YouSaid · the spoken record

Cord Jefferson

lines on the record: 50
first: 2024-02-15
most recent: 2024-02-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, no. Well, I'm zagging a little bit. The two screenplays that are most close to being finished right now are an erotic thriller and a Western, a contemporary Western film, Neo Noir Western. Dealing with some similar themes of what we're dealing with in American fiction, but through a much different lens.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm writing three different movies right now. They're all original screenplays. I'm writing two different TV series right now that are adaptations of stuff. And so I just want to keep making stuff. That to me is sort of the key. I just want to keep, people ask me if I'm addicted to directing now. And it's like, yeah, I want to keep directing. But I just want to keep making art. That's all. I don't distinguish between stage plays or films or television shows or whatever. I just want to keep making art. That's my dream is just that people keep letting me make stuff.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our salvation lies in technology is slowly going away. Hopefully people are realizing that these things are not going to save us and save the world. And generally, the idea that just because something's new means it's great and benevolent and going to help us is hopefully people are realizing that that's not the case all the time.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You need to Surprise, surprise. No, this is the thing. I'm concerned about the biases in tech, of course, because especially as a pertains to like. You know, police and the sort of justice system, I think that that is where it really frightens me. But yeah, I think that you have to look at the prejudices of the people making the stuff. And if these people are prejudiced who are making the stuff and these people are, as you said, crap in, crap out, then you need to be prepared for that. And so, again, I think that the idea that”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he does. Flat twist. Look, if these tools end up being helpful for creativity, then I'm all for it. I really find it dispiriting that somebody would want to write an entire script that way. That to me is sort of takes the fun out of it almost. So I literally have never...”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think about No, no, I don't. I'm sort of like the John Henry in all of this. I sort of like figure that my hammer and just sort of like bang and bang and bang. And maybe I die at the end of it, but I'm still John Henry.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is trying to sort of, you know, I don't think that the AI stuff is going to go away. I don't think that sort of like them trying to cut corners as much as possible is going to go away. I think that we're going to have to continue to remain vigilant and fight as much as possible. I'm wondering how much you think this is because I have a theory that a lot of this Has to do with the influence of tech on the industry.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So before we go. Yeah, look, everybody worked really, really hard, and a lot of people sacrificed a ton. Our guilds worked tirelessly for us. And a lot of people, as you said, lost their deals. I have people who sort of are struggling to pay rent. I've heard of people who had to sell their homes. So a lot of people sacrificed a lot for these deals. Obviously, everybody wishes that you could have gotten more. That's sort of like what a deal is, right? You make a deal. You have to make some concessions and not get everything you want. But I think we made the strongest deal possible this time around. That being said, I think that this is a fight that's going to continue. We understand what we're up against, and we're up against an industry that is...”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sell that commodity and that transitory period was one that's new for me. And look, I don't begrudge it. That's part of the job. But it was part of the job that I wasn't prepared for. And that to me was the most difficult thing.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Jesse Armstrong is the I think the hardest part for me is the grind of the promotion. I will say that for me was I have never been, when I was a kid, I played AYSO soccer and for whatever reason they forced us to go sell chocolate bars for our soccer teams to raise funds. And they would put me in my damn soccer uniform and then go to the mall to sell chocolate bars. And I hated it. I could never do it. I always stood behind my mother and it was just deeply embarrassed and shy. I've just never been a good salesman. I've always been reluctant to do it. And I think that that has been the hardest lesson for me is like I went from making this art project where it's like I worked with a bunch of my friends for years to make something that I really loved and that I'm really proud of. And it's an art project. And then all of a sudden there was this period that I wasn't prepared for where your art project is now a commodity and you need to.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it's on the job training, which people don't get enough of these days. And as I was doing it, that list of things that I didn't get like started to dwindle and I started to feel like I understood everything. And so you know, but it's a frustrating thing because by the time you're done with your first movie, you wish you could go back and reshoot the movie because you learned so much and you would change.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was on set many times. I was in the edit many times. We're choosing actors and stuff. It clearly sort of like not to the extent which I was. The first film, but I sort of had done this stuff. The thing that was really new to me, you know, it's just a lot of the technical stuff. It's like lighting, camera lenses, it's working directly with actors to create these characters, right? These were things that I had not done before, but”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, that's how I feel. And I think that for me, I think sometimes it's really good to be ignorant. And so I came into this industry incredibly ignorant. And when I started writing on TV, I felt like, oh, all writers, you're just a writer. So you just go and write whatever, right? And it took me like a year or two to realize that a lot of writers just say like, I'm either write drama or I write comedy. And I felt like, I don't think you can have one without the other.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I think that for me, I like stuff that feels real and authentic. And to me, life is neither comedy nor tragedy. I think that one of the reasons why I love working on succession was that it is a show that is probably funnier than most of the comedies on television, right? But people call it a drama. And so I think that...”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then B, I learned something and I think that that to me is also a lot of people tried to avoid feeling uncomfortable. And when I'm watching a piece of art or reading a piece of art. And I feel uncomfortable. To me, that's the sign that I should lean in and pay attention more.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some people have. Yeah. I was, we had a screening in New York and a white woman after the screening, a white woman, I would say in her 40s or 50s came up to me after the screening. And she said, that was very uncomfortable for me to watch. She said, I need to tell you that it was actually a little painful for me sometimes to watch. She said, but I'm really happy that I did because there was a lot of sort of like cathartic laughter, eh?”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the reasons why we're so polarized in the world these days is because we sort of have a hard time with nuance and complexity. And to me Just because somebody harbors some racial prejudice does not make them irredeemable. It does not make them a bad person. I just feel like if you will admit that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic society that has prejudice all the time, if you will admit that, then You have to be okay with people that you know harboring some prejudice when it comes to race and sexuality and gender.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Make a film that sort of, you know, held a mirror up to a lot of the people, a lot of the people that I'm surrounded by, a lot of people in this industry, a lot of people that I know in New York and Los Angeles, and suggest not that they're bad people, because that's the thing. I don't think that they're irredeemable. I don't think that anybody in the film is irredeemable. I don't think anybody in life really is irredeemable. I think that that is a wrong way of looking at the world. I think that there are people whose heart is in the right place, who may be sort of have some things to learn. And that's okay. A lot of people have some things to learn, but it doesn't make you a bad person. I think that that's another thing that I want to, you know, I think that.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, I just, this was the first time that I just wrote what I wanted to write without considering any audiences, to be honest. This is the first time in my professional career as a screenwriter that I just really didn't give a damn. And I said, I'm just going to make what I want to make. And so I would say that I didn't really think about audience reaction. I thought about what would make the movie the best movie possible. That being said, I did want to...”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cliff is just like a little bit farther ahead on his journey. Cliff is sort of like seeing we were raised in the same family. We were raised by the same guy who was great in some ways, but really screwed up in other ways. And I'm trying to teach you that there is a better way. And like, yes, the way that I'm going about it is a little rocky, a little tumultuous, but like I'm figuring out who I want to be and learning to live in that truth. And so that to me is sort of the relationship between those two guys.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lies, well, lies and secrets, lies and secrets and sort of like deception, and you, and you see where they learned it from their father, right? And so to me.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Distant and gone, and so that's how I grew up. I grew up thinking that it was. Not masculine to talk about your feelings. I thought it was, yeah, I thought it was embarrassing to show your emotions. Embarrassing to let people in. And when my mother died, I realized that there was so much about me that she didn't know that I never let her know. And it really, really broke my heart. It still breaks my heart. It's still my biggest regret to this day. And so the reason why I really empathize with both those guys is because they're both. Going through the same thing. They're both sort of like realizing that they've isolated themselves and they've built up a facade in front of themselves and they're not actually who they want to be and they've been lying to a lot of people in their life for their entire lives. And so to me,”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that he is. So, the reason that I really empathize with both of those guys the most is because there was a part of me. So that conversation that he has at the end when he says, you know, I've been thinking a lot about dad dying, not knowing I'm gay. And that makes me sad because he didn't know me entirely. That is the speech that I wish I'd given to myself before my mother died. I grew up in a family. I love my father very much, but my father is a Vietnam veteran who came back with a lot of PTSD. And like a lot of men of his generation, my father came back and he's just, he was a Stoic. He didn't talk about his feelings. He never sort of like let you in emotionally. My dad was very present. My dad coached my soccer team, helped me with my homework, very physically present, but very emotionally.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be honest, the two people that I empathize with most in the film are Cliff and Monk. And I sort of, the way that I wrote Cliff was just was largely like me, and I'm not gay. It was more just based on my own weirdness.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't think, well, I'm sure you do, but I actually thought of it as I didn't think of it as a gay trip. I thought of it as more sort of like a depiction of somebody having a midlife crisis. And sort of like this is, if it's a straight guy, he's like getting his ear pierced and dating a 25-year-old and going out and buying a Ferrari for the first time. So I looked at it as more just a guy who has felt like he's 46 and is like trying to really figure out his life now”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was out there at one in the morning in rain and cold winds shooting her scenes. And Jeffrey Wright said to her, he said, he said, Leslie, you know, do you think you have another take in you? Are you tired? Are you exhausted? And she goes, no, I'm fine. We're shooting a movie. She goes, just remember your lines.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. No, Leslie is once we got Jeffrey, Jeffrey was my first choice. I started reading the novel with Jeffrey in mind. And once we got Jeffrey, I thought, well, for sure our luck has run out. We're not going to get any of the people that we want after this. And then it was like Sterling says yes. Issa says yes. Tracy says yes. And it was like, what? And Leslie says yes. Erica says yes. It was just this sort of like embarrassment of riches as far as the cast goes. And Leslie, we just reached out. And Leslie said that she read the script and felt like I just, I have to do this. This is something that is worth my time. And she came and was absolute, she was like a true leader on set too.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People were. They understood the characters on a molecular level, so it felt like they could just come in and do it. And also just the fact that they're just total pros and everybody just came in and yes, we had no time, but they just knocked it out of the park instantly.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they were amazing. So there are some people who say that directing 90% of directing is casting. That's a quote that I've heard in the past. And I don't know if I fully agree with that, but casting was incredibly important on this movie. And one of the reasons it was incredibly important is because we had no money, which meant we had no time. So we couldn't have rehearsals. We didn't have time for the actors to work together sort of for weeks before we started shooting to really find the scenes and find the characters. We just flew people in. You know, we had Issa for, I think all of like four days and her schedule was like within an hour. It's like we had to be done and she had to go. And so everybody just had to come on to set and work together. And fortunately, I had these actors who for whatever reason had never worked together, but they just bonded immediately and they were sort of able to really find that connection instantly. And I think that what they have told me is that a lot of it was there on the page. They really understood who these”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. And so I think if this is so, and yeah Somewhere exactly, and so I just think that this is, I think that this, there is an equivalent to this, but then B, it was a real growth moment in my life as a creative person when I stopped blaming other people sort of like on the ground. I think that it's very, very difficult for me these days to get angry at individual actors because I sort of like realize in any sort of like arena. But I think sort of like especially art is like these artists are making art in institutions and societies that were created generations before they were even born. And so who cares about what the people on the ground are doing? It's more important to ask why the people sort of like 15 levels above are making these decisions.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was a real growth moment for me. Hey, I don't think you should stop apologizing for sort of making the connection to gaze because I think that that's the thing about this film is this is a movie yes about a black novelist and a black family, but this is applicable to so many different. That's correct. I'm from Arizona and I have a lot of Mexican friends from Arizona who say Mexico have to be about drug cartels or about some sort of like poor person fleeing their miserable circumstances in their small town to come to the United States of America. Why does every movie or TV show shot in Mexico have this weird burnt Siena sort of like dusty glow about everything?”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Top the institutions that make movies, that make television, that make books, that publish these things. Why are they so interested in repeating these stories over and over and over again? That to me is sort of like a better question. Why are the people with their hands on the purse strings interested in telling slave stories at nauseum?”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And so I think that the thing that I wanted to make sure we didn't do in this movie was that. I didn't want to shame any black people. I didn't want to shame any black artists. I have no interest in that conversation. And so to me, it was Incredibly important to not villainize people who made that kind of work or people who enjoyed that kind of work because that to me is sort of a truly sort of pointless exercise. To me, the more important thing that I think the sort of movie that the movie tries to ask hopefully is why are the people”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not. No. So talented 10th was this. It was W.B. Du Bois used to write about it. He didn't coin the term, but he wrote about it. And the talented 10th is this idea that 10% of black people are going to be the ones who lift the other 90% out of sort of misery. It's going to be up to the 10% who are truly gifted to help everybody else. And so I think that sort of like a more modern reference would be like Bill Cosby telling everybody to pull up your pants.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a glancing reference to the fact that maybe Monk is a little self-loathing. Maybe he's got a sort of like little bit of work to do with his own relationship to his blackness and sort of like black people in America in general. And so I think that what you're seeing there is when Monk is sort of so frustrated by the fact that his girlfriend likes this book is maybe that he's sort of like feeling a little bit of self-loathing and feeling a little bit of resentment. Yeah, sure. Yeah.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, but I also think that something that sort of like something that happens kind of in that scene with Centara is that when they sort of talk about it at the end is she doesn't say it directly. She says it kind of glancingly, but she says something to Monk where Monk says, I think I see the potential of black people in this country”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I don't think that's a weird way. I think that that's normal. I think that what we are seeing is Monk is a person who's built up a facade in front of himself and he's very much isolated himself and he's not telling anybody the truth. And what's happening in this scene is his girlfriend, who's a wonderful, smart lawyer who's really sort of a buoyant in a way that Monk is not, has read this novel that he intended to write as a hoax. It's sort of like as a piece of performance art. And now she's telling him that she likes it. And he was writing it to make a fool out of people and sort of like filled it with all these stereotypes to shame everybody. And so all of a sudden, this woman that he has deep feelings for is telling him that she enjoyed it and it's frustrating for him. And I think that the thing that's important to remember is that just because, you know, for instance, like I love boys in the hood. I think that's a wonderful movie. Is it about sort of...”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A way to show that while also having sort of like these characters come in front of Monk and show the audience exactly what it is that he's writing, what they might look like. And so we got some tremendous actors. We got Keith David, who's a legend in his own right. And then Oki, who's a fantastic Broadway performer from Hamilton, and they just came in and knocked it out of the park.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Crazy, this is that this is published. And so I knew that we couldn't show the entirety of the novel and the film. And so it's like the question is, how do you make writing cinematic? I sort of find that very frequently scenes of writers are not cinematic. Everybody's seen the sort of like writer punching at his keyboard furiously and then taking a big sip of coffee and then punching again and just knew that that would be boring to see words coming up on a computer screen. Nobody sort of gets excited about that kind of scene. And so I thought, what's a way to get the audience to lean forward in their seats a little bit the way that I lean forward in my seat a little bit when I was reading the book? And it felt like, okay, what if we actually just manifested these characters? And what if, you know, and writing for me has never been a fast process, writing for me has always been slow and painful and methodical and I rethink and sort of like go back all the time and change things. And so I felt like what's”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks. Yeah. So in erasure in the actual Percival Everett novel, the character monk writes this fake novel that he writes a real novel, but he intends it to be performance art. He wants it to be sort of full of ghetto stereotypes to kind of embarrass the publishers who buy this kind of writing. And so in the book, Erasure, the entirety of that book is published. So there's a full novel within the novel that gives you really sort of like 110 pages of the depravity that's really in this book. It really makes you lean forward because you understand how.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Middle class, very mad men, and starts to A wonderful production designer. That's all I wanted to say. Jonathan Guggenheim. He's amazing.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I don't think it has. So I think that I am an optimist in many ways and that I think that the world is getting better all the time as it relates to issues of identity and race. That being said, I think that we have a long, long way to go. I think that Hollywood has gotten better. You know, the fact that the reality is that there was a couple companies that gave me millions of dollars for this film. You know what I mean? That is the reality. There's another reality that 98% of the companies that we took this film to passed on it and said we don't want to have anything to do with it, despite the fact that they were effusively praising the film and effusively sort of like saying that they loved the script and that they loved Jeffrey Riden. And yet they still, it was too risky for them to tell this story. And so, you know, I think that it is getting better, but I think.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You did. Okay, yeah. I anticipate that I'll always write about race and racism in some professional capacity. Still, wouldn't it be wonderful if writers and creatives on the periphery were welcomed in from anonymity, not thanks to their accounts of woe, but simply because they have things to share, tales of love, joy, happiness, and basic humanity, that have nothing to do with their race and also everything to do with their race? I'm ready for people in positions of power at magazines and newspapers and movie studios to recalibrate their understanding of what it means to talk about race in the first place. If America would like to express that it truly values and appreciates the voices of its minorities, it will listen to all their stories, not just the ones reacting to its shortcomings and brutality.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you want to write this movie when you're an actor? Would you like to become a drug dealer, et cetera? Exactly. Yeah Exactly”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Last week when this happened, or the week before when more do you want me to say, what can I write about this that somebody didn't write about when this happened with Amadou Dialo, right? In the 90s, or the sort of like even centuries before that. So just felt like I need to get out of this revolving door of tragedy and trauma. And so when I started working in film and TV, I felt like, great, this is going to be a wonderful transition because we're not beholden to any realities of the world. We are able to write about anybody doing anything we want. It's fiction. It's fantasy. And it wasn't long, however, before I started getting offers to, do you want to write about this movie about a black teenager being killed by the police? Do you want to write this movie about?”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Black teenager's name being killed by the police? Or do you want to write about this racist thing that somebody said about President Obama? And it felt like, A, spiritually degrading. That's sort of like not fun job to have is just to sort of like write about misery all the time. But then B, it felt like, what can I write about this that I didn't write”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oddly Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's the, I mean, that's what spoke to me so deeply was that as I was reading the book, it just sort of the Venn diagram between monks life and my life started to become a circle the more that I read the book. It was started to feel like kismet truly. I don't really like to think in spiritual terms, but or sort of like fate. But this feels, it felt serendipitous. You know, before I started working in film and television, I was a journalist for about eight or nine years. And toward the end of my journalism career, I wrote this essay called The Racism Beat. I published it in 2014. It was the year that I started working in TV. And the racism beat was about how I had reached this point in my career when it felt like on a weekly basis somebody was coming to me and saying, do you want to write about Trayvon Martin being killed? Or do you want to write about Mike Brown being killed? Or do you want to write about, you know, in...”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that a lot of people, when we were talking about it maybe saw the family stuff as a hindrance to the project, actually sort of like wanted more satire. And I think that actually now that the movie's out and we've gotten a lot of feedback from people, I can't imagine this movie without the family stuff being what it was. I can't imagine this movie if it was just a pure comedy and you stripped away the family stuff. I think that that would, or pure satirical comedy about a novelist and his profession, I think that that would, it would diminish the movie a lot in my mind if we were to have done that. Yeah.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely I mean, I think that the way that we sold it was leaning into the satire. I think that that was what we knew was going to be the best sales tool for the project was just leaning into the comedy, leaning into the satire of the whole thing, and then kind of slipping in the sort of family stuff as a, you know, not a secret, but just kind of, you know, as going to be sort of like the icing on the cake, you know, that would sort of like just be a bonus. And I think that to me.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just sometimes the rights negotiations can take months or years for things like this. And so, yeah, the fact that he gave it to me for free and just said go right, that was a huge blessing for me. And I asked him afterward why. And he said, he thought it was clear that I understood the essence of the novel, the point of what he was getting at. And so I love a corky novel.”
2024-02-15 · On with Kara Swisher · Cord Jefferson on Making American Fiction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT