Book Details
| Title: | The Man Who Heard Voices | |
| Author: | Michael Bamberger | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 08.11.11 |
Other Books Read By This Author (0)
| Date Read | Note |
| 08.11.11 | Behind the scenes on the making of M. Night Shyamalan's The Lady in the Water. Jarrette lent this to me about a billion years ago and I'm finally getting around to reading it. I really disliked every Shyamalan movie after The Sixth Sense and Lady's failure felt vindicating to me because I was tired of having to tell people that his movies sucked. I'd always heard stories about how egotistical Shyamalan was and how he got people fired for not liking his scripts or things like that so I thought this book would be filled with juicy details. It sort of was, but the writer did an admirably objective job of not being too malicious. He writes a lot from inside people's heads though, which tends to get kind of melodramatic and suspiciously amped up. I wondered if people really placed THAT much meaning behind the things that the author assigns significance. Probably not, but I guess that's what sports writers do. So the book isn't 100% dry reportage. In the end, I wound up pitying Shyamalan more than revelling in my hatred for him. As I probably should've guessed, Shyamalan the person sounds pretty nice. If I met him on the street I wouldn't spit in his face. I probably wouldn't even volunteer that I wasn't a fan of his work. It must be painful to be sitting in the editing room KNOWING your movie isn't coming together and still have to face the world as if you think it's awesome. To watch as everyone you see tries to spin their mixed receptions to a positive light. What I thought before reading the book was that Shyamalan never realized that his movies had problems. Now I'm not so sure. It sounds as if he got plenty of feedback, at least with Lady, telling him that things weren't great. On another note, this book was probably intended to be a success story. Reading it years later, after The Happening and The Last Airbender have been released, it has a much different tone, at least to me. The impending doom pops up everywhere. It's funny though. Shyamalan's still super rich. Even if his career has his the rocks, it's not like he's destitute. I can't feel too much pity because he still gets to what he wants every day. Time to get back to work. |
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