And I'm happy that we did because I think it really set the tone for the show. But then in only one specific panel, there's a close-up of Hooded Justice, and you can see that the skin around his eyes is white. Jo Reed: Oh! Watchmen is a super-hero series set in an alternative world that nonetheless shares much of our racial history. Jo Reed: Cinematically-- I mean, the way this episode is put together. Need some streaming picks for the month? I'm not 100 percent sure, but I'll keep you posted. You're dealing with reparations and you're dealing with race and you're dealing with sexual violence, you're dealing with police violence. Can you walk us through that episode? For my money, "Watchmen" is one of the smartest and most profound examination of African American history in popular culture, and the fact that this history is embedded in a superhero series just adds to its textures. I'm not a superhero person. Started Season Two of "Succession.". I thought that was something that you created for the series. Cord Jefferson: I'm on a new show called "Station Eleven." Former Gawker staffers, led by Max Read and Cord Jefferson, are now developing scripts about the site’s glory days skewering the powerful. Cord Jefferson began his career as a journalist, but six years ago he began writing for television. There's not a lot of people of color. Cord Jefferson: Yeah. Can you just talk a little bit about what different tools you need from that toolkit to tackle both? “The fellowship is named after my mom, who would have been 72 today,” Jefferson said […] Cord Jefferson: Yeah. You can subscribe to "Art Works" wherever you get your podcasts, so please do, and please leave us a rating on Apple. Best Of: NPR's Nina Totenberg / 'Watchmen' Writer Cord Jefferson : Fresh Air Nina Totenberg is widely regarded as the dean of legal journalists. Music Credit: “NY” written and performed by Kosta, from the album Soul Sand. The first time that you see how wonderful a costume designer can execute this weird idea that you had and make it something that you had never even considered before when you were talking about a costume, or the way that you could write a line that you're not really sure is very good but in the mouth of a wonderful actor just turns out to be so much better than you ever thought it could be. Cord Jefferson: I was a journalist, and a guy called me-- a guy named Mike O'Malley called me and asked me if I would come write for television, and--. Cord Jefferson: Yeah. There's a handful of women here and there. But even so, I wanted to do that, and I still want to do that. After this piece ran we were contacted by the ONE Campaign, which wanted to clarify that the freelancer had not actually been approved for an interview. Discover (and save!) And it is something that I found to be very beautiful and moving when it works. Because you're dealing with such complicated and difficult issues. The visual of the mask beneath the mask-- the metaphor is better when he wears the white makeup instead of just wearing the mask over his face. And so I took it. Cord Jefferson: Thanks. And so there's a moment in the episode when her grandfather, speaking to her grandmother, is being accused of being angry, and he says, "I'm not angry." Its Raila Odinga Birthday. It was a siege, and it seeks to the resentment that had been building up over the years, I think. What if he puts makeup around his eyes and that is the mask under the mask?" Jo Reed: Can you describe the writers' room? Jo Reed: Well, legacy is a strand that goes through this series in many, many forms. All Free. You put the words on the page, and then there's a director who directs and an actor who acts. Obviously, there's an editor and you're not just on your own, but what you produce pretty much ends up to be what's on the page whereas with television writing it's such a collaborative process, and you don't do the completed project. And so what it did was extract older memories from people's brains and put them in pill form so that they could take them and live in happier times and remind themselves of who the people are in their lives. In this podcast, Jefferson takes us inside the writers’ room of Watchmen; we talk about Lindelof’s vision for the series and how the writers worked together to bring it to fruition. Cord Jefferson: Oh. Cord Jefferson: Yeah. Directed by Bob Lally. Yeah. Damon Lindelof (left) and Cord Jefferson at the 72nd Emmy Awards on Sept. 20, 2020. Yeah. That was one of the biggest arguments of the room. I think that as a black person in America, there's no way that I look at a noose and don't immediately think of America's history of lynching, but at the same time I think a white reader might look at that and think that he's just an executioner-- he's wearing an executioner's mask. It's light. So he was basically the motivator. Cord Jefferson has signed a multi-year overall deal with Warner Bros. Television, Variety has learned. Then you bring it back, and Damon does his punch-up on it and fixes the draft how he wants it to be fixed, and then you go forward from there. Happy Birthday Cory Jefferson! I believe Damon may have been the strongest opponent to makeup around the eyes, but we finally convinced him to do it, and I think that I'm really, really happy that we did because I think that it speaks to the character of Will Reeves himself and that this is a guy who's hiding something from everyone. Read writing from Cord Jefferson on Medium. Was it comfortable? Cord Jefferson: Not until 2021. Yeah. And so the black residents of Greenwood went to the jail and were trying to protect it from the white residents. So there was-- yeah. This was a bold way to begin what is a superhero series. We finally settled on the makeup . Jo Reed: Interesting. He was starting a show called "Survivor's Remorse" on Starz that was based loosely on Lebron James's life. My memory is a little fuzzy. We were doing a superhero show but just went a little bit more grounded in reality than maybe others. Wish the enigma of Kenyan politics a happy birthday. It was brilliant. I never saw the film. Thank you. Since that time, he has put together a jaw-dropping resume—writing for shows like, Duke Dang, GM of Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Violinist and Social Entrepreneur Aaron Dworkin. Jo Reed: Will Reeves, he becomes the superhero Hooded Justice, the original superhero. It gave viewers an immediate reaction, an immediate understanding of the themes that we were going to discuss. We knew that we wanted to include the Greenwood Massacre somewhere in the show. There was a lot of discussion-- I think weeks of discussion-- about where it would go, and we finally landed on opening the pilot with it. We started that show in September 2017, and I think there was still writing going on in early 2019-- I think March/April of 2019. Using the ideas that the group had collaborated on, I went and wrote the draft and then brought it back to Damon, and he punched it up how he saw fit, and then that's what went to air. Cord Jefferson is a journalist, essayist, and television writer best known for his work on Watchmen, Succession, The Good Place, and Master of None. Officially licensed, 100% cotton. Cord Jefferson is a writer living in Los Angeles. I really liked my journalism job. Cord Jefferson: Yeah. Her grandfather turns out to be Hooded Justice, a crucial figure in the original graphic novel who inspired two generations of costumed crime fighters. Yeah, that's how you know it. That's a novel that came out in 2015, and so I started that in August. How many people? We also talk about the process of collaboration, world building, and weaving real history into a fantasy series. By Joe Pompe o May 21, 2020 The thing that I was so blown away by was how many people didn't know about the history that we were discussing. We're now in January of 2020. I am not going to say all television, but the vast majority of television is written by committee, and so you all sit together and plan out what the season is going to look like and plan out what the story arc of each episode is going to look like. He had a hand in so many of the shows that I really loved and appreciated. Cord Jefferson is a writer and producer, known for The Good Place (2016), Watchmen (2019) and Master of None (2015). He's an incredible showrunner, an incredible man, and I learned a lot from him. Thank you so much, and thank you for just the wonderful work that you do. He's somebody who is sort of deceiving everybody a little bit. A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of work into that show, and I believe it paid off, and I'm really proud of what we were able to make. That's something that I think just speaks to how different people view different things. What about "Succession"? There's a lot of touchy subjects that we broach in the show and that we broached in the writers' room. Cord Jefferson: Yeah. I'm Josephine Reed. Did Lindelof have that idea from the beginning, that Hooded Justice would be black? So the diversity was there, the racial and gender diversity was there, and I think that Damon felt that if he was going to tell the story properly he really needed to have black voices in the room. Jefferson's Birthday officially honors the birth of the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson on April 13, 1743. So I went away and wrote. Reseña de todas las películas y series del guionista Cord Jefferson en Aceprensa . Jo Reed: Will Reeves as Hooded Justice wears many masks. You've been listening to "Art Works," produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. At the end of the day, that's my only goal. It's an alternative universe: Robert Redford is president; Vietnam is the 51st state; the police conceal their identities with masks to prevent the Seventh Cavalry, a white supremist group, from targeting them. And so that's going to be on HBO Max, and we started that in August of 2019 and are still writing that. So to me, I just-- sort of going back to the toolkit thing, I just assumed that if you were a TV writer you just did whatever you wanted to do. Lebron James was the executive producer, and he'd read some of my journalism and seen some of the stuff that I'd done and liked it and asked me if I would come write for his show. Jo Reed: Let me ask you this, because you came into Season Two in "The Good Place," and in "Watchmen" you were there from the beginning. And so that had always been my goal and my mentality, and so when I was offered this opportunity to use that toolkit and apply it to something else, I leapt at it. One of the few things I can remember my father telling me about his time in Vietnam came after a long meal at a Lebanese restaurant in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. One of the ideas that we came up with pretty early was I pitched that Will Reeves would be a victim of racial violence, that he would be someone who survives an attempted lynching, and that is his origin story-- that he's lynched by his fellow officers. It was a thriving, upwardly mobile, black community that existed in Tulsa that white residents of Tulsa felt some resentment toward it because it made people angry to see a black community flourishing. Yeah. I don't really care if it's half-hour or hour or considered comedy or drama; I just want to work on good things with smart, talented people. That was February of 2014-- about six years ago-- and I didn't look back. You know, it was chilly." Cord Jefferson: That was-- . All right. In fact, the episode Jefferson wrote with showrunner Damon Lindelof has a character living out her grandfather’s memories of vicious racism in the 1930s. Since that time, he has put together a jaw-dropping resume—writing for shows like Succession, Master of None, The Good Place (for which he just received an NAACP Image Award) and the ground-breaking series Watchmen. In the world of "Watchmen," Nostalgia pills were pills that were made for dementia and Alzheimer's patients in order to give them their memories. Jo Reed: It's not as though the Greenwood Massacre in Tulsa happened in this self-contained box. Jo Reed: Was there anything in particular that appealed to you about "The Good Place" that made you say yes to that job? Jefferson Davis's Birthday - WordReference English dictionary, questions, discussion and forums. Cord Jefferson: Thank you. There's a difference of opinion about some of those subjects, but nothing ever felt like we were showing disrespect to anybody, or nothing ever felt like there was animosity behind what was being said. I thought meant the literal temperature. Here are the buzz-worthy titles you're going to want to mark on your calendar. Italian Super Cup winner (2017) NBA D-League All-Star (2017) Third-team All-Big 12 (2014) NIT champion (2013) Alaska Aces Import (2017) # CoryJeferson # AlaskaAces # NBABDAYS # PBABDAYS I have several friends who told me that they thought it was just all a fabrication that we came up with for the show and were blown away to discover that it actually was a real gory part of American history. your own Pins on Pinterest Cord Jefferson: Yeah. An original blues guitar legend, Blind Lemon Jefferson has been an inspiration to all current blues guitarists. Cord Jefferson: Damon's thinking was that the original "Watchmen" text was built around Cold War fears and the fear of the Soviets and the nuclear arsenal and nuclear holocaust. I never read "Watchmen." His sound is often imitated but this shirt is not, get your officially licensed Birthday Record t-shirt while you still can! RT @HBO: This is, and will always be, a Regina King fan account.Congratulations to @ReginaKing on her #Emmys win for Outstanding Lead Ac… 8 hours ago; RT @watchmen: An extraordinary honor for an extraordinary writing team.Congratulations to Damon Lindelof and @cordjefferson on their #Emmy… Cord Jefferson: Okay . “Watchmen” writer Cord Jefferson is teaming up with the Writers Guild of America Foundation to launch the Susan M. Haas Fellowship, which … Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive. That's not until next year, so a lot of time. Jo Reed: Okay. What the credit "Written by Cord Jefferson and Damon Lindelof" means in this show is that I wrote the first draft of the episode. But I think that something that was interesting to me about the concept was that of course a person of color or a woman would be the first superhero. Jo Reed: Well, journalism-- you're basically writing on your own. Cord Jefferson wrote the episode in which the main character goes back in time and to relive the trauma of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. And so he came in with some ideas of his own, like I said, about wanting to set this in Tulsa and wanting the Tulsa Massacre to be a part of it and wanting Hooded Justice to be black, but then we just worked as a team to build everything out. Age : 30 College : Baylor (2009–2014) NBA Draft : 60th pick, San Antonio Spurs (2014) Current League / Team : Free Agent. So if I'm a writer, I could write novels or write articles or write screenplays or write stage plays or write ad copy. Cord Jefferson is teaming up with the Writers Guild of America Foundation to support two journalists interested in TV writing. The recent series is set in present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma. The "Watchmen" room is just you write your draft, Damon takes his pass, and then that's what's goes to air. But it is just a lot harder to do that world building and to do that character creation from the ground up. I think that it speaks to the fact that many of the white residents of Tulsa were just looking for an opportunity to lay waste to this neighborhood, and all it took was the smallest violation. Discover (and save!) Cord Jefferson: I was about to say, "That's an interesting question. That was Cord Jefferson, a television writer whose series include "Watchmen," "The Good Place," "Succession," and now "Station Eleven." There's a lot more that I could get into, but those are the basic beats of the episode. But Episode 6, "This Extraordinary Being," the one that you wrote, it is one of the most compelling hours of television I've ever seen. Cord Jefferson: Yeah. And I think that the key to having a good writers' room is just understanding that your coworkers are smart and talented and funny and interesting and have interesting things to say and that you should be respectful of that and be respectful of the diversity of opinion.