Tuesday, June 17, 2008

You Just Don’t Appreciate My Genius

With the opening of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, I’ve seen buzz around Blogsylvania about what a total tool M. Night is. So, a big Hollywood director is a diva and a brat. What a surprise! Surely, that’s never happened before!

I couldn’t care less if he threw a fit in front of reporters, and thinks he deserves to have some poor flunky pick out all the red M&M’s in the green room before he’ll touch them. (No one reported the M&M thing. I’ve worked for some theatrical venues where the one-hit wonder coming to perform had that sort of thing in the contract.) As long as he loves his wife and kids, and does his job by giving me some good movies, he can pitch all the hissies he wants.

What annoys me is the bloggers writing about him. If they’re pro-Night, then everything he’s touched is absolute gold and he’s the bestest ever and if you didn’t like his film, you obviously just don’t Get It. You have a higher intuitive power if you do Get It, I guess. I’m sick enough to envision a group of Nightfans huddled in a cave somewhere, discussing the Greater Meaning of seeing dead people and waiting for the big computer generated bird to take them home.

The anti-Nights are worse. He’s pedestrian, predictable, and highly undeserving of his artistic reputation. Yeah. And how many billion-dollar movies have you made, again? “I figured out the plot twist to Sixth Sense in the first thirty minutes.” “It took you that long? Well, I figured out the twist to Signs in the first fifteen minutes.” “Idiot. I figured out The Village from the previews!”

I will admit it. I didn’t see any of that coming. I didn’t figure out the twist. Does that mean I’m some kind of stupid, knuckle-dragging regressive? I did catch the one in a non-Night movie, The Lake House. Even though I knew what was coming, I still enjoyed it.

Are we all saddled with such huge inferiority complexes that we have to beat up on movie watchers to feel better? I generally like M. Night’s movies. I don’t have to worship at his altar. If you don’t like his movies, fine. But don’t make insinuations about my intellect when I say I loved Lady in the Water. By the way, what does it say about yours when you say you hate him but you keep seeing the movies?

Why can’t we just say, “ I liked that,” and “Oh, really? I didn’t,” and go get a macchiato?

5 comments:

Bernita said...

People are funny.

Robyn said...

And sad.

StarvingWriteNow said...

Mmm...macchiato...

BTW, I agree--and I especially hate when people pick, pick, pick and complain how they hate someone but then they still watch all the movies/buy the music... It's like, can anybody say hypocrite?

PS: I was tempted to tell FS about my new lover. Being a lady, I refrained. For now.

Robyn said...

Beth, maybe you can drop off something of his- invent a knickknack, if you have to- and then let him see you get into New Guy's car while the two of you drive off into the sunset.

Missie said...

I appreciate your genius fully, my friend.

I, however, did not so much appreciate The Happening. It had moments where Night's genius surely shown through, and I had such high hopes for it. In the end, the only redeeming qualities in the movie were the performances by MarkyMark, Zooey Deschanel, and John Leguizamo. They were great with what they had to work with.

We were so disappointed in The Happening, that the next night we rented The Village. Now, THAT was a movie! Even though we have seen it many times, it still gets us.

Remember the quote someone made about Nora Roberts being able to crap on a piece of paper and it would sell? I think that Night might be crapping on paper for the last few movies, and we are buying them in hopes of seeing the genius of his first flicks.

This is all my humble opinion, though, so take that for what it's worth. I will say the next Night movie will have to come out on DVD before I see it.