Last Airbender Film | Avatar: The Legend of Korra News, and Media Fan Blog

March 10 – Morning

Start spreadin’ the news. I’m leaving today! Upon waking the morning of my departure, it was hard not to conjure up visions of little green monsters singing the classic Liza Minnelli tune as they looked forward to a night of painting the Big Apple red. To say I was excited would have been a gross understatement. What I had initiated with my friends at Paramount back in July ’09 was finally coming to fruition: an interview with The Last Airbender director M. Night Shyamalan. I had spent the better part of a week taking questions from my readers and fellow Avatar fans, or ‘Avatards.’ I am not exactly clear which fandom owns that name anymore, as it would seem fans of James Cameron’s Money Printer have appropriated the title for themselves much the same way Cameron did the title of the film. I digress. Procrastinator  that I am, I realized I had very little time to make my final preparations for the trip. So the next several hours were spent picking up my clothes from the cleaners, deciding on a tie to wear, buying a new tooth brush, returning some videotapes, learning I would not be required to wear a tie, scribbling down twenty of your best questions, feeding the cat, packing my overnight bag, and feeling down about not being able to wear the awesome tie I bought.

March 10 – Evening

Manhattan was filthy. Infectiously grimy. I felt an intense desire for a shower. Luckily for me, a shower was waiting for me at my destination. Our generous benefactors had put us up in the snazzy Tribeca Grand. Check-in was a breeze, I found my room, rejoiced in its bathroom facilities, put Futurama on the flatscreen, and went about the treacherous task of ordering room service. The room menu had made it sound simple: simply press the button on the phone that corresponds with the service you wished to speak with. Hot coffee, I’d have sustenance in no time! Why doesn’t this button work? And why does this button not work? None of the buttons worked. Nards. Giving it some thought, I dialed zero for the operator, and was manually transferred to each service I required. Fifteen minutes later, I was the proud owner of a Chicken BLT and a pet goldfish named Flopsy. Rounding out my night of misadventures at the Tribeca included a Kill Bill marathon, locking myself out of my room, narrowing the questions I’d like to ask M. Night down to ten or less, and setting every alarm in the room to ensure an early start to the big day.

March 11 – Night

So it happened that the morning of March 11 seemingly went off without a hitch. My harrowing taxi ride to The W Hotel in Times Square, where the roundtable discussion with the Oscar nominated director was to take place, thoroughly convinced me that not only were taxi drivers suicidal, but so were the pedestrians! Having met my Paramount contacts in the W’s lobby, I was led up to a dining room where I met Jordan of AvatartheLastAirbenderOnline.com, Teddy of LastAirbenderFans.com, and a number of professional entertainment writers from MTV, IGN, UGO, io9, and more. They all seemed nice enough, and the table conversations took us from the upcoming film Kick-Ass and Jordan Hoffman’s Star Trek the Motion Picture t-shirt to Frank Darabont’s Walking Dead series and the delightful blueberry muffins being served. They were all very enthusiastic about the Avatar the Last Airbender television show, though most hadn’t seen beyond the first dozen episodes of the first season. Naturally they picked our brains for potential questions to bring up during the discussion relating to Night’s current film. But it was quite evident that most were there to get an inside scoop on the status of Unbreakable 2, and who can blame them? If I hadn’t been there on behalf of the Avatar fandom, that would have been the main question on my mind as well.

M. Night arrived, and went around the table as we introduced ourselves. He brightened up immediately when I introduced myself, which site I was with, and gave me a big thumbs up. Flushed with approval, we briefly talked about the complexity of shooting an fx driven blockbuster before being ushered into an adjoining room for the roundtable discussion to officially begin. In the interest of curbing redundancy, you can find the full transcript of the discussion at LastAirbenderFans.com. Thanks must go to Teddy, and Marc Loos of Cloneweb for making that possible.

Night possessed a childlike enthusiasm for the cartoon, and an earnest desire to bring the story and characters to the silver screen, albeit with his own unique flair for the spiritual and mysterious. I was generally impressed with the man, and open to the changes he had planned for what he hopes to be a full trilogy of films. The shiny Aang theatrical poster he signed for me didn’t hurt his case at all either.

So that’s, as they say, is that. I spent the remainder of my stay wandering the city with Jordan and Teddy; visited the Empire State building’s lobby, the Rockefeller Center, the Nintendo World Store, and other historic New York landmarks. My apologies if your question was not brought up during the discussion. Best laid plans of mice and gremlin…

Tags: aang, airbender, avatar, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone, Katara, m. night, Nicola Peltz, Noah Ringer, shyamalan, Zuko

This entry was posted on April 5, 2010 at 9:38 am and is filed under Editorials, Interview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.