M. Night Shymalan & Mark Wahlberg Talk The Happening

By Kellvin Chavez on June 11, 2008

M. Night Shymalan's name has almost become a brand itself within the thriller genre.  He may not be the Alfred Hitchcock of his time, but make no mistake that Shymalan is a force to be reckoned with.  From 'The Sixth Sense' to 'Signs' the writer/director has had great success thrilling and scaring the beejesus out of audiences. 

For his latest venture he's teamed with Mark Wahlberg a success story in his own right, who was nominated last year for his memorable performance in Scorcese's 'The Departed'.  'The Happening' is not just a star vehicle for Wahlberg, but Shymalan's first R-rated film which ups the ante.  In a press conference promoting the picture, Shymalan and Wahlberg discussed their passion for the project, handling R-rated material and the spiritual aspects of the film.

Be advised, plot spoilers.

Question for the director and anyone else who'd like to answer. How closely does this storyline reflect your own world view?

Shyamalan: They're all a little bit like therapy, these movies, about something that's bothering me or family things. I'm always working them in, in a kind of like journal way, but it does represent the things that are on my mind. I think everyone in our generation is starting to worry about these kinds of things right especially during an election year right now. It's thinking about the future, and it's interesting with a slew of these kind of end of the world movies that there's a kind of anxiety in there. It's mimics the '50's where there was the same kind of anxieties about our future, where are we headed, are we going in the right direction, is it too late to change course – all of that. I never thought that I was actually all that serious as a person, but when I sit down to write I guess more adult things come out.

This is your first film with an R rating. How freeing was that? What did you get to do in this film that you couldn't do in your other films since they were PG-13?

Shyamalan: What's interesting is that I've gotten an R on two other movies, on 'Sixth Sense' and 'The Village'. I got an R rating on those initially for the intensity of certain scenes and then you just pull back a sound effect. We were right on the line and I could always just pull back a sound effect and resubmit it and they'd go, 'Oh, that's much better.' So all I would do is take out some sound FX. It's always a big impact because what you emotionally feel is different from what I actually showed. But this one, the screenplay that I wrote, there was just no other way to do it. Then when I thought about it, one of the movies that I was thinking of was 'Pan's Labyrinth'. I thought about that a lot when I made the decision to do this because I didn't want to make it as an agenda. I wanted to make an organic decision about what the material wants to do. When I thought about 'Pan's Labyrinth' which has some visceral moments of violence juxtaposed against the kind of softer things that are going on against the canvas it gave it authority and teeth. A PG-13 version of 'Pan's Labyrinth' for me wouldn't have that kind of impact and it wouldn't have stayed with me the way that movie has stayed with me. So it felt like the right balance of things. It was exciting then and it was disturbingly easy to shoot all of those scenes. I had such a fun time doing it.

The idea of plants having consciousness is a non-western world view. Did you consider that as coming from some of your other influences and can you talk about how your non-western experience influences you? Also, talk about the spiritual side of the film?

Shyamalan: Definitely. Well, the first thing, it's interesting because the Native American culture, that's all it's about. My middle name, Night, is actually an American Indian name. I felt so attached to that as a kid, to the American Indian culture and their relationship to nature and worshipping the sky, the earth, the rock, the bear over there. That relationship felt correct then as a kid and it feels correct now as an adult. It's interesting that in all of our religions so little is said about how we should feel towards nature. It's an interesting thing to get the hierarchy back in line with the way that it is. We're just one of many living creatures on the planet.

And do you have any thoughts of the spiritual aspects of the film, Mark?

Wahlberg: Well, I think that Night cast me because of my strong faith, but then we'd do a take and he was like, 'That was great. What were you thinking about?' I said, 'Jesus.' He said, 'Oh, well. We have to do it again.' [laughs]

Shyamalan: Literally, literally.

Wahlberg: I didn't understand that at all. I said, 'It's not going to change. It's going to be Jesus every time.'

Shyamalan: Literally. I would say, 'What were you thinking about?' 'Jesus.' 'What?!!'

Wahlberg: Yeah. He said, 'Oh, my God. I really liked that. What were you thinking about?' I said, 'Jesus, baby.' 'We've got to do it again.' Obviously, I think he cast me because of my faith. Someone asked me why Elliot survived and it's because he has so much faith and hope.

John Leguizamo said he didn't see the flick, that maybe it's because he's a pagan.

Wahlberg: No. It's because you'll be converted, baby. You'll be touched by the hand of God. Trust me [laughs].

You cast your protagonist as a science teacher and then you had a scientist at toward the end that described the limits of rational thought. How does that tie into the spiritual message?

Shyamalan: Right. Well, I was reading the Einstein biography while I was writing this screenplay. It's the new one. I forgot the author. [Walter] Isaacson. Yes. It's a beautiful, beautiful book. One of the things that I was struck by, and again maybe you'll read the book and you wouldn't see this in there, but I saw it in there  -

Wahlberg: When he converted?

Shyamalan: Yeah. He rejected religion and was kind of atheistic and did his wondrous things in his twenties and got really into it and then in the gaps in science he started seeing a hand. In his point of view the hand was God, a divine kind of thing and he was like, 'Is there something there?' His life struggle was trying to find an overall formula, an overall thing that could define the kind of design of things and the belief that that was there. Then he became very religious again. The ultimate man of science became a man of faith and in a way when I was writing Elliot it affected him because he's just a high school science teacher and he has plenty of gaps in his knowledge of science. I said, 'You're just a regular science teacher and you're not going to be the hero that figures something out. It's not like that.' But you see in those gaps that he honors those things in the gap. That's why Mark felt like the right casting because obviously he's a man of faith and to see the things that we don't know, the lack of the need to define it in the closest category is something inspiring when I see that in anyone, whether that's in Einstein or in Elliot's character or in Mark. It is kind of a question of science almost giving evidence to something else.

How did it feel this time around playing a teacher?

Wahlberg: I was paranoid because I'm a high school dropout. I wasn't a good student and I had portray a teacher who's actually really good at his job and the kids love them. I didn't tell Night that. I don't know if he knew too much about my past.

Shyamalan: I had no idea.

Wahlberg: But I definitely got a GED science book and spent a lot of time walking around the Ben Franklin Institute, following kids around on their class fieldtrips because in other films I've spoken other languages and it's one thing for me to be able to say the words, but I obviously need to feel confident enough to understand if I'm going to convey them. So that's it.

How was it dumbing down Zooey's character?

Shyamalan: When I write the characters they're all some aspects of me, some thing that I'm struggling with or thinking about. Zooey's character is the person that wants to be or is scared to be vulnerable and kind of uses humor to deflect that feeling of not wanting to risk herself. I kept saying to her that her character and the movie is really about the state of the world now, where we are, the paranoia that we feel towards strangers, towards each other, towards other countries, towards everything. There's that sense that we don't trust anybody. I was saying that Mrs. Jones is kind of the ultimate version of her character. Like if she kept on going she would've closed off everything and not trusted anybody and so we went that way in talking about her. That's really the part of me that wants to protect myself and kind of jokes about it and tries to undermine it, but it's really a delicate thing for me to go, 'It's better to protect myself. I'm going to protect myself while everyone else is protecting themselves.' That's exactly opposite of what I tell my kids. I tell them to be completely vulnerable and take every hit that you can because that'll allow you to feel all those great things that are going to come, love, all the joy and creativity – all of that stuff. It will always outweigh the amount of hits that you can get, but you want to protect yourself from those little hits that you got. Really the struggle of the movie was her struggle which is my struggle, that is, 'Is this an appropriate way to be? This person?' Which is how I am naturally. Is this an appropriate way to be or is this the right way to be, the struggle of whether or not to question it. John's character for me is, 'I'm the guy with the numbers.' It always comforts me to get the numbers.

Wahlberg: He is all the characters.

Shyamalan: I always get the numbers, like, 'There's a thirty four percent chance that we're going to be okay.' It's again kind of similar because he sees the beauty in math as well, and so when he tells that story when they're dying in the jeep that beautiful riddle. He says, 'If you just double a penny at the end of a month you'll have over $10 million.' It's amazing, the properties of math. He tried one last time teaching this little girl in the jeep about how math is wondrous. 'Do you want to hear one more story about it?' Again, they each see something kind of bigger in their fields. Alma is the character that's kind of deciding whether the world is that way or is it really kind of a crappy place. So that's why I picked all that and that's what they were all setting out to do. In all of them the first thing I wanted to do was literally pick an agenda, and this sounds silly, but I wanted the most likable cast that I could possibly put at the center of the movie. You can get a great actor, but they can come from a dark kind of place and then if you put that into the center of this dark movie the movie would just be unbearable. But they all come from a place where they don't know it, they don't know why they do it, but it's their gift, that they come from a place of light – all three of them. To put those guys and all the rest of the cast, even Betty Buckley who chose to play Mrs. Jones trying to have light and then it just messes up for her – a whole cast of actors coming from light was right at the center of the movie. That's why even though this movie is so dark it has such a great light to it.

Do you see this as a popcorn movie, and is it possible to have a popcorn movie with a greater personal theme and moral?

Shyamalan: Yeah, I do. One of the things that I said to everyone, to the cast and the crew, I said that we were making a movie about an important subject, but this is a B movie. Lets get it straight here. This is a great B movie. We're making the best B movie we can and that's our job. We're making a B movie. If the themes of the movie stick with you then great, but we're not going to put that in front of the movie. We're going to have a lot of fun. It's a paranoia movie and we just need to pound away at it. That's our job. So I was really clear about that. So in that way it was meant to be entertainment, but all of my movies are a little bit of that. One reporter yesterday was asking me, 'How come you just don't go make a pure popcorn movie and then go make an art movie because it seems like you want to do them both?' I think the problem is that they're both my instincts. So there's one leg in each place which sometimes pisses off one group and then sometimes pisses off the other group. My wife will say, 'Just make one or the other!' I wish that I could, but as it ends up I do think about all these spiritual things and I do love cheeseburgers and I do love 'Seinfeld' and I do love Coca-Cola and I do love Michael Jordan. This is just me. So if I took one side away, the side that really loves to read about philosophy and these kinds of things, if I took that away it'd be a lie. If I pretended that I wasn't jumping up and down watching the Celtics last night that would be a lie as well. So it's that balancing act of trying to be honest.

This film presents a nightmare scenario for most people. In real life, do you guys ever share your greatest fears? John said his was if Obama didn't win this fall.

Wahlberg: You don't even want to think about that. You guys ever been to jail [laughs]? If you end up in jail come talk to me.

Shyamalan: I think that all fear – I've changed my thinking in the analysis of fear – comes down to the factor of being alone. It's all based in versions of that. If you take random things that you're scared of, I'm scared of flying or scared of the new job that you have, it's all related to the feeling that you're going to have emotions and no one else will have those emotions and we'll be alone in some manner. So if you're on a plane and you're scared it's like, 'I'm scared of flying, but if I talk to the pilot –' or you talk to someone else you don't feel as scared. It's the human connection and you're not alone anymore. You have a commonality. I've said that I believe art is the ability to convey that we're not alone. That's the power of art and fear is the flip of that. It's always been in our genetics since we've been cave people or whatever that fear protects us. 'Don't go down that road. You'll be alone. We don't know what's down that road and you'll be alone.' It's that being alone isn't good, there's safety in this and he'll protect me and she'll protect me and together we're safer and the person that didn't have that didn't survive. It's now kind of flipped on us and become a limiting factor. Now we're scared to put our kids out in the backyard because our neighbors might do something, but neighbors are wonderful people. The assumption is wrong. It's the same stats that it was when I was a kid riding around on a bike, but yet we're so much more scared now even though nothing has changed. Nothing has changed except for the fear. The fear has built on itself because we get more and more isolated so that your fear has been realized and you're all alone.

How personal is it for you in a film to go outside of what you believe and how does that change you when you've done something like this?

Shyamalan: Constantly, one thing or mantra that I tell my kid, and I'm not sure I'm answering this exactly because the belief thing is a different thing than fear for me, but I always tell my kids that courage isn't not being scared. That's not what courage means. Courage is being scared and doing it anyway. That's a very important thing because they might say, 'I'm not courageous.' You have to go, 'No, no, no. Everyone feels scared, but you just don't let that stop you and go forward.' For me belief is everything. All the movies are about some version of testing faith, what faith you believe in. Do I believe in family? Do I believe in God? Do I believe in each other, in humanity? Do I believe that we're a good people? Is this working, this whole thing, these questions?

Wahlberg: Fifty/fifty.

Shyamalan: I come out on the positive side of that equation. You get the instinct, as I said earlier, to protect yourself like that and you just lose your identity that way and so as long as you can you have to just keep it wide open. I don't know if that answers your question or not.

Do you see this movie as a critique of people who believe that science and technology are all you need in this world?

Shyamalan: It was interesting when I was writing this because the bees thing came up, I thought, 'Oh, this is perfect. We can open the movie with the bees.' Then I was like, 'What if they figure it out though before the movie comes out? Then the whole point is going to be lost?' They could be like, 'Oh, it turned out that it was a Verizon cell phone tower –' and I would be like, 'Ah! This is awful.' But they still haven't figured it out and it's still a mystery and we'll never figure it out. Again, it's in the gaps of it. I almost think that the most, not cynical, but clinical minds are the ones that need it the most. They need to see the proof the most. Maybe someone like Mark just instantly believes as a human being. He's had an interesting life and has done all kinds of incredible things and has had some incredible experiences, but his ability to believe is just right there. But maybe for the clinical mind that's just constantly needing the facts, the facts, the facts, the proof – it actually means more to them. It's such an important moment. My brother in law is actually one of these guys, a computer guy, all of this stuff – he debunks everything. We did a Ouija board once and he said, 'Can you guys try to get in touch with my Great Uncle Willy?' So we did it and we got in touch with Great Uncle Willy on the Ouija board and all this stuff and when we were finished he said, 'My Great Uncle Willy is alive. He's in Jersey.' He's that kind of guy. I was like, 'You want to know more than anyone.' He's just that guy, he's the science guy. He's into computers. That's what he does for a living and I tend to think that we all want someone one day to go, 'Here's the answer. There is something bigger going on. Isn't that incredible?' Some of us want to go on faith and some of us need to see it laid out on paper. It's interesting because in 'Signs', really, Mel [Gibson] played a man of faith who was became very materialistic in a way and said, 'No. It isn't that way. It's just what you see in front of you. That's it.' In a way he's the flip of Mel's character, a man of science who kind of believed the thing.

What has the basis of science in 'The Happening' allowed you to do that fantasy hasn't?

Shyamalan: I was talking to a science reporter actually, or well, let me go back for a second. When I came up with the idea I said to the research people, 'Give me every piece of information. I want to know from one to ten whether this idea is totally, totally possible, probably or completely impossible.' They came back with a stack of information about how the environment works and the plants work and examples of anomalous things that have happened in the world and how a cotton plant can send out a signal to the other side of the field to tell them that this insect is coming so that they'll send out poisons and send out toxins – all these things happening in a smaller form is that kind of thing. It's really fun. I talked to the University of Massachusetts and some other institutes about how the brain works, about toxins and how they effect each other. It was really fun to ground this in science. In a way I've done two movies where there wasn't any supernatural elements, 'The Village' and this. It's kind of fun to do that. In the process of the research there were all these cool scientific facts that came out about other cool shit to write about and make movies about. So it's really a fun source of finding more conversations about faith. Looking at science I found so many more wonderful things so that maybe that'll be a fun way to go in the future.

Were there any compromises that you had to make on this film as a result of what happened with your last movie?

Shyamalan: No, because I wrote it before 'Lady' came out. So that's my good answer to that.

Source:Latino Review

• 

  Comments

• No comments yet!

Submit Your Comments

Title

Comment

Your Name

Your Email