Fans hope to raise $150K to send M Night Shyamalan back to film school

Washington: A new website is hoping to raise 150,000 dollars to send Razzie Award-winning filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan back to film school. Shyamalan, 40, who earned fame with his 1999’s Oscar-nominated thriller ‘The Sixth Sense’, won five Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D for his movie ‘The Last Airbender’. When it emerged that he is working on a sci-fi adventure titled ‘1000 AE’ starring Will Smith and his 12-year-old son Jaden, three movie fans decided to raise money to send him back to school. Chris Baker, a copywriter and author, was first inspired last year in a movie theatre, when the phrase “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan” (during a trailer for ‘Devil’) drew laughs from the crowd. In developing his joke idea, Baker was soon joined by two advertising buddies, with one proposing ‘M. Night School’ as a name for the site. “If we all donate just one dollar, we can send M. Night back to NYU so he gets the help we all so desperately need,” News.com.au reported the website M. Night School as stating. “Let’s make it happen so we can get him enrolled before he starts principal photography on ‘1000 A.E’,” it stated. So far, around 520 dollars has been raised, and Baker agrees that yes, Shyamalan “will probably be a little hurt” when he finds out about the site. “Still, his movies do make money, for better or for worse, which is kind of the irony of the whole thing,” PopEater quoted Baker as saying. Even if the wildly ambitious goal of raising 150,000 dollars is met, Baker expects Shyamalan to turn it down. “We want to do a stunt where we present him with a giant check. Obviously, as he’s a multimillionaire, he’ll refuse it,” Baker stated. They instead hope to hold a festival in New York for young filmmakers aspiring to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The winner will receive the money raised, as a scholarship in Shyamalan’s name. ANI