--- title: 10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan | TIME description: The director's fantasy epic "The Last Airbender" is in theaters. M. Night Shyamalan will now take your questions canonical: https://time.com/video/dk99rDgb/ og:title: 10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan og:description: The director's fantasy epic "The Last Airbender" is in theaters. M. Night Shyamalan will now take your questions og:url: https://time.com/video/dk99rDgb/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/dk99rDgb/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan twitter:description: The director's fantasy epic "The Last Airbender" is in theaters. M. Night Shyamalan will now take your questions twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/dk99rDgb/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/dk99rDgb.m3u8) (5:40)  _Published 2010-07-01. The director's fantasy epic "The Last Airbender" is in theaters. M. Night Shyamalan will now take your questions_ --- Jul 27, 2023 2:22 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [10 Questions With Wonder Woman Director Patty Jenkins](/video/bGDAH1S0/) ### 10 Questions With Wonder Woman Director Patty Jenkins [10 Questions with Tracy Morgan](/video/nATLle6X/) ### 10 Questions with Tracy Morgan [10 Questions for Jerry Bruckheimer](/video/yj4aAk4j/) ### 10 Questions for Jerry Bruckheimer --- ## Transcript >> I'm Gilbert Cruz and I'm here with M. Night Shyamalan, the writer / director of such films as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Happening. His latest film The Last Airbender is out July 1st. We're here to ask Night 10 Questions from TIME readers. Night, thanks for being with us. >> Thanks for having me. >> Our first question is from Ashley Steinhouer from Fresno, California. Why go from making thrillers which you're very well known for to a fantasy epic such as The Last Airbender? >> For a long time I've had a lot of conversations with different estates and different studios about doing one of these big epic franchises. It never felt quite right and then suddenly it kind of dropped in my lap The Last Airbender which is just kind of genetically engineered for everything I love. I love martial arts. I study martial arts. It's based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophies. I was raised Hindu, you know, the word Avatar is a Sanskrit word and it just has a lot of the philosophies that I believe in, connection with nature. It has a very deep kind of Shakespearian line to it, and I'm a big Shakespeare buff and so it's just like everything that I would want in one piece and an opportunity to do CGI in not a gratuitous way but as an extension of emotion and character. So it was really kind of something I've been looking for for 10 years and it just happened. >> Andrew Chang from Edison, New Jersey says, " Do you think the criticism of your casting Caucasians in what are ostensibly Asian roles in The Last Airbender is a fair criticism ?" >> I cast what I believe and I bet you I'm not straying too far from the truth when I say that it is the most diverse, culturally diverse movie ever made. Let's look at the movie in and out of its own. Noah Ringer is the kid that lives on this planet that is a dead ringer for this character, the Avatar. He's a martial arts staff expert for real. I felt when I saw Noah that he was mixed race like I didn't know his ethnic background. So I cast the Air Nomads which is where he's from as all mixed race. So when you see the Air Nomads in the movie they're not one ethnicity. They're all mixed. >> Aaron Shaw from Loa, Utah asks what was the most difficult experience you've ever encountered on a shoot? >> Well, you know I think in Airbender probably it's the longest movie for me. My endurance wasn't quite ready to handle that level of shoot so I think probably 3 / 4 through the shoot I lost my grasp on everything. You know my ability to just come in to the room and know in advance and say you need to sit here, you gotta change this paint right here, we're gonna do this, do that, I just lost control because you come on the set and the 600 extras and they're battling and, you know, the camera equipment and everything and I just got exhausted and there was a definitely a week there where I was running on fumes and I felt like I'd lost control of the movie for a moment, and I couldn't tell you like pick a color and say this is the color that we're aiming for this target, and that was a scary moment because that had never happened to me before. >> Dallin Gonzalez from Chandler, Arizona asks who has been your greatest inspiration throughout your directing career? >> Definitely Spielberg I think in terms of, you know, I was, you know, 10 years old, 12 years old when ET came out and Raiders of the Lost Ark and I mean I was slam dunk. I was the kid that went to the theatre, bought the ticket, and my jaw dropped, and my life changed. Like if he wasn't there maybe I wouldn't have made movies, and then stylistically as an artist as an adult there's Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and you know I could tell you we go through every one of their movies and I can tell you why this is freaking genius. So they're my teachers. So they really have inspired me to do the type of filmmaking I do. >> Night, our last question is from Emily Hansen from Sands Point, Illinois. Which films give you the creeps? >> Well, the Exorcist is the scariest movie for me. It was the perfect storm exorcist of the filmmaking that was going on, very naturalistic documentary style filmmaking. Friedkin really, you know, took his time and did it very, you know, over a year. You know the subject matter in the book obviously go a lot to telling you this, but I think this was on the verge of plausible and they never once said this was entertainment. This was, you know, like a documentary and what was happening to this little girl and this room in Georgetown, and I totally get. You know I wasn't there at the time, but I totally get what it was like for people to have heart attacks in the movie theatre watching this movie. It just felt dead on real like you were watching the existence of the devil. >> Night, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for taking questions from TIME magazine readers. >> Thanks a lot. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan","description":"The director's fantasy epic \"The Last Airbender\" is in theaters. M. 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