Ain't It Cool News: IN THE DIRECTOR'S CHAIR WITH M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN!!. "How he got started? He made two complete turds of movies with Praying with Anger and Wide Awake trying to be art house before attempting to do something mainstream that still contained his sensibilities. Thus Sixth Sense was born. Originally started out as a story of a crime photographer that finds symbols in his son's drawings that appear on the victims of a serial killer. Felt it was too typical of a serial killer story and it kept coming out like Silence of the Lambs. That's when he developed the story further into the family drama we now know. Finished the final draft on a Friday, put it up for sale the following Monday and demanded no less than 1 million dollars. Said if they offered him $900,000 he still would not to do it. His previous failures had numbed him to being afraid of getting rejected. Within an hour of it being up for sale it was already at the 2 million dollar mark.

He believes that in order to be a great filmmaker you need to understand all facets of filmmaking. Each movie was a step for him. Starting with directing, then writing, then acting, and now sound design which he paid extra attention to in The Village. He talked about how they finalizing the mix of a scene in The Village and felt it wasn't working anymore. Despite everyone calling him crazy he had them strip the sounds apart, sound by sound. He discovered that the foley work they did for a particular character had her footstep be aggressive rather then gentle which is what the scene was aiming for. He said that one element changed the whole delivery of the line.

How he writes: Staying original was his main answer. Anything that even has a whiff of a scene from another movie is tossed right out. Said that he was going to shelve Sixth Sense after he heard that they were making Casper! Also he has a certain gift for telling intimate stories. He said that if he had directed Troy it just would have had two guys fighting on one side of the wall while the sounds of 5,000 army guys could be heard on the other side, but not seen. Mentioned that when he was attempting to write Indy 4 for Spielberg that he kept having too introspective of an angle on the theme of heroism and what it meant. Spielberg said if you want to continue you can, but Night was getting busy with Signs.

He was concerned about the bigger he gets the less connected he will be with his audience. Since he will not be forced to be a part of the regular joe's daily struggles then his stories will be distanced from this audience he is vying for. He likened it to a rockstar who gets so big that they are no longer able to connect with their audience who loved him for being like one of them and being able to write songs they could relate to. He also had a great line about how being a failure is the same as being a great success. The false engines of motivation are no longer there, you are empty either way.

All in all M. Night was a very invigorating person to listen to, especially if you're a brudgeoning filmmaker like myself. This interview totally cast him in a different light then that Sci-Fi debacle last Sunday. Totally bright, funny (kept using "and he killed it!"), and enlightening. A very likable guy." His career is something that I want to emulate as an aspiring filmmaker.