Put your money where your mouth is by donating to the "Send M. Night Shyamalan back to film school" fund

By Sean O'Neal | April 13, 2011 | 10:30pm

Aux Features Film

Sending M. Night Shyamalan back to film school—no longer the hyperbolic cry of the Internet, now a real-life crowdsourcing campaign launched by three former fans who have grown increasingly tired of watching the once-promising director undone by his own ego and increasingly empty bag of tricks. Or to put it in the words of the organizers, “Certainly, there must be 150,000 of us film lovers out there who are tired of his schlocky plot twists, canned dialogue, and over-commercialized image as an ‘auteur.’” Should you number among those, the cheekily named M. Night School asks that you contribute $1 toward enrolling Shyamalan for courses at NYU—the tuition for which will be presented in the form of a giant novelty check—all in time for him to put the lessons he’ll learn to good use moving Will and Jaden Smith around a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Of course, the founders of the movement seem well aware that Shyamalan will turn down their offer—not only because he doesn’t really listen to his critics, but because “the guy’s a multimillionaire.” So they have a back-up plan: They will hold a festival for aspiring filmmakers and give the check to the winner. True, they could have just started a campaign explicitly for that (and potentially raise more than the $366 they’ve nabbed so far), but that wouldn’t come with the possibility of making M. Night Shyamalan feel bad about himself, which seems to be the point. [via EW]