The first two movies I directed failed, when I was 21 and 23, and that was the greatest thing that could have happened. M. Night Shyamalan More Quotes by M. Night Shyamalan More Quotes From M. Night Shyamalan I'm so from the Woody Allen/Spike Lee school. M. Night Shyamalan woodyschool I love 'The Killing', I love 'Homeland' and 'Mad Men', all those shows that lean into the tone of things. M. Night Shyamalan tonemadmen My directing style is long takes. The longer take I can do, the more I can think of not doing it in cuts, the better. M. Night Shyamalan cuttinglongthinking You're never the same. You're degrading, or you're getting better. You don't stay the same. M. Night Shyamalan degradingget-better I wouldn't describe myself as a do-gooder. That's really more my wife. I'm kind of just the obsessed guy who's been writing and making movies since I was a little kid, just in a room and make it. M. Night Shyamalan wifewritingkids You're saying, "I'm gonna do this thing," and you have to be aware, as a rational human being, that you may not be allowed back in. M. Night Shyamalan rationalhumansmay There's no staying where you were. If you're not doing anything, your skills and point of view are atrophying. M. Night Shyamalan point-of-viewskillsviews As a child, I probably knew phrases that other children didn't known, like "pitocin drip" or "myocardial infarction." Some kind of knowledge was always in the air. My parents would always talk about science at the dinner table, saying something about this patient or some other patient. So I guess for a nanosecond in early high school, I thought about going into medicine. M. Night Shyamalan airchildrenschool Great actors come with depth about how their character sees the world, and they completely defend it. They could defend it in a court of law, down to the reason the patient deserved this. M. Night Shyamalan depthlawcharacter I'm super confident about creative stuff, and I'm really not confident about human interactions stuff. M. Night Shyamalan interactioncreativestuff Each of the actors need to have their justification for saying something awful. You want everyone to have a positive and negative thing. Even a positive thing needs to have darkness in it. It needs to have depth. M. Night Shyamalan depthdarknessnegative 'The Last Airbender' is genetically engineered for me. I love martial arts. I study it. The movie's based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. I was raised Hindu. M. Night Shyamalan buddhistphilosophyart I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them anyway! M. Night Shyamalan actorsstoriesthinking I knew the moment it happened, it was a miracle. I could have been kissing her when she threw up. It would have scarred me for life. I may never have recovered. M. Night Shyamalan kissingmiraclemay I want to make a bunch of small movies. I'm really interested in that for me in the future. M. Night Shyamalan bunchwant One of the reasons I really love low budget filmmaking is you don't have to think about that as much. You can have more fun and be more playful and be freer creatively. M. Night Shyamalan reasonfunthinking I love stage actors. The pool of world class actors that have done theater [is big], there's a higher opportunity of grabbing somebody from that pool. M. Night Shyamalan actorsclassopportunity Basically, when I'm writing something, I think about what is the subject of the piece. The subject of the piece is our fear of getting old, which is a variation on our fear of dying. M. Night Shyamalan dyingwritingthinking This is the problem with being Indian. It's hard to be one of the family members. Everybody is white usually [in the movie]. M. Night Shyamalan membersproblemwhite People who come to see my movies, you're coming to see a drama masquerading as a genre piece. M. Night Shyamalan dramapeople
