CORD JEFFERSON - Writer / Director

Team Deakins

James Ellis Deakins

Tv & Film, Filmlighting, Deakins, Movies, Filmmaking, Production, Film, Cinematography, Film Interviews

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2023

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Writer and director Cord Jefferson (AMERICAN FICTION, WATCHMEN, THE GOOD PLACE) joins us on this episode of the Team Deakins Podcast. Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Cord tells us why he never considered a career in the arts and how he wrote his way onto a journalism beat after college. After transitioning into writing television and surviving the Hollywood shuffle, Cord shares why he wrote AMERICAN FICTION following a huge professional failure in 2020 and how he realized the film with the help of Rian Johnson’s production company T-Street in a risk-averse industry. We dive deep into Cord’s process and experiences as a first-time director and learn how he prevented the tone of the film from falling into farce. Cord later shares why he prefers the collaborative nature of filmmaking over the solitude of prose writing and why AMERICAN FICTION was the first screenplay he ever wrote purely out of passion. At the end, Cord preaches patience when asked to give a younger version of himself advice, and he dispels the myths surrounding writer’s block.

This episode is sponsored by Aputure

Instagram: @aputure.lighting

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi and welcome to season two of the Team Deacons podcast, a collection of
0:08.8	informal conversations between Roger and James Deacons and a guest. We never know where the conversation
0:15.6	will take us so listen in and see where it goes. This episode is sponsored by Aperture, a company with a global footprint spanning four continents.
0:28.0	Aperture is a driving force in LED cinema technology, renowned for their cutting edge lighting and
0:35.1	software solutions.
0:37.0	focused on enabling filmmakers to achieve their creative vision,
0:41.0	they've built a lighting ecosystem of over 20 different fixtures that can be controlled
0:46.5	wirelessly through their software platform, CITES Link. Today we're talking with someone who's been a link.
0:53.2	Today we're talking with someone who's been a journalist, writer, and director.
0:57.3	Among his TV credits are Master of None, The Good Place and Watchmen.
1:02.8	Just recently, he's directed, as well as written, the film American Fiction.
1:08.0	We're happy to welcome.
1:09.3	Cord Jefferson.
1:10.3	Cord, thank you for doing this.
1:11.9	Yes, welcome.
1:13.0	Thank you so much for having me.
1:14.0	It's such an honor.
1:15.0	We'd like to start with our question.
1:18.0	How did you get to where you are today?
1:20.0	Was this something you always knew you wanted to do, or did you just sort of find it? No yeah I guess I got
1:26.1	here very slowly I would say. A meandering route. My dad's a lawyer and my mother was an educator. They were sort of, you know, just regular
1:37.1	professionals and I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. I was born in Tucson, they moved overseas briefly for about five years and then back to Arizona when I was six.
	...

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