With The Village hitting theaters this weekend, M. Night is a hot commodity. When he wasn’t busy conducting an evening with fans in Regal theaters or popping up on Howard Stern, he sat down with a few smarmy press types to answer a few standard questions. If you’ve heard him anywhere else promoting The Village then a lot of this will sound familiar, but some of it won’t. Sometimes in print he comes off as a little… egotistical. But when you hear him in person, he’s congenial, self-depricating, and nothing of the sort! Here’s a few excerpts from Shyamalan’s latest Village promoting interview:
Q: Was there something special that attracted you to that landscape for the film?
A: It’s very hard to find a plot of land in the middle of the woods, we had to fly in a helicopter to find it.
Q: Did the woods scare you?
A: The woods are a place that we are genetically afraid of, we know not to go into them in order to survive, so I am taking advantage of that.
Q: When people mention this film they refer to it as “oh, that horror movie” but it seems to be so much more, how does that make you feel?
A: I think there is always a desire to put it into a box, it was not intended to be a horror movie, I wanted it to be a period romance and have heighten suspense to the point that it would become freighting. I would feel more comfortable with them saying, “that suspense movie”.
Q: Within the film there seemed to be political commentary, being that you don’t know what the world would be like once your film is released, did you find that events occurring were running parallel to the events in your film.
A: It came from the feeling that the world is a scary place right now and desire to go back to simplicity; emotional colors were accurate for what your saying. It’s ironic because we wrote this a while ago.
Q: Are we reading into this too much but does it carry the idea that our elders are keeping things from us or that there is danger in following leaders, in any community?
A: It’s all about how to protect your innocence from getting hurt by the “creatures” in your life; the desire to protect your children from going into the unknown. If these “creatures” have hurt you, you don’t want them to hurt your children and the younger generation may be willing to risk that.
Q: As a film maker and writer how tough is it to keep the element of surprise? Everyone knows how all your films have surprises to them.
A: I'm just going to be Zen about this. If I worried about the keeping the element of surprise I wouldn’t be able to make a Six Sense. So I just going to keep doing what I’m doing.
Q: You say your going to be Zen about this...
A: Right, which is in reference to me making my movies.
Q: Right, but peoples expectations are going to get out there regardless and that must be frustrating for you.
A: I can’t take it into account, would you really want me to take that into account? Should that be the basis of my next movie. That’s why I stay in Philadelphia so that I can draw my ideas from a small pool.
Q: You put your actors for this film through a boot camp, was it interesting to see who was really into it and who was crying for their cell phones.
A: They were all very intense about it in there own ways. It gave them the opportunity to do their craft at the highest level. They felt honored to give there all and we all felt there was something precious; the process brought great meaning. I had an opportunity to create a sanctuary.
Q: Bryce said that she was shocked you casted her for this role after just seeing her in one play.
A: Yes, its this stupid trust that I have in the internet, my wife gets on me for that, she says that I’m lazy but it’s really instinct of mine. I didn’t even make her audition for it, I had a gut feeling.
Q: You refer to your work process as magic, and during magic tricks there are times where one would hold their breath and wonder whether they will be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat. Do you ever have those moments?
A: There’s a reason why signs opened at 60 million. I walked my walk my own way, and you knew that no matter what, you were going to see something different and original. It’s the choices we made: Bryce, the camp, the commitments is what shines though.
Q: You talk about “Your world”, as being a writer and a director and a producer, doesn’t that create a very insulated. Do you have a small group of people to...
A: It’s absolutely problematic, that’s where Scott Rudin (producer) comes in. We never meet before, I told him to come in here I’m in danger of being too isolated, he looks at what I have and he critiques and challenges me. That is why I hired these monster actors and theater actors, to challenge me. I’m not about being comfortable, I want to be challenged. You always want someone to go, “why that” and “why this”.
Q: Could you live in this utopian society where there is no money, no greed?
A: Could I live in it? Yeah, the irony is that I don’t put a lot of stock into money and materials; they aren’t that important. If that stuff went away I wouldn’t give a shit. If those things are your motivators in life, I guarantee crash and burn.
Q: Was it fun to write romance? As a guy who doesn’t like romance, I enjoyed it.
A: I wanted to write a romance, a period romance. I wanted to go back to the1890s where people believed in love. It was hard to write because I had to remove all my sarcasm out of my writing. Today when we say things sarcasm is always there. In that era, when someone said, “I like you” it meant they liked you.
Q: Isn’t there a danger of idolizing the past too much? You may say that the past was so pleasant but they were dying of plague.
A: Which is true but there is a give and take, all things come with sacrifice. Is it better that we have the microwave, there are all kinds of philosophical arguments to this.
Q: When are you going to get your own TV show?
A: I have all these ideas that aren’t big enough to be movies, but it requires deviation of time and effort that I can not justify. These movies work at the level that their working on because I get to devote two years of my life to them creatively. I have family and all that stuff the requires...time. I can’t right now justify that move.
Q: Has there been any interest to do this?
A: I have been asked by every network to do that same thing. But to do it right, it’s a sense of putting your time and love in. But movies are really the format that I want to talk in.
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