Black queer icon James Baldwin will be the subject of a new biopic starring black queer icon Billy Porter.
This has been a passion project for Porter, who is teaming up with Dan McCabe to adapt the 1994 book James Baldwin: A Biography by David Leeming. Longtime mover and shaker Byron Allen will be producing through Allen Media Group Motion Pictures.
Porter quoted Baldwin in his 2019 Emmy winning speech:
“James Baldwin said, ‘It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.’ I have the right, you have the right, we all have the right!”
Baldwin is a cornerstone of American activism and literature. Our own Stephen Rutledge has a great overview of Baldwin’s influence:
Although he spent a great deal of his life abroad, James Baldwin (1924-1987) always remained a quintessentially American writer. He published 26 books, including the novels, Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Another Country (1962). He never ceased to reflect on his experience as a black man in white America. In essays, novels, plays and public speeches, the eloquent voice of Baldwin spoke of the pain and struggle of African-Americans and the saving power of brotherhood.
In the early 1960s, overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility to the times, Baldwin left his adopted home in Paris and returned to the USA take part in the Civil Rights Movement. Traveling throughout the South, he began work on an explosive book about black identity and racial struggle, The Fire Next Time (1963). It became a bestseller, and Baldwin ended up on the cover of Time magazine.
Porter needs an Oscar to complete his EGOT, and it sounds as if he’s going for it with this one! He said in his announcement via Hollywood Reporter:
“As a Black queer man on this planet with relative consciousness, I find myself, like James Baldwin said, ‘in a rage all the time.’ I am because James was. I stand on James Baldwin’s shoulders, and I intend to expand his legacy for generations to come.”
This is going to be a landmark moment in queer cinema!
Images: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon (Porter) UPPA/Photoshot / Avalon (Baldwin)
