When 'Rustin' co-writer Julian Breece was told the film could 'never get made,' he made it anyway

A good story has the power to spark a "revolution," attested Rustin writer Julian Breece in an inspiring speech at the Los Angeles Equality Awards.

Accepting the Equality Visibility Award at the Saturday gala, Breece — who cowrote the acclaimed biopic on the late Black gay activist Bayard Rustin with Dustin Lance Black — charted his own journey of bringing the life of the unsung architect of the Civil Rights Movement to the big screen. It all began with seeing a photo on a blog.

Breece, a millennial, recalled that he grew up amid the "stigmas and misinformation" following the AIDS crisis, when the word gay was considered a slur and he had no out role models in his personal life or in lessons learned at school. That lack of positive representation took its toll. "Looking back, I realized that the negative stories I was being told about an important part of myself caused me to withdraw," he said. "I started to do whatever I could to make that part of me, that part that was different, invisible."

That all changed one night when he snuck down to the basement of his family home to surf the web using dial-up internet connection. He saw a photo of Rustin with Martin Luther King Jr. on the blog of a Black activist. "Just seeing that photo of the great Dr. King standing with his openly gay mentor, it changed my life in a small and significant way," he said. "It told me that the narrative I was being sold about gay people, it wasn't the whole story, and it pushed me to learn more."

When Breece began conducting formal research on Rustin a decade ago as an established Hollywood screenwriter, he was struck by how the late activist's story of planning the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom would make a compelling film, as it culminated in a great scene from American history, the peaceful protest on the Washington Mall where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

"With that one epic scene, I was able to present a counter narrative to fear mongering and racially divisive rhetoric that was being sold to the American masses by a smaller number of bigots in power," said Breece, a screenwriter-director also known for the award-winning miniseries When They See Us about the Central Park Five. "It it also signals for Black Americans that there was strength, power and safety in numbers, that our dream can become reality. But that dream has to be seen to be believed."

Breece would later be told by "a powerful Hollywood agent" in 2015 that a film about a Black gay activist "would never ever get made." The now Los Angeles resident then drew inspiration from the work of Equality California. The nation's largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization "set the stage for revolutionary change," he noted, by sharing the stories of same-sex couples with the Golden State and America in order to change hearts and minds about marriage equality. That same year he was told those words by an agent, same-sex marriage became the law of the land. So he shouldered on, and Rustin's lead (and Out cover star), Colman Domingo, went on to receive an Oscar nomination this year for bringing Rustin to life.

"Even when your dream feels impossible, tell the story," he urged.

In addition to Breece, Equality California honored Greg Sarris, chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, with its Community Leadership Award. Senator Alex Padilla was also a featured speaker. Hosted by RuPaul's Drag Race winner Sasha Colby and held at Los Angeles’s Fairmont Century Plaza, the event marked the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles Equality Awards.

Rustin is streaming on Netflix.