| M. Night Shyamalan | |
|---|---|
M. Night Shyamalan at a press conference announcing The Happening in 2008 |
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| Born | Manoj Shyamalan 6 August 1970 Mahé, India[1] |
| Occupation | Director, producer, screenwriter, actor |
| Years active | 1992–present |
| Religion | Hinduism |
| Spouse | Bhavna Vaswani (1993-present) |
| Website | |
| www.mnightshyamalan.com | |
Manoj Shyamalan ( /ˈʃæməlɑːn/;[2]Maṉōj Śyāmaḷaṉ; Tamil: மனோஜ் ஷியாமளன்; Malayalam: മനോജ് ശ്യാമളന്; born 6 August 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Indian-born American screenwriter, film director, and producer known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots that climax with a twist ending. He is also known for filming his movies (and staging his plots) in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was raised. Shyamalan released his first film, Praying with Anger, in 1992 while he was a student at New York University. His second movie, Wide Awake, made in 1995 but not released until three years later, did not succeed financially.
Shyamalan gained international recognition when he wrote and directed 1999's The Sixth Sense, which was a commercial success and later nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. He followed The Sixth Sense by writing and directing Unbreakable, released in 2000, which received positive reviews. His 2002 film Signs, where he also played Ray Reddy, gained both critical and financial success. His next movie The Village (2004) received mixed reviews from the critics, but turned out to be a financial success. His later fantasy film Lady in the Water (2006) performed worse critically and financially. The film The Happening (2008) was a financial success but also received negative reviews. The Last Airbender (2010) received extremely negative reviews in the United States and won 5 Razzie Awards, but has gone on to make nearly $320 million internationally at the box office. His latest film, Devil (2010), which he produced and wrote the story for, but did not direct, was not screened by critics before its release but eventually received mixed reviews. Devil was not a blockbuster hit but has become a commercial success relative to its budget.
Most of Shyamalan's commercially successful films were co-produced by Disney's Touchstone Pictures film division.
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Shyamalan was born in a Hindu household in Mahé, Pondicherry, India.[1][3] His father, Nelliate C. Shyamalan, is a Malayali physician from Mahé. His mother, Jayalakshmi, is a Tamil and an obstetrician and gynecologist by profession.[4] In the 1960s, after medical school (at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research in Pondicherry) and the birth of their first child, Veena, his parents moved to the United States. His mother returned to India to spend the last five months of her pregnancy at her parents’ home in Chennai.
Shyamalan spent his first six weeks in Pondicherry, and then was raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. He attended the private Roman Catholic grammar school Waldron Mercy Academy, though he was a Hindu (they chose it for disciplinary reasons), followed by the Episcopal Academy, a private Episcopal high school located at the time in Merion, Pennsylvania. Shyamalan earned the New York University Merit Scholarship in 1988.[5] Shyamalan is an alumnus of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, in Manhattan,[6] graduating in 1992. It was while studying there that he adopted Night as his second name.[7]
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 him to follow in the family practice of medicine, his mother encouraged him to follow his passion.[8] By the time he was 17 the Steven Spielberg fan had made 45 home movies. On each DVD release of his films (beginning with The Sixth Sense and with the exception of Lady in the Water), he has included a scene from one of these childhood movies which he feels represents his first attempt at the same kind of film.
Shyamalan made his first film, the semi-autobiographical drama Praying with Anger, while still a student at NYU, using money borrowed from family and friends.[9] It was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 1992,[10] and played commercially at one theater for a week in rural Woodstock, Illinois.[10] 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, 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.[11] His parents were the film's associate producers. The drama dealt with a ten-year-old Catholic schoolboy (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 Julia Stiles, and Camryn Manheim. Wide Awake was filmed in a school Shyamalan attended as a child[12] and earned 1999 Young Artist Award nominations for Best Drama, and, for Cross, Best Performance.[13] Only in limited release, the film grossed $305,704 in theaters.[14]
That same year Shyamalan co-wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little with Greg Brooker.
In 2008, Shyamalan was awarded the Padma Shri by the government of India.[15] In 2010, he directed The Last Airbender, based on the Nickelodeon TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Although Shyamalan has stated he is in the middle of directing his next thriller, it has been confirmed that his next film will be a sci-fi epic titled One Thousand A.E., to star Jaden Smith. When asked about it in an interview, Shyamalan denied the idea of shooting it in 3D but stated he was planning something technically special. It will be the first film Shyamalan has directed, but not written.
In 1993, Shyamalan married psychologist Bhavna Vaswani, a fellow student whom he met at NYU[16] and with whom he has two daughters. The family resides on a sprawling estate in Willistown, Pennsylvania, near Shyamalan's usual shooting site of Philadelphia. His production company, Blinding Edge Pictures is located in Berwyn, PA.[17]
| Year | Film | Director | Producer | Writer | Actor | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | Praying with Anger | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Dev Raman |
| 1998 | Wide Awake | Yes | No | Yes | No | |
| 1999 | The Sixth Sense | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Dr. Hill |
| Stuart Little | No | No | Yes | No | ||
| 2000 | Unbreakable | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Stadium drug dealer |
| 2002 | Signs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ray Reddy |
| 2004 | The Village | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Jay (Guard at desk) |
| 2006 | Lady in the Water | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Vick Ran/The Vessel |
| 2008 | The Happening | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Joey (voice) |
| 2010 | The Last Airbender | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Firebender at Camp Scene |
| Devil | No | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| 2013 | One Thousand A.E. | Yes | Yes | No | N/A |
In July 2000, on The Howard Stern Show, Shyamalan said he had met with Spielberg and was in early talks to write the script for the fourth Indiana Jones film. This would have given Shyamalan a chance to work with his longtime idol, Steven Spielberg.[18] After the film fell through, Shyamalan later said it was too "tricky" to arrange and "not the right thing" for him to do.[19]
Shyamalan's name was linked with the 2001 film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but it conflicted with the production of Unbreakable. In July 2006, while doing press tours for Lady in the Water, Shyamalan had said he was still interested in directing one of the last two Harry Potter films. "The themes that run through it...the empowering of children, a positive outlook...you name it, it falls in line with my beliefs", Shyamalan 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".[20][21]
After the release of The Village in 2004, Shyamalan had been planning a film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi with 20th Century Fox, but later backed out so that he could make Lady in the Water. "I love that book. I mean, it's basically [the story of] a kid born in the same city as me [Pondicherry, India] — it almost felt predestined", Shyamalan said. "But I was hesitant because the book has kind of a twist ending. And I was concerned that as soon as you put my name on it, everybody would have a different experience. Whereas if someone else did it, it would be much more satisfying, I think. Expectations, you've got to be aware of them. I'm wishing them all great luck. I hope they make a beautiful movie".[22]
In July 2008, it was announced that Shyamalan had partnered with Media Rights Capital to form a production company called Night Chronicles. Shyamalan would produce, but not direct, one film a year for three years.[23] The first of the three films was Devil, a supernatural thriller directed by siblings John and Drew Dowdle. The script was written by Brian Nelson, based on an original idea from Shyamalan.[24] The movie was about a group of people stuck in an elevator with the devil, and starred Chris Messina.[25] The next film in the Night Chronicles series will be called Reincarnate. It will be scripted by Chris Sparling and directed by Daniel Stamm.
In 2004, Shyamalan was involved in a media hoax with Sci-Fi Channel, which was eventually uncovered by the press. 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 requiring 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[26] and Zap2It.com,[27] 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. This prompted Sci-Fi's parent company, NBC Universal, to state that the undertaking was "not consistent with our policy at NBC. We would never intend to offend the public or the press and we value our relationship with both."[28]
| Film | Rotten Tomatoes | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | Top Critics | |
| Praying with Anger (1992) | N/A | N/A |
| Wide Awake (1998) | 41%[29] | 29% |
| The Sixth Sense (1999) | 85%[30] | 79% |
| Unbreakable (2000) | 68%[31] | 58% |
| Signs (2002) | 74%[32] | 56% |
| The Village (2004) | 43%[33] | 49% |
| Lady in the Water (2006) | 24%[34] | 13% |
| The Happening (2008) | 18%[35] | 11% |
| The Last Airbender (2010) | 6%[36] | 7% |
| Devil (2010) | 51%[37] | 27% |
| The Sixth Sense | Unbreakable | Signs | The Village | Lady in the Water | The Happening | |
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| Frank Collison |
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| Bryce Dallas Howard |
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| Cherry Jones |
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| Joaquin Phoenix |
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| Bruce Willis |
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With the exception of The Sixth Sense, a common criticism of Shyamalan's works is that they feature better direction than screenwriting.[38][39] He has also been labeled a "one-trick pony" for his continuous use of the "twist" element in his screenplays.[38] After the release of The Village, Slate's Michael Agger noted that Shyamalan was following "an uncomfortable pattern" of "making fragile, sealed-off movies that fell apart when exposed to outside logic."[40]
In a May 31, 2008, interview with the London Independent, Shyamalan offered this answer to the question about his "one-trick" movies: "[A common misperception of me is] that all my movies have twist endings, or that they're all scary. All my movies are spiritual and all have an emotional perspective."[41]
Robert McIlhinney, a Pennsylvania screenwriter, sued Shyamalan in 2003, alleging similarity of Signs to his unpublished script Lord of the Barrens: The Jersey Devil.[42][43][44]
In 2004, Margaret Peterson Haddix noted that The Village has numerous similarities to her children's novel Running Out of Time, prompting discussions with publisher Simon & Schuster about filing a lawsuit[43][44][45]
In response to both allegations, Disney and Shyamalan's production company, Blinding Edge, issued statements calling the claims "meritless".[45]
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