A Conversation with a Wonderful Man: Baldwin, the Author, the Feature, and His Unfinished Movie “One Day When I Was Lost”

Baldwin never went to college, but he read, by his own count, every book in the library. Remarkably, he never received any of the major literary awards. He wrote essay, novel, short story, song, children’s literature, drama, poetry, and, of course, his famous screenplay. He was hired to write the script for a Malcolm X movie, which he did reluctantly. Hollywood made it into a documentary instead and then never released it, leaving Baldwin to publish it himself in book form, as “One Day When I Was Lost.”