Directors, Producers, Screenwriters and Composers Unpack Their Craft at Variety FYC Fest
variety.comVariety FYC Fest on Dec. 6 in Los Angeles. Variety‘s senior awards editor Clayton Davis, Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay and Senior Entertainment & Media Writer Matt Donnelly moderated several panels throughout the event.
From the environmental documentaries “Common Ground” and “The Issue with Tissue: A Boreal Love Story,” to Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the filmmakers behind 2023’s favorite films pulled back the curtain on their process. Cord Jefferson Panel “American Fiction” Spotlight “American Fiction” director and writer Cord Jefferson sat down for a one-on-one with Variety editor Davis.
Jefferson revealed that after stumbling upon a review of Percival Everett’s “Erasure” he immediately picked up the novel that inspired his screenplay adaptation and started reading. “It resonated with me deeper than any piece of art had ever resonated with me,” Jefferson said. “I started reading the book in Jeffrey Wright’s voice actually, that’s how early I started thinking of Jeffrey Wright.” Jefferson would later pitch Wright the idea to star in his film on Malibu beach. “Jeffrey Wright’s a big jock, that might surprise you all.
Jeffrey Wright went to Amherst to play Lacrosse as a kid,” he said. “Now he’s a huge surfer. He surfs a lot with the Hemsworth brothers from Australia, they’re a big surf gang.” Cord continued on revealing how adapting this novel into “American Fiction” helped resurrect his passion for creation, “Three months before I found this novel I had a big, professional setback,” he said detailing a show he was certain was going to shoot that was suddenly killed.
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