Independent Perspective News

Translation by Carolina Friszman.

The director of Sixth Sense and Signs admires Hitchcock and Spielberg and is worried about feith and fate. He loves the unexpected, but never shoots outside his city, Philadelphia.

(...)

Shyamalan explains why his latest four films (Wide Awake, Sixth sense, Unbreakable and Signs) take place in Philadelphia.

"It's where I live —that's his simple answer. I don't understand directors who leave their homes for six months to film. It's brutal. When they come back, they must find their families have changed a lot. Neither my daughters nor my wife have asked me to live that kind of life. I wouln't exchange them for the world greatest success."

(...)

"I write about the things that obsess me and frighten me, and I like giving my movies an important presence of spirituality. Of all of them, Signs is the one that represents me more. It's about destiny and feith. Everybody needs something to believe in."

(...)

"My father wanted me to be a doctor, that's true —M. Night Shyamalan remembers this afternoon— but, well, now he's very excited about what's happening to me. He's retired and excited."

(...)

After studying in a catholic school for ten years, Shyamalan became mystical. "I began wondering about what I believe in, and about fate," he says.

(...)

This afternoon, he is not wearing the silver chain with the Sanskrit inscriptions his father gave him for protection. Although he exposes himself as a family man very much in love with his wife, Shyamalan prefers making mystery films rather than romantic comedies. He wrote one right after getting married, called Labor of Love, but failed to have it filmed by Fox.

(...)

"This isn't a job for me —he continues after putting his glass of water on the table and again attacks the ring in his right hand. I feel so connected to each character that I see it as a form of expression. It's a somewhat bizarre public therapy because when I write I do it with my truest feelings.

(...)

Shyamalan strives to make clear how dear this movie is to him. He alludes to one of the most tense scenes, when Gibson's character tells his children the stories of their births. "You had such big eyes, you looked like an angel", he says to his daughter. "Your mother had dreamed of you all her life, that's why I wanted her to hold you soon", he says to his son. "These are the stories of my two daughters' births", he confesses.