Reading a "closet screenplay": Hollywood, James Baldwin's Malcolms and the threat of historical irrelevance

African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005 by Brian Norman

Shortly after Malcolm's murder in 1965, Hollywood approached Baldwin to adapt the Autobiography. By 1970, aware that he was the "Great Black Hope to the Great White Father" (No Name), Baldwin reluctantly agreed and moved from Harlem to Hollywood (by way of Europe). The studio disliked the effect of Baldwin's early drafts and forced upon him Arnold Perl as a "technical assistant." Baldwin quickly realized that his script would be technically cut down to easily digested action scenes. In fact, Baldwin's former secretary, David Leeming, notes that familiar actor-heroes were considered for the role of Malcolm X, even Charlton Heston--"darkened up a bit" (Leeming 297). Anticipating the inevitable, Baldwin hastily published his original version of the script in 1972 as One Day, When I was Lost, and split town. (5) Baldwin later reflected on the cultural pull of Hollywood in The Devil Finds Work (1976), but by then he was largely dismissed as a relic of a past integrationist age. In one negative review, Orde Coombs rejects the essay's "undirected rage" and considers Baldwin's tortured relationship with Hollywood naive. According to Coombs, Baldwin should have known all along that Hollywood was nothing but a cash register waiting to be filled. In 1976, on the other side of the rise of Black Power, anything associated with American capitalist icons were inherently complicit and therefore defunct.

On his side of 1976, however, Baldwin moved to Hollywood to demand Malcolm X's continued relevance. Malcolm X's protest is widely portrayed as a constantly evolving vision. The choice of what stage, location, or version of Malcolm X one chooses to believe or represent becomes a crucial question. The two popular versions of Malcolm X--The Autobiography and Spike Lee's film--present models where earlier protest messages are discarded at each developmental stage. In his "scenario," however, Baldwin brings together protest moments that do not dissipate or die when their speaker (Malcolm X) leaves the stage. Baldwin envisioned the moving picture version of "Malcolm X" as a means of stirring things up: presenting disparate stages of Malcolm in one shot. To do this, Baldwin makes a subtle but fundamental break from the Autobiography and Lee's film with regard to Malcolm's names. In the Autobiography and in Lee's film, we learn Malcolm's given surname half way through--at the moment it is cast off. In stark opposition, in Baldwin's "scenario" all four of Malcolm's names exist together on page three. Malcolm states, "I have had so many names" (One Day 3). Baldwin employs multimedia technologies to present--in one location--"Malcolm Little," "Malcolm X," "Omowale," and "El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz." While the audio track follows the replacement of Malcolm's X by the ceremonial name Omowale ("the son who has returned"), Baldwin simultaneously offers two more images of nominal inscription: El Hajj Malik El Shabazz in the Book of the Holy Register of True Muslims and Malcolm Little in a family Bible in 1925. Malcolm's story disrupts distinct stages of Black history; rather, Malcolm is a historical participant whose conflicting naming ceremonies navigate America's racist struggles.