Cord Jefferson, Best Adapted Screenplay
| American Fiction | |
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When adapting Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure” for the script to “American Fiction,” first-time writer-director Jefferson wrestled with the shift between the world of idealistic academic Thelonious “Monk” Ellison and its counterpart depicted in Ellison’s Black-lit parody “My Pafology.”
“It had to be a scene that was cinematic, brief, but also forcing the audience to lean forward in their seats a little bit and pay attention to what was going on,” Jefferson says.
The moment follows a scene in which Monk witnesses a recitation of material from fellow author Sintara Golden, whose novel “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto” embodies everything he hates about popular Black literature.
“Sintara is the villain of the story in Monk’s mind,” Jefferson says. “So Jeffrey gives us this little sly grin, this giggle before he starts writing, not realizing what a bad decision he’s making right now.”
Jefferson worried that viewers wouldn’t take Monk’s cartoonish “Pafology” seriously as counterpart to Sintara’s overwrought but earnest prose. “I thought that that people were going to be rolling in the aisles at how ridiculous it was,” he recalls. “But then the seriousness with which actors that we got were performing allows us to believe that this could be a best seller.”
The scene proved as revealing about Monk as it was pivotal to his story. “We’ve seen him loaded up with frustrations, and now we’re going to see what happens when he tries to exercise these demons,” he says. “This is a guy who doesn’t really allow himself to be playful in front of people, so it is a window into his private life.”
