Manoj Shyamalan - An Indian writer-director in Hollywood

Entertainment Showbiz Pakistan , Bollywood & World Entertainment
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Manoj Shyamalan - Writer - Director of Sixth Sense.

An Indian director in Hollywood

BEVERLY HILLS - A nine-year-old boy questions the existence of God when his beloved grandfather passes away in “Wide Awake,” a poignant comedy about loss and love. For director M. Night Shyamalan (Manoj Shyamalan), the thorny subject matter allowed him to focus on children’s honest emotions. “I think because they’re such wonderful mirrors and vehicles for emotions, such wonderful storytelling vehicles,” he said. “To put a child in an emotional situation, to put a child in a funny situation, or scary, it seems to enhance each of those moments. I just love when they’re doing it correctly, when they’re just being themselves. There’s a real trueness to it on the screen. It really appeals to me.”

Dressed in black jeans and a black button-down, the 27-year-old Shyamalan affably discussed “Wide Awake.” With a warm, languorous smile, he described how he based “Wide Awake” on his own experiences growing up in Pennsylvania. He still lives in his hometown of Philadelphia, and shot the film at the Waldron Mercy Academy, the Catholic elementary school he attended as a child.

Homecoming remains an important theme for Shyamalan, whose first film “Praying with Anger” chronicled an American-born Indian who studies abroad in Madras to discover his roots. In a concession to Western difficulties with pronunciation, Shyamalan shortened his first name of Manoj to M. to avoid mangling. He shot “Praying with Anger” at the age of 21, but said starting young has helped him maintain his own vision.

“The big advantage of starting young is that I got to create my own voice, as opposed to making it a version of someone else’s voice,” he said. “By working with so many people, and learning their view of things, completely, and making my voice a version of theirs. That’s also helped being in Philadelphia, being able to just do my own thing, and hope that everyone responds to it.”

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Praying with Anger

Date Released: 5/28/93 (Limited release)
Running Length: 1:43
Rated: PG-13 (Language, violence)
Starring: Manoj Shyamalan, Mike Muthu, Christabel Howie, Richa Ahuja, Arun Balachandran
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Producer: M. Night Shyamalan
Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan
Music: Edmund K. Choi
Released by Northern Arts Entertainment

Dev Raman (M. Night Shyamalan) is an American-born Indian sent to India as part of a college student exchange program. Dev is reluctant to go, but his mother, to whom he is devoted, insists. So, friendless and alone, halfway across the world, Dev experiences culture shock -- he may look like an Indian, but it is quickly and vividly demonstrated that looks are of little consequence, and it will take more than a glib tongue and an unwillingness to back down to earn acceptance and respect. In the midst of his initial travails, Dev's sole friend is Sunjay (Mike Muthu), his guide and mentor, upon whose advice he relies. There are times, however, when he chooses to be headstrong and ignore Sunjay (on such issues as approaching a pretty girl or passively accepting the taunts of older students). Unsurprisingly, those incidents lead to embarrassment -- or worse.

Stories about clashing cultures are nothing new. In recent years, the subject has formed the basis for comedies (such as the popular 1986 release, Crocodile Dundee, about an Australian transplanted to New York), science fiction (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, about a group from the twenty- third century coping with modern-day San Francisco), and numerous dramas (including 1992's City of Joy and Mississippi Masala). Now, add Praying with Anger to the list. The debut film of M. Night Shyamalan (who produced, directed, wrote, and starred), Praying with Anger presents another perspective of this issue.

Comparisons with City of Joy and Mississippi Masala are appropriate. Like Praying with Anger, those movies deal with friction between Indian and American traditions. However, where Masala sets the story in the United States and City of Joy makes the protagonist a white male adrift in Calcutta, Praying with Anger sends an American-born Indian to the "home" he has never known.

The film is at its best when it explores Indian culture and tradition, and examines how Dev must adjust to live in what for him is a strange world. These scenes, which make up a majority of the first half of Praying with Anger, hold the viewer's interest. Shyamalan doesn't reveal anything extraordinary, but neither does he shrink from showing the often-painful rigidity imposed by India's caste divisions. Social class is very much an issue, both as it applies to Dev and the people he comes to care about.

Unfortunately, the basic plot is a series of formulas neatly bundled together. There's the requisite tragic love story, the girl who bucks the centuries-old system, the outsider who comes to be respected by those who previously despised him, and, of course, the coming of age tale. It's always apparent what's around the next corner, and the one after that as well.

To M. Night Shyamalan's credit, he strove for something lavish and ambitious in this, his first effort. While Praying with Anger is often tedious because of its lack of originality, there are occasional glimpses of promise which indicate that Shyamalan may have a future in film making. Overall, however, Praying with Anger relies on too much stock material for it to warrant anything more than a passing interest.

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MANOJ SHYAMALAN
Night Has His Day
Little known in his home country, this India-born director is making waves in Hollywood. His third film, The Sixth Sense, is poised to cross the $200 million mark in the US.

By Anupama Chopra with Arthur J Pais
This yearbook shows him on the cover of the Time magazine with the heading: Best Director. It is a trick photograph he engineered when he graduated from the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia. At 29, Shyamalan is almost there.

The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan's third film, just broke Hollywood's Labour Day weekend record by raking in an estimated $28.5 million (Rs 122.5 crore) over four days. The earlier highest was $17.2 million by The Fugitive. Currently in 2,775 venues across the US, The Sixth Sense has grossed $175.5 million and looks set to cross the $200 million mark. The film, about the relationship between an eight-year-old boy who sees ghosts and a child psychologist, has topped the box-office charts for five straight weeks.

Shyamalan had a sixth sense that something like this might happen. Three years ago, when he was editing his second film, Wide Awake, he said to his editor Andrew Mondshein, "You know, I'm going to write a screenplay called The Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis is going to star in it." Mondshein had replied, "Yeah, sure."

But Shyamalan made his premonition come true. In September 1997, Shyamalan's chilling story -- he describes it as Ordinary People meets The Exorcist -- sold to Disney for $3 million ($2.5 million for the script and $500,000 for directing). "It was absolutely historic, unprecedented," Shyamalan says, "and they asked for no rewrites." They also agreed to let him shoot the film in Philadelphia. Bruce Willis, best known for testosterone dramas like Armageddon and the Die Hard series, not only signed on but also slashed his $20 million fees so the film could come in at a more reasonable $40 million budget. "There have only been three scripts," Willis says, "that I have ever read in my career that I immediately knew I wanted to do and The Sixth Sense was one of them. It has a real balance of dark and light moments, of normal and paranormal events in these characters' lives."

Naturally, everyone is asking who's that guy? Not many people know. Despite two low-budget art-house feature films, the desi contingent in Hollywood had never heard of Shyamalan. Before The Sixth Sense shook up the box-office, film director Shekhar Kapur hadn't heard the name. Says filmmaker Deepa Mehta: "Even now, there isn't a great awareness that he's Indian."

Shyamalan is an Indian-born American. "Night" is an anglicised version of Nelliyattu, his original middle name, which proved to be too much of a tongue-twister in America. His cardiologist father Dr N. C. Shyamalan and gynaecologist mother Dr Jayalakshmi migrated from Pondicherry to the US when Manoj was eight weeks old. He grew up in Philadelphia, attending private Catholic schools. When he was eight years old, Shyamalan picked up his father's Bell & Howell 8-mm camera and started making movies. "He would call all the neighbourhood kids into the backyard and create stories," his mother recalls. "I used to put out sandwiches and coke." "The plots," his father says, "would have one kid playing the richest man in India. Even then he was telling ghost stories."

Shyamalan's upbringing has been a pot-pourri of Indian and Yankee. He visited India once every two years to see his relatives. He doesn't speak Malayalam but understands it. His values, his mother says, "are Indian". At 16, Shyamalan completed his 45th short film. At 17, he stood before his parents, surrounded by pictures of the other 12 doctors in the family and announced that despite getting admission to several prestigious medical schools, he wanted to be a filmmaker. "We were scared," says Jayalakshmi, "because it's a new line and we couldn't help him in any way. But he's a very focused and strong-headed boy. He's hard working and determined. I knew he would do something. But we never imagined this. He's really taken off. We feel like we're dreaming."

This dream is going to last. After Sense, Shyamalan is being aggressively courted by the major studios. He continues to live in Philadelphia, in what his aunt Dayajayaram describes as, "a very nice house with a swimming pool and tennis court" with his wife Bhavna and their three-year-old daughter Saleka. Bhavna, who is currently doing her doctorate in psychology is expecting again. For the Shyamalans, bigger things are to come.