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M. Night Shyamalan

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M. Night Shyamalan
Born
Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan
Occupation(s)film director producer, screenwriter and actor
SpouseBhavna Vaswani (1993-)
AwardsNebula Award for Best Script, 2000, for "The Sixth Sense"

Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan (IPA: [ˈʃaməˈlan]) (Malayalam: മനോജ് നെല്ലിയട്ടു ശ്യാമളന്‍; Tamil: மனோஜ் நெல்லியட்டு ஷ்யாமளன்) (born August 6, 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Academy-award nominated Indian American writer-director of major studio films, known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots that usually climax with a twist ending. He is also known for filming his movies (and staging his plots) in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Shyamalan released his first film, Praying with Anger, in 1992 while he was a New York University student. His second movie, the major feature film Wide Awake, made in 1995 but not released until 3 years later, failed to find financial success. Shyamalan gained international recognition when he wrote and directed 1999's The Sixth Sense, which was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. He followed The Sixth Sense by writing and directing Unbreakable, released in 2000, which received mixed reviews. His 2002 film Signs gained both critical and financial success, but The Village (2004) was a critical disappointment whose box office fell hard after a strong opening weekend, and Lady in the Water (2006) performed even worse. His next and latest film, The Happening (2008), did financially better than his previous effort but was also panned by critics; in its entire American run, it grossed only slightly more than what Signs made its opening weekend.

Early life and career

Shyamalan was born in Mahe, Pondicherry, India.[1] His father, Nelliyattu C. Shyamalan, a physician, is a Malayali, and his mother, Jayalakshmi, is Tamil and an obstetrician and gynecologist by profession.[2] 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, 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).

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 Catholic grammar school Waldron Mercy Academy, which his parents chose for its academic discipline,[3] followed by The Episcopal Academy, a private Episcopalian high school also in Lower Merion. Shyamalan went on to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, in Manhattan, graduating in 1992. It was here that he made up his middle name.

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.[4] 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 (with the exception of Lady in the Water).

Shyamalan made his first film, the semiautobiographical drama Praying with Anger, while still an NYU student, using money borrowed from family and friends.[5] It was screened at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12, 1992,[6] and played commercially at one theater for one week.[6] 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.[7] 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 Rosie O'Donnell, Julia Stiles, and Camryn Manheim. Wide Awake was filmed in a school Shyamalan attended as a child[8] and earned 1999 Young Artist Award nominations for Best Drama, and, for Cross, Best Performance.[9] Only in limited release, the film grossed $305,704 in theaters.[10]

That same year Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little.

In 1993, Shyamalan married Indian psychologist Bhavna Vaswani, a fellow student whom he had met at NYU[11] and with whom he has had two daughters. As of early-2008, the family resides in Willistown, Pennsylvania, near Shyamalan's usual shooting site of Philadelphia.

he is gay

Other media

Sci Fi Channel

In 2004, Shyamalan was involved in a media hoax with the 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[12] and Zap2It.com,[13] 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."[14] 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."[14] Other critics have since deemed viewers to be victim of a somewhat 'cheap' promotional trick which went too far.[15].

Criticism

A common criticism of Shyamalan is that he is a better director than he is a screenwriter.[citation needed] Some critics have suggested that he would be more successful by hiring a screenwriter to help translate his stories to the big screen.[16][17] He has also been labeled a "one-trick pony" for his continuous use of what some people call the "twist" element in his screenplays.[16]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."[18]

In a May 31, 2008, interview with the London Independent, Shyamalan offered this answer to the question about his "one-trick" movies: "Q: A common misperception of me is ... A:That all my movies have twist endings, or that they're all scary. All my movies are spiritual and all have an emotional perspective."[19]

In recent years, M. Night Shyamalan has been accused of plagiarism. It has been noted that The Sixth Sense resembles an episode from the American teenage horror TV show called Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Tale Of The Dream Girl, in which a boy notes that he is ignored by everyone except for his sister. In the end of the episode, it is revealed that he is actually dead resulting from a car/train crash in which his girlfriend died as well. She comes for him later on, and the scene in which the boy realises he is actually dead closely resembles the same revelation to the character of Bruce Willis in the sixth sense.[20] Robert McIlhinney, a Pennsylvania screenwriter, sued Shyamalan over the similarity of Signs to his unpublished script Lord of the Barrens. [21] Margaret Peterson Haddix considered a lawsuit after it was noted that The Village had numerous elements found in her children's novel Running Out of Time.[21]

Filmography

Year Film Oscars BAFTA Golden Globe
Nominations Wins Nominations Wins Nominations Wins
1992 Praying with Anger
1998 Wide Awake
1999 The Sixth Sense
6
4
2
2000 Unbreakable
2002 Signs
2004 The Village
1
2006 Lady in the Water
2008 The Happening
2010 The Last Airbender

References

  1. ^ 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
  2. ^ Chennai Online
  3. ^ Bamberger, Ibid., p. 15
  4. ^ NNDB -Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan
  5. ^ Bamberger, Ibid., p. 19
  6. ^ a b IMDb: Praying with Anger Release Information
  7. ^ Internet Movie Database - Wide Awake Trivia
  8. ^ Answers.com - Wide Awake
  9. ^ Young Artists Award - Past Nominations Listing
  10. ^ The Numbers - Wide Awake Box Office Data
  11. ^ 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
  12. ^ Associated Press (June 16, 2004): "Profile of M. Night Shyamalan goes sour: Sci Fi Channel is still planning to air the documentary"
  13. ^ Zap2It.com (June 17, 2004): "Sci Fi Schedules Controversial Shyamalan Doc"
  14. ^ a b Associated Press story on CBS News site (July 20, 2004): " Sci-Fi Channel Admits Hoax, 'Documentary' On Reclusive Filmmaker Is Bogus
  15. ^ MoviesOnline.CA
  16. ^ a b dailybulletin.com (07/20/2006): "Is M. Night Shyamalan a genius or an egomaniac?"
  17. ^ The Radford Reviews (August 2 2004): The Village (2004)
  18. ^ slate.com (July 30, 2004): "The case against M. Night Shyamalan"
  19. ^ The 5-minute Interview: M Night Shyamalan, Writer and director - Features, Film & TV - The Independent
  20. ^ Uncle Orson Reviews Everything (August 8, 2004): "Infringement, Watts, Plum, Ringworld, and Even More Books"
  21. ^ a b Movie & TV News @ IMDb.com - WENN - 11 August 2004
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