James Baldwin's screenplay adaptation of [The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley] now published as One Day When I Was Lost, is no substitute for the original. Unfortunately, it is not much worth reading at all, except for those who have a special interest in Baldwin's career and its curious downward spiral during the last years. What ever has happened to him, anyway? He seems to have become increasingly isolated from America and its problems, perhaps even from himself, during the 1960s. This screenplay, about which there was a lot of talk just a few years ago, may have been a last major effort on his part to come to terms with something important in his own life. Perhaps on this level Baldwin has succeded—or else why let us see it at all? He certainly has not written a produceable script. It is, first of all, about twice as long and three times as talky as any movie would dare be today. Secondly—and more important—it carries no sense of story with it at all. It would, I think, be utterly incomprehensible to one who had not read the Haley book. All in all, it was probably unwise of Baldwin to publish One Day When I Was Lost, for it adds nothing to Malcolm and can only detract from its author's reputation.
Bruce Cook, "'One Day When I Was Lost'," in Commonweal (copyright © 1973 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.), Vol. XCIX, No. 2, October 12, 1973, p. 47.
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