James baldwin: the price of the ticket summary

In 1979, just a cou­ple of months into his stint with 20/20, ABC’s fledg­ling tele­vi­sion news mag­a­zine, pro­duc­er and doc­u­men­tar­i­an Joseph Lovett was “beyond thrilled” to be assigned an inter­view with author James Bald­win, whose work he had dis­cov­ered as a teen.

Know­ing that Bald­win liked to break out the bour­bon in the after­noon, Lovett arranged for his crew to arrive ear­ly in the morn­ing to set up light­ing and have break­fast wait­ing before Bald­win awak­ened:

He hadn’t had a drop to drink and he was bril­liant, utter­ly bril­liant.

We couldn’t have been hap­pi­er.

Pio­neer­ing jour­nal­ist Sylvia Chase con­duct­ed the inter­view. The seg­ment also includ­ed stops at Lin­coln Cen­ter for a rehearsal of Baldwin’s play, The Amen Cor­ner, and the Police Ath­let­ic League’s Harlem Cen­ter where Bald­win (and per­haps the cam­era) s