American Fiction – Screenplay by Cord Jefferson – nominated for Five Oscars, including Best Motion Picture of 2023, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor in a Leading and Supporting Roles and many other trophies, one other note is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/02/oscar-nominated-for-best-motion-picture.html - 9 out of 10

 

American Fiction – Screenplay by Cord Jefferson – nominated for Five Oscars, including Best Motion Picture of 2023, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor in a Leading and Supporting Roles and many other trophies, one other note is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/02/oscar-nominated-for-best-motion-picture.html

9 out of 10

 

 

American Fiction is an original, thought provoking, inspiring, outré movie, one of the best in 2023, offering audiences not just entertainment, but also a challenging narrative, satire and intrigue unlike what we can see normally, in the usual programs that we can see in the cinema, or on the streaming networks

 

Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison is the hero, portrayed by Jeffrey Wright, who is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading role – the main character is a writer, who does not want to be type cast, placed in a box and he rebels against this notion, taking physically his work along with him

He is in a library, or maybe a book store, when he sees his volumes, asks the assistant about the author, and then takes his sun glasses off and reveals that he wrote those books…what about this section, and the reply is that he does not select the spaces, and then that this is how it works with a chain of stores, it is higher up…

 

Thus, Thelonious Monk takes the seven or ten volumes in his hands, against the protest of the employee, and wants to move them, because he does not agree with the superficial, false criteria that have been applied to him – this is a film about the new trends, the Woke, Cancel Culture, the guilt that is displayed, falsehood and more…

He participates at a symposium – if this is not wrong, incidentally, if you have reached this point, maybe it is far enough, first, my opinion of the film is already expressed, then there might be spoiler alerts, and more important, it is subjective, and details are confused, so these lines are in no way helpful, or accurate…

 

But in the room there are very few people, and when Monk asks, he is told that Sintara has a session nearby, at the same time, only Thelonious had not heard of the successful writer, so he walks to the other premises, where Sintara Golden reads from her best seller ‘We’s Lives in Da Ghetto’ a puzzling work…

Later in the narrative, when they are part of the jury of five, that will decide on a literary award, she will talk with Monk, and she will say that she ‘offers what the market wants’, but the main topic here would be that the white readers and critics have this image of Black literature, which has to include ‘words from the street’

 

White people want the Black culture to appear the way they see it, a number show some remorse for what ancestors did, but it is mostly false, pompous and self-congratulatory, these aspects are satirized in the film – Thelonious decides to write a book in the style that is ‘required’ and sends it to his agent, Arthur…

One printing house is thrilled with it, and wants to pay about eight hundred thousand as an advance (maybe it was not this figure, but I have already mentioned the inaccuracy to be expected in this text) for the ‘Black Literature’ that is so vivid, jumping out of these pages, meanwhile, Monk has a very different opinion

 

He does not think there is a typical Black literature, and is evidently correct, we cannot have people fit boxes, there are varied experiences, styles and messages, his offer was more of a protest, and he continues with this game Games People Play  https://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/games-people-play-by-eric-berne.html comes to mind

Thelonious does not publish under his own name, he chooses Stagg R Leigh as his pseudonym, and furthermore, he claims to be a fugitive from justice, and uses a foul language, just the expected, and eventually, he insists on changing the title of his book to…Fuck, which is more than provocative, it has to be censored in places

 

Initially, the editors are worried – you could not use the name on television, the linear channels, so how to market the product, but then they realize the power to shock, and the buzz it will create, perhaps in the manner that the Benneton publicity worked, some decades back – but they accept the ultimatum given by Stagg

The movie industry ahs to get a piece of the action, and Wiley Valdespino enters the frame, as a producer of films that are ‘real’, albeit he is the epitome of the obnoxious celebrity – in one scene, an assistant brings him a cold drink, and the arrogant moron asks why the can is wet, well, it is ‘condensation’

 

However, the entitled prick does not like it, changes this to some other liquid and threatening says ‘never again’, which is both comical, but also traumatic, how could the poor employee avoid condensation, for a cold drink…with Stagg aka Monk, the conversation is brief, because the ‘fugitive’ hears the sirens on the street

Ergo, he jumps and runs, abandoning the meeting that could lead to the sale of the movie rights, only Valdespino offers a huge amount of money, four million dollars, because he is now convinced that his writer is the ‘real deal’, attributing the tempestuous end of the talk to a run from the law, the sirens form the police cars made him want to escape

In reality, Thelonious was worried about his mother, thinking an ambulance had come to take her in an emergency, the parent is suffering from Alzheimer, he places her in a home, but she is losing her memory…

 

 Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Heritage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”