REDLINING Puts Empowerment on the Map

No matter how strong, smart, or successful we become, there’s always that quirky, queer kid within quivering at the big, bad world towering over our heads. Society wants to convince us that we’re just funny or just artsy or just weird, but here’s the truth: we’re just everything.

“As a gay man, you get limited,” assesses Jason Stuart, creator and star of the groundbreaking new short film Redlining. “People think of you as limited. And I’m anything but.” Indeed, Stuart is a mega-accomplished actor, writer, director and comedian with hundreds of credits to his name. Check him out on IMDb and bring a sherpa to navigate his mountain of mentions.

But he wasn’t always so confident. “I’m dyslexic and I was browbeaten and bullied as a kid for being gay and a little bit for being Jewish. And I would go into the theater, and I could see a movie or watch something on television or see a play and see something in a completely different light. I could see a story, and that was my education. So, the idea that somebody goes in this room and doesn’t know about redlining and doesn’t know about generational wealth. This is a big, big subject matter, redlining, but it’s a very small story about two families.”

The narrative spans 40 years in the lives of neighbors who must maneuver the racist realities of redlining, a discriminatory method of denying marginalized communities the ability to build and keep a home. “I wanted a quiet film. And I wanted to film in the style of Terrence Malick,” Stuart explains. “I’m a talker and nobody talks in this film very much… I feel like I’m watching somebody else. This character is not like me at all.”

The multitalented filmmaker discovered that once he closed his mouth, he opened his consciousness. “What my job is is to take my shoes off, put on the shoes of my Black siblings, and shut up and listen. It’s not my place to give my opinion. Because it’s not my experience.”

Stuart tapped into the universal injustices we all face, crafting a tale of two star-crossed men who pit a bigoted system against itself to carve out their life together. “I wrote the film originally myself, and I did a reading of it with my friend Lee Garlington, and I thought, ‘What can I do to make this better?’ Because she’s a wonderful writer, as much as she’s such a prolific actress. She’s been in over, God knows, 200 films and TV shows… And she said, ‘Look, I’ll write it with you.’”

Once their script was rock solid, it was time to cast the film. In classic Jason Stuart fashion, he hands this interviewer his phone and casually invites me to chat with Baywatch legend Alexandra Paul. Though I was woefully unprepared, she disarmed and dazzled in our brief, exclusive conversation.

“I always like to do homework on characters, and she was interesting because she ages and I’m actually taking care of my mother, who’s 90. So, when Jason said, ‘I want you to play her when she’s in her 80s,’ I’m like, well, first I was concerned because I was worried the makeup would look cheesy.”

But cheese was not on the menu, thanks to the brilliant makeup work of Amy Lederman. She allowed the actors to truly become their characters, losing themselves behind a tableau of seamless cosmetic effects. Ms. Paul was able to focus on the deeper themes of the film, commenting, “Most of white people’s wealth comes from homes that they inherited from their families. So Black people didn’t get that opportunity because of redlining, and it’s one of the reasons that there is an income disparity in our country now. All those people like Trump who say, ‘Whoa, you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps and yada, yada,’ it’s like, okay, yeah, well, their bootstraps were cut and they couldn’t even pull on them.”

As our chat winds to a close, she can’t help but share her endless admiration for Stuart. “Jason being such a close, close friend of mine, we know each other so well that actually I felt very comfortable with him and so I was able to connect with him immediately. It was really about my love for Jason. That was able to inform the mother character, even though he’s older than me, by the way. And also, he’s a wonderful director because he’s an actor, so he knows how to speak to actors, and he cares about motivation and moment.”

From the next room, Stuart interjects playfully that he’s not older. Their dynamic is sibling-rivalry-esque, which makes their on-screen chemistry so compelling, and it all reaches a fever pitch of emotion in the mother/son deathbed scene. “During my close up, she was in complete tears, she couldn’t even talk. She was in such tears and during her close up, I was in ugly tears. And if we used it, it would have been just way too self-indulgent. So, I used the other angles to show we were there for each other. Right? It worked better. The tears were there, but not in the same way, yeah. Not like a faucet.”

Stuart coins a phrase for the maudlin, overdramatic thespian theatrics he avoids. “I love that you can’t see the acting. There’s no schmackting.”

Schlove it!

Even though the subject matter may be heavy, the creative team found the silver lining in Redlining. Despite the government’s best efforts to keep folks down, they rise up by fudging their paperwork and finding gay romance in the deep south. As Stuart describes it: “Everybody grows an inch or two in this quiet story of people who are not telling everybody everything they do.”

Kareem Ferguson triumphs in the role of Stuart’s lifelong love interest, and the actor brought his real-life partner into the crew as lead hairstylist. “Kareem actually got his husband, Dennis Bailey, who’s nominated for an Emmy for Fallout,” narrates Stuart. “Susan Hopper did our sets, and she redid that house for four different decades, just by changing little things… I don’t know what to say about Shon LeBlanc – he had two and three outfits for every person. He had extra clothes. What is he doing? That’s just too much. But he was right. He was so prepared. Just wonderful. So, I had an incredible team of people.”

Striking a hushed, reverent tone, Stuart continues, “Billy, who was my editor and my DP [director of photography], Billy Clift, a filmmaker in his own right. He said, ‘Yeah, this is great and it’s just intimate.”

His shout-outs reach a crescendo as he turns his attention and affection to Redlining producer Steve Campbell. “Steve, for me, was my right-hand man,” beams Stuart. “When things didn’t work out, I could go to him, and he was terrific that way… He was indispensable. And he’s my friend, and I love him. He was there to hold my hand quite a bit. Because there were a lot of people, and a lot of personalities, and a lot of stuff to do in a very short amount of time. It was only a three-day shoot. But we rehearsed for one day with the company… Steve was very instrumental in helping me organize all of that.”

Campbell felt the urgency to bring Stuart’s vision to vibrant life. “Obviously, we had a timeline that we had to stick to, and we got it shot. I have to give credit to Jason, and I’m not just saying it because he is my friend. I truly think he has a great mind… I was skeptical because I thought, ‘These things take forever.’ I mean, I’ve been working on projects for years that haven’t happened.”

But failure wasn’t feasible once Campbell got hooked on the project. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so beautiful, and I related to it,” recounts the producer. “The story is important, and I think anyone that’s had any kind of adversity should be able to relate to it.”

While Stuart was in the weeds as director and star, Campbell was able to provide a big picture perspective. “When it’s a short film, you’ve got to get the point across quickly,” he argues. “Give people a chance, make everything fair. I believe in that.”

The proof is in the production. Campbell compares Redlining to one of the great gay filmmakers of all time. “It makes me kind of think of Todd Haynes, you know, that kind of feel.”

Well said, well earned.

Stuart is unveiling his opus at events ranging from the Hip Hop Film Festival in New York to Cinema Diverse in Palm Springs. The fact that queer audiences and Black audiences share a voracious appetite for Redlining speaks to both its universality and authenticity. But for Stuart, the bottom line is entertainment. He’s positively giddy over the reaction he received at his first screening. “People were there for two and a half hours after it. It was a school night… That was my first sign.”

And it won’t be the last. Redlining is poised to take awards season by storm, but Stuart refuses to take himself too seriously. He’s headlining a standup show at Agua Caliente Casino Palm Springs, noting: “Stephanie Hodge from The Comeback and my friend Ethan Herschenfeld will be my special guest comedians on September 18.” But the true star of the show will be Stuart’s real-life mom. “There’ll be more antics about my mother and her newfound stardom in the AT&T commercial that we’re in together. She actually said, ‘If they used me more in the commercial, people would like it better.’”

He is a whirlwind, he is a wit, he is a wonder, but when asked for a final comment to tie together all of his fabulous philosophies, Jason Stuart grows contemplative. After an earnest pause, he says simply yet profoundly, “Remember where we came from.”

History is written in the margins. We can’t be erased, we can’t be silenced, and we can’t be wiped off the map. Redlining reminds us that every time they try to eradicate us, they only succeed in empowering us. Our bonds are stronger than their boundaries.

Catch Redlining at a film festival near you! Screening soon in New York, San Francisco, Tarzana, Hollywood, Palm Springs, and more. For tickets and details visit JasonStuart.com/Redlining.