American Fiction Rating

American Fiction

Orion Pictures, MRC Film, T-Street Productions, 3 Arts Entertainment

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Release date

September 8, 2023 (TIFF)

November 17, 2023

My Rating 

8/10

#whatonwhatsgood Fan Club Rating 

75%

Running time

117 minutes

Description

AMERICAN FICTION is Cord Jefferson's hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

Written for the Screen and Directed by 

Cord Jefferson

Based upon the novel ‘Erasure’ by 

Percival Everett

Genres

Comedy/Drama

Starring

Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison

Tracee Ellis Ross

Erika Alexander

Leslie Uggams

Sterling K. Brown

Myra Lucretia Taylor

John Ortiz

Issa Rae

Adam Brody

Keith David

Produced By

Ben LeClair, p.g.a., Nikos Karamigios, p.g.a., Cord Jefferson, p.g.a., Jermaine Johnson, p.g.a.

Executive Produced By

Rian Johnson, Ram Bergman, Percival Everett

Cinematography

Cristina Dunlap

Edited by

Hilda Rasula

Music by

Laura Karpman

Erika Alexander stars as Coraline and Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION An Orion Pictures Release Photo credit: Claire Folger © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Issa Rae stars as Sintara Golden and Nicole Kempskie as Sintara’s moderator in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION An Orion Pictures Release Photo credit: Courtesy of ORION Pictures Inc. © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION An Orion Pictures Release Photo credit: Claire Folger © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Sterling K. Brown star as Cliff in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION An Orion Pictures Release Photo credit: Claire Folger © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Tracee Ellis Ross stars as Lisa and Leslie Uggams as her mother Agnes in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION An Orion Pictures Release Photo credit: Claire Folger © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Writer/director Cord Jefferson on the set of his film AMERICAN FICTION An Orion Pictures Release Photo credit: Claire Folger © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

CORD JEFFERSON discusses American Fiction

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.

I made this movie for everyone tired of these lazy, monotonous stories—especially the

generations of Black artists who have too often been tasked with rendering rote suffering, to the

neglect of their countless other abilities. I wanted to make an honest film that speaks to both the

universality of being marginalized by the world and the unique individuality that animates every

person on earth.