BAFTA winner Cord Jefferson (‘American Fiction’) on the key to adapting a novel: ‘Keep close to the way it makes you feel’
Best Adapted Screenplay is one of the most interesting categories at the Oscars this year. “Barbie” has been shoved into that lineup after months of campaigning in Best Original Screenplay pitting it against the likes of awards titans “Oppenheimer” and “Poor Things” Coming on strong is “American Fiction,” which writer-director Cord Jefferson adapted from Percival Everett‘s 2001 novel “Erasure.”
He followed up his Adapted Screenplay win at the Critics Choice Awards with a victory at the BAFTAs, triumphing over rival nominees “All of Us Strangers” (Andrew Haigh), “Oppenheimer” (Christopher Nolan), “Poor Things” (Tony McNamara), and “The Zone of Interest” (Jonathan Glazer). But what sets his adaptation the part as the best of the pack?
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“To me, the key to a great adaptation isn’t keeping close to the source material, it’s keeping close to the way that the book makes you feel. The essence and spirit of what the author was trying to accomplish. So for me, there were three cornerstones I needed to rely on to do that,” Jefferson explained backstage at the BAFTAs.
“One was, I needed it to be funny because ‘Erasure’ is a very funny book. The second is, that I needed to be a little metatextual because a lot of the writing is metatextual, and the last was it couldn’t be didactic. I didn’t wanna make a movie that spoon-fed anybody morality or lessons. The epilogue of the book actually ends with a Latin phrase that translates to ‘I offer no hypothesis.’ That’s what the film needed to do. I leaned into those three tenets and invited Jeffrey Wright along for the ride.”
Jefferson again, as he has done throughout this awards season, expressed his gratitude for Wright joining him on that ride. It was Wright’s voice, Jefferson explained, that he heard in his head while reading the novel. It was Wright’s face that he kept picturing in the scenes he was reading. And there is good reason for that. “Jeffrey has a gravitas about him – I think anybody who has met him would say that. It’s easy to believe he’s the smartest person in the room, he’s incredibly well-read. He’s very smart. He’s also one of our greatest living actors. He came to my brain organically,” Jefferson said.
“I truly do not remember saying ‘Let’s think about Jeffrey Wright,’ I just immediately thought about him as I was reading. When I took him the script I was just happy he said yes because I had no idea what I was going to do if he said no. I don’t know if this movie would have been made, honestly.”
It was a risky move in the eyes of certain people and about a topic that hadn’t been explored before in cinema. “So many people were so afraid to take on this movie and were so afraid to finance it and give us distribution. If the movie does anything, I love awards and the recognition is wonderful and I’m so proud of everybody who worked on this film. But I think that if the film can do anything, maybe it could serve as an example for filmmakers who are coming behind me and are trying to make things that people are nervous about making. Maybe this can crack the door open for people trying to make something a little bit different,” Jefferson said.
He continued: “I think it is morally right to tell stories about under-represented people. I think that is morally the right thing to do. Unfortunately, this industry doesn’t really operate on morality. It’s a business. I hope that this film’s success — I hope it affords other people opportunities.”
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