“Rustin”: Read the script for the pic that honors an often-forgotten civil rights icon

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series, which highlights the year’s most talked about screenplays, continues Quiet, Netflix biopic about civil rights icon Bayard Rustin. Colman Domingo stars in the film, directed by Tony winner George C. Wolfe and coming to theaters and streaming after its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in November.

The script, co-written by Julian Breece (who worked on the story for years) and Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black, focuses on one of the key architects of the 1963 March on Washington, where more than 200,000 people followed Martin Luther King’s ” I” sang. .” “Do you have a … dream”. Talking about the National Mall. Rustin was a pillar of the civil rights movement and joined figures such as King and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Ella Baker, although he was openly gay. often having to work behind the scenes at the time, he challenged authority and never apologized for who he was or what he believed.

In addition to Domingo, the cast also includes Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, Aml Ameen, Gus Halper, CCH Pounder, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Johnny Ramey and Michael Potts as well as Jeffrey Wright and Audra McDonald.

The film’s executive producers include Barack and Michelle Obama of Higher Ground, as well as Mark R. Wright, Alex G. Scott, David Permut, Daniel Sladek and Chris Taaffe. Quiet was the first narrative film for Higher Ground; As president, Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts. It was in 2013, more than 25 years after Rustin’s death and ten years before this film was released in theaters.

Bruce Cohen, Tonia Davis and Wolfe of Higher Ground are producers and form a reteam of Cohen and Black milk, about the events leading up to the assassination of California’s first openly gay politician, Harvey Milk. This screenplay earned Black his 2009 Oscar for original screenplay.

Click below to read it Quiet Script.