ISSUE 19 - BOOK REVIEW

Man Who Heard Voices
by Michael Bamberger

In 1981, a young Night Shyamalan watched Raiders of the Lost Ark in a crowded cinema away from his friend. There are two things he took away from that day. One, being transported by the movie experience and second, the kindness of a grandfather he sat next to. The old man left his wife and returned with a popcorn and soda for the young boy. It was the kindness of the man and the viewing experience that led Night to becoming a filmmaker.
After meeting filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan at a party, sports writer Michael Bamberger was impressed and intrigued, enough that he told Night that he’d liked to write about him. Night agreed and maintained that the writer not hide anything.
Bamberger’s novel, The Man Who Heard Voices, is an account of Night’s struggles to make Lady in the Water, an adult fairy tale that originated with a bedtime story the director told his children. Night called Disney home when making his films. When they were hesitant about Lady he sought to make at Warner Brothers. The heads at Disney tried to steer the director to something they had in mind (a film about ice skating), citing they didn’t ‘get it’ regarding the Lady script. They offered to make the film anyway, to keep him happy, but Night balked. He did not want them backing a film they didn’t get or believe in. After Signs and The Sixth Sense, he was confused, hurt and alone.
It was bold for Night to say no and even more interesting is Bamberger’s account of the filmmaker’s integrity to his desire to make films. Throughout Bamberger recounts Night explaining that he wants to see original voices in Hollywood, not more of the same. From the book’s dust jacket one would think Bamberger’s account is of a megalomaniacal director out of control but it’s quite the opposite. Voices is a detailed account of a successful filmmaker dealing with the ever increasing corporate mindset. It’s a lesson in the butting of art and commerce. Night comes off as a man with secure finances and strong ideals about telling a story and how to reach as many people as possible. His work is proof he is a descendent of both Hitchcock and Rod Serling as well as Spielberg (a descendent himself of Disney).
Night believes in storytelling and the experience of viewing them in a cinema. He believes in the traditional values of it – even choosing to edit Lady on film versus digitally with an Avid. He is disappointed, yet blames himself, when few of the cast and crew show up for a viewing of The Wizard of Oz he sets up prior to filming the first day’s production. He works over his screenplay tirelessly, draft after draft, as if trying to root out every weed in the garden.
Lady is a simple story, yet told complexly and at times, bordering on confusing. There are characters that are too easy to take a shot at, as most critics did. There were complaints of word usage, such as narf and scrunt. But did anyone complain over the use of the word Ewok?
Reading Bamberger’s account is like watching a lighter version of Heart of Darkness, Eleanor Coppolla’s documentary about her husband struggling to make Apocalypse Now. Night at one point sought to finance half of Lady himself to the tune of thirty million dollars but decided against it. One gets more reinforcement of the Hollywood machine, that it exists to use art as a means to make millions and not to try and do a little bit of both. Disney wanted Night to continue making the same thing over and over again, he did not. “He wants to make art for the masses, not just filmed entertainment,” Bamberger writes.
Finishing the book, you believe him. You believe he is still the boy sitting alone in the cinema in 1981 eating popcorn and watching Indiana Jones on his first adventure.

- Brian Tucker