The Museum of Natural History rolled out the blue carpet Monday evening for filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (right) and the premiere of his spooky-ish “bedtime story,” Lady in the Water. I had anticipated the event for days, mostly by practicing Navy SEAL hydration exercises that would keep me sharp and upright despite the soul-shrinking heat along Central Park West. Continuing my preparation, I also surveyed the recent film-press literature abusing Shyamalan like a fraternity pledge; his outsized self-awareness, self-promotion and a new book detailing his split with Disney have all somehow made the filmmaker even more infamous than his middlebrow oeuvre ever had.
Certainly, in these sweltering days leading up to Lady‘s release, Shyamalan senses this overheated player-hating as well as anyone. And having not seen the new film, I had little else to talk about when I caught up him last night outside the museum. “Your films have made over a billion dollars,” I said. “But you’re also one of the most controversial blockbuster directors going.”
“I know, they really get pissed off, don’t they?” Shyamalan said.
Indeed they do. But why?
“I don’t know what it is,” he told me. “What I’ve watched in other careers is that when there’s an early success that was not preordained–it just happened, you know?–there’s a long period of earning that respect. And so there’s a great suspicion that hangs over you for a long time. With the media, I’m saying. You know what I mean? And so they’re like, ‘No, he’s not the real thing. He’s not the real thing.’ You know, maybe one day when I’m an old man they’ll be like, ‘All right.’ But maybe they won’t. Maybe they won’t, you know?”
Sure, but–spoiler alert–doesn’t Shyamalan kill a film critic in this movie?
“Well, let’s not tell everyone that. Something happens to him.”
OK, fine. Was that for any specific reason, or–
“Well, the movie is about storytelling,” he said. “And so, you know, the idea’s about honoring storytelling again and giving it reverence. And this particular guy who thinks he’s an expert on it is leading people in the wrong way.”
And so he must pay the consequences?
“Well, you check it out.”
It is on my Netflix queue, Manoj. Meanwhile, I followed up with leading Lady Bryce Dallas Howard, who had worked with the director previously on The Village and who, as Ron Howard’s daughter, grew up in one of the hackiest filmmaking households around. Also a Lars von Trier alumna, she confessed to The Reeler a certain predilection for reviled–or at least challenging–directors.

Lady co-stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Paul Giamatti take the heat Monday night (Photos: STV)
“It’s fantastic,” she said of Shyamalan’s love/hate reception. “The kinds of movies I want to be a part of–more than anything–I want them to be unignoreable. His films truly are. Everyone goes to see them. And you’re right–they do polarize people. And I think that’s because he’s truly an auteur. His vision is never diluted. It’s truly a unique opinion on cinema and a story and how to tell a story. So I’m very, very proud to be a part of that.”
Howard’s co-stars Paul Giamatti and Bob Balaban also cruised the carpet, occasionally turning from the media line to greet the crowd boxed into bleachers on the museum steps. A cheerleader rallied the spectators to applause as one would a studio audience, but after an hour or so of irrepressible spirit, they just started looking woefully hot. Furthermore, they totally let me down, sitting on their hands when a true star made the evening’s most remarkable, latecoming entrance.
“Uh-oh,” Shyamalan said at the sight of ace cinematographer and Reeler hero Christopher Doyle, who took a break from carousing around Asia long enough to shoot Lady in the Water in the director’s beloved Pennsylvania, and who dispensed with garish premiere formalities by arriving a few minutes before the film started. As unpretentiously as possible, of course: He crept along a shuttered lane of traffic with his dates (“Dates”? Plural? Well, yeah.) and greeted Balaban and Shyamalan from the sandbags-and-sweat side of the guard rail.

Genius cinematographer Christopher Doyle with the Li girls, Rain (right) and Xin
“Hello, hello!” Doyle said, breaking off one of Balaban’s interviews and continuing on with a few seconds worth of unintelligible mutterings. I reintroduced myself, too caught up in the moment to remember I had wanted to ask him about all the shit he flung at The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s remake of the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs. I met his lovely companions Rain and Xin, and wished them a happy screening.
“Hell,” Doyle said. “If we don’t enjoy it, who will?”
Good question, Chris. Good question.

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