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Shyamalan creates fairy tale film with ‘Lady in the Water’

By Lou Gaul Calkins Media Film Critic 10 min read

NEW YORK -With huge international hits such as “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs” on his resume, M. Night Shyamalan could make movies anywhere on the planet. The writer-director, however, decided to make his new film, “Lady in the Water,” in Bucks County near Philadelphia for a very specific creative reason.

“I don’t feel comfortable with too much stimuli,” Shyamalan said at his hotel after a high-security screening of “Lady in the Water,” which opens July 21. “I can’t think properly (with too much going on around him), and (on his set in Bucks County), everything is minimalistic.

“With less of everything, I can think clearly, because there are no moments where there’s too much information.

“One day, I want to make a movie somewhere (else). I was just joking with my wife that all I have to do is write in the script, ‘exterior: Paris,’ instead of ‘exterior: Philadelphia,’ and we’re set, let’s go, but it always ends up being Philadelphia, which is so rich in its different textures.

“I can do a period piece or anything (in the Philadelphia area), and there’s a lot of flexibility for me.”

Shyamalan filmed portions of “Signs” in Newtown, Morrisville and Doylestown, Pa. For “Lady in the Water,” he had sets, including a five-story structure, and a soundstage constructed at the former 3M industrial park off Green Lane in Bristol Township.

In the PG-13 picture, which the 35-year-old writer-director created under his usual veil of secrecy, a sea “narf” (Bryce Dallas Howard, who previously starred in “The Village,” also directed by Shyamalan) becomes trapped in the swimming pool of an small apartment complex. She’s discovered by the building superintendent (Paul Giamatti of “Cinderella Man”), a depressed sad-sack who eventually helps the fragile being return home by confronting a deadly creature of the night stalking her.

The script for “Lady in the Water” began as a bedtime story Shyamalan told to his two children, ages 6 and 9. He became intrigued by the elements – including the multicultural renters at the apartment complex, the tragedy that led Giamatti’s character to live and work at the remote place (a la the personal loss that haunts Mel Gibson’s character in the spiritually driven “Signs”) and the haunted look in the eyes of the endangered narf – and felt he could create a fairy tale-like film that would entertain children and intrigue adults.

“I’ve never gotten more joy out of a story than this one,” he said, “and I don’t know why.”

To either make a motion picture or enjoy one by someone else, Shyamalan seeks a certain spirit in the material.

“There’s this thing I look for in a great movie,” he said. “I call it ‘the tide,’ which is an irrational emotion that starts to rise up and you just feel it and it kind of waves over you at the end of the movie.

“For me, (Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s) ‘Brokeback Mountain’ had the tide, and I know that for a lot of people, it didn’t. But while I was watching it, I felt this emotion just rise up and take me away. Some movies do that.

“When I watched ‘Lady in the Water’ with audiences, I’ve felt it in the theater. I don’t know if it’s just my own viewing of it, but it has the tide.”

That same level of enthusiasm for “Lady in the Water” wasn’t shared by executives at Walt Disney Pictures, who enjoyed huge success distributing “The Sixth Sense” (1999), “Unbreakable” (2000), “Signs” (2002) and even “The Village” (2004), which grossed more than $100 million despite lukewarm reviews. Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Picture Group, agreed to give Shyamalan $60 million to make his fairy tale, but the filmmaker could feel that Cook and his fellow executives didn’t believe in the material.

Due to that lack of faith in executives he had considered strong supporters, the filmmaker severed ties with Disney and took the project to Warner Bros., where he was embraced by the studio’s entertainment president, Alan Horn, and given full support to bring his vision to life on the big screen. (The break with Disney is chronicled in “The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale,” which was written by Michael Bamberger and will be released by Gotham Books on July 20.)

“I’m not all that upset about anything,” Shyamalan said of the book that will arrive in stores the day before his film opens. “Usually, these are the types of things that happen on every movie, but you just keep it to yourself and go through a personal torture thing.

“I don’t feel bad about anybody on the Disney side. They’re very parental to me, so I don’t get a pang that says, ‘I hate those (expletive deleted).’

“It ended really well for me in that I found a wonderful home and a wonderful place to make this movie. They (WB executives) love and cherish the movie, so it worked out for everybody.”

According to Shyamalan, each film he creates expresses the emotional elements of his life at the time. He believes that’s an important link between his cinematic works.

“With ‘The Sixth Sense,’ it (his emotional state) was a struggle to find a balance between work and married life and wondering if I would be a good parent,” he said. “So those two elements play in ‘The Sixth Sense’ a lot.

“On ‘Unbreakable,’ it was the burden of people saying, ‘You have to do this now because you have this responsibility and this opportunity to do something’ and my not feeling worthy of it.

“With ‘Signs,’ it was a battle with faith with things that have gone wrong and how you battle with your own faith. ‘The Village’ was a strong desire to go back to strict traditions that don’t exist anymore. It contains a philosophy and tradition that I would feel much more at home in, because it’s a place where you can say, ‘I built that table and you built that,’ and you’d have an important purpose (in the community).

” ‘Lady in the Water’ is a positive flip of that. It shows the world is in a bad place, but we can each make a difference. It’s a community of potential, a place that almost has (Bob) Dylan in the air saying that we can change things and don’t have to sit passively by.”

For Howard, whose character was the pure spirit in “The Village,” the joy in working with Shyamalan is surrendering to his vision.

“My greatest responsibility was to be a vessel for him,” said the actress, who’s the daughter of director Ron Howard. “I’m there saying, ‘Let me know what it is, and I’ll do it.’ “

Some other topics touched upon by Shyamalan included:

– Why does he give himself a featured role in all of his films?

“You have to create a scenario where it’s not a distraction and is just accepted. I was (in a major role) in my first movie (1992’s “Praying With Anger”) in India, but nobody saw it, so they (audiences) don’t know that (he’s an actor).”

– Will the two sequels he planned for “Unbreakable,” starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, ever be filmed?

“I got depressed after I wasn’t accepted (by the press and public) immediately the way I thought it would be (when “Unbreakable” was released). I just got bummed out, but you might actually see them (the follow-ups). I love ‘Unbreakable,’ and it’s the movie I get asked the most about.

“There’s a lot of kinetic potential in that story. I have some ideas for a second one.”

– When did Shyamalan (a graduate of New York University’s prestigious film school) decide to become a director?

“I was dropping off my parents at the JFK Airport to go to India. We’re waiting and the flight’s delayed, so I go in the bookstore and Spike Lee’s book (“Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking”) is there. I buy it, and I’m reading it, and I said, ‘You can just make movies? You don’t have to be born into it? There’s not some magic family that does it?’

“That was really the beginning of me seriously thinking I could make movies, even though nobody in my family knew anything about movies. Then I go and make movies, people come to see them, I have money, I put it into a foundation and now the foundation goes and helps a woman in India who was beaten and raped in this village and we’re trying to help and educate that village and save lives.

“So in a real way, Spike’s book saved lives. It was a conduit (to getting Shyamalan’s foundation money to India). Is he aware that he’s saving lives? We all connect to each other like that. As long as you’re always going in a positive direction, you can be part of an incredible chain of events.”

– What scares the filmmaker who chilled audiences around the globe with “The Sixth Sense?”

“Complacency. Being ordinary. There’s this idea about why Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player. It’s said that he could control the emotion of the game. He understood it, felt it, got into the flow of it and slowly turned it.

“No one else has been able to do that. It’s almost like a Jedi thing.

“The idea that you’re helpless to the external flow is a scary thing. You know that day when everything goes wrong, you feel like you’re fighting the flow.

“That’s scary.”

– Does he think ghosts and extraterrestrials exist?

“I believe in believing. The fact that you thought of your aunt the second before she called. Or that I picked up that Spike Lee book. Is it all explainable or is there an energy thing (that connects us)?

“There’s a search for meaning.”

– As a major Bruce Lee fan (who received a very rare original one-sheet “Enter the Dragon” poster from Disney executives when “The Sixth Sense” became a hit), does he ever want to direct an artistic martial arts epic, a la “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?”

“Absolutely! I would love to do that. And Warner Bros. (his new Hollywood home) made ‘Enter the Dragon,’ which is so cool.”

An air of quiet calm surrounds Shyamalan during an interview, and it’s easy to appreciate how such a mood would be welcomed by artists on a soundstage. Actors who have worked with Shyamalan sing his praises, but Giamatti quickly learned the secret to the filmmaker’s success with cast and crew members.

“He doesn’t beat the hell out of you during the day and shoot the hell out of things,” Giamatti said. “He’s incredibly nice to the crew.

“Night has it built into his budget that he can build a bar on the set, and there’s this amazing guy who builds this incredible thing, and after work, everyone goes to the bar on set. People just love working for him, and it’s incredibly smart (to have a bar), because it makes for a great working atmosphere.

“Everybody has a good time.”

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