Pablo Torre Finds Out - American Fictions: Why Oscar Contender Cord Jefferson (Still) Gives a F*ck

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

This year, Emmy-winning screenwriter Cord Jefferson (Watchmen, Succession, The Good Place, Master of None) has become a major Oscar contender for his directorial debut movie, American Fiction. So we wanted to ask Cord the truth about awards, competitiveness, race, external validation, and happiness. Also, the Men In Black soundtrack.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4O3jaJ1TN94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I don't know if you know Core Jefferson by name yet, but you are about to. I keep on warning people about this. When Cord visited the studio to tape this episode, it was before American fiction was everywhere. It is now in theaters, by the way. Use your God-given right as an American during the holiday season to go watch a movie by yourself and apologize for nothing. American fiction, a great candidate for that. You could also do it with friends, as I did. But you know what?

also just solo. Also great. It's been as prophesied on this show, collecting basically every sort of award nomination, deservedly. Golden Globe nominations. Critics Choice nominations. There is so much Oscar buzz officially, even more so now, independent spirit awards, Gotham, Independent Film stuff.

It's just all of it. All of it. So that's today's episode. episode. Cord himself is a total delight. So consume this, then consume that. Please enjoy. Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're going to find out what this sound is. Man, if I look like Sterling K. Brown with my shirt off, I'd be sureless right here. I'd be sureless on this damn podcast. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. I'm coming off of having just

gone to your screening last night. Yeah. And you had this big thing in New York, and I've never screened something that I've made for that many people. You're kind of a veteran at this now, I assume. Yeah. But last night, where you have a mix of friends

and people I think you respect. Yeah. And people who are friends, who are also professional critics. Yeah. What is your stress level as something like that as you premiere your new movie American fiction as a first-time screenwriter-director simultaneously?

Yeah. It's exceedingly high. Exceedingly high. I'm in this weird, I'm in this weird, uh, transitive moment, right? Where it's, where I've taken this art project that I've been working on for three years of my life with,

with my close friends. And we've been putting all of our resources and hearts and souls into. And I'm now in this period where it's turning from this art project into a commodity. that I need to sell people now. That is a very, and it has nothing to do with integrity or anything. Like, I understand that this is the nature of the business, and this is something that this is part of the job, and I'm okay with that, but I'm just not a confident salesman.

I sort of, I've never considered myself a confident salesman. I've always been bad at it, even going back to, like, selling candy bars for AYSO soccer. Like, that was never, I hated it when I was a kid. And so it seems very unnatural for me to do that. And so I am, so I'm just constantly on edge these days trying to not screw anything up and trying to make sure that as many people as possible see the film. Okay, so you should know that Core Jefferson has not screwed this up yet. Exactly the opposite, actually.

But he did come kind of close. Because the first time I ever heard about this film, Cort and I were in the bar of the Bowery Hotel. This was in New York back in, I want to say, June, 20th, And Cord told me that this new movie he was writing and directing now had a title. And that title was, yeah, just f- with an F. Which was both a reference to an actual plot detail in the script. And also, as Cord discovered, a problem.

Because no film, not even an Oscar nominee, was ever going to make the first page of search results when someone googled the words f*** and movie. And so now the movie is called American Fiction. And if you have not yet heard about American fiction, which is a comedy, a satire, you will. Very, very soon, I suspect. Because in the weeks since that screening I attended, Core Jefferson has become the stock that pretty much everybody in Hollywood

wishes they'd bought, especially after American Fiction won the audience at multiple super prestigious fancy film festivals. And especially now that it's become a legitimate betting favorite for a Best Picture nomination at the actual Oscars. And so clearly, in this trajectory, in this story, there is a lot of that real shit, the sports shit of this that I'd wanted to find out about with court, ego, competitiveness, and trophies, and external validation.

taste I respect are telling me they really enjoy the film and I'm trying to revel in that a little bit but it's just very hard just because there's a constant you know there's a constant thumping in the back of my brain saying like yeah but you need to sell this thing these people these people are might be lying to you it is just a constant um it's just a constant fear that's all it's a movie it's a screenplay that you wrote that is based on a book that is an obscure book relatively speaking yeah but the reason you knew you wanted to make this for people who are not familiar with your personal backstory. How do you explain that? I worked as a journalist for many years before I started working in film and television. And toward the end of my career, I was

working at Gawker and I was writing a lot about race. And, you know, I started becoming the guy sort of who was, people were like, oh, do you want to write about this racial tragedy? Do you want to write about Mike Brown? Do you want to write about Trayvon Martin? And, you know, Obama was in office so you know there was a lot of racism directed obama and that became sort of my go-to thing and i got to a point when i when i was like you know this is this doesn't feel good to me anymore this is not i don't like that my job is basically just commenting on like racial tragedy racial relief pitcher yeah exactly exactly bringing the bring in the left exactly and so it was like what what do i what do i need uh what do i need to do to get away from this and so i i left and i

I went to film and television, and I was thrilled to go to film and television because I was like, now this is great. I can write all these fictional stories about people, and none of it has to sort of like bear any resemblance to reality. And once I got there, I realized people were like, oh, do you want to write about these slaves? Do you want to write a movie about these gang members? You want to write a movie about these crack dealers? And it was like, wait a minute, why we now exist. I'm working in an arena where we can write about anything we want to. about black people. We can put them in any situation that we would like. Why is this still the most

interesting location for these people on a plantation or in the hood selling drugs? Like, why is this what you find most intriguing about black life? And so I read this book Eurasia by Percival Everett. Highly recommend picking it up. But it's about that. It's about a black novelist who is having difficulty selling his latest book, largely because people keep telling him that his work isn't black enough. Monk, your books are good, but they're not popular. Editors, they want a black book. They have a black book.

I'm black, and it's my book. You know what I mean. And people are like, yeah, but you know, it's not the kind of black that we're looking for, by which they mean, you know, we want stories of tragedy in the inner city or slavery or sort of like people burning crosses on families' lawns, that kind of thing. Where's our representation? Would you give us the pleasure of reading an excerpt? Yo, Sharonda, girl, you be pregnant again?

If I is, Ray Ray is going to be a real father this time around. He gets mad and writes a sort of, writes a book intended to sort of like mock the, mock the establishment and what they want from black writers. Deadbeat dads, rappers, crack. You said you wanted black stuff. That's black, right? And it ends up becoming sort of a massive success. And so...

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. And so these are issues that I've been talking about forever with my friends of color, and not even like just black people. Why is every quote-unquote prestige movie about these issues? Why is it always sort of like from this perspective? Like, these people's lives are miserable, and we want to touch on how miserable they are.

The word prestige, I want to be clear. Two things I want to be clear about as I interrupt you here. Number one, this movie is funny. Thank you. Like, I'm cackling as I remember the skewering of prestige. That's the second thing I just want to hone in on is that there's a specific demographic here. People who want to be, I guess in their mind, seriously engaging with important things. Yeah.

And in the process, they're revealing their uns seriousness. Yeah, absolutely. And your voice as a dialogue writer is so f***-sharp, man. Thank you. And it makes you laugh. The thing that I set out to do when I made this movie is that I wanted it to be, I wanted it to be a fun movie. I didn't want this movie to come in.

Despite the fact that, like, these are serious issues, right? Race is a serious issue. And it sometimes has fatal consequences. That is the reality of the world. But to only talk about these things in sort of like grave tones is a disservice to, it's a disservice to the human beings that are going through them. I wanted people to leave the theater like smiling and laughing. That to me was one of the, you know, one of the exciting things about the screening last night

was that, you know, we left the theater and we went to the bar afterward for the party and just everybody was just seemingly having a good time and laughing. I should say that you, Corre Jefferson are someone that I first met years ago as a journalist and you have completed this trajectory and it's not complete yet, but you are mid-story arc. What feels like, it's not a peak yet,

but it feels like this has all the trappings of that scene in the movie where, like, the first time writer-director has the big screening in New York, this premiere, and my vantage point is as a friend of yours who has his own high-stakes, decision, which is to figure out if I like it.

Yeah. And then how do you navigate the post-screening conversation if you don't? Exactly. Exactly. That's the, I mean, the thing that I always, the thing that I always think is the, is the most appropriate thing to say because you don't want to lie to your friends. But the thing that is, is honestly good to say to anybody, like, is you're like, you know, if you read a book that your friend wrote and you don't like it, you can say, you

wrote a book, and that is a massive, massive accomplishment. Like, you wrote and published a book, that's huge. And so I've had people come up to me and say, you made a movie. You made a movie. It's so great. And I'm like, oh, that is the oldest trick in the book. I know that. This is what we need to talk about, is the handbook that anybody who has friends who

makes things, how do I maintain my own integrity creatively while also not alienating them? Exactly. And I think we both have a friend who will go nameless, you might be able to know who it is immediately, whose go-to line which I love is, thank you for making this. That is incredible. I've never heard that before, but I think I know you're talking about. It's brilliant. It threads the needle of I am expressing a gratitude. You're getting a compliment. Oh, absolutely. That's the, I just don't. And so do you care, right? Like, this is the question I'm getting at. The thumping in the back of your brain about salesmanship. How much of it is, you're getting at? How much of it is a compliment? How much of it? but is also parsing the compliment, because that reflects, too,

on not just the marketability of the thing you made, but also about ego and self-esteem. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I want people whose tastes I respect and people I love to like the movie. I do. There's a real part of me that wants that.

That being said, I need to come to two. terms with the fact that not everybody is going to like the movie. This is, especially, you know, you know, the movie, the movie that I made is, you know, it's not like supposed to please everybody, you know. There are, I knew going into it that there were going to be people who did not like the film and that's, and that's, uh, who saw themselves in it in the wrong way. Perhaps, yeah.

Can I ask what you were in for? Was a murder? And you said that not me. They're offering four million dollars for movie. Yes! Perhaps they felt too uncomfortable to actually enjoy it. And so I know that that's happening. That being said, there are people, you know, that's why last night's screening,

despite the fact that it was full of my friends, I was extra sensitive, despite the fact that the theater is full of people who love me. Because it's like, you know, it's like Wesley Morris was there, right? And like, I love Wesley Morris's criticism. I think he's an amazing... Pulitzer Prize winning film. critic, whose work that I love and whose tastes I really respect. And so, you know, he's sitting there and I'm nervous. John Caramonica, who's another, like, amazing critic, you know.

I was thinking of you explicitly at the party afterwards because Wesley and John, I barged in on a conversation they were having about the movie. Oh, really? And I was like, oh, shit. Like, this is, this is like, this is like wiretapping, like the inside of the New York Times. Exactly. It's the New York Times podcast happening right in front of you. Those people are friends of mine and people in the media are friends of mine. And so I'm very happy that they're seeing it. But at the same time, these are people who I've come to really, really respect their professional opinions about art. And so I find it very difficult to maintain my composure and sort of like not feel sensitive to their opinions in that kind of environment. I went and saw a screening of

licorice pizza before it opened and uh yeah p t anderson gave this uh you know mini speech before the before the start of the film and he said uh but one of the last things he said he goes he goes the movie's great you're gonna love it thank you for being here and he walked away and i and i remember thinking like man i wish i had the confidence to stand in front of an audience of people and say this movie is great i really do i really do no there's an athletic confidence there yeah yeah truly like Yeah. This is a, it's an unrelatively athletic. Yeah. Superstar athlete just being like, watch this go in. Yeah, exactly.

I should say for anybody listening, because I, because they don't know what I told you last night, which is that I am someone who thinks this is a special film. Thank you. Truly. And we can just, we can zoom through me, uh, philating you in that way. But legitimately, like, it's the ultimate compliment that I felt because you, again, former journalist who goes and does a thing that, is in many ways what every journalist daydreams about. I was looking through just some of the reviews of the film already.

And, you know, it was a quote about you that Variety said that I just want to say to embarrass you. You're now one of the most closely watched screenwriting talents. Which is one of those things that is also like, okay, that's a loaded description. Like, is this guy going to choke? Yeah, exactly. Closely watched. I see if he's going to blow it. Right.

But I want to establish that the stakes are high, not just because you made something that I think people are, it's going to be a thing. People are going to really resonate with it. But also because your arc, your success in screenwriting has been significant. It's been prolific by any standard early on, man. And I want to point out that the ultimate compliment to me that I felt my self-feeling to be perfectly blunt with you and felt it sort of emanating through the air was that level of. Holy shit, Cord did it. And the back of my head is the thumping envy of like, oh, man, jealousy of just like, he's doing it.

He's doing the thing that we all, as journalists, daydream about. We all want to make a movie. We all want to be this guy. No, yeah, I know. I appreciate your vulnerability here. This is great. But at the same time, like, immense just pride as your friend and also, like, wow, I wish I could know what that feels like.

You can. I mean, this is the thing. This is the thing that I've realized is that making... So I've worked in TV for about nine years before I made this movie. And I've sold numerous TV shows. I've developed numerous TV shows at places, and I've never been able to get anything on the air. It has been a constant uphill battle and constant rejection,

so much so that when I went in and... When the company produced this film is called T Street. And T Street, when I was meeting with production companies, I met with them, and they greenlit the film in the room. They said, we're going to make this movie. And I started to cry. I started to cry on Zoom in the meeting because I had faced almost a decade of rejection over and over and over.

And now to be sitting there with somebody looking at me and saying, we're going to make this, it was literally a decade of sort of pent-up frustration about this. And I think that it's interesting that you say that, though, because I think that, you know, I, the reason I think I was a journalist is because I, it was, my parents are professionals, my father's a lawyer, my mother was an educator, they both went to grad school. I didn't know anybody who made art for a living growing up. I didn't know anybody who had a creative job. And so I always knew that I liked to write, but to me, journalism was an opportunity to be, creative, but also still feel like a professional, and I didn't allow myself to consider myself an artist.

I was like, it's kind of tweet to say, like, you're an artist, you know, I want to be an artist, I want to create stuff. It was like, oh, no, I'm a journalist. That's a serious profession. It's something my parents can tell their friends I do. That's why I did journalism for a long time, and I always did it knowing that I would like to write a novel or write a screenplay someday, but I never really allowed myself to pursue those things because I sort of thought it was like beyond my capability and beyond my reach.

I want to point out that, you know, in what you do and when I reference the arc, the part of the movie of your life that you're in right now, you have just had objective measures of success. And so I want to just be, again, in the therapy couch way, if you're, if you're comfortable with it, just talk about what it means to be competitive and how awards validate your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, and desires because there's, man, I would be lying if I said that when you have a child's vision of what it means to be successful, you're literally talking about I want to win an Emmy, I want to win an Oscar, I want to win an NBA championship, right? It's like this child's idea of sports and art being somehow the same thing. Yeah. And you're a guy who has won,

you won two Emmys in the same year, right? No, no, I won two Writers Guild Awards in the same year. But I didn't win two Emmys. I won one Emmy. And the Emmy goes to Damon Lindeloff, Core Jefferson Watchman. How embarrassing. Sorry, the Wikipedia table. I was consulting.

I was like, this all gets very confusing. But you worked on all of it, Watchman, Succession, a good place, Master of None, Station 11, which is, anyway, the point is,

you have the resume validated by the hardware. I just wonder, honestly what that allows you to feel or what you take from just that proof of holy shit I won this thing so here's so it's interesting that you sort of like bring it up bring up the sports comparison because I think the thing that the thing that I envy about athletes I've thought about this a lot the thing that I envy about athletes is that at the end of the day there is a very clear winner and loser there's very and it may not be like you know

know, if we play this game a hundred times, this team's going to win 99, but you won that one, and on that one day, you were the better team and the better player. I envy that so much because art is so subjective. It's art is, and I think that I had that, I had that impression. I remember from a very young age, probably like 96 or 97, I was 14 or 15. I was really, really into rap as a kid. And, you know, that era of rap to me in the sort of like 90s, and then particularly late 90s, You just had like all these incredible talents who were doing amazing things and amazing art.

And then that year I remember, I watched the Grammys and I remember that men in black, the Will Smith song for the movie, one best rap song of the year. And the Grammy goes to Will Smith. And I remember thinking like, what? Men in Black is the best rap song of 1997. It's not a bad song, but it's a commercial for the movie. Like, I remember thinking as a 15-year-old, like, that is really the best. Do the good guys really dress in black?

Do I have to remember that? Exactly. Like, what is going on? Like, you have Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. and J-Z. Like, all really at the top of their powers. And Men in Black is the best rap song. And so I sort of had this inclination that I was like, oh, this isn't, this doesn't seem like an accurate assessment of the quality of something. It doesn't, it doesn't feel that way.

And so. So you grew cynical early about what this is supposed to signal. Yeah. But then here's the thing. As much as you tell yourself that as much as I'm like, I try to sort of maintain my composure and say like, okay, you don't need external validation. I talk about this in therapy all the time. That being said, though, you know, when you're a. sitting in the audience, in your tuxedo, you want to win. You want to win. No doubt. I'm not going,

you know, you're sitting there and you're going, I want to win this thing. And despite the fact that you might like, you want to be a sort of like bigger person and say like, okay, it doesn't matter who wins, none of this matters. You want to win. You do. And so, and I will say that the practical reality of winning also is that, you know, my movie is full of black actors. the lead being Jeffrey Wright, who in my opinion is one of our greatest living actors and sort of like a national treasure. And Jeffrey Wright's never been nominated for an Oscar, you know?

Never. And he's kind of universally known as being like an amazing actor, but he's, you know, he's rarely sort of like the lead in a film. He's like in a bunch of huge movies like Commissioner Gordon and Batman. He's got these huge parts. Yeah, in Westworld. Yeah, exactly. For whatever reason, like people have overlooked him

when it comes to his, come to his talents and awards. And I think that awards do affect people's visibility. And it does, and beyond that, it affects people's paychecks, you know? Like, if you win an Oscar, your price goes up, you know, and in a very real way. And so there's this obvious cognitive dissonance in, like, the thing Oscar's so white, right? Which is, which is that we know, and we have known for a very long time, obviously they're doing a bunch of stuff to try to rectify this at this point but in years past that black actors and black art has been underappreciated by by these like governing bodies

like by sort of in in film and television awards yeah in film and television awards right and so on the one hand you might want to say oh like but who's Who cares then? Like, why do you even care about being nominated for an Oscar? Like, if you, if, if, if everybody understands that this governing body is not supporting your work, why do you still, why are you, it's almost, it's like, it's like, it's like, why are you pursuing somebody who's rejected you all the time? Right.

You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, why do you keep going after the girl who keeps telling you, no, I'm not interested? No, I'm not interested. Well, like, why, why don't you go find somebody who loves you? Why do you want this mortgage from this corrupt mortgage lender? Exactly. Exactly, exactly. You're right. And the reason is, is because there are real consequences to winning.

You literally want a bigger house. Exactly, exactly. You literally want to, you literally want to send your kids to school, like a private school in L.A., which is not cheap. You want to, you want to build generational wealth, the way that you're watching, you know, all these other people around you build generational wealth. Like there's all these real concerns that go hand in hand with winning awards. And so that's why it's both equal parts real and not real. And so at the end of the day, you want to say like awards don't matter, awards don't matter, awards don't matter. But there are some very real concerns when it comes to awards. But when it comes to the neurology of winning and wanting so badly to win, when you're in therapy,

because I'm curious if what you're working on is a deactivation of the lizard brain such that you don't want to feel the high, the dizzying, high upon winning. Because that's sort of the problem you have now. Yeah. Is that you're actually winning so often that you have to reckon with, is this actually a feeling that I should indulge? Because I watch your movie, and I'm like,

dude's going to be wearing tuxes at another thing pretty soon. Seriously. Which is amazing, and I want that for you. And I also, when I watch that award ceremony, I want to think about this conversation and wonder if you're trying to, if you're trying to burn off the neural net. I haven't been reading the reviews.

I haven't read the reviews for the film. People send me the headlines. and people tell me this one was good, and I'll look at the headlines, but I don't actually, I can't bring myself to read them because it's too stressful for me. And I know I'm the kind of person

who will read 10 great reviews and one bad one, and I will just linger on the bad one for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, and I won't be able to function. So even reading the good reviews, when you look at reviews, if you start to believe the good ones, then that also opens a window for you to believe the bad ones.

It's sort of like also opens the, Because once you start putting faith in what all these people are saying, then when I think about my creativity, I don't, even subconsciously, I don't want to be sitting there one day writing a script and saying, you know, remember that review that said they really liked when you did this on that film? Maybe you should like lean toward that. Like maybe maybe you should play more toward what this person said was really good in your last movie and do that in this movie. I want to be guided by my own instincts, and I don't want to be guided by these kinds of outside forces and outside opinions in doing what I'm doing. So, yeah, I think that all of that stuff is designed.

All of those practices are designed so that I can do what you're talking about, that is preparing myself for the possibility of being in an audience and, like, looking up at a stage and them, not calling my name and calling somebody else's name. And, like, not wincing. That's the most, that to me is the most... I can't wait. Ideas just, like, hearing somebody else's name,

and then you just, you gotta, like, still smile and applaud. Yeah. There is no better... It's brutal. There's no better, I should say, worse acting from great actors than when they are clapping after just losing. Exactly.

Exactly. That thing is less persuasive. Yeah, and it's, you know, I think that it is, impossible to not want to win when you're in that situation. Clearly, I have this competitive instinct in me, but that being said, I really, I really, really try to avoid letting that shape anything that I do. Because I, because, you know, the, I don't know, it's, it really, like, I was, I was just a TIF. We premiered the film at TIF.

In Toronto. Yeah, and I saw, I saw so many great films, like so many great films. And I was like, man, I love this. I love this actor. I love this director. This is really great work. And, you know, the idea that I should then, like, the idea that I could walk away and, like, make a hierarchy of the movies and of the art and saying, like, well, this was the better art or this was, this was the, you know, this was the worst thing. It's like they're all so varied and different and trying to put statistical analysis like you wouldn't explore.

Exactly. It's impossible. It's impossible. And I just, I think that I, I really, really love, I just really, really love, I love what I do. And I think that that to me is, you know, I try to focus on like that being the victory, that being sort of like winning. Yeah, it's just like, was I, because that's the thing that I can control. I can't control anything else. What I can control is working to make something to the best of my ability.

and then putting it out in the world. That's what I can do at the end of the day. I can't do. So I think that there is something, there is something, um, satisfying in that because unlike sports, I'm not like,

there's nothing that's going to keep me awake at night being like, here's what I should have done to win an Emmy. Here's what I could have done. You know, it's not, because I have no idea what you, you have no idea what you could have done to win an Emmy. You have no idea what the policy.

You have no idea what the politics are going to be like that year or who's going to release a movie that year, who's going to release a TV show that year. If somebody's going to do a T, do, you know, if somebody's going to, if all of a sudden, Merrill Streep's going to be in a TV show and she's not clearly going to, clearly going to, like, destroy the acting category. What real world event will reshape the conversation, capital T, capital C, towards some piece of art that happens to reflect it coincidentally. Exactly, exactly. And so all of, so I think that unlike a basketball player, player who might, who might, like, stay up and I'd just, like, if I had hit this shot, if I had just made that shot, if I had just made that block, if I'd played defense a little harder, in this moment, we could have won the game. I think that I have the piece of just saying, like, I certainly

watch things that I've worked on and said, like, okay, I could have done that better. I could, I could have executed that a little bit better. But that's more just about the creative process. That's more about the art itself, as opposed to, like, here's what I could have done to win this award because there's nothing that I could have done necessarily. It's all just, I just, I put it out and sort of like what happens, happens. And I think that there is some comfort in that, that it's sort of, I can't control these things. Yeah, I think all the time about how, um, in some sense, the cliches around the journey being the championship. The real, the real title we won was the friends we made along the way. Like that actually kind of what I'll be

whispering on my deathbed to myself. Truly. The older, the older, the older, the old I get, the older I get, the more I realize that all that stuff is true. All the cliches are true. It really is. It's like, it's about the process. If you focus on awards and money, you're going to be miserable because you're never going to have enough. Like, it's just, you need to focus on being creative and making the work that you want to make and like let everything else fall to the fall by the wayside. The older I get, the more I'm like, oh yeah, all like the Eckhart Toll books, like, are accurate. All those like, those like quote of the day calendars. But also, um, I want people to appreciate it.

So much of your film is about the themes that we're touching on here, right? Who gets to make what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Truly something that I want to parse just a bit about who the... Again, I say this all the time now, like, the contemplation of, are we the bad guys? And I think so much of why this movie is worth talking about is because in American fiction, your film, the bad guys are people ostensibly with good intent.

Yeah. There's already so much buzz because of the movie deal. Michael B. Jordan is circling. We want to put him on the cover in one of those scarves, I guess you would call them, tied around his hat. A du rack? Yeah. Yeah. Who want to be, again, admittedly, on very superficial box checky sorts of ways.

but think they're the good guys. Absolutely. And their intent is not to drag down. It's to actually, perversely, elevate. Exactly. And in that selection of who you elevate, you again are revealing that, yeah, there's a nuance here that is being a little missed.

Exactly, exactly. And I think that I don't ever want, I come from a very weird household where my father is a black Republican. My mother was a white liberal. They had very different ideas about politics in the world, and nothing was taken for granted in my household. It was sort of always like, you need to figure out how you think about the world. Because they had such polar opposite opinions on so many things that it wasn't like I could sort of like take everything like spoon fed for my parents about how the world works. I knew from a very early age, like, oh, okay, these people have very different opinions about everything.

This comment section is a little messy. I know, exactly. Exactly. And so it was so it was up to me. And they made it clear that it was up to me to sort of figure out how I wanted to think about the world. And so I grew up with this, with this idea that that things are difficult and complex and there aren't going to be answers to these questions sometimes. And that's okay. And I think that that's what I wanted the movie to explain is that another thing that sort of like is real and not real is race, right? And that the vast majority of scientists will tell you that the differences between the races are very, very insignificant compared to sort of like all of our similarities. So all of this stuff is... On a DNA level, right? As much as I am measuring your skull right now, for it. Exactly. Get out the calipers. Yeah, as much...

As much as I want to show you my binder of skulls, admittedly. But at the same time, it's... We have created... We have structured society and our laws and our traditions around the idea that this is real. And so, and as I said, sometimes race has fatal consequences. So on the one hand, race is not real. And on the other hand, racism is real, right? And so that, that, there's an inherent absurdity there. Like, there's an inherent ridiculousness to that idea. And to me, it's like, let's laugh at that. Let's find ways to sort of, like, have fun with that and talk about this because we're never going to solve this stuff if we don't talk. And I think that it's finding an

audience amongst very, very disparate groups of people, which to me is exactly what I set out to do. So to me, again, my unrequested college lecture is along similar lines, though, the idea that race, we're sort of borrowing the language of many topics you've talked about already here. But race is consequences. Yes. Race is not up to you to decide on a real level. Right? That's the whole one-drop rule idea.

But it's up for someone else to decide. And if someone is going to assume that you are this way, then they're going to treat you with consequences that accord with that, even if you bring out my ancestry.com results, I point out, actually, I'm just a really dark-skinned Indian guy. Like, sorry, you know, it doesn't work when you're dealing with the police department. Exactly. But the second thing that I was thinking about, as I heard you talk about,

how this thing that is not real, has real consequences. Yeah. Is that I'm ready to write my think piece that race is like the Academy of Words. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's exactly right. It's total fiction, but also the most important thing that determines how big my house is going to be. Exactly. It's exactly right.

It is like, it is the strangest, I mean, yeah, just, We have created, we have manifested all these things so that they are real. And like race is the number one. It's, it's, and to me, I just want to, I want to start, I just wanted to point out that the ridiculousness and that and then have fun with it. I, like the spiritual, a spiritual predecessor for my film was Hollywood Shuffle. I'm not sure if you've ever seen it, but. I haven't, but please.

It's Robert Townsend, co-written by Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wains, directed by Robert Townsend and starring Robert Townsend. And he plays a black actor in. in Hollywood, trying to break into the field, and the difficulties that he has with, like, not playing pimps and gang members and muggers and rapists and sort of like every job that he's going out for, it's these, like, same things. And they're like, well, could you, could you, like, walk blacker?

We need a blacker walk. And he's like, well, what's a blacker walk? And it's like, the guy's like, and it's a, there's this amazing, it's like, it's full of, like, little skits here and there. And there's this amazing skit where he's, like, sitting there waiting to go in. and do this audition for this film. And he's like, he envisions this black acting school. And then the black acting school, it's like all these white teachers that are like,

no, you got to walk like this, brother. And it's like, and he's like talking to another guy. And he's like, he's like, you've worked a lot this year, right? Ricky, can you tell us what you've been doing so you've graduated? Well, Robert, I've played nine crooks, four gang leaders, two dope dealers. I played a rapist twice. Whoa. That was fun.

It's just like it is all the things that people are still talking about nowadays. And it was done in a way that it was the first time that I can remember as a child seeing somebody talking about these issues in a way that made me laugh so hard. In a way that sort of really, I think, in the same way that, you know, in the same way that Chappelle did it. You know, in the same way that Richard Pryor did it. Like I was exposed to those guys later. but that was the first time in my life that I was like, oh, this is, these are incredibly serious issues

that have incredibly serious consequences, as we're talking about. But these guys are talking about it in a way that is just so funny and delightful and joyful. And I loved it. I loved that. I loved realizing that you could do that. And that in some ways, it was easier for people to accept it when you did that. That if you sort of like tried to write an academic thesis about this and then read it in front of like a white audience to try to get them to learn,

how many of those people are never going to attend to that performance in the first place, you know? Truly, truly, this is why when I say think piece, I say it as if, like, a think piece, if you were to label it as such a hand it to someone as like, hey, I got this real curdled milk. Yeah, exactly. Want to try it? Take a sip. It's profound. There is profundity in this milk.

Exactly. But you mentioned, you know, the Robert Townsend thing, and it reminds me of so much of what I was enjoying on a pure just like belly laugh basis in your movie, which was Jeffrey Wright being a guy, again, spoiler alert to some extent, who is now cosplaying as a fugitive. Yeah. Who is on the run and has a criminal past and is trying to now carry himself with the, whatever the opposite of the word gravitas is when you're talking about that character. It's different kind of gravitas.

Exactly. He's gone to four. Staggarly is still on the run for authorities. You haven't done anything. It's not like they can arrest you. Right, right, right. There's a German word for this. I don't know what it is.

It's a super racist German word. But whatever that is, it's like, how do you, again, you're a f***ed first-time director. Yeah. And Jeffrey Wright is Shakespearean. Yeah, exactly. So just the idea of getting him to buy in. Yeah. How do you direct Jeffrey Wright?

To make another sports analogy, it's truly like telling, like giving tips to Michael Jordan about like a jump shot. It's it's like I that he was the most intimidating person to come to when I was putting the movie together because I knew that I wanted him so early that I started reading the novel in his voice when I was thinking about the scenes in my mind. Jeffrey Wright was already there when I was reading the book and so he's the first person that I went to and you know I think that a lot of people talk the talk of like want I mean we've seen it very recently sort of like post George Floyd, everybody like, oh, well, we're going to increase our diversity and we're going to start reading these books and, and we're going to have anti-racism lectures and yada, yada, yada,

yada. And now there's just been such a huge backlash to that, right? And I think that there's been a lot of, and there's a lot of people talking about this and like, we're going to make changes, yada, yada, yada. And then there's guys like Jeffrey Wright who, I come to him, a black, a black man who's never written a film before, never directed anything before. I was like, I know you were an Angels in America on Broadway, and you played Basquiat. Everybody knows that you're one of the greatest living actors that we have. Gravitas. Gravitas, exactly, exactly.

And I know you could work with anybody. You're in Batman. You're in, you're in, you're in, all these West Anderson movies. He works with some of the biggest and most acclaimed directors in the world. Yes. For him to look at me and sort of like my total inexperience and his willingness to say, okay, you know what? I'm going to trust you with this and like, let's do this.

Like that to me is walking the walk of like actually trying to promote, to promote diversity in the industry. It is truly looking at somebody who, uh, has never done this before and is traditionally underrepresented in the industry and saying like, I'm going to, I'm going to give it a go. I'm going to give it. I'm going to, I'm going to see if this works and like, I'm putting my faith in you that we're going to make this thing.

And that to me was I'm forever indebted to him. I'm forever indebted to him for that because he could have, he could have done a million other movies with a million other huge. directors who are way, way, way bigger than me. And he took time out of his life to work with me on this sort of, on this, you know, it was, as you said, it's like a pretty esoteric book even. It's not, it's not like a slam dunk, like best-selling novel that came out in 2022. It's not conventional IP.

Exactly. Exactly. And he said, okay, let's do it. And I think, and after he said that, everything became easier. Because your cast is ridiculous, I should say. The cast is amazing. The cast is really, really amazing. And I think that, and the tip of that spear was Jeffrey Wright.

It was that once Jeffrey Wright was signed on, everybody was like, oh, this movie's real now. The financiers, the financiers agreed to give us more money for the film. Actors became much easier because they were like, oh, I want to work with Jeffrey Wright. Are you serious? Sterling K. Brown was like, yeah, I'll be shirtless in every scene. First-time director. Why not? Man, if I look like Sterling K. Brown with my shirt off, I'd be shirtless right here.

I'd be shirtless on this damn podcast. We're going to Photoshop ourselves. in post with lots of muscles. I do want to point out at the end here, though. I praised you a lot. I do think you're a total hypocrite about one thing. Yes, please. You mentioned how part of what's so exciting

about what you get to do in Hollywood now is that you get to put black people in positions that are fanciful and absurd. Yeah. Right? Like, you can put them in space. You can have them do anything. And meanwhile, I'm thinking back to what you told me about your awakening to the bull-s-h-of-a-wards.

Yeah. And I'm like, well, there was... one actor who tried to do something like that. Yeah. And it was this. A tone for your hypocrisy. This is Grammy Award winning Will Smith Men in Black, the greatest rap song to come out in 1997.

Forget Tupac, forget Piggy, forget Jay-Z, forget Nause, forget Common. That's right. This is the best we had to offer. That's right. I'm not even saying that song's bad. It's just, there's no way that was the best rap song that year. There's no way.

That's a good song, actually. I want all of our thoughtfulness that we attempted to put into this podcast to be reduced to one clickbait headline. I love it. Which is that Cord Jefferson says Will Smith never deserved his Grammy. Cord Jefferson says that the men in black commercial that came out in 1997 was not as good as, I don't know, illmatic. I don't think that's a controversial opinion. I'll die on that hill. CORD

Thank you for being one of the good guys Literally dressed in black today Thank you for having me man I love it I loved being here I love talking to you It's always insightful And yeah thanks for having me

Yeah I ask this of every one of my guests At the very end I want to play an extra in one of your movies Absolutely See this is what I do at the very end Deal, deal You are very well spoken So I'll happily do that

But what do you want to play? Oh I should live up to the promise of imagination I think that's the key. I want to play a seven-foot white guy. Okay, fair, fair. That's 100% reasonable. Great.

So as I ponder what it is that I found out today, I'm reminded that you should just go see American fiction when it comes out in theaters on December 15th. Take my word for it, but also find out for yourself, as it were. But as for what I found out, I am thinking about a writer named Stephen Pressfield, who wrote a book called Turning Pro.

This guy Billy Oppenheimer posted about it, and I stumbled across an excerpt, and it sent me into this rabbit hole of its own. Stephen Presfield talks about something called a shadow career. And he writes, quote, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor. For our real career, its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. If you're dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for. That metaphor will point you toward your true calling. And so that is how Cord felt, as he said, about being a journalist, but really wanting to be a screenwriter and director.

And now I'm left wondering if that's how I really feel about what I'm doing. And I don't think it is. This is kind of a big development here. because I have an inner golem, a golem that regards an Oscar, an Emmy, whatever, that trophy, that external validation, as my precious. But having a conversation like the one today

and having the conversations I've had on these two months of shows so far, as much as I love metaphors, and I do, this is a show about metaphors, I don't think this show is a metaphor for my true calling, I kind of feel like this show might be the calling. And I'm not sure, but that's the way it feels at the end of today's show. That's what I found out.

And it feels good. As much as I have a screenplay, a movie to direct, a book inside of me, an itch, all of that to scratch. It feels good to know that the metaphor is actually something real. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. metal arc media production and i'll talk to you next time