BIZARRE BUT TRUE.
Remember the chills you felt back in 1999 when you first watched The Sixth Sense, directed by then-newcomer M. Night Shyamalan? We all knew we had found our next Steven Spielberg.
Well, we weren’t exactly right and it hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses for Shyamalan ever since.
Sure, his string of movies after, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, The Lady In The Water, have all made money. They’ve made money because we keep buying tickets in the hopes that we once again find the magic that was the Sixth Sense…but each time, we walk away more disappointed than the last.
Shyamalan’s last hot mess of a movie, The Last Airbender, hit a new low and received horrible reviews from fans and critics alike. He even lead the pack at this year’s Razzie Awards: He won the honors of Worst Director and the movie won Worst Picture. Airbender also won Worst Screenplay, a brand-new RAZZIE category for 2010, Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3-D, and Worst Supporting Actor for Jackson Rathbone.
Now another tough break for the director has surfaced. Movifone reports that three movie fans are doing their best to raise $150,000 to send Shyamalan back to film school. Ouch. Of course the fundraising campaign was started without the director’s knowledge (though I am sure he’s found out since).
Chris Baker, a copywriter and author, came up with the fundraising campaign idea when he was watching a preview for Devil in the movie theater and heard the catch line “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan” draw a roaring laugh from the movie crowd.
Two of Baker’s advertising colleagues joined him in the mission and named their project, “M. Night School.” The campaign has only raised $520 so far but if the lofty goal of raising $150,000 is met, Baker obviously thinks Shyamalan will reject the money and the request. “We want to do a stunt where we present him with a giant check. Obviously, as he’s a multimillionaire, he’ll refuse it.”
So, plan B for the mission once Shyamalan refuses the funds is to hold a festival in New York for aspiring young filmmakers to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. One winner will receive all the money raised, get this, as a scholarship in Shyamalan’s name.
WHERE do I contribute?!!!