You’ll notice that in the last few week’s we were keeping round-about tabs on the slow-motion train wreck that was becoming the negative advance publicity/crappy word of mouth on M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening.” Then we stopped. What happened? It was all getting too painful to watch.
Shyamalan, who’s always been his own worst enemy and who’s never endeared himself well to the press with his ego and wildly inflated and pretentious assessments about his already overrated work, opened his mouth and the already-sharpened knives had at him. First he introduced his own trailer with some long-winded blather about how awesome he thought it was and how lucky you were all going to be when you finally got a chance to see how scary it was! He could barely contain his ego enthusiasm.
The New York Times already roasted him over the coals once for his whiny, woe-is-me, pity party that was, “”Shyamalan’s Hollywood Horror Story, With Twist, but he insisted on talking to them again. Naturally, this interview did nothing to dispel the notion that Shyamalan was a self-pitying, defensive and arrogant jackass filmmaker.
Then we had to look away for a bit and in the wake of all the mostly eviscerating reviews, the director tried to go into damage control mode and say, “hey, my mysterious horror movie is meant to be kind of terrible! It’s intentionally unintentionally funny!”
“I wanted it to be a fantastic, fun B-movie,” Shyamalan nervously told Reuters in a recent interview looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was buying the snake oil he was trying to sell. “The No. 1 thing is I want people to say: ‘That was a really fun B-movie.'”
“It’s a B-movie. It’s the best B-movie you’ll see!,” he said humbly echoing the same sentiment he told to Reuters which is essentially saying, ‘See all these other turds? Well, my turd smells the best!”
During the premiere in New York the filmmaker said he tailored the lead role for star Mark Wahlberg. The actors disagreed and said, “The only reason I got the role is because Will Smith wasn’t available.” If he’s joking it surely doesn’t come across in the article.
Shyamalan said he’s not as intense as some of his actors claim he is and chuckled nervously, “It’s a bad rap. I’m a good guy!” Suuuuure, you are. And your film are fantastic too! You’d feel sorry for the guy if every time he opened his mouth he didn’t make it 10x worse for himself. “The Happening” opens up this weekend and what’s it about? Oh who gives a flying fuck. All you need to know is reviews are in the toilet and we’re not exaggerating. But that doesn’t neccesarily mean much. Pundits are noting that Americans by and large are stupid people and so therefore the film still has a decent chance at giving the “The Hulk” a run for its money.
Oh and these guys keep making asses of themselves when they’re opening their mouths to report anything that isn’t straight up news. In defense of Shyamalan’s work? This is yet another, not a good look.
