The ballad of M. Night Shamallama

July 1, 2010.
In his mansion in the snooty, uber-rich part of Pennsylvania, M. Night Shyamalan sits bolt upright in bed:

“OH NO! I forgot to make the Avatar movie!” It’s due to the studio tomorrow, and it’s worth half of his grade.

He tiptoes past his sleeping children to the TV room and frantically tries to shove the first DVD of the series into the player. “Go! You stupid thing! Go!” he hisses, and clicks the play button over and over. Finally it loads and begins the opening

"Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony…"

“Agggghhh, I don’t have time for this!” He fast-forwards. 2x. 4x. 8x… he leaves the episode running at 32x in the background, and rushes over to his computer.

“Ok, ok. Think, Shyamalan. What did you do at film school?” he Google searches “Avatar.” A bunch of blue cat people appear on his screen.

“Damn you, Cameron,” he curses, and adds “the last air blender” to the search box.

“Did you mean: ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender?’ Google suggests.

“Yes yes, whatever! Give me summaries! Where’s the damn Wikipedia?”

20 minutes later, he’s filled a Word Perfect document with cut and pasted chunks of text from ten different websites. On the back of the receipt he found inside the DVD box set, he writes his own notes:

Aa-ng – bald one. Avatar. Everyone he knows is dead
Zu-ko – Fire prince. Dishonored. Doesn’t like women (gay?)
So-ka – Guy with Ponytail. Can’t airbend (mad about this?) Loses gf (becomes fishmoon spirit)

Girl – Also water (name? purpose?)

Watta pads in from her bedroom, in her Airbender PJs.

“Daddy? What are you doing?
“Nothing. Nothing… Go back to bed.”
“Oh! Are you watching Avatar?!” She runs to the TV, delighted.

“Not now sweetie, Daddy’s making a movie.” He shoos her away. The first season is still flying along at 32x, the rest of the discs strewn on the floor from his mad search for volume 1. “Jesus Christ, how many of these episodes are there?” he asks. Only 10 hours until it’s due. Time to focus.

“Script, script. Every movie needs a script,” he mutters to himself. He pulls a stack of printer paper out of the laser jet and writes

INT. SCENE: THE SOUTH POLE - DAY
VOICEOVER (Girl)

“Let’s see…” he skims the summaries for plot points. “Find the avatar, air temple, liberate the village, liberate another village, water temple, Yoshi warriors…” God, there’s no time for all this.” He deletes huge swaths of text from his Word Perfect file. “You’re cut. Cut. Cut. So cut.”

Two hours later, Shyamalan is just hitting the third act. The desk is cluttered with coffee cups, scattered papers, and six empty Five Hour Energy bottles. He’s started writing on the laptop again, so he can get a word count every page. The minimum is 90 minutes. He starts to pad it out.

ESTABLISHING SHOT: THE GATES OF THE NORTHSIDE WATER KINGDOM – EVENING
ESTABLISHING SHOT: THE SHIPS APPROACHING THE NORTHSIDE WATER KINGDOM – EVENING
ESTABLISHING SHOT: EVERYONE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE NORTHSIDE WATER KING – EVENING

VOICEOVER (Girl)
We arrived at the northside water kingdom

M. Night Shyamalan tries to remember what he did with that $280 million the studio guys gave him to make this movie. He searches through his online banking statements: $50 for the complete Airbender box set, $40,000 to put mirrors on every interior wall, several trips to India, weekly lunches with Brad from Paramount… A-ha! $30 million to ILM for “bending rendered”

He calls up San Francisco. “Georgie! Baby! How are you?”
“Night man? Why are you calling me? How did you get this number?”
He asks him if he remembers the Last Airbender assignment.
“Yeah, you were completely in the bag. Kept telling me to put a lot of KARATE CHOP HADUKEN PEW PEW KA-BAM. It’s a kid’s show, Night man.”
“Did you do your section?”
“Yeah, I paid some nerds to do it like a week ago.”

M. Night Shyamalan tells George Lucas he needs him to do him a solid, and make the whole thing 3D. “That other Avatar movie was 3D.”
“So?”
“So think about it! If we don’t make ours 3D then it will totally look like we slacked off!”
George Lucas promises that he’ll wake the computer nerds, and make them work on it all night. He hangs up the phone and puts his arm around his C-3P0 realdoll.
***
The sun is rising over M. Night Shyamalan’s mansion. A black Audi winds down the driveway and approaches the gate. In the TV room, the title menu sequence plays over and over, unheard.

Shyamalan drives up to the mammoth soundstage in Reading. Teamsters are drinking coffee on every horizontal surface. Child actors in full makeup are practicing synchronized roundhouse kicks over and over by the port-a-johns. Two extras are making out in the Air Temple.

A whisper starts up and sweeps across the soundstage. “He’s here? He’s here?” They gather around their fearless leader, waiting for him to speak, after so many months of silence.

Only one dares to ask: “Did you bring it?”
Shyamalan smirks. Poor doubting Aasif. He holds the coffee-stained script aloft. “Ok people. Let’s make a MOVIE!”