While 1999’s The Sixth Sense is rightly regarded as the film that launched M. Night Shyamalan’s career — his latest, Old, opens July 23 — the India-born, Philadelphia-raised director had made two features before it.
The first, 1992’s Praying With Anger, was an autobiographical film starring Shyamalan and shot while he was a student at NYU. His second outing was a step into the big leagues: On the strength of its script, Wide Awake drew a cast of big-name talent like Rosie O’Donnell, Denis Leary, Dana Delany and Robert Loggia (plus a young Julia Stiles in one of her first roles).
The film, produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein for Miramax, was made in 1995. Wide Awake did not follow the supernatural template (plus twist ending) that would become the director’s calling card; this was a sweetly philosophical story of a fifth grader on a mission to find God after his beloved grandfather dies.
“What a great talent he was,” recalls O’Donnell of Shyamalan; she was 33 when he approached her to play Sister Terry, a Phillies-loving teacher at the boy’s Catholic school. “He was a really loving director and a great guy. He was very family-oriented, talking about how he got married very young. It was a lovely, warm family that this guy seemed to have come from, and I thought, ‘He’s going to be successful.’ He seemed to have his own little universe of support wherever he went.”
But the positive aura surrounding the shoot ended the moment Shyamalan handed over his final cut to Weinstein and the producer ordered extensive edits.
“[M. Night] called me up and told me he was having trouble with Harvey — that Harvey had recut his movie and would I talk to Harvey with him,” says O’Donnell. “So we had a conference call where he was in the office with Harvey and I phoned in. And I said to Harvey Weinstein, ‘This kid is an artist. You wouldn’t say to Van Gogh, ‘Less blue.’ Your job as the producer and the distributor is to frame it and sell it, but not to change the canvas.’ And that’s when he called me the C-word. And he said, ‘You don’t know anything. You’re just a talk show host. Who do you think you are?’ And I said, ‘Well, this is the last conversation we’ll ever have.’ And it was.”
Weinstein’s efforts to bury the film seemed to work: When it was finally released in 1998 — a year after Shyamalan had sold his Sixth Sense spec for a record $2.2 million — the $6 million film grossed just $282,000.
This story first appeared in the July 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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