UB Spotlight: ‘American Fiction’ Cast Talk New Film + BTS

Black.
Black, with a side of Black.
100% Grade A Black.
Blackity.
Black, Black, Black.

“American Fiction” is in select theaters this Friday December 15th, and Everywhere December 22nd.

This is a must-see film!

Tony and Emmy Award-winner Jeffrey Wright stars in “American Fiction,” Cord Jefferson’s feature debut from an adaptation of Percival Everett’s “Erasure” – a bold comedy about the commodification of marginalized voices and a portrait of an artist forced to reexamine his integrity.

A fearless, funny, and provocative tale, “American Fiction” shines a thoughtful and thought provoking light on the concept and construct of race, identity, and family that aims to unify.

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Wright) is a respected author and professor of English literature. But his impatience with his students’ cultural sensitivities threatens his academic standing, while his latest novel fails to attract publishers who claim Monk’s writing “isn’t Black enough.”

He travels to his hometown of Boston to participate in a literary festival where all eyes are on the first time author of a bestseller titled “We’s Lives In Da Ghetto,” a book Monk dismisses as pandering to readers seeking stereotypical stories of Black misery.

Meanwhile, Monk’s family experiences tragedy and his ailing mother requires a level of care neither he nor his complicated and self proclaimed black sheep of a brother (Sterling K. Brown) can afford. One night, in a fit of spite, Monk concocts a pseudonymous novel, “My Pafology,” embodying every Black cliché he can imagine.

His agent submits it to a major publisher who immediately offers the biggest advance Monk’s ever seen. As the novel is rushed to the printers and Hollywood comes courting, Monk must reckon with an identity of his own making.

“I think the film, if I can kind of distill it down, is about freedom. It’s about defining oneself on one’s own terms to the extent that any of us are able to do that,” stated Jeffrey Wright.

Author and activist James Baldwin once said, “If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” This quote then begs the question: What does it mean to be seen as Black? Who gets to define, evaluate, and authenticate Blackness?

Is society, industry, and media ready to breathe in the depth and breadth of Black identity beyond recycled perceptions and preconceived notions? Is it time to turn up the volume on Blackness so Black experiences can break through – in total living color?

Starring Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Keith David with Issa Rae and Sterling K. Brown. Also starring Myra Lucretia Taylor, Ray Anthony Thomas, Okieriete Onaodowan, Miriam Shor, Michael Cyril Creighton, Patrick Fischler, Neal Lerner, J.C. Mackenzie, Jenn Harris, and Bates Wilder.

Orion Pictures and MRC present, a T-Street Production, in association with Almost Infinite, and 3 Arts Entertainment, “American Fiction,” a film by Cord Jefferson.

Film Characters

Monk (Jeffrey Wright) is a respected author and professor of English literature. But his impatience with his students’ cultural sensitivities threatens his academic standing. Also the oldest of three children and was his late father’s favorite.

Monk’s sister, Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), is an ob-gyn like their late father. She is recently divorced and is the primary caretaker of their mother. She is the glue that keeps the Ellison family together.

Arthur (John Ortiz) is Monk’s book agent. Arthur is a good agent and loyal to Monk, but as the rejections accumulate, he tells him it may be time for a reckoning.

Coraline (Erika Alexander), is the Ellisons’ beach house neighbor. She and Monk meet cute when Monk helps her with her groceries, and she makes an unfortunate joke.

Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), is the Oberlin-educated author of the newest best seller We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. She is polished and unapologetic for being a Black writer of a best-selling book about the “Black experience.”

Agnes Ellison (Leslie Uggams), is the Ellison family matriarch. She is graceful and reserved. She still lives in the family home with her only daughter and longtime family housekeeper and friend, Lorraine.

Cliff Ellison (Sterling K. Brown), is the youngest of the Ellison siblings and the outcast of the family. He recently and dramatically came out of the closet by having an affair with a man, and blowing up his marriage and family. He’s a surgeon, very bright, and feels like he’s never been accepted by his family and has a strained relationship with Monk.

Forward By Cord Jefferson

From the moment I started reading “Erasure” — the weird, hilarious, heartbreaking, and elegantly furious Percival Everett novel on which “American Fiction” is based—I had felt that the book was written as a gift specifically for me. From Monk, the protagonist, feeling alienated by many people’s concepts of race to an ailing mother to a reference to my obscure alma mater, the book’s many overlaps with my life made it resonate with me deeper than most any piece of art has. As soon as I finished reading it, I scrambled to find Mr. Everett’s contact information so that I might beg him to let me adapt it.

“Erasure” was published more than 20 years ago, yet the questions it asks remain painfully relevant: Why is American culture fascinated with Black trauma? Why aren’t Black professors depicted in books and films as frequently as Black drug addicts, or Black rappers, or Black slaves? Why is it that white people with the power to greenlight films, books, and TV shows have such a limited view of what Black lives should look like? I’ve asked myself these questions many times before when I hear yet another slave movie is going into production, or when I see that another talented Black actor has been hired to portray a drug dealer, pimp or single mother who needs to overcome her unenviable lot in life.

This reductive view of Blackness makes me angry. And I’ve funneled that anger into “American Fiction.”

The experience I’m most trying to communicate with this movie is the asymmetry between how individuals see themselves versus how the world sees them. This goes well beyond a Black person sick of slave narratives. I believe people of every identity can empathize with the struggle to be seen as a discrete being, whole and specific, with an interior life that goes well beyond strangers’ assumptions.

“Aren’t you fed up? Black people in poverty, black people rapping, black people as slaves, black people overcoming racism in the 1950’s, black people being murdered by the police, soaring narratives about black folks in awful situations who nonetheless find ways to maintain their dignity. It’s like they can’t envision us out from under somebody’s boot.” – Monk

Check Out the UB Spotlight: “American Fiction” Cast Talk New Film + BTS!