Oh, Colman could do this.” And then after a while, his name just kept on emerging until, in essence, it became inevitable. I have not seen recently as good a rendering of the divisions within the movement that existed around this time. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about those tensions and why it felt to you like sort of a solid platform on which to build the drama.
The whole march on Washington was planned and solved and executed in eight weeks, which is phenomenal. And it engaged the entire country... This is the moment where you’re feeling the emotional and political and intellectual seismic shifts happening. In filmmaking, in storytelling, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a neutral choice. Choices you make either enhance the story you’re telling or distract from it. Neutrality doesn’t exist. I think the same thing is true in politics. I think the same thing is true in citizenship. What you’re doing either enhances the vision or distracts. And I think he imbued the younger people who followed him with that sense of responsibility.
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