A different take

Manoj Shyamalan ended his high school years with a dramatic statement. Editor of the 1988 yearbook, he ran a full-page replica of a Time magazine cover - featuring himself. The grinning teen stands in bow tie and cummerbund, his suspenders thumbed to the limit of their elasticity. The bold headline: "Best Director. NYU Grad Takes Hollywood By Storm."

"It was kind of tongue-and-cheeky," says the man now known as M. Night, sitting near the window of a Manhattan hotel room, the foliage of Central Park a tangled jungle below. He giggles at the memory. The March 1993 date on the mock cover alluded to Hollywood's award season. "It was so outlandish, you know, that it was like a dream you throw out there."

Mr. Shyamalan has yet to win an Oscar, though his 1999 breakthrough film, "The Sixth Sense," was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. And he has yet to make the cover of Time (settling, so far, for Newsweek). But Shyamalan has indeed stormed the movie universe, becoming Hollywood's highest-paid screenwriter, one of few directors who can open a blockbuster on the strength of his name alone - and, effectively, sole owner of the suspense genre.

His new film, "The Village," opens Friday. Its cast includes two Oscar winners, Adrien Brody and William Hurt, not to mention Sigourney Weaver and Joaquin Phoenix. But on posters it is the writer/director/producer's name that looms above the title of a film that fits neatly into what has become the auteur's standard fare: paranormal tales with Twilight Zone twists.

"He's the star. M. Night Shyamalan has become a brand name," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a Los Angeles-based firm that tracks box-office trends. Mr. Dergarabedian points to the strong association between Shyamalan (SHAH-ma-lawn) and his major works: "Signs," "Unbreakable," and "The Sixth Sense." "In order to sell the movie, you really push the fact that it's his movie," he says. "That's enough to get people in."

That power has led some in the media to dub him "the new Spielberg" or "the new Hitchcock." But remarkably, this director, a first-generation American of Indian heritage, is no Hollywood insider. The 33-year-old millionaire has remained resolutely anchored - physically and artistically - to his hometown of Philadelphia. The city is the setting for all of his movies and the headquarters of Blinding Edge Pictures, his production company.

Cloistered there, away from the self-absorbed universe chronicled by People magazine, Shyamalan seeks inspiration for scripts with emotional themes - faith and family - that will resonate with ordinary moviegoers.

"I think he is genuinely interested in why and how people come to believe," says David Thomson, author of "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film."

Shy yet confident, mature yet childlike, precise yet open to ambiguity, Shymalan aims high.

"My biggest fear in life," Shyamalan once told The Philadelphia Inquirer, "is to be average."

On that score, say those who know him, he probably needn't fret. It became apparent early on that Manoj was no ordinary kid. He took in "Star Wars" at age seven, and that experience kicked him into creative overdrive.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6