Movies: Night Vision

Want to know the twist behind M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie, Lady In the Water? It’s not on the screen, but behind the scenes, where the director stands at a career crossroads

He proved himself early in the shooting of The Sixth Sense, in 1998. Tensions came to a head inside the old Civic Center, where a set served as the interior of a house lived in by Bruce Willis’s character, Dr. Malcolm Crowe. In one scene, Crowe is drunk and speaking in rhyme, like a stoned Dr. Seuss. Willis stumbled with his delivery, then challenged Night’s very specific directions. The actor raised his voice, and the kid in the director’s chair raised his, until the entire stage heard the argument. To everyone’s surprise, the superstar backed down. Later, in his trailer, Willis told a secretly petrified Night, “You’re doing a helluva job.”

Sixth became one of those rare films that cross over from blockbuster to phenomenon, and while it was unquestionably the result of Night’s creativity, in some significant ways, his instincts still needed sharpening by those around him. Early private screenings of the film were disastrous, in large part because the ending was confusing and audiences weren’t responding to Night’s maudlin final scene, punctuated with more singsong Seussing (“Anna Crowe, I am in love. In love I am”) — the best writing he’d ever done, in Night’s opinion. With the guidance of his Oscar-nominated editor, Night inserted the flashback scene that drives home the point that Willis has been dead all along. He finally agreed to kill his cherished ending, but would include it on the Sense DVD, saying, “I was so sad when I had to make this cut. … I fought it a long time.”

With its new finale, Sense catapulted Night into the stratosphere. The media heralded him as “the next Spielberg” and “a modern-day Hitchcock.” Disney rewarded him with the power he craved. “With The Sixth Sense, the studio gave him a huge amount of control,” says Mason. “After Sixth Sense, they gave him complete control.”

But as Night climbed the ladder of Hollywood’s hierarchy, a conflict developed between his mentality as a storyteller and his new status as a hit-maker. “He wants the control that comes with being an independent filmmaker,” says Martin Grove, a columnist for the Hollywood Reporter, “but he works in a very commercial genre.” 2000’s Unbreakable was a thinking man’s superhero story — no explosions or spandex. Disney suggested that his ending was really the beginning of the third act, but Night fought to keep his version, and won. Abysmal test screenings were heartbreaking for Night, according to an insider who has worked closely with him on many of his films, and both the ending (spoiler alert: Bruce Willis really is a superhero!) and the tally (just shy of $100 million) fell flat. Two years later, Signs marked a return to box-office form, though Night’s problems continued to mount. His twist — or, as he calls it, “revelation” — again drew the ire of fans and critics. (You can kill the aliens with water?) And his CGI spaceman, who appears in the film’s final moments, was disappointing even to Night. As one reviewer noted, “I’ve seen better costumes at office Halloween parties.”