Jenkins then spent a long time not getting Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, an adaptation of Bill Clegg’s junkie memoir, off the ground, and writing for the TV show The Leftovers. It was well liked and won a few awards, but made nothing more than a modest impact. An African-American variant on the mumbly, lo-fi hipster romcom, it detailed the aftermath of a one-night stand between an articulate but slightly annoying man who supplies fancy fish tanks and a sleek, good-looking woman who lives with an art curator. Moonlight is his second feature: his first, a two-hander called Medicine for Melancholy, was released in 2008. Jenkins is not quite the man from nowhere, though. “I was so damn naive I didn’t realise a company like Plan B would be interested.
Financing was not going well, but Jenkins’ hosting duties resulted in “the sweetest ambush” – an invitation to dinner and an offer from Plan B, Brad Pitt’s production company. Moonlight trailer: Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-tipped drama – video Guardianīeing thrown together with Pitt and co at Telluride marked a turning point for Moonlight: Jenkins had for some time been working on the film, a reworking of an unproduced play by Tarell Alvin McCraney.
