If Beale Street Could Talk is an adaptation of Baldwin’s fifth novel, written and directed by Barry Jenkins, who was nominated for best director and scored a screenwriting Oscar for 2016’s Moonlight, which also won the Academy Award for best picture. Born 1924 in Harlem, Baldwin became the prophetic voice of black literature, expressing African American angst, anger, and aspirations in novels like his semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953, and in essays like The Fire Next Time, published in 1963.īut, although Baldwin is heralded as an American icon, none of the prolific writer’s fiction has ever been adapted into a U.S.-made, theatrically released feature film-until now. The quotation, of course, is from James Baldwin, who made the comment during a 1961 WBAI interview with Nat Hentoff. In the Netflix racial satire series Dear White People, a black character quotes “Baldwin” to a white person, saying “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” The clueless caucasian is impressed by the profundity of “Alec Baldwin.” Kiki Layne debuts her screen acting career as Tish Rivers in If Beale Street Could Talk, a film adapted from James Baldwin’s book of the same name.
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