M. Night Shyamalan (yes I have trouble spelling his name) burst out onto the scene with a wonderful debut film The Sixth Sense in 1999, even though (as I’m just discovering) it isn’t his first film.  He’s gone on to do numerous films that barely anyone likes, these films include: The Village, The Happening, The Lady in the Water, Unbreakable and Signs.  Most bloggers and film enthusiasts who’ve gone and watched his latest film (which I decided to skip since it was released only in ‘FAKE’ 3D), The Last Airbender, seem to have had the last of the director who loves cameoing in his films and writing ridiculous twist endings.

With all this said I cannot help but feel that there is still something this man can teach me about the world of filmmaking.  As many horrible movies that this man makes he never strikes me as a Uwe Boll who just churns out movie after movie for the sake of doing a movie.  Shyamalan always has a passion for every project he does, which I have to respect.  We all know that he keeps making movies because his films tend to be made cheaply and therefore makes it easy for the film to make back its money at the boxoffice.

I don’t pretend to be any sort of journalist and I’ve never participated in any form or true journalism, but I imagine that when you’re actually sitting down with a member of the production of a film you try to show some respect and not basically call them an imbescile to their face, you save that for your reviews and snappy tweets.  Which is why I found it mindboggling the other day when someone pointed me to this video of a journalist actually asking Shyamalan to his face what he thinks of the general public opinion of him and his work.  See the video embedded below:

So here’s my idea.  Love him or hate him, he’s an artist.  You can call him a bad artist but an artist none the less.  You may not like his work but it’s not like this guy is acting like a Family Guy caricature of Stephen King (see here) and just throwing in a plot twist just to piss you and me off.  This is something that I can’t help but find to be an admirable attribute.  He’s just making what he thinks is good and isn’t that what we all want from filmmakers.  We just hope that their version of ‘good’ in someway parallels with our own.

So I guess the question of the day is does this mean journalist make you like Shyamalan even if you don’t like his movies?