M. Night Shyamalan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Born: | August 6, 1970 Pondicherry, India |
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| Occupation: | film screenwriter, director, producer and actor |
Manoj Nelliattu Shyamalan (born August 6, 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Academy Award-nominated Indian American film writer, director, and producer. His biggest commercial success as of mid-2006 is the 1999 film The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment, which has grossed over $600 million worldwide [1]. Shyamalan, along with Jay Chandrasekhar, is one of several South Indian-diasporic descent filmmakers working in Hollywood. Like director Alfred Hitchcock, one of his idols, he is known for making cameo appearances in his films.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Shyamalan was born in Mahé, Pondicherry, India[2], and is of South Indian heritage: His father, Nelliattu C. Shyamalan, a physician, is a Malayali, and his mother, Jayalakshmi (called Jaya), an obstetrician and gynecologist, is a Tamilian [3]. In the 1960s, after medical school and the birth of their first child, Veena, Shyamalan's parents moved to the United States. Shyamalan's mother returned to India to spend the last five months of her pregnancy with him at her parents' home in Chennai (Madras), India.
Shyamalan spent his first six weeks in Pondicherry, and then was raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, an affluent Main Line suburb of Philadelphia. He attended the private Catholic grammar school Waldron Academy, which his parents chose for its academic discipline [4], followed by The Episcopal Academy, a private Episcopalian high school in nearby Lower Merion. Shyamalan went on to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, in Manhattan, graduating in 1992.
Shyamalan had an early desire to be a filmmaker when he was given a Super-8 camera at a young age. Though his father wanted Shyamalan to follow in the family practice of medicine, his mother encouraged Shyamalan to follow his passion.[5] By the time he was 17, Shyamalan, who had been a fan of Steven Spielberg, had made 45 home movies. Beginning with The Sixth Sense, he has included a scene from one of these childhood films on each DVD release of his films, which he feels represents his first attempt at the same kind of film.
Shyamalan made his first film, the semiautobiographical drama Praying with Anger, while still an NYU student, using money borrowed from family and friends.[6] It was screened at the Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 12, 1992,[7], and played commercially at one theater for one week.[7]. When the film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival, Shyamalan was introduced by David Overbey who predicted that the world would see more of Shyamalan in the years to come. Praying with Anger has also been shown on Canadian television. Filmed in Chennai (Madras), it is his only film to be shot outside of Pennsylvania.
Shyamalan wrote and directed his second movie, Wide Awake in 1995, though it was not released until 1998.[8] His parents were the film's associate producers. The drama dealt with a 10-year-old Catholic schoolboy (played by Joseph Cross) who, after the death of his grandfather (Robert Loggia), searches for God. The film's supporting cast included Dana Delany and Denis Leary as the boy's parents, as well as Rosie O'Donnell, Julia Stiles, and Camryn Manheim. Wide Awake was filmed in a school Shyamalan attended as a child. [9], and earned 1999 Young Artist Award nominations for Best Drama, and, for Cross, Best Performance.[10]. A commercial failure, the film grossed $305,704 in theaters.[11]
That same year Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little.
In 1993, Shyamalan married Indian psychologist Bhavna Vaswani, a fellow student whom he'd met at NYU [12] and with whom he has had two daughters. As of mid-2006, the family resides in Wayne, Pennsylvania, near Shyamalan's usual shooting site of Philadelphia.
Multiple movies by M. Night Shyamalan are spoiled for you below.
[edit] The Sixth Sense
Shyamalan achieved commercial success in 1999 when he wrote, directed, and produced The Sixth Sense, a supernatural drama about a psychologist (Bruce Willis) who blames himself for a patient's suicide and his own broken marriage. Upon meeting a disturbed child (Haley Joel Osment) who claims to see people who have died, the psychologist feels he has a chance to redeem himself. According to the book DisneyWar, David Vogel of The Walt Disney Company read Shyamalan's script and, without obtaining approval from his superiors, bought the rights to it for a high $2 million dollars and allowed Shyamalan to direct.[13] Vogel's bosses, disagreeing with his decision, sold the profits to Spyglass Entertainment, and kept only a 12.5 percent distribution fee for itself.[13]
The film had a $40 million budget, and grossed over $600 million box office worldwide. It is one of the 25 most commercially successful films through mid-2006[1], and Disney's biggest live-action hit until 2006's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
The Sixth Sense was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor for Osment, Best Supporting Actress for Toni Collette, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay. It won the Nebula Award for Best Script, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
[edit] Unbreakable
Unbreakable is a naturalistic drama about David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the sole survivor of a train crash. He eventually meets comic-book collector Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a mysterious mastermind who is convinced that Dunn has latent super powers. Budgeted at $75 million, it grossed $95 million domestically and $248 million worldwide.
The film has since been referred to as Shyamalan's cult classic, being a common favorite with fans, as well as Shyamalan's own personal favorite.
[edit] Signs
Opening in August 2002, Signs is a science fiction drama of a rural Pennsylvania pastor (Mel Gibson) who has lost his faith after his wife's death, and regains it with his family as they witness the worldwide events of an alien invasion. Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin also star.
Budgeted at $72 million, Signs grossed $227 million domestically and $408 million worldwide.[14] It was the highest-grossing film as well as the highest opening-weekend gross ($60 million) of Gibson's career as an actor.
Shyamalan said in an interview with Science Fiction Weekly that his choice of Gibson was based in part by the actor's emotional role in the film Lethal Weapon: "I was on my parents' sofa watching the video of Lethal Weapon, and then this guy did stuff emotionally that had no business being in an action movie. ... I completely believed the humanity of a man who was so torn by the loss of his wife that he wasn't afraid of dying, which made him a lethal weapon. ... [W]hen I wrote the movie about a guy who loses faith because his wife has passed away, I felt like that was the guy. And I also like taking an action guy and not letting him be The Guy".
Shyamalan also said that originally, there was going to be very little music in the film, but that composer James Newton Howard's intense and emotional compositions reminded him of a Bernard Herrmann (Alfred Hitchcock's frequent composer) score, and prompted him to change his mind. [15]
[edit] The Village
Drawing on Wuthering Heights after being offered to pen a screen adaptation, Shyamalan went to work on what was originally titled The Woods[16], The Village was released in July 2004. A drama starring Joaquin Phoenix, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Adrien Brody, it tells of a small, 19th-century community (we see the tombstone of a boy is being laid to rest in the opening of the film that reads 1890-1897) run by a group of "Elders" who seem to be content in their isolation from the outside world. The village is encircled by a forest said to be filled with mysterious and threatening creatures. Even as an uneasy truce between the villagers and the creatures seems to be falling apart, one villager (Phoenix) starts to question their forced isolation.
With total production costs of $71.6 million[17], the film grossed $114.2 million domestically ($50 million in its opening weekend) and a further $142 million in non-USA receipts. Its successful opening weekend in America was followed by a severe dropoff of 67%, and the film is generally considered to be somewhat of a commercial failure. Critical response was mostly negative [18]: Desson Thomson of The Washington Post called it "a bewildering disappointment"[18]; Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times said, "It's tedious instead of provocative and so unconvincing as to be preposterous".[18] Shyamalan claimed he was exploring a more romantic story than he had in his other works.[19]
Shyamalan expressed a great deal of regret in the way the film was marketed, telling producing-partner Sam Mercer, while overseeing the editing of the teaser trailer for Lady in the Water, that he had wished for the The Village to have been sold as a period romance with a scare only at the end of the trailer. Shyamalan is also said to have thought that the shift in the main theme of faith from his previous films to that of deception, resulted in the mixed-negative response. Citing that his other movies set out to make an audience believe in the supernatural, The Village set out to do the opposite. [20]
The Village earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.
[edit] Lady in the Water
Lady in the Water, released on July 21, 2006, is a fantasy about a Philadelphia apartment-complex maintenance man, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), who discovers a young woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) in the swimming pool. Gradually, he and others in the complex learn that she is a water nymph who has come to "the world of man" to bring inspiration to someone in the complex. Her life is in danger from a vicious, wolf-like, mystical creature that tries to keep her from returning to her watery "blue world."
The proposal for this film highlighted a severe rift between Shyamalan and Disney, the studio for which he had done his biggest previous films. In the book The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale by Sports Illustrated writer Michael Bamberger, Shyamalan said that he felt Disney "no longer valued individualism ... no longer valued fighters."[21] Shyamalan left the studio after production president Nina Jacobson and others became highly critical of his script, which Warner Bros. eventually produced.[22] Critical response was again negative — Frank Lovece of Film Journal International saying simply, "this Lady is the Showgirls of fantasy film"[23] — disparaging both the inclusion of a film-critic character (one element of Shyamalan's screenplay that Disney found troublesome) and Shyamalan's decision to take such a large and personal role in the film as a writer whose work would change the world. The New York Post wrote that the film was "dead in the water", criticizing Shyamalan as a "crackpot with messianic delusions".
[edit] Future Projects
After the overall poor reception of Lady In The Water Shyamalan has said that his next film will be a "return to form", likely indicating that his next movie will be more along the lines of his blockbuster hits The Sixth Sense and Signs.
On ABC's The View, Shyamalan stated that his next project was a science fiction piece in the realm of Michael Crichton, and that it has a big star attached to it. [24] In addition, he has called his next project both his darkest and his most Hitchcockian. Saying, "The one I'm writing now, I really love those 1970s and 60s paranoia movies – The Andromeda Strain, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, so this new one is in that kind of vein." [25]
He has also stated his willingness to direct one of the last two Harry Potter films after not being able to take up the offer to direct the first one due to conflicts with the production of Unbreakable: "The themes that run through it...the empowering of children, a positive outlook...you name it, it falls in line with my beliefs," he said. "I enjoy the humor in it. When I read the first Harry Potter and was thinking about making it, I had a whole different vibe in my head of it. [There would be] a lot at stake emotionally. The teaching of magic would be desperately needed, there would be a lot riding on it." [26]
[edit] Box office gross
- Praying With Anger
- Budget: $750,000
- TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
- Domestic: $100,000
- + Foreign: N/A
- = Worldwide: N/A
- Wide Awake
- Budget: $6,000,000
- TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
- Domestic: $282,175
- + Foreign: N/A
- = Worldwide: $282,175
- The Sixth Sense
- Budget: $40,000,000
- TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
- Domestic: $293,506,292
- + Foreign: $379,300,000
- = Worldwide: $672,806,292
- Unbreakable
- Budget: $73,200,000
- TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
- Domestic: $95,011,339
- + Foreign: $153,106,782
- = Worldwide: $248,118,121
- Signs
- Budget: $70,200,000
- TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
- Domestic: $227,966,634
- + Foreign: $180,281,283
- = Worldwide: $408,247,917
- The Village
- Budget: $71,600,000
- TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
- Domestic: $114,197,520
- + Foreign: $142,500,000
- = Worldwide: $256,697,520
- Lady in the Water
- Budget: $70,000,000
- TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES (through 8/17/2006)
- Domestic: $42,285,169
- + Foreign: $30,200,000
- = Worldwide: $72,485,169
sources: [1] The Smoking Gun IMDb rediff.com
[edit] Miscellaneous
Shyamalan has been approached to collaborate on several movies with strong fan bases, the most notable of which was the fourth Indiana Jones film. This would have given Shyamalan a chance to work with his longtime idol, Steven Spielberg. Shyamalan turned down the opportunity, claiming it was too "tricky" to get everyone on the same page and that it just "was not the right thing" for him to do.[27]
However, Shyamalan seems to have since changed his mind on collaborations, stating that he would like to direct the seventh Harry Potter film, claiming that the relationship between the characters interested him. [2]
[edit] Other media
[edit] Sci Fi Channel hoax
In 2004, Shyamalan was involved in a media hoax with the Sci Fi Channel, which when eventually uncovered by the press prompted Sci Fi's parent company, NBC-Universal, to denounce the undertaking as "not consistent with our policy at NBC. We would never intend to offend the public or the press and value our relationship with both". [28]
Sci Fi claimed in its "documentary" special — The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, shot on the set of The Village — that Shyamalan was legally dead for nearly a half-hour while drowned in a frozen pond in a childhood accident, and that upon being rescued he had experiences of communicating with spirits, fueling an obsession with the supernatural. The Sci Fi Channel also claimed that Shyamalan had grown "sour" when the "documentary" filmmakers' questions got too personal, and had therefore withdrawn from participating and threatened to sue the filmmakers.
In truth, Shyamalan developed the hoax with Sci Fi, going so far as having Sci Fi staffers sign non-disclosure agreements with a $5 million fine attached, and required Shyamalan's office to formally approve each step. Neither the childhood accident nor the supposed rift with the filmmakers ever occurred. The hoax included a non-existent Sci Fi publicist, "David Westover", whose name appeared on press releases regarding the special. Sci Fi also fed false news stories to the Associated Press [29] and Zap2It.com [30], among others. A New York Post news item, based on a Sci Fi press release, referred to Shyamalan's attorneys threatening to sue the filmmakers; the attorneys named were non-existent.
After an AP reporter confronted Sci Fi Channel president Bonnie Hammer at a press conference, Hammer admitted the hoax, saying it was part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to generate pre-release publicity for The Village. Despite his office's disclosure-agreement requirement and approvals of each marketing step, Shyamalan told the AP, "I was, of course, involved in the production of the special but had nothing to do with the marketing of it. If the Sci Fi Channel erred in their marketing strategy, it was totally out of enthusiasm." [28]
[edit] American Express commercial
An American Express commercial directed by as well as starring M. Night Shyamalan debuted during the 2006 Oscars. The spot takes place in a restaurant with several eerie events happening in quick succession. After these events unfold, a waitress approaches Shyamalan, jolting him out of what seems to have been a daydream, and tells him how much she loves his films. Shyamalan, in a voice-over, says, "My life is about finding time to dream, that's why my card is American Express," as he goes to a different restaurant to find other things to dream about. [31]
[edit] References to M. Night Shyamalan in other media
M. Night Shyamalan has been repeatedly spoofed on the stop-motion animation TV show Robot Chicken. One of the segments of episode 9, entitled The Twist, is a fictional movie written by, directed by and starring Shyamalan (voiced by show co-creator Seth Green) consisting entirely of a string of subsequent plot twists, each one followed with an exclaimation of "What a twist!" from M. Night - a jab at Shyamalan's perceived "trademark" surprise ending.
[edit] Criticism
A general criticism of Shyamalan is that he is a better director than he is a screen writer.[32] [33] He has also been labeled a "one-trick pony" for his continual use of the "twist" element in his screenplays.[34] After the release of "The Village" Slates Michael Agger noted that Shyamalan's was following "An uncomfortable pattern" of "making fragile, sealed-off movies that fell apart when exposed to outside logic."[35] Additionally M. Night Shyamalan has been criticized as being conceited for using his name before every one of his films, e.g. "M. Night Shyamalan's The Village." [3]
In recent years, M. Night Shyamalan has been accused of plagiarism. It has been noted that The Sixth Sense resembles the Orson Scott Card novel Lost Boys[36]. Robert McIlhinney, a Pennsylvania screenwriter, sued Shyamalan over the similarity of Signs to his unpublished script "Lord Of The Barrens"[4]. Margaret Peterson Haddix considered a lawsuit after it was noted that The Village had many elements found in her novel Running Out of Time. [5]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Box Office Mojo - Sixth Sense (1999 Film)
- ^ Bamberger, Michael. The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale (Gotham Books, New York, 2006), p. 150
- ^ Chennai Online
- ^ Bamberger, Ibid., p. 15
- ^ NNDB -Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan
- ^ Bamberger, Ibid., p. 19
- ^ a b IMDb: Praying with Anger Release Information
- ^ Internet Movie Database - Wide Awake Trivia
- ^ Answers.com - Wide Awake
- ^ Young Artists Award - Past Nominations Listing
- ^ The Numbers - Wide Awake Box Office Data
- ^ The Christian Science Monitor (July 28, 2004): "A Different Take: "Self-directed filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan forges his own sub-genre: suspenseful movies with revealing twists. How a confident Hollywood outsider keeps his focus on family and faith", by Stephen Humphries
- ^ a b Answers.com - The Sixth Sense
- ^ Box Office Mojo - Signs Box Office Information
- ^ Science Fiction Weekly (Aug. 5, 2002): M. Night Shyamalan interview
- ^ Ain't It Cool News - M. Night’s WOODS Script Review
- ^ The Smoking Gun Hollywood by the Numbers
- ^ a b c Rotten Tomatoes - The Village
- ^ The Village DVD - Bonus Material
- ^ The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.
- ^ The Internet Movie Database "StudioBriefing" (June 23, 2006): "Shyamalan Blasts Disney Execs in New Book"
- ^ Los Angeles Times (June 23, 2006): "Book Tells of Breakup with Disney"
- ^ The DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray of this film will be released on Dec. 19.Film Journal International review: Lady in the Water
- ^ http://www.mnightfans.com/untitled/
- ^ Empire Online
- ^ http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/pottercast/?mode=blogarchive&eid=47
- ^ Science Fiction Weekly, Ibid.
- ^ a b Associated Press story on CBS News site (July 20, 2004): " Sci-Fi Channel Admits Hoax, 'Documentary' On Reclusive Filmaker Is Bogus
- ^ Associated Press (June 16, 2004): "Profile of M. Night Shyamalan goes sour: Sci Fi Channel is still planning to air the documentary"
- ^ Zap2It.com (June 17, 2004): "Sci Fi Schedules Controversial Shyamalan Doc"
- ^ My Life, My Card Commercial Campaign
- ^ dailybulletin.com (07/20/2006): "Is M. Night Shyamalan a genius or an egomaniac?"
- ^ The Radford Reviews (Aug 2 2004): The Village (2004)
- ^ dailybulletin.com (07/20/2006): "Is M. Night Shyamalan a genius or an egomaniac?"
- ^ slate.com (July 30, 2004): "The case against M. Night Shyamalan"
- ^ Uncle Orson Reviews Everything (August 8, 2004): "Infringement, Watts, Plum, Ringworld, and Even More Books"
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- M. Night Shyamalan (fan site)
- M. Night Shyamalan at the Internet Movie Database
[edit] External links
- M. Night Shyamalan Fansite - Community Forums, Thousands of Pictures
- Wrestling the Twister: An Interview With M. Night Shyamalan
| Movies by M. Night Shyamalan |
| Praying with Anger | Wide Awake | The Sixth Sense | Unbreakable | Signs | The Village | Lady in the Water |
