"This means the world to me," said director Cord Jefferson during his acceptance speech.
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The film was adapted from Percival Everett's "Erasure," a 2001 novel that came out when a genre alternately called "urban lit," "urban fiction," "street lit" or "hip-hop fiction" was peaking, especially among young Black readers.
In his best and most bracing film role to date, Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a Black novelist who feels angry and frustrated that his well-reviewed books never sell. It seems the public only ponies up for stories that juggle tropes about Black poverty and violence.
So Monk joins the enemy club under a pseudonym and hits paydirt with hilarious and pointedly satiric results.
Jefferson said they made the film out of passion.
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"It feels crazy, it feels incredibly surreal," he said. "We made this movie with very little money and very little time. We made it because we were passionate about it."
ABC News' Peter Travers and the Associated Press contributed to this report.