A DIRECTOR'S JOURNEY

Sunday, August 13, 2006 By GLENN LOVELL SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS M. Night Shyamalan sees skeptical people — in mouse ears, no less. Last year, according to "The Man Who Heard Voices," the writer-director of "The Sixth Sense" and other tricky, pseudo-mystical chillers sent his latest script to his longtime backers at Disney. Pitched as a bedtime story about an apartment-complex super and a sea nymph who lives at the bottom of a pool, "Lady in the Water" was, in Shyamalan's humble opinion, an exciting departure for him, a darkly humorous blend of "Splash" and his all-time favorite movie, "E.T." The 35-year-old, Philadelphia-based filmmaker looked forward to raised glasses, congratulatory slaps on the back. "It's great being in the M. Night business!" he could hear the studio bosses exclaim as they cut him a check for $60 million. Instead, over dinner with Disney honchos Nina Jacobson and Dick Cook, he got withering stares and a stern lecture. The suits didn't understand his claustrophobic world of outsiders and ogres. His made-up words (scrunt, narf, tartutic) sounded like recycled Beowulf. They especially didn't like the shots he took at film critics and the fact that he wanted to cast himself in a meaty supporting role of a struggling writer. He was leaving himself open to charges of rampant egoism. Moving on First dazed, then angry, the filmmaker severed ties with the Mouse Factory and shopped "Lady" to Warner Bros., which very much wanted to be in the Shyamalan business. And what studio wouldn't? The director's arty, languorous ruminations on the power of faith — "Unbreakable" and "Signs," among them — had grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. So what if his last film, a glorified "Twilight Zone" episode called "The Village," had stumbled at the box office after a promising opening weekend. Michael Bamberger's new book details Shyamalan's sudden fall from grace, his nagging doubts (had Nina and company been right after all?), and his spiritual rejuvenation vis-a-vis "Lady," which opened recently with Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard's daughter, in the leads. Too close As reported by Bamberger, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, "The Man Who Heard Voices" proves a different kind of Hollywood chronicle, one that both benefits from its subject's rare cooperation and suffers from it. We can never shake the feeling that Bamberger became too chummy with Shyamalan and, therefore, was never as brutally honest as someone on the outside looking in might have been. "I felt a powerful force coming off the guy," he admits at the beginning of a narrative that covers a little over two years, from a chance meeting at a party to a private screening at Shyamalan's converted horse farm. Later, Bamberger allows, "I was rooting for him and his movie. Maybe that sounds like the writer getting too close to his subject ..." To be fair, Bamberger does eventually get around to echoing Disney's misgivings about the script, calling a version of the new film abstract and hard to follow — "a devastating experience." But this is left for the last chapter. For the bulk of the narrative, the director is a superman and visionary who seems capable of ESP (hence the title). He is also the perfect husband and dad who makes sure the downtown set for "Lady" is no more than a 45-minute drive from his home. Other tidbits: Shyamalan is lactose intolerant and has a 31-inch waist; he writes in his basement and, like hero Alfred Hitchcock, relies heavily on storyboards; his personal gods are Michael Jordan and Bob Dylan; and he plays a mean game of four-on-four full-court basketball. A cross between sports groupie and New Age auteur, he says things like "I'm not feeling the love," and "Feel the weight of shaving cream in your hand ... to be really aware of the moment." Shyamalan does occasionally chastise a crew member who screws up, but overall he's a pussycat next to such legendary Hollywood tyrants as Henry Hathaway and Otto Preminger. In the book's most telling passage, he meets with a New York University student who, after a private preview of an early cut of "Lady," posted his negative assessment on Ain't It Cool News. Instead of ripping into the kid, the director tells him, "You're the kind of person who can help me make the movie better." Cast and crew Giamatti, the "Sideways" star in his first studio lead, and Chris Doyle, the film's Aussie cinematographer, make for more interesting copy. The paunchy, balding Giamatti is like some of his characters, a good-natured schlub who shuns the spotlight, and Doyle is a "crazy genius" who likes to imbibe and drop his pants. Leading lady Howard — blind in "The Village," naked and mute for much of the new film — comes off as postmodern flower child, a strict vegetarian whose trailer is decorated with pictures of Einstein and Martin Luther King. This is definitely no tabloid-y expose. Nor is it in the same league as "Picture," Lillian Ross's classic journal on the making of John Huston's "The Red Badge of Courage," or "The Devil's Candy," Julie Salamon's exhaustive tabulation of everything that went wrong on Brian De Palma's execrable "The Bonfire of the Vanities." Bamberger bends over backward to paint himself as the ultimate Hollywood outsider, the commoner invited to sup with Hollywood royalty. If anything, he overplays the role. The most casual film buff can't help but wince over such lame asides as "Ingmar Bergman, man or woman? I don't know." Elsewhere, he spoon-feeds the reader with Film Theory 101 definitions of dailies and stand-ins. Predictably, many of the sportswriter's allusions are to Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds and NBA superstars. Ultimately, how much you enjoy this book will depend on how big a Shyamalan fan you are. If you think his movies are life-altering and profound, you'll hang on his every smug pronouncement ("actors turn me off; human beings turn me on"). If, on the on the other hand, you find him overrated and pretentious, you'll grimace over same ... and very possibly wonder what all the teeth-gnashing is about. Can this guy really read minds and communicate with some Higher Power? Or is he just eccentric? We'll find out as the box office figures and reviews for "Lady" roll in. Thumbs up, he's a genius and a prophet who's on the side of the narfs — I mean, angels. Thumbs down, the Disney suits were right to shrug, "Not buying it. Not getting it. Not working."