Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Cord Jeffersonmade a plea to Hollywood after winning the Best Adapted Screenplay forAmerican Fictionat the 2024Academy Awards.
The other nominees in the category wereGreta GerwigandNoah BaumbachforBarbie,Christopher NolanforOppenheimer, Tony McNamara forPoor Thingsand Jonathan Glazer forThe Zone of Interest.
He began, “This means the world to me. Thank you so much to the Academy, thank you so much to everybody who worked on the film.”
“I’ve been talking a lot about how many people passed on this movie and discussing it and I worry that sometimes [it] sounds vindictive, and I don’t want to be vindictive, I’m not a vindictive person anymore,” Jefferson continued. “I’ve worked very hard to not be vindictive anymore.”
Jeffrey Wright in 2023’s American Fiction.Claire Folger
Claire Folger
Jefferson then implored Hollywood to take more risks in filmmaking.
“And it’s more a plea — it’s a plea to acknowledge and recognize that there are so many people out there who want the opportunity that I was given…. I understand that this is a risk-averse industry, I get it,” he said.
“But $200 million dollar movies are also a risk, you know?” he added. “And it doesn’t always work out but you take the risk anyway. And instead of making one $200 million dollar movie, try making 20 $10 million dollar movies or 50 $4 million dollar movies. Like, you can — there are so many people, I just feel so much joy being here, I felt so much joy making this movie, and I want other people to experience that joy, and they’re out there I promise you.”
“The nextMartin Scorsese’s out there, the next Greta’s out there — both Gretas, the next Christopher Nolan’s out there I promise you. They just want a shot and we can give them one and this has changed my life. Thank you all who worked on this movie for trusting a 40-year-old Black guy who has never directed anything before. It’s changed my life, thank you — I love you all, thank you so much.”
Jefferson wroteAmerican Fiction, which he also directed, based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel titledErasure.
“Twenty pages in, I knew I had to write a film adaptation,” Jefferson toldThe New York Timesof readingErasure. “By the time I finished the book, I knew I had to direct it.”
Ana Cruz Kayne, Sharon Rooney, Alexandra Shipp, Margot Robbie, Hari Nef and Emma Mackey in 2023’s Barbie.Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Jefferson’s fellow nominees Gerwig, 40, and her husband Baumbach, 54, wroteBarbieduring the first year of the COVID pandemic. At a Q&A for the film in New York City in November, Gerwig recalled that writing the movie during an uncertain time in the world and the film industry inspired them to craft the movie’s bold story.
“We were writing it when no one was going to movies and there were no movies and no one was making movies,” Gerwig recalled. “There was also a feeling of ‘There’s no movies, nobody’s making anything.‘So there was this sort of go-for-broke quality in how we did it. Then once we were doing it, we felt like, ‘We love this — and also, definitely no one will ever let us make this.’ "
Cillian Murphy in 2023’s Oppenheimer.Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
Nolan wroteOppenheimer— for which he is also nominated as Best Director — based on the 2005Robert J. OppenheimerbiographyAmerican Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert J. Oppenheimer. The movie, which starsCillian Murphyas the eponymous Manhattan Project physicist, received 13 total nominations at the Oscars, the most among all movies.
Nolan wroteOppenheimer’s screenplay from a first-person point of view, which he toldEmpireback in May 2023 was highly unusual for his own writing.
“I don’t know if anyone’s ever done it before. But the point of it is, with the color sequences, which is the bulk of the film, everything is told from Oppenheimer’s point of view — you’re literally kind of looking through his eyes,” he said.
Emma Stone in 2023’s Poor Things.Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
McNamara reunited withPoor ThingsdirectorYorgos Lanthimosand star/producerEmma Stoneafter writing the pair’s 2018 movie,The Favourite(he also contributed to Stone’s 2021 Disney movieCruella).
At the movie’s New York City premiere in December, McNamara told PEOPLE he “just looked for where the story [is]” while adapting the book.
“The novel is huge, but this piece of the novel and this premise of the young woman who gets a child’s brain in her head was sort of — what Yorgos wanted to do was that Frankenstein element, but really tell the story of a young woman going through life without any of society’s stuff in her head and how she would do that and how she would create herself,” he said. “Then you get Emma Stone and you’ve got something pretty great.”
Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller in 2023’s The Zone of Interest.Courtesy of A24
Courtesy of A24
The movie follows Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their family as they live their lives just yards away from death and suffering inside the concentration camp.
Glazer toldThe Guardianin December the “reason I made this film is to try to restate our close proximity to this terrible event that we think of as in the past.”
“For me, it is not ever in the past, and right now, I think something in me is aware — and fearful — that these things are on the rise again with the growth of rightwing populism everywhere,” Glazer said. “The road that so many people took is a few steps away. It is always just a few steps away.”
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source: people.com
