How I Built Resilience: M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan spoke with Guy as part of NPR's Storytelling Lounge at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Night is known for writing, producing and directing blockbuster films like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Split. Despite his many successes, Night shares that he still faces self-doubt, fearing every new project may be his last. He spoke with Guy about the production of his new film Old and the new season of his Apple TV Plus show Servant, both of which were filmed during the pandemic. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and industry leaders about how they're navigating turbulent times. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:45Guy Raz?

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• 1:30Guy Raz?

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• 5:06Guy Raz?

  or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. Hey, everyone, and welcome to How I Built This: Resilience Edition from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. And on these episodes, we're hearing from entrepreneurs and other interesting people about how they've been building resilience into their businesses during this very challenging time. And today, my conversation with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. I spoke with M. Night as part of NPR's Storytelling Lounge at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Night is an acclaimed filmmaker, whose work includes The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Split.

• 5:51Guy Raz?

  And more recently, he's entered the world of television with his Apple TV Plus series, Servant, now in its second season. Before he became a blockbuster film director, producer, and writer, Night grew up outside Philadelphia, where, as his fans know, many of his stories take place. And as a kid, he loved recreating and filming his favorite movies in his spare time. I want to just start briefly with a little bit about your story. Sure. Because you really developed a passion for filmmaking as a kid, right? You had like a Super 8 camera at home. I had one when I was a little kid. I used to play around with it. Unlike you, I didn't make 45 movies on it by the age of 17. How did you? Just fall in love with that camera and making movies as a kid. How did that happen?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  I think it was a confluence of when I was born and the natural feeling towards storytelling that I didn't realize that I had. But being born in that 1970 and then, you know, you have ET when I'm 11. You have Raiders of the Lost Ark when I'm 12 and Star Wars when I'm seven and a half. And just right between the eyes, you know, masterpieces meant right for me. And that became my religion and this feeling. I wanted to recreate that feeling. I wanted to, you know, so you'd be at home and what you would normally do as a child is, you know, you pretend that you're in the X-Win fighter and you're, you know, you're doing all the play, imaginary play.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  But you keep taking that further and further and, oh, like, you know, maybe I could record this and, and maybe it could look like that. And so I was very organic, just following a love. And the love was really just a hobby because I thought there was no precedent for becoming a filmmaker, certainly in the Indian community or the Asian community. And so this was just for me, for fun, something that I did. And I was going to be a doctor. That's what my parents are and everyone in my family is. So I think, you know, from like 10 to like 15, that was, it was just a, this is the thing I love to do on the road to med school.

• 7:56Guy Raz?

  Huh. I mean, I, I remember those cameras because they were expensive, right? The cartridges were expensive. It was expensive to get them developed. You only had a few minutes on that Super 8. What, what kinds of-

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Three minutes, yeah.

• 8:07Guy Raz?

  For some of your super fans know that you do show little clips of them on some of your DVDs that you release. What kind of stories were you telling?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Well, I need to convey the level of lack of talent that was shown in these pieces staggering, like that if you're looking for like a morsel of creative instinct or originality, it's void of all of those things. It's just, just absolutely me copying, copying anything that I've seen in the worst possible way, you know, in an ineffectual way and finding that ineffective.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  And finding that not satisfying, kind of pretending I'm making a horror movie, pretending I'm making Raiders of the Lost Ark, pretending I'm making a James Bond movie. It's farcical when you see them, but it was funny. I skipped the wonderful part of it, which is the creating. I was mimicking rather than creating. And so it had none of the joy. And I think once I started to make up things that were original, it felt so different than that.

• 9:08Guy Raz?

  It's such an important point because whenever we find people who have mastered what they do, you know, people who've been on the show, what you do as a filmmaker, you know, people ask me, how often ask me, how do you interview people so well? And the answer is, I did it really badly for five to six years. Over a 25-year period, when I started, I was really bad at it. And it's really important, I think, to underscore this idea that when you start something, you're going to be bad at it until you start to figure out how to get good at it.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  You're touching on one of my rules of life, which is iterate as much as you can. Create environments where you can safely iterate. Some people call it failure. I don't, you know, it's so stigmatized, that word, that just call it iterating. Where can you iterate safely? So as we're just talking, this just occurred to me. By me couching filmmaking as a hobby, as fun, it was safe to fail because it has no merit in like whether I was going to be going to become a doctor or, you know, anything, you know, that my Indian parents valued. It was like, oh, it has no bearing on that. So I could, wow, that was terrible. Let me do another one of those. Wow, that was a little less terrible. And you could just go and it never said anything about me.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And so as opposed to, hey, I'm going to be a filmmaker. Wow, I'm terrible at it. I'm not going to do this anymore because I don't like this feeling.

• 10:29Guy Raz?

  You know, on How I Built This, we've had so many stories of people who either are first-generation Americans or born abroad and grew up here.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:36Guy Raz?

  And you hear the same stories, which is my parents wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer because that was a safe path to a secure and stable life. And your parents, as you mentioned, were doctors. They immigrated with you from India when you were a kid. What did they, what did they make of your filmmaking obsession? I mean, obviously, they eventually supported it because you went to film school, but... But did they try to kind of discourage you from it at the beginning?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  First of all, it should be known that at that time, and maybe it's similar now, I'd have to talk to 20-year-old Indian child who wants to go in the arts, but at that time, me saying I want to go to film school was exactly the same if I had said, "I'm gonna become a goth rock and roll star and I'm gonna begin today." If I'd just said that, if I said, "Mom, I'm gonna wear makeup, I'm gonna spike my hair, I'm gonna wear the collars, and I'm gonna scream into the microphone," it would have been met with the same kind of, "Okay, well, that's insane." And my dad reacted with classic Asian dad-ness, which was he just became silent and didn't, you know, just disappointed beyond belief and just ignored this.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  And then my mom, who I think fancied herself an artist when she was younger, obviously never had the opportunity to follow any of this, was encouraging in a kind of follow-you thing, you know, but really, I think there was, what's gonna happen? And with regard to the college thing, I really only applied to NYU's Tisch School early, and at that time, that was unusual. I was the only kid who went and got in early and said, "I'm applying to one school, this is it, I'm just gonna make films."

• 12:11Guy Raz?

  Wow. One of your earliest films, actually, I think it was really your earliest film, Praying with Anger. You didn't just direct it and write it and produce it, you starred in it, but you had to raise all the money to fund the production, which you still, you know, do, but back then, when you were totally unproven and untested, I mean, that must have been terrifying. And that's the same story with an entrepreneur. We've done Airbnb and Instagram and Slack and all those stories, and it's the same story. There's a point where you are unknown. Howard Schultz, unknown, nobody would take his call, right? Because who's gonna say, "Oh, you're Howard Schultz of Starbucks?" He was Howard Schultz who had one store called Starbucks. How did you convince people to help you out?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Well, that first one was friends and bartering and can we borrow this equipment? And my uncle giving 5,000 and my aunt giving 2,000 and it was like, you know, putting it together. When it was all sudden, we sell it to cable and HBO and things for just the same amount of money that we spent on it and we gave it back. And it was like, you know, basically like a wash, a loan over those years. But it was terrifying, right? And you're not making any money. It gave me a chance to go to film festivals. I mean, that story that you're asking me about the first film keeps on happening over and over and over in your career, at least for me, because I try to do original films. And so there's this pull to go into the system.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  But for whatever reason, I feel like every time I want to stay outside the system a bit and try something a little bit different. And so you're, almost every single time, it feels like that. I mean, when I did the visit, which was many, many, many years later, I put a mortgage on the house and did the whole thing all over again.

• 13:51Guy Raz?

  How did you, and this may still be something that you face, and we'll talk about this in a bit.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:56Guy Raz?

  Because certainly something I face. But certainly in the early days, when you still, you know, you hadn't proven what you are capable of to anybody, including to yourself.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:07Guy Raz?

  How did you overcome self doubt?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  You don't. You don't. I have it right now in front of you. I mean, I just came from editing room and I have all these issues with this reel and I'm trying to figure it out. And the voice inside you says, you're not, you're not going to figure it out. It's not, you're not going to figure it out. When I'm done with you, I'm going to write my next movie. I'm supposed to spend a few hours today writing the next movie I'm going to shoot. I'm trying to balance everything. And I'm scared to write it because I might be, today I won't be able to think of that thing. And you just, both my older daughters are artists and I'm saying, that is your plight. You're going to wrestle with your demons every single day of your life.

• 14:47Guy Raz?

  It sounds to me like you sort of absorb a tremendous amount of pressure, right? Before everything you put out. Is that because you have had so much success and the expectations are so high and you want to meet those expectations? Where does it come from?

• 15:06Speaker 01

  I definitely have a healthy, by healthy, I mean unhealthy, anxiety about what could go wrong and what's gonna happen. And that's the opposite of where you need to be emotionally when you create. So the only relief I've ever had in my life, this was I was telling to my head of my company yesterday. I said, you know, I've been anxious a lot. And I said, you know what the amazing thing is? The only thing that makes me not anxious is creating. It turns out the thing that I do to ground and be centered is my job. So it's like that beautiful thing that you, the thing that you love to do is your job. So all this other stuff, to be honest, I've learned is irrelevant. How many people did come on their weekend? And what did the New York Times think?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  And what did that fan think? And oh, that other guy made that much or did that? Or oh, the cover, they offered you the cover of this or that? None of that matters, honestly, to me inside. It's after we're done the interview and I sit down and I can figure out what happens after he falls down. I'm talking about a character in this new movie, hits the ground and hits his head and what they're all about to do. If I can figure that out today, I'll be so happy, so, so happy.

• 16:19Guy Raz?

  I love that answer. And I'm often, I'm often asked what makes a good leader? And I, one of the first things I say is self doubt. And the ability to interrogate yourself and your own wisdom, right? Because your films have grossed $3 billion. So people watching this, I hope people watching this are looking at you and saying, thank you for saying that. It's amazing to hear somebody whose films have grossed $3 billion, who still constantly has anxiety about, about whether he's good at what he does.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  I, I get it, I don't know if this is healthy or not, but every single time I go, this is the last movie that they'll ever let me make. This is, this is the one. And is that okay? So make it so that it's okay. That if this was the last one, you put it all that, wow, I'm ready to burn the house down for this value system that I showed artistically in this movie. And if that means that's the end, then no problem. And so each movie is like that, that anxiety, like. Remember when I was a kid writing Unbreakable while I was editing Sixth Sense? Because I'm like, they're never gonna let me direct after this movie comes out. So let me try to, as fast as I can, make this movie about comic books, which no one wants to see a movie about comic books.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  So I was like, I'm the only person that would ever want to see a movie about comic books. So I was like, writing that as fast as I could, like on the train rides and all. The mentality was, you know, you're an Indian kid from Philly. This is not, you're already lucky to have been directed a movie. This is maybe an immigrant mentality too, because my parents are, never stop thinking like this. I mean, they have in their house, literally, pictures of me embossed on covers of like magazines everywhere. And I'm like, Mom, you can't just have this stuff up on the wall. That, you know, like, they still are waiting for me to have my big break. That's like, that's an immigrant mentality. Um, my, the first time I told her that, I was like, hey, you know, this amazing thing, you know?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Bill Clinton asked for me to come to the White House to have a dinner. This is amazing. And Mom and Dad was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Maybe something good will come of this. I'm like, Mom, that, that's the good thing. That was the good thing. He's not gonna give me part of the country or an island. It's not, that's not immigrant end here. This is it. And it was like, they never get out of that thing. Every day when I come over, I see them every day now. They're, they're 80 now. And they just still waiting to hear, you know, the good news of, we made it. We're gonna make it. I'm like, I keep telling them, we made it. It's, it's all good. It's all good. What happened? Anything good happen today?

• 18:49Guy Raz?

  I'm, I'm laughing and shaking my head because I'm also the child of immigrants. And I, I know that story so well. It's so true. Um, Knight, your, your work typically explores pretty dark themes, right? Like death and grief and physical isolation and paranormal activity. And you are, I've read so much about you. You're such a joyful person. You have a wonderful family. And tell me how those themes came to be what you became known for.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  If we hung out, we were having beers or whatever. I'm a little bit mischievous. So that mischievous side of like making you laugh and, you know, playing tricks on you, that would be how our relationship would be. And that just kind of transfers into playing with the audience and making them laugh or playing tricks on them. Or, ooh, I love when they ooh and ah, or when they can't believe what they just saw, or that was unexpected. It makes me happy. And so it's a playfulness about it. I think the spirituality is me, a part of me that's always, I'm constantly reading books and trying to understand things. But I do think the inherent spirituality of the Indian culture kind of morphed from

• 20:01Speaker 01

  my grandma saying, you know, this house is haunted. Or she puts like nails a chicken head outside the house because of some bad thing that was, she thinks a curse has been put on her house. This kind of, it's just normal in the culture to believe in those things. That kind of moved over and became aliens and comic books and comic book characters and stuff.

• 20:23Guy Raz?

  So walk me through your creative process a little bit. I mean, what you just said gives me a bit of a window into where your ideas come from. But, I mean, you've got infinite ideas. You just mentioned that you're working on trying to figure out what happens after he hits his head on the ground, right? So how do you find them? And how do you give yourself the space to come up with ideas and to come up with a whole story, a whole world?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  You know what? The space is such a great thing that you said. I wonder if, when you see this sinus curve of success, failure, success, failure, and a lot of people go success, failure, and never return, right? There's inherent poles that happen because when you have nothing, you become really clear about what's important and what are your values. You're very clear about them. And then you get up and you start to have success. And there's this accretion of good decision making that gets you here. And then you have all these distractions that are starting to bend you and distract you from what you knew before. And it starts to make bad decisions and you start to come like that. And

• 21:33Speaker 01

  The space that anonymity gave you, gives you at the beginning, the space that I then again saw during the pandemic, where I was just had to stay at home and just sit there. There was no, there is no press tours. I'm not going on, on The Tonight Show. I'm not going to Europe to open up the film there. I'm not, you know, I'm not doing this screening and that screening.

• 21:58Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Hey, what interests you? What's your writing? All these ideas started coming and it reminded me of an earlier time. I do feel space is such a critical thing. I was, and I saw the documentary on Bill Gates and he takes that week every year, the think week, to just think. We don't give ourselves enough of that to let, let us connect to the universe. However, you want to say this thing of coming up with new ideas. So that part for me is critical that you take the space. And even if it's in the morning, like right now, I'm supposed to take two hours. You can blow the two hours. That, that's fine. Blow it, sit there and stare at the wall. But that's your two hours to write. Okay?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  So you, you'll feel great shame, or I do, right? You go and you burnt those two hours staring at the wall. But you cannot be productive in other ways. So that's the thing for me, because there's so many other ways I can fill it right now. Oh, I need to look at that edit. Da, da, da, da, da, da. Do all these things. No, don't, don't kid yourself. Spend those two hours. And even if I sat there for two hours wondering what happens to him after he hits his head, five different iterations of things came and went that were incorrect. Right? It feels like I didn't do anything, but I did. And then, then the next day builds and builds and builds.

• 23:13Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you do that every day? You give yourself two hours? And if you're just staring at the wall, that's those two hours?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  That's, that's the, yes. You try not to stare at the wall, but that's, I'm allowed to.

• 23:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  That would be a version of safely failing.

• 23:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Right? You creating a space to safely fail every day. But it won't because you're inspired. You're going, oh yeah, just write it down. And suddenly you become unlocked. Yeah, she, I hate when she says this. And then you go, oh yeah, that's right. I hate that. Because of that, sometimes I'll read when I'm writing. Now, we're just talking about writing for a second.

• 23:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  I read constantly, so I'll read something, not necessarily nonfiction like these books that are in front of me, but something fiction like a classic, you know, that gives me rhythm, like things you couldn't possibly connect. Why they make any sense, like reading Slaughterhouse Five helped me write The Visit. I don't know why, you know, it just, it just, it evokes something in me.

• 24:10Guy Raz?

  I, I wonder how you balance, I mean, you run a production company. You are a manager, you have people who work for you, there's payroll, there's, I mean, of course, there are people who probably do those different things and operational things, but at normal times, you must be pulled and tugged in different directions from the business people outside of the company and the Hollywood studios and, but you're also the creative. You're the person, you're the reason why people want to distribute your films or work with you. So how do you balance the creative side of what you do and the business side of what you have to do?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  This is trial and error where we've gotten to what I'm about to say. There's certain principles that now are absolutely essential, like no dysfunctional geniuses. So your dysfunctional genius thinks I'm going to go to somebody else to help me do the composition or do this or that or editing or put the production design together or whatever it is. Protecting your process, the single greatest thing that we have come to understand in this. So you never say yes to anything that would compromise the process. So if they said, hey, do you want to do this incredible XYZ project with this superstar who has developed this screenplay, right?

• 25:25Speaker 01

  And it's going to shoot in this place, you know, and you're going, well, I don't have the ability to iterate in the way that, that is safe for me. That, that would be an almost guaranteed no, because I can't guarantee that I can make a zillion mistakes and figure it out on my own. And so we're heavily protecting the process. And so if you look at the, the things that I'm making and the partners that I'm making it with, they're super healthy, they allow. Me to have this process and what is the goal? The goal like what is success, right? So it's not a monetary thing. I believe that the monetary will come if you do this other thing. And if it doesn't, it's still fine.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  But the monetary will come if you build the strongest connection with the audience possible. They know that they're coming to someone who isn't pandering or going to do something that I know you want to see. It's going to be very specific. I, you know, all the filmmakers that we work with and the TV shows and things. I'm always like, the stronger your voice is, the more specific it is. Don't copy me or anybody else, or even try to round off the things that are not great about you. Your blind spots are your strengths. That is why you're not doing this and you're looking at that. That's part of what makes you so beautiful. To concentrate on that, then your voice shoots. It pops in the marketplace and they hear you and they remember you.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  We know this, all of us know this when we're hanging out with someone and someone says something that's kind of rote or they betrayed themselves or they don't know themselves. We don't think in that moment, that's what they did. We just this feeling like, wow, I don't really know them. Well, that was a little artificial comes out. That's so true in art as well.

• 27:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, you know this and our listeners know this. So much of putting an idea into the world is hard. Um, making it succeed is even harder. And then maintaining that success is even harder than that. And I read a speech that you gave at Drexel University in Philly in 2013, where you talked about a series of setbacks you had in 2013. And you said, I found myself questioning myself and every thought that came out of my head. And, and, you know, maybe I'm a sham. You were talking about how you went through a period where you really did not believe in yourself.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Now that I'm safely away from that moment a little bit, I can talk about it in the terms that it should be talked about. It's like a great teacher, teaching you what's important. In that Drexel commencement speech that I gave, I was talking about two columns of everything in your life. And the one column is the things that you have control over, and the other column is the things you don't have control over. And a lot of times in life, you think you have control over this other column. Right. And you shouldn't put any energy into that column at all. So what ended up happening is, I was, in many ways, if I'm being honest with myself, was confused about this. Where is my power? And do I have any power at all? Or is it all ephemeral? Did I make it all up?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  I'm sensing the lie in that I have control over this column, and I'm blurring it now and saying, I don't think I have control in either column. And so I was getting really scared. This is existentially what's happening. So I keep trying to control the outcome. So I'm like, if I work with this person, if I do this kind of movie, if I do this, rather than, I wonder what happens to the guy when he hits his head. Right. That's all I should be worried about. Nothing else. And so the world, as I kept putting more and more into the wrong column, nothing was working out in the way, and I wasn't happy. So then everything went away. And then I went, I just suddenly felt clear. And it was one of those things. I was doing a puzzle with my little one.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  And I just came back from showing the movie that I mortgaged my house for, right? And I showed an early, early cut, like three weeks, four weeks out of shooting, which you should never do this, to all the buyers, because I was so scared that I was gonna go bankrupt or whatever, right? And nobody wanted to buy it. And sat down and was doing the puzzle. We started this thousand-piece puzzle, and...

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I was like, this is impossible. Right? Looking at this puzzle, me and her, we're like, we both looked at each other. I'm like, this is impossible.

• 29:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  And we just did one piece and we did, and we took, searched through the thousand pieces and found like eight pieces and then 10 pieces and 12 pieces. And we finished the day like with 12 pieces or something. And we did it again the next day and suddenly I went, wow, I don't need to know the whole picture. All I need to know is find the next puzzle piece. That's all you need to concentrate on. It's a version of stay in this column.

• 30:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And so what I did was, nobody wants to buy it. I'm just gonna go into any room and make it just a little bit better.

• 30:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  That's all I'm gonna do today. So I went in, I was like, oh yeah, I can tighten that and I can move that. And then I did that again the next day and the next day and the next day. And then I suddenly forgot about the mortgage and I forgot about my career being over, forgot all about that. And I just was looking forward to finding the next puzzle piece with the movie. I was, ooh, you know, if I did that line, oh my God, that, that takes so much funnier than the one we never put in. We should put that in, and then, and then, and then, oh, I have a great idea. Instead of it being six days that that story is about, it's gonna be five days. Let's take a five, let's take that third day right out of the movie and slide it together. It'll be much more of the movement, like over, over and boom. And then I was, it was off to the races. And then when we were done that movie, you know, we ended up showing it to one studio

• 30:55Speaker 01

  and they bought it and it became universal, became one of the biggest movies of the year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 31:00Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, more of my conversation with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan and how he's had to adapt his creative process to write, produce and direct multiple projects safely over the past year. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This, Resilience Edition from NPR. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies and new expectations for speed, reliability and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow and operate globally.

• 31:43Guy Raz?

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• 32:02Guy Raz?

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• 32:53Guy Raz?

  And one more thing. The New York Times bestselling book, How I Built This, is now available. It's a great read and a great gift for anyone looking for ideas, inspiration, wisdom, and encouragement to have the courage to put out an idea into the world. It's filled with tons of stories you haven't heard about how some of the greatest entrepreneurs you know and respect started out at the very bottom. Check out How I Built This, the book, available wherever you buy your books.

• 33:30Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This: Resilience Edition. And I'm talking with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. The pandemic has completely upended Hollywood over the past year. But despite all the uncertainty, Night has taken this year in stride, working on a new film called Old and a new season of his Apple Plus TV show, Servant, both filmed during 2020. Night, I want to talk to you about this past year, ask you about this past year, because it's obviously been extremely challenging for the movie industry. I mean, have you been able to shoot, edit, direct? I mean, have you been able to do any of the things that you normally do?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  You know, the answer is a surprising one. And the answer is, it was my busiest year.

• 34:16Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Why it was is, I'm a writer and I was able to write. I was able to work with writers on Zoom for the TV show. Um, we ended up writing all the episodes for the next season and outlining the final season of the show while we were in the pandemic. So we got way ahead, way ahead. And that's an amazing thing. And I did, I was, went ahead in my head and I said, you know, look, I'm gonna go shoot this new movie. So let's start casting. So I was the first, basically the first movie in the world that started casting during the pandemic. So everyone in the world was auditioning for me by Zoom. And at that moment, it was still very odd that you would be in your bedroom or your living room. It was super odd, right? Everybody was like, hey, I've never done this before.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  And actors from all over the world, thousands and thousands and thousands of auditions. So I had all this time to audition and prep and write and storyboard. I storyboard out everything. I draw every single shot of the movie. So I took the time to do all of that. So there was a lot of work that could be done here and virtually to set us up. And then we had to figure out how to do it together in a safe way. And there was no guidelines, right? This was, so I just took the information, talked to as many doctors and, and did it by my understanding of human nature, which is this. If I do it in the tightest, smallest group of people and I buy out everything, I buy out the hotel, I buy out everyone that's giving us food.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  We don't leave the hotel, the people that are cleaning the hotel rooms, every single human being for a very short amount of time. And everybody commits as much as possible to make a true, true bubble here. I am not gonna be able to stop the costumer from talking to the construction worker and them after. I'm not gonna be able to stop that. That's going to happen. So, but they're gonna be within the bubble. And give them really clean parameters. It's eight weeks I'm asking you for, eight weeks. And this is why we're doing it. You don't go to your daughter's birthday. You don't see your sister. None of that happened. If you can't, I totally understand it. But we're good on the next movie. No problem, no problem whatsoever, no pejorative, nothing.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  But if you can do this for eight weeks, I'm gonna pay you and we're gonna go make this movie. But that is the only way I will do these projects is if every single person that we come in contact with is within our bubble. And we did it and it worked really well for me because

• 36:41Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  my movie takes place only in two locations. So we were able to buy out that whole location. And so we literally, I, guy, for, I would say for two and a half months, I didn't meet a human being that wasn't

• 36:55Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  tested a negative and in our bubble. Like, I didn't even meet him. I remember when I first came back, went to go to like, you know, pick up something. I'm like, oh, my God, this is the first human beings that I didn't personally test and have in our bubble

• 37:09Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  for three months. So it was like that and, and we were very lucky because everybody did abide by this. We tested three times a week, every single human being, thousands and thousands of tests. And not a single positive. And everybody went home. We, we made this movie and we made the TV show under those parameters. And it was tough. Some people

• 37:27Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  um, were scared to leave their families for that long, but understood the why. I was saying, you just, you can't. And if you can do four weeks and then leave us, then I'll get another person to come do four weeks. Like, I was very clean about what we were doing. You just can't come back and forth, kind of thing.

• 37:43Guy Raz?

  Wow. Where did you do this?

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Well, the movie was done in the Dominican Republic. So that was a great thing. The government helped us a lot and helped us. For them, they were, they didn't quite have the scale of the pandemic that we had. So their, their anxieties and it's outdoor a lot. The movie was outdoors primarily.

• 38:02Guy Raz?

  And this is old, this is the film, old.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  This is old, yeah. And then the other project was Servant for Apple, which is, we had to finish shooting the second season, which is out now.

• 38:11Guy Raz?

  And that was in Pennsylvania?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  That's in Pennsylvania. That one was in Philly. And they were very different in tenor because of the two countries' relationship to the pandemic at the time.

• 38:22Guy Raz?

  Wow, that's just incredible.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:25Guy Raz?

  The film was supposed to be released in February, but it's coming out in July, which doesn't seem like that much of a delay.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  No, no, we picked, and again, we're, the movie industry in general is a circus, right? It's a traveling circus. So you're, I'm anticipating, from the time I get the idea to the time you see it in the movie theaters is two years. You know, I'm already thinking, what will it be like? What will life be like? Even who will be president? These things all have a ramification on the feeling of the audience and all of that stuff. And for us, when we did, we said, based on what we knew about the vaccines and what the protocols were looking like and how it was coming along, I felt that July 23rd was a place where the world would be ready to be back to normal and we could be part of bringing everyone safely back together.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  That was the game. And if it didn't work out, we would just push it. But it felt like that was the right point.

• 39:18Guy Raz?

  Nate, we've got tons of questions that have come in. I promised to get to some of them. So let me, let me see if I can get through to a few of them. This is from Pilar Fitzgerald. Pilar asks, what advice do you have for aspiring writers and directors of color who want to break into the industry, which is largely dominated by white men?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  You know, I've been doing a lot of soul searching myself about this particular subject because I think many of the things I experienced from 21 years old till today, I just accepted as my particular path. That the headwinds and the resistance and the things of, wow, that was, that was really harsh. And wow, that wasn't very helpful. And wow, huh. All these things, that feeling, it's, I'm coming to terms with what it meant to me, you know, and how much, how much it became a part of my identity, the things that, that this person is asking. Look, I, I think this is really the best time it's ever been for that question to be asked

• 40:15Speaker 01

  because I believe in everybody's individuality is their power. So the fact that I am- Was born in Pondercherry, India and live outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You know, and I wear flannel shirts. I love cheeseburgers, but my mom has a puja, you know, at her house. All that mixed together is why I think people connect with my voice around the world. We'll call it the immigrant flavor that's coming from that, that's redefining American storytelling, is each of our responsibilities to do, you know, to bring that to. It isn't like, hey, I'm angry, I don't have a seat at the table. It's not only bring your chair

• 40:57Speaker 01

  to the table, it's make the table longer. That's your response. Go add to the table, you know. And so I said once to a Mexican student who was, I did a speech and he's like, you know, there's not enough Mexican voices and all that stuff. And I was saying to him, I need you. You're right, I need you. So tell, start telling a story for me. Tell me a story, but, but don't round the corners. The more specific it is, the more power it is. Where I go, I could never do that. Or Quentin Tarantino could never do that. Or Wes Anderson or David Fincher can't do that. That's what you want. That you want that specificity of that person who asked a question, telling me exactly the things

• 41:38Speaker 01

  that make them then. And that includes the negative stuff. The anger, the arrogance, all of that stuff needs to be in there in a truthful capacity.

• 41:46Guy Raz?

  Essentially, use your voice, right? Because your, your sort of advantage, right? Your unfair advantage is that, is that unlike the people you mentioned, the Wes Andersons, the David Finchers, the Quentin Tarantinos, you have a perspective that they don't have.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And they each do too. I'm not devoting anybody's point of view. It's just that in society, most of the time, it's been, a certain point of view has been more, people have been more open to a certain point of view, right? And just understanding how much storytelling affects everything we do as a society. What stories we tell ourselves? What are the basic premises that we take for granted? And we all get to decide that. As storytellers, help add a certain color to that, to the things that we take for granted.

• 42:34Guy Raz?

  I'm going to combine two questions, a question from Anna Young and Jared Jones. Anna asks, as king of plot twists, which one are you most proud of? And Jared asks, does your reputation of being the plot twist guy get on your nerves?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's funny, even as you asked it, there is a certain kind of derivative quality to that that is frustrating, I would guess. I would say more than anything else because I would say, you know, spirituality, the pervasive nature of kind of talking about spirituality is just as much there.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  I don't look at it as a kind of a fancy dance move or something like that. Like, okay, now I'm gonna do the moonwalk, everybody, here we go. You know, that's not it. It's a points of view and how to talk about points of view and the structure of storytelling. And not understanding, why is she acting that way? Why is she acting that way? Oh, my gosh, she's acting that way because of that, you know, that kind of thing. I love characters realizing things. And so if I'm doing my job right as storyteller, you are with that character as they realize this thing that happens. I really enjoy that. I mean, look, I enjoy feeling emotions and intellectual thoughts that are unexpected, that I didn't expect to feel that way about.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  And whenever I'm reading or learning, a painting can do that, a book can do that, make me feel this kind of epiphany.

• 44:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And I hesitate to ask, but do you have a favorite or one that you kind of go back to in your mind that you're particularly proud of?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  As a mischievous kid, I really enjoy the reactions. I was, when we were... I have an audio recording of the visit in the movie theater. And there's a thing that happened. For those of you that haven't watched the visit, I'm not gonna ruin it too, but there's a moment where something is revealed. And the audience's reaction is so vocal. It was like that I thought the theater was going to erupt. These are just more favorite moments of me being in the movie theaters with them, with the audiences when these things happen. And then the first time I screened Split, it was in Austin, Texas, at a film festival, Fantastic Fest. And when it got to the last scene, there was music that comes in prior to the last scene.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  And the music is from a previous movie. And soon as those first notes happened, there was a guy like... I snuck in and hid, and I saw a guy in there. And he was sitting back and he was watching, and the music came in and he was like... And he just starts sitting up and he started looking at everybody. And everybody, there was this murmur, went through the whole crowd. And then at the end, when, when the reveal happened of who was sitting there at the counter, at the end of Split, I thought they were gonna tear the seats out of the theater. When there were people like putting their hands up in the air like, like a roller coaster, like they were going down a roller coaster, woo. So it was really, it was such a joy. And that, that feeling, you can imagine, right? That little kid that loves to, to have that feeling, what that felt like.

• 45:37Guy Raz?

  It's amazing to think that you can have that impact on people. I mean, what an incredible feeling to know that you can move people like that.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks, man. No, it's, it's a joy. The collective experience is such a wonderful thing. Making movies for me is, and showing them in a movie theater is a little bit of a sacred thing for me because I think it's when we're at our best. Because the teenage girl is affecting the 60-year-old guy in the back of the theater, even if he doesn't know it. She's giggling in a certain place and attuning him in a certain way. And then his kind of taking things in a kind of earnest or sincere way, it's affecting her as well. And we're all this quilt as it's putting, coming together. So I mean, for me, it's a very sacred thing, getting to, having the opportunity to tell stories to, to a group.

• 46:25Guy Raz?

  I love this question from Gregory Voight. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, Gregory. Gregory asks, when things are going wrong during the script-writing process, you know, edits not clicking, like what are the steps you take to make it better, to improve on it?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  What happens is when you, when you get stuck, like you're doing, you're essentially, you're betraying the story, but you don't know how you're betraying it. So you can feel the damage, you just don't understand it. This isn't working. So any ways that you can say it out loud or put it on a paper? This is not working. This feels so redundant because this and this. You'll even, as you're saying the problem, there's the answer will be kind of in there, embedded in there. You're going, this is redundant, oh, redundant. Oh, wait a minute. What is the, the scene is about, oh, why are we doing this whole sequence? I already did it before. Or this isn't the right time to do that. Or I don't really know her. And I keep putting her down.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  And that's why I'm not, I hate writing her because I don't know her. It's just a blurry, like, empty space that I'm calling her. And it's generic, and I don't like that. And so then you, so you'll know that and you'll go, uh, what was my hope for her? Well, my hope for her would that she would be like my mom and she would have this sense of anger, but she's never been connected to her own anger. Like, you'll write something and go, oh, someone who doesn't realize they're angry. Okay, great. And I can write that.

• 47:50Guy Raz?

  I love that. Mike, this year has been a kind of a horror film on its own. How do you think this past year is going to find expression in, in future films and TV?

• 48:01Speaker 01

  You know, this, this world of what happened to us is a lot of what I live with. And when I'm thinking about fictional stories, you know, about things that happen to the world and how does it, how do we all feel when we're isolated from each other? And there were so many things that we experienced that I never thought of that occurred to us. I do think that it'll create a certain paranoia. I think it'll take us a long while to feel safe, even past the pandemic. We never in a million years thought the whole world would shut down.

• 48:35Guy Raz?

  No.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  The whole world would shut down. That's, it's, it's scary. It's humbling. And I think in probably a healthy way for all of us that, you know, this isn't guaranteed and all, and there'll be that to grapple with. That might mean that people just want to escape more and be entertained. Maybe they're not ready for too heavy a stuff. I don't know how that's gonna, to play out. We have found this movement, this is a whole nother subject, Guy, probably another podcast, but this movement of what plays in the movie theater versus at home. And you'll see this movement of drama leaving the movie theater and coming to home. Like, you're okay feeling emotional, dramatic things in, at home.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  But going to a movie theater with a group of people, you want to be scared and laugh and thrilled and spectacle and all these things. You want to have a group experience. You don't want to have an internal one, like, you know, almost we could call drama an internal thing. So that's been an interesting bifurcation that's happened, which wasn't there before streaming and all of these other things. And so I'm studying, you know, how people behave. Maybe that will change. Maybe that will change now.

• 49:49Guy Raz?

  I know that, we're running out of time, but I do want to ask you about the streaming question. I know that you were very vocal when Warner decided to drop 17 of its major releases. I think on the same day they released them, made them available to stream for a month. And you and many other filmmakers were really upset about it. Can you explain why you think that decision by Warner is so detrimental to creators?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was more the how, that they unilaterally did it without talking to the filmmakers who had every, they are just as passionate as I am about this movie-going experience. They thought they were making one art form. And then they were told, hey, it's mostly not going to be that way or at all. And that's a very profound thing to change on somebody, that, hey, we're not even doing the art form that you signed up for to do. Every decision you're making about how the sound moves through the theater and all, that's not going to be the case because it's going to be in a home theater or on a TV or on a laptop. It should have been filmmaker by filmmaker's decision of how to handle this here. If they wanted to put it out that way, great, everybody comes to decision.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Or if they wanted to wait, and if the studio could handle that financial burden of waiting for a beat, you know, to put it out when it was safer, those conversations just needed to be had. And it felt like they were prioritizing their other business and willing to undermine the movie-going experience. That's what it felt like, their value system had switched. And which is not great for those of us who movie-going is religion.

• 51:22Guy Raz?

  It sounds like what you're saying is that this year, this past year has kind of supercharged this trend of dramatic films being watched at home and this idea that going to the cinema, which obviously many people haven't, is about spectacle. I suspect that's the future, right? Is there a world where... Going to the movies will be a very special, specific, and rare experience in the future? I mean, is that where we're heading?

• 51:47Speaker 01

  No, no, I don't believe that at all. I think the second that we can all be back together again, we're just collective creatures. We want to go experience things together. Let's watch this together. Let's watch the game together. Let's go watch the movie together. And those movies that promise this is going to be something you want to share with your friends and others. I believe when you go to the movie theater and you commit to leave your house, park your car, get your babysitter, and come and turn off your phone, you cannot multitask. You're making the biggest commitment that you will ever make to an art form for two hours.

• 52:25Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  And then we, in turn, hold your attention and have to earn that for two hours. That is the greatest commitment. And if you put more commitment into anything, you're going to get more back. So the experience will be stickier. It'll be more powerful and will stay with you longer. So it's just in that way, if you call that the product, that is the most powerful product.

• 52:44Guy Raz?

  Last question for you. What advice would you give to that kid who made Praying with Anger? If you, you know, if you now had that opportunity to go back and speak to him and know what you know now?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:57Guy Raz?

  What would you say?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  You know, so much of the worrying about the second column, every single bit of it is a waste of time. I wish I could have figured out that idea earlier and told him, I promise you, just figure out what happens to the guy after he hits his head. I promise you, that's all you need to worry about, and everything will happen. You know, there are moments to say, hey, who's going to distribute the movie? And when is the best date? And all of that stuff. There are practical things, but that's not where you should put your love and your energy. It's over here. Hey, you made this great piece of art. And, you know, he was figuring it out. There was no roadmaps of how to do this. But I certainly have spent way too much of my life

• 53:44Speaker 01

  worrying about things and angsty and being sad over the wrong things, just the wrong things.

• 53:51Guy Raz?

  I really love that advice. M. Night Shyamalan, thank you so much. Thanks for being with us.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Thanks, Guy. It was really fun talking to you guys.

• 53:58Guy Raz?

  That's an excerpt from my live conversation with M. Night Shyamalan for NPR's Storytelling Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. If you want to see any of our past live interviews, you can find them on the How I Built This Facebook page or at youtube.com/NPR. And if you want to join our conversations live and maybe even ask questions, they happen every Thursday at 9 Pacific, noon Eastern. To find out more about the How I Built This Resilience series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with help from Farah Safari, J.C. Howard, Bruce Grant, El Manion, Gianna Capadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers.

• 54:42Guy Raz?

  Our intern is Janet Wu-Jiang Lee. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and I'll see you back here in a few days. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.