Highlights abound on the current festival circuit for Cord Jefferson–with two in particular standing out for American Fiction (Amazon MGM Studios), which marks his directorial debut. The first major splash came last month at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where American Fiction won the People’s Choice Award, a perennial bellwether in the Oscar race. Historically the audience award, voted on by festival attendees, has almost always translated into Academy Award contention. In fact, every People’s Choice winner at TIFF since 2012 has gone on to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
Fast forward to this week on the concluding day (10/29) of the AFI Fest in Los Angeles, and American Fiction again scored a highlight–but of a different variety–for writer-director Jefferson who after the screening of his film was interviewed on stage by groundbreaking director, writer, actor and comedian Robert Townsend. Jefferson shared that when he was a youngster, he was deeply moved and motivated by Townsend’s feature, Hollywood Shuffle. Jefferson described getting the chance to meet Townsend at the AFI Fest–and then share a back-and-forth dialogue with him on stage–as being a huge honor.
Jefferson recalled seeing Hollywood Shuffle when he was eight years old and it stirred something inside him. He described Townsend’s satirical film about stereotypes of African Americans in film and television as being simultaneously serious about racism and its impact, but not self-serious. The 1987 film inspired Jefferson and eventually helped set him on a circuitous path to pursue being an artist. Jefferson declared to the festival audience that without Townsend–and the career-shaping influence of Hollywood Shuffle–there would be no American Fiction. Without Townsend, affirmed Jefferson, “I’m not sitting here today” on stage at the AFI Fest.
Jefferson wrote and directed American Fiction, which is based on the 2001 novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett. Jefferson recalled that upon reading the first 20 pages of “Erasure,” he knew that this was a story he wanted to adapt. Fifty pages in, he felt strongly that this was a film he should also direct. Jefferson reached out to Everett who–apparently feeling the aspiring director’s passion for the story–gave him the rights to the book free of charge for six months. This gave Jefferson time to write his adaptation, at which point the two could confer and then arrive at a deal if they felt the project was properly progressing. Jefferson said he remains indebted to and appreciative of Everett’s graciousness and generosity in giving him the chance to delve into the story and lay the foundation for the film.
American Fiction confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a professor of English literature. He is both a respected and frustrated novelist, fed up and disillusioned with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own which propels him to a lucrative publishing deal, the promise of a feature film adaptation–and in the process into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain. The cast also includes Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae and Erika Alexander.
Jefferson acknowledged that as a first-time filmmaker he initially felt some trepidation giving direction to an actor the caliber of Wright, comparing it to someone trying to tell Michael Jordan how to make a jump shot. But Jefferson soon found Wright and for that matter his entire cast and crew to be cut from collaborative cloth, making his directorial debut far less daunting. That esprit de corps and commitment of all to do justice to the story made being involved in American Fiction, affirmed Jefferson, “the greatest honor of my life.”
Townsend asked Jefferson how different his feature adaptation was from Everett’s novel. Jefferson estimated that about two-thirds of the movie is “new stuff” injected into or revising the storyline. But the spirit of the book remains intact.
While American Fiction is Jefferson’s first foray into features and directing, he is no stranger to critically acclaimed fare. For Watchmen, Jefferson won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series alongside Damon Lindelof. Jefferson’s writing credits also include Succession and the philosophical comedy, The Good Place–shows for which he garnered two Writers Guild Awards and an NAACP Image Award. His other work spans such shows as Station Eleven, Master of None, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and Survivor’s Remorse.
Prior to making his way into television, Jefferson was a journalist, most notably serving as the West Coast editor for Gawker. During his tenure in journalism, Jefferson also wrote for such outlets as The New York Times, National Geographic, NPR, USA Today, MSNBC, Bookforum and The Daily Beast, among others. This was part of the alluded to circuitous route he took to television and filmmaking. At first, he saw journalism as a way to ease into writing–and it became respectable enough when he got the White House beat, covering the Obama administration.
But Jefferson’s satirical coverage of a story about white surfer teens who were caught looting and causing a disturbance in the affluent seaside community of Huntington Beach, Calif., caught the eye of TV series creator and executive producer Mike O’Malley. Jefferson’s tongue-in-cheek white kids’ problem piece, which ran on MSNBC, underscored the danger of punk music, lacrosse camp and surfing. Jefferson described his commentary on white kids raising havoc as being analogous to what a Fox News primetime host might say if Black kids did the same thing. A Bill O'Reilly, related Jefferson, would ask assertively where their parents were and how things could go so wrong.
Upon seeing the report, O’Malley sought out Jefferson and ultimately offered him a gig as a writer. Jefferson had up to that point viewed writing as “a lonely thing” and “a solitary exercise”–which it was for him as a journalist. But being put in a TV writers' room was the antithesis of that. Writing suddenly become “a collaborative thing,” and it opened up more possibilities for Jefferson who embraced this new world. Still, there are pitfalls in even the most promising world. Jefferson recalled at one point being rocked back on his heels when a TV show he had nurtured and which appeared to be on the verge of coming to fruition instead fell by the wayside.
Helping him recover was coming across the novel “Erasure,” which set the wheels into motion for what became American Fiction, currently slated for release in select theaters on December 15 before going wide the week thereafter.
During the AFI Fest session, Townsend assessed that Jefferson struck in American Fiction that rare balance of being funny, thought provoking and emotionally touching–a feat all the more impressive when achieved by a first-time director.
(This is the first installment of a 16-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com, with select installments also in print issues. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards gala ceremony. Nominations for the 96th Academy Awards will be announced on January 23, 2024, The 96th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 10, 2024.)
