Out Of This World

When shyamalan finished writing 1999's "The Sixth Sense," he told his agents at the United Talent Agency that he had a screenplay for them to sell and that he was going to direct it. No matter what. And that the minimum bid was $1 million. No matter what. Says Mendel, "Night came out to L.A. and he bought himself a new pair of shoes, and he and Bhavna checked into the Four Seasons determined to have something great happen." Disney gave him $3 million. "I was only 10," says Haley Joel Osment, "but I could tell it was amazing writing."

On the day that Shyamalan's driver, Franny, drives us out to the Episcopal Academy, the director and I have our spat about whether he's cocky or not, and then we walk around campus in a funk trying to find somewhere cool to talk. We wind up in the chapel, which is empty and quiet except for a whispering air conditioner. I ask Shyamalan about 2000's "Unbreakable," about the making of a superhero. The movie was his second with Bruce Willis, and it was so grave and slow that it seemed to suggest he'd become overconfident about his ability to hold an audience. Shyamalan is fiercely proud of "Unbreakable" and of its status as a cult favorite. Still, when he talks about it, it's clear that if he was arrogant before it opened--"Sixth Sense" had made the all-time box-office Top Ten, and he was quoted as saying it'd be cool if "Unbreakable" made it, too--his theories about movies and audiences took a beating when "The Grinch" clobbered him at the box office.

"When 'The Grinch' took us, it really shocked me," he says. "It was such a great lesson for me. 'Signs' could go out there and completely tank, I'm telling you. I couldn't believe what was happening. 'The Grinch' became the phenomenon! They stole Thanksgiving!" By the time we leave his old school, Shyamalan seems chipper. His driver heads the wrong way down a one-way street and, from the back seat, the director says, "Franny! I'm gonna get expelled."

The thing that broke "Unbreakable," of course, was the ghost of "Sixth Sense." "I think Night suffered from second-film syndrome," says Willis. "People wanted to say, 'This guy isn't the genius that everyone said he is.' I don't use that word casually, but I believe he has elements of genius in him--as a writer, as a storyteller and as a film director." When I ask Shyamalan about his expectations for "Signs," he sounds grounded. Sort of. "I don't care about the box office," he says. "I care about the connection. I want it to be a phenomenon--a cultural phenomenon, where the audience feels some connection to this place, these people and what was being said here. That's 'Jaws,' 'E.T.,' 'The Exorcist.' All those movies. They just connected." I tell someone that Shyamalan has worked with that the director is hoping for a cultural phenomenon, and he laughs fondly: "In my opinion, just even saying that is stupid. As a tactic, you know? Keep that to yourself! That's a fine goal but by saying it you're sticking your chin out and saying, 'Punch me.' I think that Night--and this is an endearing quality--is not that savvy about how to promote himself. He definitely wears what he's thinking and feeling on his sleeve."

The morning I leave Philadelphia, Shyamalan's parents offer to drive me to the train. As the green, leafy Main Line darts past the windows--beautiful lawn after beautiful lawn after beautiful lawn--I ask why Manoj ever stopped calling himself Manoj. "You are pronouncing it so well," his mother says, sweetly. (It's Ma-noge.) She says that Shyamalan's teachers used to mangle it, so when he was a teenager he came up with Night. His father tells me that his son always felt a kinship with the Native Americans, and that the word resonated for them because the elders told their children stories around the fire in the evening and because you can see the universe only at night. Also, his father adds, "it was a good entertainment name." And there are the twin strands of Shyamalan's DNA, it seems to me--the very things that will keep him on minds and movie screens for years. A profound sincerity. And a profound ambition. We would never have known the one without the other.

© 2002