00:00 It's an honor to meet you today. I'm so excited to chat about the film.
00:04 I just wanted to start off by congratulating you.
00:07 I watched it and it really, really is going to speak volumes to so many audiences.
00:11 Oh good.
00:12 So it fearlessly portrays Rustin and his story towards the march,
00:16 but it also just shows the intimate parts of his life and his relationships with Elias.
00:21 So what influenced you to really want to draw so much attention to that aspect of his life to show audiences?
00:27 It's who he was. It's like, you know, it would be wonderful if we could isolate,
00:36 if we're focused on a job that we have to do and everything, every other corner of our life obeys.
00:43 But that doesn't, it's not what's happening. You know what I mean?
00:46 You know, if you're working, you have relationships, you have a family, you have responsibilities and things collide.
00:54 And that's part, I think, of the wonder and the potency of him is that the purity of his focus and that this happened,
01:04 and he organized this march in eight weeks and also trying to create dynamics that were,
01:10 and at the same time, he's also being challenged and under attack by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI
01:17 and the Kennedy brothers don't want this to happen. And at the same time, it's fictionalized.
01:22 He's starting a relationship with the person who is married.
01:26 And then he has a relationship with an ex who is helping to organize the march.
01:32 And it's the chaos of one's life. And how does one maintain one's focus, one's drive,
01:38 one's determination and one's clarity in the middle of all of that?
01:43 It's that's who we are. That's who we are. And I think it humanizes him.
01:48 I think it looks like us. I think it looks more like us.
01:51 So that therefore, hopefully we can see him and see not this marble statue,
01:56 but a human being endeavoring to do great and extraordinary things.
02:01 Absolutely. And I love what you said, just talking about all of the different components that make him up as a human being.
02:06 The movie also really focuses on intersectionality, talking about his queerness and his blackness,
02:11 and as well as others in the movie, like Anna Hedgman's marginalization as a black woman.
02:16 What do you hope people take away from this film when it comes to intersectionality?
02:20 Well, it's one of the things that I think is really fascinating and very moving.
02:27 I think it was about eight, nine years ago that I saw extensive footage of the march.
02:33 And I saw all these different faces from all over the country converging on Washington, D.C.,
02:39 which is very important to remember in 1963 was a segregated city.
02:45 The lunch counter scene at the very beginning was filmed at a lunch counter in Washington, D.C.,
02:53 and someone who knew it said this was segregated in 1963.
02:59 So you had all these people coming together from all over the country because they felt a responsibility.
03:06 They understood, whether they understood it intellectually or they understood it emotionally,
03:12 that it needn't look like you to be about you.
03:16 And that sense of grace and that sense of sensitivity and availability is very, very important.
03:24 And I think something that we need to reinvest in every single day of our lives.
03:28 Absolutely. And my last question I just wanted to ask,
03:31 was there a particular moment in Rustin's life that you were really excited to see represented in the film?
03:36 Oh, that's an interesting question.
03:40 Just I was very intrigued to see the scenes or to manifest the scenes where he's challenging and engaging his young team,
03:53 pushing them to dig deeper, to be smarter, to think more, to not stop each other's ideas.
04:01 And I was really excited about him instructing them because I think it's very important,
04:08 as I like to say, activism is a verb, not a noun.
04:12 You can call yourself an activist, but it's the details, the job, the work that you must do.
04:17 And I think that begins to embody his understanding of that and passing that information on to another generation,
04:25 passing on what he knows so that therefore those who can absorb it and do it and then pass that on and pass that on.
04:32 And that's how legacies are built.
04:33 Absolutely. Those are very strong scenes. Well, congratulations.
04:36 Thank you very much.
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