On Jordan Peele's surprise visit to UCLA & The Sunken Place Course

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And we're live.

Hey, this is Tananarive due. I am an author and an instructor at UCLA where I've been teaching a black horror course called the Sunken Place.

And I'm Steve Barnes, science fiction novelist. And we had a fantastic experience at ucla. We when Jordan Peele dropped by to talk to the class. Yes, Jordan Peele himself came to our class.

So here's the story. I had been tweeting about the fact that I would be teaching a Black horror course. Io9 did a story about my course.

And you may have heard about. You may have heard him reference it on Stephen Colbert's Late Show.

Yes. Just recently, he shouted out the course and he shouted out how excited the student were. And to go back to how it all came about, I had the article written about me and his company reached out the very same day. He was DMing me the very same day because he was very honored that we were teaching a course. I was teaching a course based on get out called the Sunken Place.

And we want to talk about this. And as a little bonus, if you will stay while we're talking about this, you're going to learn something that most people do not know. You're going to get an answer from Jordan Peele's lips. Why didn't Chris kill Rose?

Now, there was a lot of publicity when Jordan Peele came to my class. A lot of photos came out, but there's never been video footage shared except a tiny sliver of the reaction. The class just excited. We have a lecture excerpt that has never before been seen that we're going to share with you.

Yep, it's about three and a half, four minutes of absolute gold on how he created get out, what he thinks about different things in connection with it. It's very tough questions put to him by some very smart students.

So, yes, Professor Peale, as we call him, took the course for about an hour. He stood up there, and the students had a lot of questions, and he had some very smart answers. So when are we going to share that with.

Well, we can share that with him whenever you'd like to. Would you like to do that now?

Let's do that right now while setting them up. Oh, and it's very important. He wanted it to be a surprise. That was a big element from the very first day he DMed me. He was like, oh, ha ha. It would be so funny to surprise the students. And that's exactly what we did. He was wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap, and he sat in the back, in the dark, while students were watching a clip from the film that I knew would make them very angry, because it's about a moment of betrayal of the poor protagonist, Chris. And when the lights came up, I asked him, or I asked the whole class, okay, what do you think the director was trying to say about the coveting of black bodies? And he was in the very back row. He raised his hand, and he's like, oh, I have a question. And he stood up, and as he walked up the center aisle of the class, the students were just going wild. They were freaking out. They were. One girl even left the room to pace outside. She was so excited to gather herself so that she could come back in the room and participate in the class. So that was really, really exciting for them. I know for me, as an instructor, it was especially meaningful to hear him shout out the smart questions that the students asked. And we're going to fast forward to the specific moment we want to share with you. The student has just asked the question, what? Why didn't Chris, played by Daniel Kaluuya, kill Rose?

I think the place to look is what I did.

Why didn't Chris kill Rose, played by Allison Williams? Those are the two leads. So this is his answer to that.

Question, to tell you, and thematically, what my sort of conclusion in this film was. Well, there was two things.

Three things.

One, the threat is not done. But then on the level of the character, I think there are two important moments for me. One, when he's choking Rose at the end. So this was a bit, you know, I had some people tell me, like, kill her. I want to make this very important distinction about the violence for survival. And that what Chris is pushed to is a metaphor, what many people are pushed to, and that it can and should in many cases, be interpreted as a response to the system and a survival instinct. And where that crosses another, crosses over into a different category of violence for me was when it became about hatred. So when it became about revenge, it came about killing this woman. She was already dead, by the way. She was already dying. And he's got this choice. Does he succumb to the monster inside of him? And she has that moment where she smiles at him. And that's the point where if he killed her, she would have won, right? She would have taken his humanity. And so what he decides to do is not kill her, of course. He leaves her to die the way his mother died, lying cold and alone on the road. Right? So there is a justice done there. But he saves his humanity. So that was a huge piece of it. And the other piece is, you know, early versions of the script. I'm sure you saw the original ending. You know, the character of Rod and Chris kind of become the most important relationship in a way of this movie. And I love the way we've chosen to end the movie. I love the way I have it now because I get all the benefits of the original ending. In that moment, the cop car shows up and everybody in the audience knows what that means. But, you know, early in the movie, this movie was such a project designed to give a black horror audience the movie they've been asking for. And part of that for me was, look, black people, we're not gonna look. I'm not gonna go. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna be the guy. And I had the line earlier in there where it's where Rod says, look, I'm not gonna be coming up to the country and save you from a witch's coven, because we wouldn't.

It's just not. This is not.

Happens in many horror movies. And so my original ending was to honor that and to say, yeah, he would. And that's part of the problem in a weird way. But with the ending and the cathartic response that we got from him coming out of the car, that, to me was wrapped up in this statement that we do have to show up for each other. And the way that the only way we can, you know, even if it means going up to a witches coven upstate, the only way we can defeat this, the evil of race and class and all the other isms that, you know, are related, is together.

Wow. Wow.

Just wonderful. The class. Can I show a picture of the class?

Sure, yeah. They had such a terrific time. We really could have listened to him lecture on get out all day. He told us little tidbits here and there that we hadn't heard about. There were moments of excitement and gasping. And it's like this is from a get out reception that was just last week in Hollywood. You see the two lead actors, Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams, in the back. And those are some of my students from. From the class. Not all of them, because they're nearly 60 and there are nearly 60 already.

That was a standing room only class.

It was huge. I couldn't even invite colleagues I knew because there was no room for anyone. And I didn't want to give away that it was a surprise. So what's really exciting is. Well, he enjoyed this class visit. He likes the class and we have decided that since there's been so much demand for this class, ever since I started tweeting about it, people have been saying, oh, I wish I were at ucla. And that's just continued every time there's a mention on national television or every time there's a newspaper story. So I decided it was time to do a public class, to actually do a public webinar where you don't have to be registered at ucla, you don't have to take the midterm, you don't have to turn in an essay, but you do have to do the homework.

And watch some of the greatest fun movies you know, over. Basically, we're talking about a century of black horror film.

Yeah, the. The course is called the Sunken Place. Racism, Survival and black horror. And by black horror, that means we're going to look at some classic horror films. Like you see Dwayne Jones here in the lead at Night, the Living Dead. We count that as, as black horror. As Jordan Peele also defended it as black horror on the late show Ganja and Hess, which a lot of people haven't seen, of course. Get Out. Candyman, Blackulism, the classics, some you've seen, a lot you probably haven't seen. And in addition to that, we will also be discussing various short stories by horror writers. And what's very exciting is that Jordan Peele has agreed to make an appearance to the digital class too. So it's not just the UCLA students who will have the opportunity to see him speak live and put questions in the comments section during the webinar. You can do it too.

And we have a lot of extras. It's not just because some of you are young filmmakers, you would love to be able to ride this wave. It's basically a resurgence of black cinema. So we've created a complete package for you. Basically, there's a virtual screenwriting class.

That's a four week screenwriting class.

Tonan Rick Du's Secrets of a Writer's Life. Writing the thriller Writer, Writing the horror screenplay. And a special thing we're going to be doing next year is call it 0 to 60 million. Bootstrapping your way into Hollywood even if you have no resources and no connections.

That's about how we made our short film and crowdfunding and all kinds of secrets. You don't have to have a lot of money or a big studio behind you to get started making your own movies right now.

And so all we're saying is that if you like this clip, we will have more stuff for you. Not just Jordan Peele. We'll be having other guests. It's going to be an absolutely wonderful class. Our students were basically saying things like, you know, it's the best class they've ever taken.

It's the Sunken Racism, Survival and Black Horror. And you can sign up now. It starts January 1st. Before December 1st, we have a discount, so don't miss it. It's www.realblackhorror.com.

Www.Realblackhorror. Com. Thanks so much, and we hope to see you there.