Booing M Night Shyamalan

Over at IndieWire, this entry by Anne Thompson about people booing and jeering when M Night Shyamalan's name appeared in the trailer for 'Devil' reminded me of a recent comment the director made. In an interview he said:

"Look, I loved Michael Jordan, right? He was my favourite basketball player. When I used to watch him at Madison Square Garden there would be 25,000 people booing every time that he touched the ball, screaming abuse at him.

"And it was because the entire stadium was there to see him be spectacular. They were like, 'I don't want you to disappoint me or hurt me.'"

Is he suggesting that when people boo him it's because they think he's one of the all-time great directors and they don't want to be disappointed -- they want the next movie to be as great as the last? Do they boo Shyamalan because he is (and continues to be) as impressive a director as Jordan was an athlete?

More recently, Shyamalan said in response to a reporter's tough line of questioning which suggested popular opinion was the director was making poor movies:

"I think if I thought like you I'd kill myself. Everything you said is the opposite of my instinct as an artist. The way you just thought, I literally would kill myself."

I can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy. His track record of comments is getting as preposterous as the plot devices in his movies.

Who will want to work with Shyamalan in the future? Top-drawer actors probably won't be lining up, whether he is directing the movie or it's simply 'from the mind of'. Doing so would put image-sensitive stars at risk of being ridiculed. Nobody wants to be in a high-profile movie with a single-digit fresh rating.

There may already be signs few are willing to associate with Shyamalan. He currently has only two projects listed as being in development. (Steven Spielberg has almost twenty, and Guillermo del Toro has over ten). I realize M Night has, in the past, had a reputation for keeping upcoming projects under wraps, but with 'The Last Airbender' series under way you'd expect at least a sequel to be listed as being in development even if it has yet to be greenlit. Shouldn't there be other movies for kids under development?

There may always have been only one or two M Night projects listed as being in development, yet it seems noteworthy now. If he had continued to bowl over audiences with edge-of-your-seat movies that had killer twist endings, having very few movies in development would have a definite cool factor. But under current circumstances it just looks odd.

There should be more talk of pending movies, more rumors of A-list actors circling this or that Shyamalan project, more speculation as to what his next bombshell of a twist ending will be. There isn't. Except for the slashing reviews of his movies, the ridicule leveled at him by bloggers, and the outrageous comments he himself makes to the press, not much is said about Shyamalan anymore.

Will Shyamalan be reduced to distancing himself from upcoming features, lending only his moniker as a producer to modestly budgeted B-horror, and allowing someone else to write and direct movies based on his ideas? Could be, but if people boo at the sight of his name in a trailer, even that may not be a good idea, and I'm not sure how much more Shyamalan could play down his association with any given movie. 'NOT written or directed by, and definitely NOT from the mind of M Night Shyamalan'? Could that be a selling point? Maybe they could try: Presented by a friend of a friend of M Night Shyamalan... Would people boo that announcement in a trailer?

And, what about money? Will M Night be allowed the kind of budget he's enjoyed in the past? 'Devil' takes place mostly in an elevator and has no big stars. The next in the Night Chronicles series, 'Twelve Strangers', about a group of jurors deliberating a case that deals with the supernatural, would of course be set in one main location -- the juror's room. Set the script in one main location, shoot on one main set, and hire little known actors -- these are earmarks of low-budget movies.

The trailer for 'Devil' is okay, but it's clearly not the atmospheric creepfest Shyamalan established a reputation for. This is shock horror, not elegant suspense. The poster, with its exaggerated low point of view and fiery light coming through the elevator doors forming an inverted cross (on the sixth floor, with the 'down' button lit) is on a par with low-budget schlock horror.

I'm curious what kind of budget M Night will have to work with for his next directorial effort. For now, the fact that 'Devil' and 'Twelve Strangers' are 'from the mind of' Shyamalan doesn't do much for his image.

With his last movie, 'The Last Airbender', being for kids and his future projects as a producer seemingly aimed at B-horror fans, Shyamalan's days as a master of eerie suspenseful movies with adult themes and high-caliber actors are, temporarily at least, over. Right now you couldn't give me a ticket to a Shyamalan movie. I've been burned too many times and wasted too many hours hoping this one would be the next Sixth Sense. It never is, and they're getting worse, even laughable now.

I'm wondering where all this will lead. If 'Devil' does mark the start of a comeback for Shyamalan, it's as a producer of B-horror -- as the guy whose mind dreamt it all up but, rest assured, had nothing to do with the actual production.

Would this even be considered a comeback? Well, if no one goes to movies (for adults) that M Night Shyamalan directs, and if there isn't another 'Airbender', I suppose it would. However, on second thought, it might be more aptly called a 'continuing slide'.