Written by Jeff Giles for Newsweek and published in the August 5, 2002 issue

Looking back, the moment I liked M. Night Shyamalan most was the moment he liked me least, and that was the moment when he said he'll never understand why people occasionally think he's cocky and I said, Well, you are cocky — maybe that's why. This exchange took place in the back seat of a black SUV as Shyamalan's driver, Franny, ferried us out to the Philadelphia suburbs so I could see where the 31-year-old writer-director went to high school. Shyamalan wanted to know what he'd said that sounded cocky. "See, we have to clear this up," he said. "I can't believe you think that. Cocky? Give me an example." I was regretting that I'd opened my mouth. I told him I'd have to think about it. "Oh, now you've got to think about it. You had the statement right there in your hand with nothing to back it up!" The SUV pulled into the Episcopal Academy, in Merion. Shyamalan and I ducked into an administrative building, and a woman named Meg Hollinger whisked down the stairs. She told me that Shyamalan was a wonderful role model for the students, that he came to speak with them and that what struck her most about him was his humility. Shyamalan grinned, shot me a look and said, "See!" When we headed back out the door to tour the campus, he put his hand on my shoulder, a gesture, I later discovered, he inherited from his father. "I'm sorry," he said, pleasantly. "You weren't finished with your belligerent accusations."

Relax, Night, I'm about to say that you're a filmmaker who matters. At 28, Shyamalan — whose last name is pronounced Sha-ma-lon — wrote and directed "The Sixth Sense," which starred Bruce Willis as a psychologist and Haley Joel Osment as a trembling boy besieged by ghosts. That movie, of course, had a spectacular twist ending, and grossed nearly $700 million worldwide. More than that, though, "The Sixth Sense" proved that even in summertime moviegoers did not need to be pummeled or condescended to. As Mel Gibson puts it, "That one he did about the dead people — that was a phenomenally crafted movie. Night's uncompromising in the way he tells a story. He doesn't spoon-feed, and he doesn't pander to anyone." Shyamalan's follow-up, the somber "Unbreakable," misfired at the box office. But his latest offering, "Signs" with Gibson, is a welcome return to form.

Shyamalan is every bit the movie buff that the '70s auteurs were. His idols are unapologetically pop, though: not Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, but Hitchcock, Lucas and Spielberg. The scares in "Signs" call Hitchcock to mind, but Shyamalan is more akin to the young Spielberg in his careful rippling of the heartstrings, his deft touch with child actors, his fascination with the middle-class American family and his desperate desire to keep pleasing the same demographic over and over: people between the ages of 10 and 100.

Shyamalan is already Hollywood's highest-paid screenwriter. Disney gave him $5 million to write "Signs" and $7.5 million to direct. Now he's attempting to turn his name into a brand, like Spielberg, so that on opening weekend audiences will converge to see not a Mel Gibson or a Bruce Willis movie, per se, but an M. Night Shyamalan movie with Gibson or Willis in it. Says Marc H. Glick, the director's lawyer and earliest supporter, "Where we're headed is, 'Shyamalan' will open the film."

Cocky is, in fairness, too lazy a label to stick on someone who's widely liked, introspective and hellbent on self-improvement. "It's funny," says the director. "We were on the set of 'Signs' once — we were deep in the shooting — and we did something, and I went, 'No, no, no, I was wrong.' And Mel hugs me and goes, 'You said you were wrong! I can't believe it!' And I'm like, 'What are you talking about? I'm always wrong!' I can't be unclear about how I want to make movies. But that doesn't mean I'm right. It just means I'm clear." Point taken. But Shyamalan is nothing if not unabashed. He is Hollywood's next great entertainer. And I'm thinking he knows it.

"Signs" is an unusually moving thriller about a former priest named Graham (Gibson) who lost his wife in tragic circumstances — and his faith immediately thereafter. Graham, his brother (Joaquin Phoenix) and his kids (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) are holed up in their Pennsylvania farmhouse when crop circles suddenly materialize in the cornfields, the first volley in what appears to be an alien invasion (see review). Like all of Shyamalan's movies, it is obsessed not just with the unknown, but with family, parenting and self-renewal, and shot through with the unmistakable admonition that we must draw whoever is near and dear to us even nearer. The director's mother had not yet seen "Signs" when I interviewed her for this story. She will love it. "I feel he should make the nice movies," says Jayalakshmi Shyamalan, a retired obstetrician. "The latest thing — sex and that sort of thing — I am not for it. But it is a different profession. He would turn around and say, 'Mommy, I didn't tell you how to deliver a baby.' We don't have any control over what he's going to write, but I feel it should be something nice which leaves a landmark on the people who see it. Maybe a little spirituality. That would be the greatest thing."

Shyamalan's career seems especially significant at the moment because Hollywood at large is patently not making the nice movies. Or at least the fresh ones. This summer has been a rush of franchise pictures based on pre-existing concepts and characters. Of course, attendance is up 15 percent — and so is self-congratulation. Which means it's getting exponentially less likely that mainstream filmmakers will do anything as radical as sit down and try to, you know, think stuff up. "Signs" will have to fight to be No. 1 because its release is bracketed by two blockbusters borrowing James Bond's mojo: "Austin Powers in Goldmember" and "XXX." The latter was set to open the same day as "Signs," but the "XXX" folks opted against going head to head and moved back seven days. "They're scared to death, man," says Shyamalan. "They're absolutely terrified." That didn't sound cocky, did it? Just checking. "Night thrives on being the one original movie in a sea of sequels and derivative products," says Disney Studios chairman Richard Cook. "He loves the competition. I think that's part of what gets him going."

One morning in June, Shyamalan paces around a sound-mixing studio in midtown Manhattan. On screen, Gibson's character and his family stand shellshocked in their front hall, as booms and bangs and what sound like scuttling claws start filling every corner of the house. At a mixing desk facing the screen, sound editors "audition" a series of noises for a crucial thud at the front door. Shyamalan considers each option with what, to an outsider, seems like an extraordinarily discerning ear. He tells the editors he doesn't want some cheesy, generic boom. He tells them the characters will seem smarter if they're responding to subtler noises — and that the audience's ears won't be ruined for quieter effects to come. All the while, he teases his team to keep the energy up, at one point telling sound mixer Michael Semanick to do the opposite of whatever he did on "Attack of the Clones." Semanick laughs, and says over his shoulder, "You don't want $245 million in five weeks?" Shyamalan grins and shakes his head. "I'm telling you, if you'd done a great movie, you'd have made four times as much as that."

For the record, the "Star Wars" franchise has always been close to Shyamalan's heart (see "Top 10"), and he hasn't actually seen "Clones" yet: "I'm just giving Michael s–t." Still, the director is obsessed with understanding why audiences do the things they do. "Last year was probably the worst year for movies for me since I've been alive," he says, after settling into a leather chair. "It was the worst. The quality of movies in general. We don't have to get into specifics. And what that creates is a starvation in the audience. And, ironically, what that creates is … If they know what they're getting — like a franchise, something established — the starvation says, "I'll take that. I'll come in droves." 'Signs' will have to earn the audience's trust. "People believe in honesty. They really do," says Shyamalan. "And integrity — all the way down to the choice of a sound effect."

He pauses and looks up at the screen, where Gibson's character is trying to calm his kids down by telling them the stories of their births. They are the stories of Shyamalan's own daughters, 5 and 2, being born. "What will come across is something pure," he continues. "Hopefully. A voice. It will be the voice of a kid who was born in India and grew up in Philly. That's the only thing I have on the 'Scooby-Doos'." Later in the week, with "Signs" minutes away from being finished, Shyamalan shoots baskets in a portable hoop in the mixing room, and jokes around some more. "Let's say I decided to do 'Pokemon 5' — would you come?" he asks Semanick, brightly. "You wouldn't come?" He turns to his film editor, Barbara Tulliver. "If I did 'Pokemon 5,' would you come? Come on! I could turn it into a metaphor for the human condition!"

Related post categories: Features, Movie News : M. Night Shyamalan, M. Nightly Retrospective, Signs

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