Jeffery Wright is rewriting what it means to be a serious academic author in dark comedy “American Fiction,” winner of the TIFF People’s Choice Award this year.
Wright stars as Monk, a novelist whose high-brow books haven’t hit the bestseller list in years. Frustrated, a drunken Monk parodies himself for a mock memoir under a pseudonym, incorporating Black stereotypes…and becomes a hit author in anonymity.
Cord Jefferson (“Succession,” “Master of None”) wrote and directed the critically acclaimed film, which premiered at TIFF. Jefferson’s directorial debut is an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel “Erasure”; Everett served as an executive producer on the film, along with Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman.
The official description for “American Fiction” reads: Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of the hypocrisy he claims to disdain.
Per the logline, the film “confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes.”
Tracee Ellis Ross and Sterling K. Brown star as Wright’s siblings, with Issa Rae as Wright’s arch-rival in the publishing world. John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, and Adam Brody also star.
“American Fiction” is produced by writer-director Jefferson, Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios, and Jermaine Johnson.
Jefferson told audiences at TIFF that his own TV writing career reflected the meta stereotypes “American Fiction” character Monk faces as a creative. “People would come to me and say, ‘Hey, do you want to write about this slave? Do you want to write about this crack addict? What do you think about these gang members?’” Jefferson recalled.
He continued, “The people who greenlight films, books, and TV shows, I say that they have a poverty of imagination when it comes to what Black life looks like. There’s a real sort of myopia there that they refuse to see us in any other terms. Jewish people get ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Annie Hall,’ right? The sort of spectrum of Jewish [stories], right? You can do all of it. And for whatever reason, when it’s a ‘prestige’ Black film, it’s always gotta be civil rights or slavery, or drug dealers or crackheads. It’s just so limited to us.”
“American Fiction” premieres in select theaters December 15 with a wide release December 22 from Amazon/MGM. Check out the trailer below.
