M. Night Shyamalan
M Night Shyamalan returned to India recently to promote The Happening, produced jointly by Twentieth Century Fox and Indian company UTV. In an exclusive interview, The Sixth Sense director tells Saroni Roy that The Happening is the easiest scary movie he's ever made
A long day's journey into M. Night's world
How do you deal with the criticism of your recent films? It's about different perceptions. For instance, The Sixth Sense had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention. I have worked hard and learnt that I have to make a decision whether I am going to conform and protect myself or not. I chose not to. So if The Happening makes $1 billion, we will be happy for the producers but I am not going to be loved any more or any less. When Unbreakable or The Village came out, the same thing happened. My movies don't get acclaim the day they come out.
Do you make films the way you want, or do you make them for an audience? You can do both: you can make it meaningful on a personal level and also enchant the world with the writing. I do both. My wife keeps asking me to make films like others do, but I can't. I wish I could make a popcorn version of Unbreakable.
What was it like to have a couple of films that didn't do well after the huge success of The Sixth Sense? I have failed twice. So I sat back and thought, Where am I going wrong here? I wrote The Sixth Sense and luckily got an opportunity to make it into a film. Unbreakable didn't work initially. Signs, with Mel Gibson, was my biggest writing experience. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were torturous. Nevertheless, there was an emotionality and spirituality about them. After that, I did The Village. I was intrigued by Wuthering Heights, and wanted to make it into a movie where people do something phenomenal. Then I made Lady in the Water, which was a story for my children.
And The Happening? Right after Lady in the Water, I got this very scary idea that culminated in The Happening. The film came pretty easily. It's the easiest I've done. It's a story about people who are trapped in an area where something strange happens. The emotional centre of the movie is: if you really love someone and you know you are going to die, what would the conversation be like? What would be the last thing you would say?
Why do you keep making cameo appearances in each of your films? It's more important for me to be a part of the film in some way rather than to be an outsider from the independent world of filmmaking.
I would love to play the lead role, but it's physically impossible.
Why do children play such a huge part in your films? I grew up watching Steven Spielberg and scary movies. I was around ten or 11 when Spielberg made all those amazing movies like ET, where a child has a belief and he makes adults believe in it.
What's next? My next movie is called Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's inspired by a Japanese animated series, and has a lot of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy.