*Sunday night (03-10-24) at the Oscars EURweb’s L. Marie Charles was holding it down in the press room and asked a question so salient that other sites like Deadline and Variety could not resist using it as well. [You’re very welcome, Deadline and Variety and other sites. 🙂 ]
And what was that the question, you’re no doubt wondering? Well, our query was directed to Cord Jefferson who took home the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “American Fiction” which he also directed. Watch the video above for Jefferson’s response.
Charles: I feel like you kind of foreshadowed your success with the character. Adam Brody’s. Get your tucks ready. We’re going to the big show. And so here we are. So I want you to speak to the importance of being recognized for a film that shined a light on the stereotypes and also kind of poked fun at the stereotypes of black characters in film.
Jefferson: Yeah, look, there’s a Victor Hugo quote that he says, nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And so I was very passionate about this film. Everybody who worked on this film was very passionate about it. Nobody was there for the money because we didn’t have any money. So people were there because they believed in it. And so to be here now and to receive this kind of response, it feels incredibly surreal. And I’m so grateful for it. And I think everybody on the film is so grateful for it. We didn’t have a huge marketing budget, and so we relied on word of mouth a lot and people who liked the film telling other people that they liked the film. And so, yeah, it is hopefully the lesson here, and it’s kind of what I tried to convey in my speech, is that there is an audience for things that are different. There is an appetite for things that are different. And a story with black characters that’s going to appeal to a lot of people doesn’t need to take place on a plantation, doesn’t need to take place in the projects, doesn’t need to have drug dealers in it, doesn’t need to have gang members in it, that there is an audience for different depictions of people’s lives and that there is a market for depictions of black life that are as broad and as deep as any other depictions of people’s lives.
About “American Fiction”
Based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, the film straddled the line between drama and satire to depict social commentary on microaggression and pigeonholing of Black creatives in the publishing and film industry. To tell this story, American Fiction centers around Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), an intelligent and jaded author frustrated by the high-profit margins on Black entertainment that relies on discriminatory behaviors and tropes. But, in wanting to challenge the construction and prove his point about the bias for Black narratives that are more palatable for white audiences, he uses an alias to create a stereotypical book that accidentally gains him critical acclaim and notoriety.
MORE NEWS AT EURWEB: Cord Jefferson’s ‘American Fiction’ is Winning! | WATCH
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