M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan
Manoj Shyamalan, known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Indian-American film director, screenwriter, producer and occasional actor known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots. His major films include the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense, the superhero drama thriller Unbreakable, the science fiction thriller Signs, the psychological thriller The Village, the fantasy thriller Lady in the Water, the natural thriller The Happening, the fantasy adventure film The Last Airbender, the sci-fi action-adventure film After Earth, the found-footage horror film...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth6 August 1970
CityMahe, India
CountryUnited States of America
Over the course of history, the people who are not scared go into the woods and are mauled by a bear, are not going to survive.
I try to take B genre movies and treat them as if they're A dramas. Get the cinematographers, get the actors to do an A drama, but it just happens to be about aliens or ghosts or crazy people, or killers, or whatever it is.
People break down into two groups when the experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance.
Sometimes people can write really great scenes and even a great episode, but they can't see the bigger picture.
See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky?
Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters.
I've never had an issue with studios. I believe in them as true creative partners in the process.
I grew up watching Steven Spielberg and scary movies.
Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.
I feel most akin as an artist, in my life and my career, to Agatha Christie.
That's something we should be taught as kids: To be okay with ourselves.
The thing that's protected me creatively is that the movies have made profits.
I don't like to chase an audience. You can smell when someone is chasing an audience and it's not good.
There's a monster outside my room, can I have a glass of water?