Tucson-born Cord Jefferson won an Academy Award Sunday for best adapted screenplay for writing βAmerican Fiction,β his first film.
Jefferson also directed the film. That was a first for him too.
βIβve been talking a lot about how many people passed on this movie in discussing it, and I worry that sometimes that sounds vindictive,β Jefferson said while accepting the award Sunday.
βI donβt want to be vindictive. Iβm not a vindictive person anymore, Iβve worked very hard not to be vindictive anymore.β
βItβs more a plea, a plea to acknowledge and recognize that there are so many people out there who want the opportunity that I was given. I understand that this is a risk-averse industry β I get it,β he continued.
βBut $200 million movies are also a risk, you know, and it doesnβt always work out. But you take the risk anyway,β he said. βInstead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies, or 50 $4 million movies.β
βThank you for trusting a 40-year-old Black guy whoβd never directed anything before,β Jefferson said.
He wrote the screenplay after reading Percival Everettβs satirical novel βErasure,β Jefferson told the Star in a January interview. The novel is about a Black authorβs attempt to mock the publishing world by writing a hyper-stereotypical βghetto novelβ that ends up becoming a bestseller.
Jefferson graduated from Canyon del Oro High School and left Tucson for college in 2000. He worked as a journalist for several years before becoming a writer for television.
In 2019 he earned a Primetime Emmy Award for his work on the HBO limited series βWatchmenβ and wrote for the Netflix comedy βMaster of Noneβ and the NBC sitcom βThe Good Place.β
Meanwhile, another Arizonan was a big Oscar winner Sunday.
Emma Stone, from Scottsdale, won the Academy Award for best actress Sunday for her performance in βPoor Things.β
It was her second Oscar win for best actress. In 2017, Stone also won for βLa La Land.β
Stone was honored Sunday for her tour-de-force performance as Bella Baxter, a childlike woman in Victorian London who comes to life through a brain transplant and begins a journey of self-discovery, the Associated Press reported.
Stone is the 13th woman to win two best actress trophies. She was nominated for supporting actress in 2015 and 2019.
She also was nominated this year in the best picture category for producing βPoor Things,β which lost to βOppenheimer.β She was the second woman to be nominated for acting and best picture for the same film after Frances McDormand, who earned both trophies for βNomadlandβ in 2021, the AP reported.