James McBride & Spike Lee

Spike Lee's class this semester is all about his next film, which just wrapped shooting 2 weeks ago. It's an adaptation of James McBride's book "Miracle at St. Anna", and the 92nd Division (mostly black soldiers in WWII) experiences through Italy.

Last week we were absolutely treated to see a teaser trailer that was assembled for Hollywood types. The stuff is truly beautiful.

This week, we were lucky to have the author James McBride (who also wrote the screenplay) come to class and talk to us about working with Spike on adapting his own work. It was really great to hear about his writing process, and what goes through his mind when writing for characters. It's interesting to note that Mr. McBride is also a notable jazz musician and journalist (he teaches journalism at NYU).

At the end of the class, Spike said that we were all getting copies of McBride's latest book Song Yet Unsung, which was released on Tuesday. We also got copies of the screenplay. It was like Oprah! I was a fanboy and got them both signed by the author, who was extremely gracious.

It was a great treat to have two master artists in one room, and to hear them talk about storytelling and craft.