Cord Jefferson (‘American Fiction’): ‘I’m really happy people are coming in and enjoying themselves’

“American Fiction” has won over audiences around the world since its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Often literally: the debut film from writer and director Cord Jefferson has received multiple audience awards from major festivals, including top honors from Toronto attendees.

“From the very beginning, I wanted to make a movie that felt like it was a big-tent film – that it was inviting to a lot of different kinds of people. I didn’t want to make a movie that was for people in New York and Los Angeles,” Jefferson tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview as part of our Meet the Experts: Film Directors panel. “I’m 41, and this is the most divided I’ve ever seen our nation, and, in many ways, the entire world. The only way we move past that reality is if we can find ways to sort of talk to each other and not retreat to our own corners, and just live in our own bubbles of our own news, our own information, and our own entertainment and our own music. I just think that there needs to be some sort of cohesion amongst people again.”

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“American Fiction” is Jefferson’s attempt to bridge those divides. Based on the book “Erasure” by Percival Everett, the film focuses on an author and teacher named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) who has become frustrated and disillusioned by the publishing industry and the way it commoditizes Black trauma. But after suffering through a personal tragedy and more professional slights, Monk uses a pseudonym to write a reductive and frequently offensive book in an effort to call out the hypocrisy he abhors. When it becomes a huge success, it puts Monk in a perilous position that threatens both his career and relationships.

“I understand issues of race and issues of identity and issues of sexuality, these are important issues – and sometimes they have fatal consequences. I understand people’s impulse to be self-serious about these things,” Jefferson, an Emmy winner for “Watchmen,” says. “But I didn’t want to make a movie that felt like that. I think there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And I think that there’s more than one way to build empathy. And I think one of those ways is inviting people in and sort of like letting them laugh and saying, like, look, this is all a little ridiculous. Come in and enjoy yourself and laugh and have a good time. And, you know, sit there next to a stranger who may think differently from you politically, or about race, or about identity, and find something where you can meet in the middle. To me was always the goal.”

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“American Fiction” from MGM is out in theaters in limited release on December 15 before a nationwide rollout on December 22, but Jefferson notes that the film has already played successfully to large and diverse audiences – all of whom have responded to the satire, even when it’s about them.

‘There was a woman that came up to me in Savannah, Georgia, where we showed it at the Savannah Film Festival – she was an older white woman, and she said, ‘You know, I realized halfway through the movie that I was laughing at myself. But it felt so good,’” Jefferson recalls. “I think that there really is a desire for people to take a breath a little bit and stop being so tense, and to find some joy. And I think people are excited to go to movie theaters and laugh and have that communal experience of what it feels like to laugh with a bunch of people and experience these emotions with a bunch of people. That was the move I wanted to make. And I’m really happy that people are coming in and enjoying themselves.”

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