How M. Night Shyamalan’s UNBREAKABLE Led to SIGNS
Even though M. Night Shyamalan has crafted some masterful movies in his day, such as Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, I still think my favorite Shyamalan flick is Signs with Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.
And today, Shyamalan explained how Unbreakable led to Signs.
Shyamalan tells The Ringer: “I had a complicated reaction to the reaction to Unbreakable. I wanted to make a movie about comic books … I wanted to do it in a very kind of dramatic way, and I think my somberness at the time of Unbreakable came off in the film… It’s a very burdened movie.”
He adds: “There was this weird moment where, strangely, I went to Denny’s. I was sitting there and seeing a family that was silent, and they were eating. I saw a couple that was quiet, and they were eating. And I was saying to myself: I can make movies that are burdened, and that’s honest for me. But I was looking at those people in the Denny’s, and I knew they were coming to my movies, and I wanted to make them feel better. So I called Disney and I said, “I want to make a movie that is just joyous, and doesn’t have that lens of burden on it.” It can have a lot of conflict in it, but the voice, the angle, I wanted it to be inspired and childlike, almost. And so Signs was born that way.“
Finally, he says: “I wouldn’t write unless I was feeling lighthearted. If I started to get tight, I would walk away. And what ended up happening was really interesting. It was a psychological experiment. Because it was the easiest script to write in my career. It’s on my shelf over there. … It was just lighthearted and fun. The shoot was the easiest shoot that I’ve ever been on. And my shoots are torturous for me. Every day I question whether I should have become a doctor, you know. But it wasn’t that way on that movie. It was really fun.”
How much do you love M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs? Make sure to let us know in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!
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