Writer-director Cord Jefferson is new to the directing game, but seems to have immediately cracked the code. His debut film, American Fiction, stars Jeffrey Wright as frustrated author and academic Thelonius “Monk” Ellison who resorts to writing a pseudonymous novel built around particularly egregious Black stereotypes in order to vent. Conceived primarily as a thought experiment to confront majority white publishers with what they claim to want, he’s instead treated to the wildest success of his career and a double life for which he’s quite unprepared. The film was adapted from the 2001 Percival Everett novel Erasure and is up for five Oscars next month — including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Jefferson tells The Treatment how he sees the quest for freedom as a central theme of the film. He explores the wild things people are capable of in attempting to attain said freedom through the microcosm of Monk’s story. He talks about how Robert Townsend’s 1987 film Hollywood Shuffle helped pave the way for American Fiction and how he hopes his film can do the same for future filmmakers.
More: Weekend film reviews: ‘The Zone of Interest,’ ‘American Fiction’
