Stepping in Front of the Camera: “Let's say, Mel [Gibson] can go from an actor to a director, because he becomes less visible. This movement here, if they feel like it's going this way – to [be] more visible - is a difficult to thing. I was in my first movie, in India, but nobody saw that. So they don't know that that's where I came from, that I do kind of [have] this independent… All of it's a very independent spirit. This one especially, everybody in the crew, all the actors, everybody was independent in spirit. That gentle balance is what I wanted to maintain - not too much, not too little. I don't like the cameo thing. That's not something that was of any interest to me at all.”
The Film Compared to the Real Bedtime Story: Shyamalan said, “The story that Paul [Giamatti’s] told is the story I told my kids, pretty much verbatim, and then the movie is an extrapolation of that. What happens and if you believe in it.”
Shyamalan admits the story he told his children was pretty scary. “There are some elements that I changed and the scariest moment in the story of it changed in that the evil monkeys, the tartutic, came actually into the building and the big fight happened in the laundry room. I think you can still tell in the movie that the laundry room was intended to be this kind of mythic place and it never left me, that feeling, so I kept it in there, the emotion of it. The scrunt got trapped in the laundry room and then he heard through the vents these things coming and it came out and they had this battle with sheets and all. That's how I told it to them. That was scary. That was a scary moment for them. My six-year-old got really scared when she watched the movie, She loved it, but she was like [puts his hands over his eyes] the whole time.“
Casting Paul Giamatti as the Lead in Lady in the Water: “Paul [Giamatti’s] just the greatest, man. I would put him in everything. I don't know why he's not the first choice for everybody. He's just amazing. The guy's eyes are... The beauty of him is that he has no idea that he's that good and that gives him that constant accessibility to the audience. He really genuinely believes that he's just the guy at the grocery store buying the cereal. The guy next to him buying the cereal cannot connect to human beings the way he can, cannot emote the way he can, with such truth, without any garbage or agenda, nothing. I knew he was my guy. He came in and sat down with me and he had a science fiction book in his pocket and had paint on his sleeve from where he leaned on something.”
Shyamalan’s Films Express His Emotional State: Shyamalan provided a film by film analysis of what was going on in his life when he created each of his movies.
The Sixth Sense - The Sixth Sense was a struggle to find a balance between work and home, married life and home, and wondering if I was going to be a good parent. Those two elements played in Sixth Sense a lot.
Unbreakable – Unbreakable was the burden of people saying, 'Hey, you have to go do this now. You have this kind of responsibility and you have this opportunity to go do something,' and not feeling worthy of it - you know, after Sixth Sense, that feeling.
Signs – Signs was a battle with faith. Good things had gone wrong and you're battling with your own faith.
The Village – The Village was a strong desire to go back to traditions that don't exist anymore. A philosophy and tradition that I would feel much more at home in a community where I built the table and you built that and you made this. We all had a purpose and that was important.
Lady in the Water - And subsequently Lady, which was written almost at the same time [as The Village], is more of kind of the positive flip of that. That the world is in a bad place but we can each make a difference, that we have the potential to. I thought it's a community of potential. That we can change things, we don't have to sit passively by. That your little thing you do in your little apartment might have an affect.”
Page 2: M Night Shyamalan on Spike Lee and The Man Who Heard Voices
