Cord Jefferson chats with The Hollywood Reporter and reflects on his film 'American Fiction' being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards. He reveals the first person he called after he was nominated, who he will invite on stage if he wins and whether he would return to writing for television.
00:00The best piece of advice that I've been given is just try to take it all in because this doesn't happen all the time.
00:05My name is Cord Jefferson and I wrote and directed American Fiction and I am nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
00:20I'm a writer at heart and I'll always be a writer. That was my first love and so Best Adapted Screenplay is important to me.
00:27But Best Picture I think acknowledges the sort of contributions of everybody and sort of filmmaking is a collaborative effort.
00:34I don't believe in like the auteur thing. Like it is the work of hundreds and hundreds of people.
00:40And so to me Best Picture is I would say sort of like a great honor for me and hopefully everybody else who worked on the film.
00:47I would want every single person who's who's in the theater who worked on the movie to come up there with me.
00:57I wish every single person down to every single PA and every single van driver on set.
01:01I wish we could get them an Oscar ticket so they could come because you can't do it without them.
01:06And so I want it to seem like those stages are going to collapse because there's too many people. That would be my dream.
01:18My father.
01:19My dad lives in Saudi Arabia for half the year and so he was actually at work.
01:23He was sort of like in a meeting and so I called him and he was very, very excited.
01:28Yeah, I always I always compliment people's clothes. People are really dressed really fancy at these events and sort of like they obviously the people have put in a lot of time and effort into into how they look.
01:43So I always feel like it's better than like the weather. I always figure you look cool.
01:47That's everybody likes to hear that they look cool.
01:53Chris Bowers, the sort of like composer, he and I actually talked about maybe liking to work with with one another.
01:58Eventually, I really I really appreciate his work and respect what he's done.
02:06Yes, I think that I love I love writing for television.
02:10The thing is, is that I had this like gigantic professional failure and just in 2020 in which I was really confident that I was going to get a TV show on the air.
02:20And then at the last minute they pulled the plug on it.
02:22That was sort of like one, you know, like a years, years long series of TV failures.
02:28When I found this book, I was like, well, they're never going to let me make a TV show.
02:31So maybe I should try to make a movie.
02:33And I was able to make this movie.
02:35And so I would I would love to write for TV.
02:38It's like it's like I heart TV.
02:40But does TV heart me?
02:42I don't know if TV hearts me back.
02:43And so we'll see if they if they let me make a TV show, I would love to.
02:46And I loved Station Eleven.
02:48Absolutely.
02:48I would I would be glad to go back to the world of Station Eleven if there's a if there's an interesting story to be told there.
02:54And I think there probably is.
02:58The best piece of advice that I've been given is just try to take it all in because this doesn't happen all the time.
03:05You know, this is this is not there's so many movies that come out and people work really, really hard on stuff that just doesn't get looked at.
03:14Remain sort of excited about it and remain enthusiastic and just try to soak it in.
03:18And and then also sort of the thing that I was just doing naturally, but people have always said is just try to meet your heroes, you know, to sort of like talk, like use this time to talk to directors whose work you love and actors whose work you love and writers whose work you love.
03:31And and just sort of find maybe collaborators for for future projects.
03:35And so that to me has been the really, really nice thing is just meeting people whose work I've loved since I was a child.
03:40It keeps the stamina up just because it's it can be exhausting.
03:44But any time that I'm sort of, you know, like meeting artistic hero of mine, like Paul Schrader or something like it's like it makes it all worthwhile.
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