M. Night Shyamalan has officially launched his own YouTube channel, giving fans a new and very personal way to hear directly from the filmmaker. In his first video, Shyamalan introduces the channel as an opportunity to reflect on his career, connect with the people who have followed his work, and venture into something that feels a little uncomfortable and unknown.
“I’m M. Night Shyamalan. I’m a filmmaker, make movies for a living, and this is my YouTube channel,” he begins. “What I hope it is, is an opportunity to reflect and get to know each other, deepen the relationship,” Shyamalan says.
Interestingly, he admits that starting the channel scares him, and that is part of the appeal. “When I’m scared, it usually feels like I’m doing something right, growing,” he explains.
After roughly 30 years of making movies, Shyamalan says he wants to “undo it a little bit,” setting aside some of the expectations and assumptions that naturally accumulate over a long career. He talks about embracing “the messiness of it all” and giving both himself and his audience “permission to be not great.”
Shyamalan recorded the video outside his office, sitting on a small bench beneath a tree. He explains that the bench was given to him by his office and that he comes there when he needs to calm down or think. He also points toward another tree nearby that carries much deeper significance. “Out there is a tree that we planted for my dad who passed away this year,” Shyamalan says. “So I get to look at that, and one day that’ll be a big tree.”
It is a quiet and deeply personal moment, and perhaps a good indication of what separates this new channel from the usual filmmaker publicity machine.
For now, even Shyamalan doesn’t seem to know exactly what the channel will become. “I don’t know how this is going to be,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m going to show you and what you’re going to show me, but the joy of it is stepping into the unknown. And so we’ll do that together.”
For fans like me, who have spent years watching Shyamalan explore the unknown on screen, this is very exciting.
After more than three decades of movies including The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Split, Old, Knock at the Cabin and Trap, we have seen plenty of M. Night Shyamalan the filmmaker. This new channel may give us a chance to get to know M. Night Shyamalan the person behind them. And I’ll certainly be watching to see where he takes us.
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