In my last commentary I made an offhand comment about M. Night Shyamalan and his movie “Unbreakable” before actually seeing it. Shame on me. I actually read reviews from professionals and Joe Blow punters that said the film lacked the edge “6th Sense” had. I am here to tell you “Unbreakable” is just as good, if not better then, “6th Sense”. I originally wrote this piece to point out that you can’t please everyone all the time, and how difficult it is to make a film when you’re constantly second guessing yourself and your work. It doesn’t take a lot of time to say that does it?

So I’m changing the focus of this article after what I’ve read in the user reviews on Yahoo Movies. The reviews range from “Excellent Flick” and “This Movie is TOP STUFF” to “Sucks Nads” and “GIMME MY MONEY BACK”. (Sorry for the caps – that’s the way these headings were written.) Obviously this movie has polarized the population, separating it into a quasi-Marxian “Likes” and the “Like-nots”. There are very few 2, 3, or 4 star reviews, and drawing demographics based on the short paragraphs is difficult. About the only thing you can extrapolate is that the Like-nots are uneducated, impatient, and easily stüpid.

There are 10 votes by some illiterate called “niggazgotsabigdick” giving the movie one star because

“dis be a cracka movie! Da hero is white, da bad guy be black! Of Course!!!!!!!!!!”

Does this idiot really think Samuel L. Jackson would sign up for a movie if he thought it had racist overtones? As a positive reviewer said, these postings are probably from some corn-fed white boy who bought an Eminem album and thinks he’s down with O.P.P. Once again, the unbounded stupidity of the movie going public astounds me.

And, astounded as I am, I begin to wonder, “what if we only made movies that the public liked?” And, “what if we only made movies that made truckloads of money?” And, “what if we just cranked out the same tired old formula crap that people shell out their money for every time?” This is the same type of big studio thinking that has given us “The Grinch” for a second time, and low and behold, it’s holding at #1 because the public loves predictability. They know the story, they know the outcome, and they go and see it anyway.

Yet, “Unbreakable” held at #2 for a while, and is still in the top ten as I finish this article. Could it be that the public is not as herd minded as I thought? Maybe there are enough people out there that like to be surprised, shocked, and told an original story that a true storytelling filmmaker can make a living? Maybe some people are individuals after all, and maybe they can make up their own minds about what to like.

I’d like to think that we, as filmmakers, can make films that please us, and us alone, and that there are people out there in the world that would like what we make. The hard reality is the thinking audience is scarce, and most moviegoers want to see brain candy. They don’t want to be challenged or made to think, they just want mindless entertainment. Don’t get me wrong – I like spiffy action films and screwball comedies too, but they do not replace movies that push the envelope of thought, concept, and human experience.

So somewhere is the Promised Land, the middle ground where big studios can make big money, moviegoers can see whatever they want, and independent filmmakers with independent ideas can make a living. I do not know where this nirvana lies, or if it exists at all, but many claim it is almost within reach now. Just a little more bandwidth, a few more households with DSL, and some way to effectively advertise, and the Internet can be our haven.

Until that marvelous day when swine sprout wings and take to the air we’re going to have to work. Work for our films, our audience, and our own satisfaction. M. Night Shyamalan has proven to us, as so many others who routinely operate outside the box have proven before, that it is possible to make a movie on your own terms and be a success. And as we have seen before, you can’t expect to be different without upsetting a few fools. Let the idiots rattle the cages of their minds and shake their collective fists at us; we do not create for them – we create for ourselves. We just hope they’ll like it enough to give us their money.