'American Fiction': After a decade of rejection, Cord Jefferson made one of the best movies of the year

After winning the People's Choice Award for best film at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Cord Jefferson's American Fiction, starring Jeffrey Wright, is finally in theatres, and is certainly among the best movies of the year.

American Fiction release date: In theatres Dec. 22
Director: Cord Jefferson
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Leslie Uggams, Issa Rae, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody
Runtime: 117 minutes

What is 'American Fiction' about?

American Fiction is based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett.

Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Wright) is an author and university English literature professor. After his last few books weren't particularly successful, he's having a hard time trying to sell his new novel, based on Aeschylus’s "The Persians." The hottest book at the moment is one from Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) titled "We’s Lives in Da Ghetto," and the feedback Monk continues to get is that his book needs to be "Blacker."

Monk is absolutely not a fan of Sintara's book, criticizing it for being a collection of stereotypes of the "Black experience," and he wants nothing to do with it.

That's until one night when Monk decides to start typing out his own story, full of tropes likes poverty and gang violence, and titles it "My Pafology." Monk brings it to his agent, played by John Ortiz, and the book sells, but Monk moves forward by using an alias as the author, Stagg R. Leigh.

While trying to manage the success of this book that Monk really just wrote as a prank, he's also helping to care for his ailing mother, played by the legendary Leslie Uggams, and begins dating his neighbour Coraline (Erika Alexander).

American Fiction is blend of a clever satire and comedy, with a sweet love story.

'I wish more people felt like they can be artists'

This is a phenomenal feature film debut for Jefferson, who previously worked on TV shows including Watchmen and The Good Place, but he's also an incredibly talented and accomplished journalist.

Speaking to Yahoo Canada in September, during TIFF, Jefferson shared that one of the reasons he started his career in journalism was because he didn't know a lot of creatives and it didn't seem like a realistic career path. Growing up in Arizona, it seemed to him that great artists all lived in New York or Los Angeles, or London or Paris, and came from wealthy, artistic families.

"I think the reason why I actually started in journalism was because it allowed me to scratch this creative itch," Jefferson said. "I knew that I wanted to write, but I don't think that I ever allowed myself to think that I might be able to write fiction, for instance, or write screenplays, it just felt like, OK I'm allowed to be creative here, but this is as far as I want to go, because it feels safer."

When Mike O'Malley first reached out to Jefferson, having seen his journalism work, asking him to work on a TV show, that's when things changed.

"I didn't have any industry connections. I didn't have any inroads. So I was just like, 'Well that's for other people,'" Jefferson said. "So when he asked me to do that, I leapt at the opportunity and that is how I entered the industry."

"I didn't sort of actually pursue it myself because I was too intimidated and felt like I didn't belong here, and then once I got there, ... I honestly believe that if you are a storyteller, you're a storyteller. If you can tell a story around a campfire that keeps people engaged, you can probably write an interesting article. If you can write an interesting article, you can probably write a novel. If you can write a novel you can probably write a screenplay. I think that these skills are translatable to other passions and pursuits."

Jefferson revealed that two of his "literary heroes" are Joan Didion and James Baldwin, who both have a varied body of writing work.

"I wish that I would have sort of taken a stab at it earlier," Jefferson said. "I allowed myself to sort of trick myself into thinking that it wasn't for me, and sometimes I think that these kinds of professions have intentional barriers around them because people like to keep the talent pool smaller, to sort of allow them to have more opportunities sometimes."

"I wish more people felt like they can be artists. I feel like I found the thing that I really, really love and I am worried that if that guy hadn't emailed me that one day, just out of the blue, that maybe I would never be here right now, because I wouldn't have pursued it myself. So I just wish that I considered myself capable of doing art earlier."

A 'collaborative' ensemble of talented actors

In terms of actually working on American Fiction, Jefferson was initially "terrified" to take on a version of Everett's novel.

"It wasn't just thinking about the audience, it was thinking that I don't want to take this thing that I really love, and think is really beautiful and special, and degrade it in any way," Jefferson said. "So that was always at the forefront of my mind, just because it's an incredibly important piece of art to me."

"Before [Percival Everett] was willing to give me the rights to the book, he and I had a conversation on the phone and then he gave me the rights, and then before he signed off on the deal, he asked to read the script. So I sent him the script and he read that and sort of gave me his blessing, and then signed the deal. Then I just showed Percival and his wife, who's another author, Danzy Senna, who's an amazing person, I showed them the film last year and he was really enthusiastic about it."

A highlight for Jefferson was being able to work with such an impressively talented cast, but it did come with some concerns for Jefferson, being a first-time feature film director.

"One of the biggest concerns was that I was going to be working with such high calibre talent that it was going to make me feel even more like an amateur," Jefferson said. "But when I got in there, I realized that the people that I was working with, and Jeffrey at the very outset, and then everybody else came after him, but just working with really collaborative people."

"Leslie Uggams has been doing this for decades and decades. ... The fact that she's willing to trust me with her decades of talent and legendary history in this in this industry, I just feel so honoured that they were willing to do that, and it made the entire process much easier."

Jefferson has nothing but praise for Wright and was particularly excited about seeing the actor in a leading role, along with bending the expectations some may have about other cast members as well.

"Jeffrey Wright's in Batman and 007, he's in the most massive movies in the world, he's in all these Wes Anderson films, he can work with a lot of different, very, very experienced people, and so for him to trust me and say, 'I'm going to work with a first-time filmmaker who's never even written a film and never directed anything,' and put his faith and trust in me to do that, that just meant the world to me," Jefferson said.

"Jeffrey is very frequently, like I said, in these major movies, but he's not the leading man, and I think people have a vision of what Sterling K. Brown, the kind of work that he does. I think this is a departure from the This Is Us Sterling K. Brown. Erika Alexander, I love her. I've loved her since I was a kid when I was obsessed with Living Single. ... Just being able to see these people in roles that they might not otherwise be considered for, that to me, I'm just so happy to be able to work with them in that capacity."

'It's perseverance. It's not talent'

Following the American Fiction world premiere in Toronto, Jefferson highlighted that near the end of his time as a journalist he wrote a piece about the "racism beat," about being a go-to journalist to write about racism in America.

As the filmmaker recalled, when he first moved into film and TV, he was excited to write about "fictional worlds," but the offers he got were, "Do you want to write about this slave? Do you want to write about this crack addict? What do you think about these gang members?"

"We are in fantasy worlds, we can do anything," Jefferson said at the Toronto theatre. "I thought I was going to escape it and I was still sort pulled into it."

"This is what you have to offer. The tragedy of Black people and the misery of Black people and the violence upon Black people, this is what we want you to give us. It was just really demoralizing and I think when I read [Percival Everett's] book, the book was published in 2001 and it could have been published yesterday."

Jefferson went on to say that those responsible for green-lighting films and books and TV shows have "a poverty of imagination when it comes to what Black life look like."

"I don't want a world in which we don't have slave movies, god knows we need them these days, ... I want these things to exist, but I also just want other stuff to exist," he said.

Speaking to Yahoo Canada following the film's Toronto premiere, Jefferson's advice for any filmmakers or artists that are very much feeling the confines of this "poverty of imagination" among the decision makers in these creative industries is that "resilience" and "perseverance" is necessary.

"There's going to be a lot of rejection and I think that the number one quality for anybody who wants to work in a creative industry is resilience, it's perseverance. It's not talent," Jefferson said. "I've known a lot of people who have talent, but who don't have that resilience, who don't have that ability to withstand people saying no all the time."

"People have told me no for a decade and it wasn't until I made this that I finally got some support. ... When I was pitching the movie to T-Street [Productions], the reason we went with T-Street was we were meeting with a bunch of producers and T-Street, in the room, said 'We want to make this film.' So I said great. Well I didn't say great, I started crying. I started tearing up and crying because I had been told no for a decade, I'd been sitting in these exact kinds of situations and trying to get people to believe in me, and to believe in this work. Having people say, 'Why don't you make this character Blacker? This character isn't Black enough.' ... Just facing that kind of scrutiny and rejection constantly, and to have somebody finally say, after almost a decade of trying, say yes we're going to make this, I was just so overwhelmed with emotion."