Fresh Air - Cord Jefferson Finds Catharsis With 'American Fiction'

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

The movie American Fiction is a satire about a Black writer who can't get his latest book published because it's not "Black" enough. He decides to write a book with every offensive Black stereotype he can think of — and gets a $1 million book deal. Screenwriter/director Cord Jefferson says he experienced something similar as a writer in Hollywood. Also, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album from tenor saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. In the new satirical film American Fiction, Thelonious Ellison is a frustrated writer who can't get his latest book published because editors say it's not black enough. So he decides to write the kind of black book they want out of spite, using every tired and offensive trope he can think of. He submits the manuscript under a pseudonym, and to his surprise, he's offered a million-dollar book deal. This film is TV writer Court Jefferson's directorial debut. He got his start as a journalist before becoming a screenwriter for shows like Succession, The Good Place, Master of None, and Larry Wilmore's former late-night TV series The Nightly Show. In 2020, he won an Emmy for his writing of episode six of Watchmen titled The Extraordinary Being, along with Damon Lindelof. American Fiction features a star-studded

cast that includes actors Jeffrey Wright, Issa Rae, Adam Brody, and Sterling K. Brown. Cora Jefferson, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, so the main character in American Fiction, Thelonious, whose nickname is Monk, played by Jeffrey Wright, is a writer and college professor who writes this book out of spite. And the book's contents play into all of the stereotypes about violence and trauma with these over-the-top characters. But, of course, Monk writes it under a fake name, so to add to the lies, he says he can't reveal his true identity because he's running from the law. I want to play a scene. It is Monk and his editor, played by John Ortiz.

And they're talking with Paula from one of the publishing houses over speakerphone. Let's listen. Hello. Hello, Paula. Arthur. So wonderful to hear from you. I hope that you are with the man of the hour. I am indeed. He's right here next to me.

Mr. Lee? Yeah, this is he. Oh, really? Yeah, damn it. Mother f***er. Right, okay. Yeah, I was a little confused at first, but... We're both very excited to discuss Thompson Watt's offer. Yes, well, first of all, let me just say that all of us here at Thompson Watt are thrilled with my pathology.

It is about as perfect a book as I have seen in a long, long while. Just raw and real. Mr. Lee, is this based on your actual life? Yeah, you think some bitch-ass college boy can come up with that shit? No, no. No, I don't. That was a scene from the new movie American Fiction. In court, this film is based on

Percival Everett's 2001 book Erasure. When did it become clear to you that you wanted to adapt it? Oh, wow. Almost instantly. I found Erasure, I'd had a really bad 2020. We've all had a bad 2020. I don't think I'm saying anything unique there. But mine was bad, not just because of COVID, but also because I'd come very, very close to getting a television show on the air. And at the last minute, they killed it. And that was about September of 2020. And so I was feeling pretty bereft and kind of creatively adrift.

And I'm a pretty slow reader normally, but this was a book that I just devoured. You know, it was one of those ones when I set it down and went somewhere else, I would sort of, my mind would drift toward it and I would come back and read more of it. It felt like it was a book written specifically for me. The themes within it were things that felt like... Parallels to your own life. Well, in so many odd, eerie ways. And so about 50 pages in, I knew that I wanted to try to adapt the script.

I would say about 100 pages in, I knew I wanted to adapt it and direct it. And then at some point, I started reading the novel in Jeffrey Wright's voice. That's how early I started thinking of Jeffrey as being the lead character for this. He just came to me. And as soon as I was done, I called my manager and asked him to contact Percival so that I might beg him for the rights to the book. The death of the family storyline is so refreshing. It's a refreshing surprise because the movie promos and trailers don't actually promote this part of the story, but his mother is suffering from the early stages of dementia, and he's being asked to take a leave of absence from his job as a professor because of his anger, which means he's leaving without a salary. It feels so relatable and universal. And as you mentioned, a lot of parallels to your own life. Yeah, yeah. No, you know, like Monk, I had had these issues come up in my different professions.

I started out as a journalist for about eight or nine years, and then I started working in film and television in 2014. And I had had these experiences in both of those arenas in which people had, you know, when I was a journalist, people were like, you know, toward the end of my career, it had started to feel like there was this revolving door of misery that I was expected to write about. And so sort of on a weekly basis, they would come to me and say, do you want to write about Mike Brown getting killed? Do you want to write about Trayvon Martin getting killed? Do you want to write about, you know, this unarmed black person getting killed? It just felt like there was this constant churn of just violence and misery.

And so it's like, I don't want to do this anymore. And so when I got into film and television, it was thrilling because it felt like, great, we're in the world of fiction. We are not bound by the realities of anything. We are allowed to write about black people in space. We're allowed to write about black people riding unicorns in the underworld.

It doesn't matter. Like, we can do anything. And and then lo and behold uh you know people would call me and they would say do you want to write this tv show about uh about a black teenager murdered by the police do you want to write about this movie about a slave do you want to write this movie about uh crack dealers and it just felt like oh even here even here, you're still in the world of fantasy. There's still just such a hugely limited perspective as to what black life looks like. And then on top of that, as you said, you know, there's a lot of these family issues that take place in the novel that, you know, there's a trio of siblings and I have two older brothers. And,

you know, we've had we've had our sort of like various ups and downs in our relationship. You know, there's an ailing mother, as you mentioned, you know, my mother didn't die of dementia, but my mother died of cancer about eight years ago. And, and, you know, I, I moved home at a certain point to, to help take care of her as monk does. And so, you know, there's an overbearing father figure in this story that sort of reminded me a little bit of my father and who looms large in my life and my brother's lives. There was just so much overlap. It just started to feel strange, as I said,

as if somebody wrote me a book specifically. You know, this cast is a pretty amazing cast another person that does such a great job in this film is isa ray she's hilarious and really laser sharp in this film she plays the character sentara golden whose work is is basically what sets monk off because her debut is We Lives in the Ghetto. And it's exactly the kind of work he's railing against. In this clip, she's at a literary festival speaking before a packed house and reads a passage from her book. Where are our stories? Where's our representation? And it was from that lack that my book was born. Would you give us the pleasure of reading an excerpt? Yo, Sharonda, girl, you be pregnant again? Might be, I tells her. And if I is,

Ray Ray is going to be a real father this stuff out. This is, you know, I do relate to a lot of the situations in which Monk finds himself. And it's also just, you know, I think that satire to me has always had a special power. You know, I think that there, you know, I'm forgetting, I heard a quote recently that I forget who said it, but it was, if you're going to tell people the truth, then you need to be funny or else they'll kill you. And I think that that is sort of what satire is able to do is it's really able to, you know, it's a big tent thing. It sort of allows people to come in who might not otherwise want to listen to what you're trying to say. And so I think that writing that scene and, you know, all the scenes in which there's, you know, you're talking about these serious issues, but you're talking about them in a way that makes you laugh and in a way that sort of makes other people laugh. I think that there's a power in that, that, you know, other kinds of art don't have. That's so interesting about satire, because I agree with that quote, but it also just feels like for the

last few years, world events and life in general have felt so ridiculous and fantastical that sometimes, at least for me, it's been hard to consume satire because everything feels like it's just completely over the top and we're laughing to keep from crying. Yeah. But I think that even if we're laughing to keep from crying. Yeah. But I think that even if, even if we're laughing to keep from crying, then I think that there's, that's still, that's still a worthy goal. You know, I think that that is, uh, if nothing else, if we lose our ability to laugh and find joy, that's when like really all is lost, you know, like even in the worst of circumstances, if we can't find ways to enjoy each other's company

and to make each other laugh and to tell stories and to fall in love, all of these things that make life worth living, if we can't find ways to do that stuff, then we're really in trouble. I heard you say that the spiritual predecessor to American fiction is Hollywood Shuffle, which is a satirical comedy that came out in 87. It was directed and co-written by Robert Townsend and Kenan Ivory Wayans. And I'm going to play a clip from it, but Robert Townsend plays Bobby Taylor. He's a black actor trying to make it in Hollywood, and it's loosely based on Townsend's experiences in the industry. So this scene I'm about to play, the character Bobby has nabbed this role in a movie called Jive Town Jimmy's Revenge. And he's about to get in a fight with some street gangs. It's so full of stereotypes, Court. That's amazing.

Yes. So on the set, Bobby is wearing a big Afro wig and wearing a shiny suit and is reciting this cartoonish jive talk. Let's listen. You killed my brother. My main man. I loved it. This dude, baby. He was, he was. Cut.

Why is he stopping? Bobby, that was terrific. That terrific what what why'd you stop what happened oh there's there's no problem i just i just i just forgot my line okay that's fine no problem you want to look at the script no i'm okay great okay let's go again excuse me sydney before you do i have another very good idea. Could you tell him to be a little more, you know... Yeah, Bobby. Bobby, I need a little more black. You know what I'm saying?

Like, stick your ass out, bug the eyes. You know how they move, you know? Jive ass. Let's slate it. Let's go again. Sorry, sorry, Sidney. Scene 10, Baker 1. And action. That's a scene from the 1987 film Hollywood Shuffle directed by Robert Townsend.

Court, when did you first see this film? What kind of impression did it have on you? Oh, my God. The biggest. I saw that movie when I was about 9 or 10 years old, probably. Yeah. And it just changed my life uh that i'm sorry i'm trying to compose myself i love that that scene is probably the funniest scene in the movie it is yeah dying laughing um and and the reason it had this

profound effect on me i didn't i certainly didn't know the word satire back then i didn't know what that meant but i knew how it made me feel. And, you know, 9, 10 is, is you're right in the thick of learning about, you know, slavery and civil rights and sort of the origins of this country. And, and the ways in which people teach you these things is basically by showing you horror movies. You know, I remember watching like Eyes on the Prize, this documentary. I remember watching Mississippi Burning, Gene Hackman, and Willem Dafoe. It's really great. It's about the Mississippi murder of the three civil rights activists.

I remember now. Yeah, yeah. It's a great movie, but it gave me nightmares. I remember specifically waking up in the middle of the night, worrying that the Klan was going to come to my house and harm my family. Like that is how we were teaching these lessons to children. And I really like those movies. I think that they're important.

But when I found Hollywood Shuffle, I was like, wait a minute. This is talking about racism the way that those other things are talking about racism, but it's doing it in a way that is making me laugh every three seconds, like in a way that's hilarious and accessible and not scary and just sort of and joyful in some ways, you know? Mock has a PhD. Both of his siblings are medical doctors. Their parents, they have this beach house. You interweave their lives seamlessly, and it feels real and accurate. But how did you navigate, or was it a challenge at all navigating or incorporating these characters without falling into that kind of respectable depiction of blackness. Yeah, I mean, that's something that the minute Jeffrey sat down to first discuss the

script with me when we first had our first meeting, his immediate question was, he said, you're not trying to do some talent and 10th Bill Cosby, pull up your pants and behave in front of white people thing, are you? And I knew instantly when he asked that, that he was the perfect person for the role, because that's that had been something that I'd been thinking about as I was making it. And it's something that that I didn't want to do. You know, I think that there's this scene that again, I don't want to spoil it, but there's this scene where Monk and Santara meet toward the end of the film, and they kind of have their ideological conversation about where they where they come from in their art practice and their approach to making stuff that i felt was really important to make sure that we didn't we didn't come at this from a sort of like respectability politics pull up your pants kind of thing that that you know this is a person who who's you know again i don't want to spoil it but that scene was important to me to include in order for us to avoid this kind of thing. Because, you know, one of the things that Jeffrey and I decided when we first set out to make this was we never wanted to police blackness.

We never wanted to police art. And we especially didn't want to police black art. That that is sort of not conversations that we found interesting or important. That the other conversations we were having were vastly more important than that. And so, yes, they have PhDs. Yes, they're doctors. Yes, they're professors. But the greatest part about it is that, you know, Cliff's a plastic surgeon who meanwhile is, you know, struggling with, you know, a cocaine habit and his life is falling apart and he's divorced and his children dislike him. And Monk is this kind of, he's a professor, but, you know,

you see that he's kind of pathetic and angry and resentful and miserable. And he's kind of, you know, he feels insecure and weak. And, you know, these are people just with real problems. You know, I think that these are people who are just human beings. You know, in this movie, we watch Monk's creative process as he writes this book of stereotypical figures. There's a great scene where the characters actually come to life while he's writing it. And the characters talk back to him. They disagree with him in those scenes. Is that what the creative process feels like to you, that the characters disagree with you,

and then you kind of talk back to them in your writing, through your writing? Yeah, yeah. I think that the thing that, you know, I never, I don't sort of like, I think that you can get a little twee about it and say like, well, the muse comes and like, and I call upon the muse. I'm not like that. I don't do it in that way. But I do think that you start to learn who these people are as the script goes on. You know, you start to build these characters in your head and you start to understand them more from scene to scene. And then you start going, well, this is how Cliff would react here. You know, you need to just really start listening to yourself as you build them and start trusting your own instincts as to how this character would act. That is absolutely true. And I think that every argument that you write and do a screenplay should be a draw because otherwise it's going to be super boring. You know, you don't you don't want somebody to win. Everything and they think I'm doing what I need to do and everything that I think I'm doing is right.

And so when you come at conversations and when you come at arguments and when you come at characters from that perspective that this person believes what they're doing is right. And so let's follow that logic that if you think what you're doing is right and this person thinks what they're doing is right, how would you guys interact with each other? And so those are the kinds of things that I think about when writing characters is just think about them as these are, this is a person who is thoughtful and this is a person who is considered and this is a person who is making, and this is a person who is making decisions because they think the decisions that they're making are the right decisions. And then follow

that logic, and it allows you to start seeing these people as being real and distinct and not just kind of, you know, surface impressions of what humanity like kind of looks like. Our guest today is movie director and writer Court Jefferson. We're talking to him about his new film, American Fiction. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Seth.

And I'm Molly. We're producers at Fresh Air, and together we write the newsletter. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the show. We highlight interviews from the week, recommend things that we're reading, watching, and listening to, and give you an exclusive look at the interviews that are coming up. My dad raves. I love reading every week, even when I don't know what you're talking about. Subscribe for yourself at whyy.org slash fresh air. we're talking to filmmaker Court Jefferson. He's written for Succession, The Good Place,

Master of None, and Larry Wilmore's former late-night series, The Nightly Show. And he also wrote for Gawker's now-defunct website, where he was the site's West Coast editor. In 2020, Jefferson won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a limited series for the show Watchmen, along with Damon Lindelof. Court Jefferson's new satirical movie, which he wrote and directed, is called American Fiction. It's about a writer who can't get his novel published because it's not black enough and is frustrated with editors who want cliched stories about black life.

You take on different elements of anger in this film. Monk, the main character, he has this seething, quiet anger that is clear in his very being. But then there's his brother, played by Sterling K. Brown, who is vocally angry. He's a gay man who feels misunderstood.

I'm just wondering, is there a therapeutic element to writing about anger and creating characters who are grappling with it? Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. You know, I've had a... I think that I've, you know,

I've known that I have a problem with anger for a long time. Since I've been in my 20s, I knew that I had an issue with anger. And what do you mean by that? Like, what kind of anger? What does that exhibit? Oh, I used to, my anger used to manifest itself as, I used to get in a lot of fights in college. I used to. Like fist fights. fights in college. I used to.

Like this fight. Yeah, but I never punched anybody. I've never I've never hit anybody, but I used to get knocked out a lot. I used to I used to I really don't like bullies. And there was college was the first time that I ever really encountered bullies that people were bullying me. And I just like what kinds of. I mean, that's an interesting question. And I just... For what? Like what kinds of... I mean, that's an interesting question. It's like, why are you getting bullied? I don't know, you'd have to ask them. But I think that, you know, I think that there was a racial element

to it, if I'm being quite honest. I think that I went to school in the South. I had never lived in the South before. And so I went to school in the South and I just, I think that there was a racial element to, to it. You know, I got, I got picked on a lot in college for whatever reason. It had never, I had never been picked on before, but I started getting picked on a lot in college by, by, um, by a lot of football players. There was a, there was a, it was really sort of like high school cliche, but it was college. You know, I got knocked out a few times. It just, there was, and then, you know, I would get into arguments with friends and girlfriends and my family, and I would just distance myself from everybody, and I'd isolate.

It was, you know, there was just, I still feel deeply angry, but I've just learned to. Channel it into your work. Yeah, I've learned better ways to, yeah, I've learned to channel it into my work. I've learned to channel it into other creative projects. And I do a lot of therapy. I take medication now. There's just all these things that I've done to improve my life. And, but that being said, I'm still really interested in anger as a theme and the way that it ruins people's lives and the way that, you know, it causes people to behave that, you know, these guys in this movie, Monk and Cliff, these brothers, the thing that they do so well is that you see the anger, but what keeps you on their side and what keeps you rooting for them is that you see the pain that's underneath that anger. When you went to pitch this screenplay, you said, if you want this script, I come along as director. And I was just wondering, is that common in the industry to write a screenplay and then take that position?

No, I don't think so. I'm not sure. You know, I think that this is an industry in which a lot of people just decide to do one thing. And, you know, I think that my ignorance about the industry sort of helped me in guiding the career that I have, which is, you know, when I first started working in film and television, for instance, I didn't know that people who write for television generally choose one, like choose either drama or comedy. It's sort of that is a path. And so when I got into it, I just thought that, well, I want to do both. You know, I know about both. I feel both happy and sad in my life. I think that sort of, you know, human beings are, you know, life is neither comedy nor tragedy.

And so I just wanted to work on things that felt like life. And so that was something that I never considered as being sort of this one or the other. And then when I started working in it more, I thought, you know, I'd like to try directing one day. Actually, a friend of mine suggested that I try directing out because he said, you know, I thought that at first that I hadn't gone to film school, so I know nothing about cameras or lenses or lighting. And so this is not for me. But a friend a couple of years after I started working in TV said, you know, you should give it a go. You know, you don't need to have gone to film school. You just need a vision and to be able to articulate that vision to the people that you hire to work on the film with you.

And so that kind of planted the seed. And so I started considering that. And it took me about four years until I found the book that I ultimately knew I wanted to direct. Cord, I want to talk a little bit more about your journalism career for a moment. When I was a reporter, I had a white news boss tell me that I wasn't black enough. I'm from Detroit, and he said he wanted me and my work to reflect more of Detroit Tanya. And I've also had bosses tell me that I'm too black, that I focus too much on black issues. So it really shows like an impossible position to be in. There really is no winning. And I'm just wondering for you, you had this

successful career, even when you were a journalist at Gawker, and like you were able to step in and say, like, I'm gonna make fun of this and also talk about the fact that I'm kind of on the racism beat. But had you ever had an experience where basically like the blackness meter scale came out on your blackness? Yeah, yeah. I mean, these are, I grew up in a weird household, very strange in which my father was a black Republican. My mother was a white liberal. There was nothing sort of like there was no political opinion taken for granted in my household. There was constant churn of discussion and interrogation and sort of, you know, it was a household where I learned very early on that it was up to me to make up my own mind about the world because, you know, I had I was being raised by two people who thought about the world differently and in various ways. about our beliefs and what I believed and sort of not taking lessons from the media and sort of just learning to think for myself.

And when I started sort of writing about race, I think that, yeah, that I realized that it was that topic in particular is one that's especially charged and gets people really polarized very fast. And three months before I found the novel Erasure that I ended up writing, I got a note from an executive about this script that I'd written that they said that we want you to make the character in the script blacker. And so that note came through an emissary, and I told the emissary I will indulge that note if the person who gave you that note will come to me and tell me what it means to be blacker. And guess what? That note went away because I'm sure that person knew that if they were going to have that conversation with me, that they would be probably committing a civil rights violation.

And so they can't have that phone call. But these are, you know, the realities of my life are a lot of the things that I put into the film. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Court Jefferson about his new film, American Fiction. It's about a frustrated novelist who's fed up with the establishment that profits from black entertainment, which relies on tired and offensive tropes. American Fiction is Jefferson's directorial debut. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

We talked about this a little bit, but you spent a lot of time in white spaces. You grew up as a biracial black boy in Tucson, Arizona. You went to William and Mary College in Virginia, where there wasn't a lot of ethnic diversity. And in your journalism career, you were often the only black person in the room. Yeah, I grew up, you know, Tucson, Arizona has no diversity in that, you know, it has diversity in that there's a lot of Latinos. But, but that's really it. You know, my, my school was, was, had a lot of white people and a lot of Latino people. And that was really what diversity meant. You know, there was, there was a handful of black kids. We basically all knew each other and, and,

and hung out with each other. But, but, um, other than that, there's not, there's not a lot of diversity. And so I grew up, you know, feeling very comfortable around white culture. You know, I feel if we can say white culture, I grew up sort of like feeling very comfortable around white people just because I had to, you know, I had to sort of learn how to do that in order to make friends and in order to feel comfortable going to school in order to feel comfortable in social situations like these are these are just things that I had to learn and so I think that that reality probably has helped me along my career to be honest I think that I think that's sort of an ability to be comfortable as being the only black person in the room it's something that you have to learn how to handle. If you sort of want to climb the professional ladder in this country, that's just the reality of the world. And that is something that I think I learned how to do from a very young age. I want to talk about something else, mortality, which, you know, is brought up in this movie.

There's a thought and a through line around mortality with Mock's parents and his sister. And the last time that you were on the show, you talked about the death of your mother to cancer and donating a kidney to your ailing father and your own heart condition, which kind of made you grapple with your own mortality when that happened. But before that diagnosis, I also read that you tell people that you probably wouldn't live very long. Now that you're older, I mean, I guess you'd be considered getting into middle age or middle age. Yeah, yeah. I think I'm well into middle age. You're well into middle age.

Yeah, I'm 41. I think that's- That's early middle age. Okay. And we've also, as you mentioned earlier, been through a pandemic. How has your relationship with mortality maybe evolved or changed? Oh, I think I've gotten better about accepting it, to be honest. I think that the thing that I've learned recently about myself is that I was just desperate to be an artist. I was just desperate to make stuff.

That's really what I learned about myself. And I think that this is the first year I've been telling people that I think this is the first year that I might have ever, that I feel like I might be happy. I think that happiness has been elusive for me my entire life. And I don't think that I've ever, I think that if you'd asked me ever sort of before this, if I'm happy, I think I would have absolutely said no. Um, and I don't even know if I'm happy right now, but I know that now I feel less turmoil just in my guts. I just feel less, um, um, you know, frantic energy in my heart. I just, I feel like far more at ease with myself than I've ever felt before. You know, I think that I am, I'm just comfortable with, with who I am for the first time

in, in ever really. And so, um, I think that, and I think that the difference is, is that I'm just now making stuff, you know, I'm, and I, this movie is so deeply personal to me. And I think that, uh, my TV career was a successful TV career in many ways, but I definitely had this chip on my shoulder, um, that I never really talked about, which was the fact that I was working on other people's shows always. And I, and I, yeah, and I always had this nagging voice in the back of my head saying, can you do this on your own? What if you didn't have these bosses here to hold your hand? What if you didn't have these bosses who I'm pretty sure were all straight white men? What if they weren't here to sort of to help guide you? Would you be able to do this without them?

And there was always that nagging feeling that just like maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I couldn't do this without them. um, you know, feel like I am a professional artist and feel like I have a creative outlet and I'm able to, I'm able to channel these, these feelings that I have and channel this anger that I have and channel this pain that I have in this fear that I have into work. I think that's really allowed me to like exercise some demons that have been plaguing me for a very, very long time. And so I think that I've just, you know, I don't even really think about mortality these days as much as I used to, but I think that, um, were I to, uh, I think I would just, I just feel far more

comfortable in every aspect of my life than I, than I ever have before. And therapy. Oh God. Yeah. Therapy, but also Zoloft. Therapy and Zoloft. Yeah, I just started taking – I took my first dose of Zoloft on my 40th birthday. It was my 40th birthday gift to myself. I said, you know what? What took you so long? Were you obstinate to it at first? Yeah.

Well, I was obstinate to the fact that I was depressed at first. My mother told me she thought I had clinical depression when I was 19 years old. And I thought, you're crazy. Because I was like, I get out of bed. I go exercise. I eat healthy. Highly functional. I go to school.

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that I had a therapist tell me later was the same way that there's functional alcoholics, there's functional depressives. That doesn't mean you don't have clinical depression. It just means that you've learned to live this way. And so I was reluctant to even, again, it goes back to not acknowledging weakness. You know, I don't want to say that I'm scared. I don't want to say that you hurt my feelings. I don't want to say that I feel depression. I don't want to admit that I'm

flawed in this way. And then sort of, and that, that this is, this is a struggle for me, right? That's how I used to think. And then on top of that, I was also scared that my creativity came from my pain, that I would take these pills and that it would go away and that sort of my ability to write and sort of like channel sort of like my darker emotions would go away how long into being on zoloft did that fear go away for you that you're like oh i'm still creative instantly instantly like it is truly changed my entire life it has changed my entire life i feel finally i finally feel like i i am i am finally like i said coming into myself and i'm 41 years old. I'm about to be 42. And so it had a profound effect on me,

and I realized that not only did it not hamper my creativity, it enhanced it. Like, if anything, I feel far more creative than I've ever been because I've been able to clear out all these other negative thoughts and sort of make room for just creativity and make room for, for thinking about all these other things. I'm no longer thinking like, if I go to this party, will all the people at the party dislike me? Am I going to be a loser if I go there by myself? Or like, if I, if I go and speak in front of this large audience, am I going to say something foolish and everybody's

going to make fun of me and laugh at me? Like all of these nerves and, and, and sort of thoughts that I had that plagued me for decades now are just, I'm making room now for just, you know, being an artist and it feels really good. Cord Jefferson, thank you for this conversation. No, no, it's my honor. Thank you so much. Cord Jefferson's new movie is American Fiction. It's nominated for two Golden Globes, for Best Musical or Comedy and Best Actor, and opens in theaters on Friday. This is Fresh Air. Tenor saxophonist Jerry Berganzi is a Boston institution, a longtime educator in presence

in the city's jazz rooms. He's made dozens of records in Europe and dozens of his own, alongside even more records as a sideman with Dave Brubeck and many others. Still, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says, Borgonzi might be better known making records as good as his latest. Thank you. Jerry Berganzi on the title tune to his album Extra Extra. Back in the day, newspaper vendors would yell that to call attention to a breaking story. The album Extra Extra is deceptively casual. The saxophonist and some frequent colleagues play a few of his mostly older tunes. No big concept, no headline guest stars. But that relaxed setting is conducive to improvising, to creating in the moment without distractions.

Even when Jerry Berganzi darts around the tenor saxophone, you hear his cool confidence, his poise and self-possession, as when he revisits his 2008 tune, Obama. ¶¶ Jerry Berganzi with Boston's Luther Gray on drums and bassist Harvey S. up from New York to produce the session. On Berganzi's oldie, Loud Z, floating guitar and a sunny bossa nova beat set up the leader for some Stan Getze paragliding. But Berganzi has his own voice with its own cry. He's nimble, approaching a beat or chord from any direction. He gets a consistent tone from tenors top to bottom that still has a softness to it, a vulnerability. And even when he's revved up, he leaves space in a solo to let pretty phrases sink in. Thank you. Like many Boston jazz musicians, Jerry Berganzi also teaches.

He has a series of jazz instruction books full of practical exercises to get players going. On his new album, there's good give and take between him and old allies. Those include trumpeter Phil Grenadier, who's on three tunes, including that bossa nova, where he takes the album's first solo. One Bostonian newer to Berganzi's circle is guitarist Cheryl Bailey. She's crisp and boots things along with a light touch. As ever, buoyant jazz propulsion is in the rhythmic details, where you place a note and when you cut it off. There are also those small shifts in texture or dynamics, like the moment on Double Build when Luther Gray switches from wire brushes to drumsticks just before solo guitar

hands off to tenor. It creates a subtle change in air pressure. Thank you. Jerry Berganzi's album Extra Extra confirms that no matter how much or little pre-planning goes on, the success of improvised music hinges on the chemistry among the players. Like this crew, who listen and support each other, bring their own ideas, form temporary alliances, and give a soloist breathing room. Throw in a leader in full command of their instrument and ready to play, then you have Jerry Berganzi's recipe for music that's extra, extra good. Kevin Whitehead is the author of the books Play the Way You Feel, The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, New Dutch Swing, and Why Jazz? He reviewed Jerry Bergonzi's new album, Extra Extra.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, the search for God and for meaning. We talk with poet and writer Christian Wyman. He says after he was diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of cancer, in spite of all of his modern secular instincts, he turned to what he learned to call God. His new book is called Zero at the Bone, 50 Entries Against Despair. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and to get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salet, Phyllis Myers, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelly, and Susan Yakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesper. Roberta Shurock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.