“Trap” and “The Sixth Sense” filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan launched a YouTube channel this past weekend with a video looking back on the making of his hit 2002 sci-fi thriller, “Signs.”
The filmmaker’s 16-minute Sunday video sees him sitting in his home’s barnyard stables and reading through the pages of the diary he kept throughout the production of “Signs.” Among the many revelations included is Shyamalan’s confession that he was inspired to start journaling his filmmaking experiences after he read “Jaws” co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb’s “The Jaws Log,” which details his experiences on the set of that 1975 classic.
“It’s possible that this is the first time that I kept a journal of every day of shooting,” Shyamalan says of his “Signs” diary. “I have to go look in the ‘Unbreakable’ drawer and shelves and the ‘Sixth Sense’ drawer and shelves.”
“I haven’t gone back to read this in 25 years, but I wanted to go back and read it and share this experience here,” Shyamalan wrote in the video’s caption, adding, “It was harder to do this than I was expecting, but my hope is that maybe you can also learn something from it.”
You can watch the filmmaker’s full trip down “Signs” memory lane below.
A number of the principal cast members of “Signs” were replaced prior to production. Joaquin Phoenix stepped in for Mark Ruffalo and, while Shyamalan reportedly approached actors Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood first to play the lead role of grieving patriarch Father Graham Hess, it was Mel Gibson who played the character in the finished film.
Shyamalan acknowledged the film’s behind-the-scenes cast turnovers in his Sunday video, rereading the diary entry he wrote after casting then-child actor Rory Culkin to play the role of Morgan Hess.
“‘Talked to Rory Kulkin. He seems’ — I think I wrote ‘juiced’ — ‘about being in the film,’” Shyamalan said, reading the words of his 2001 self, adding, “I completely forgot about that. That Rory came on later into the production and we were very close, days away. That entire cast changed.”
“I didn’t remember that Rory wasn’t there the whole time,” Shyamalan confessed. “In my mind, he was always there.”
The filmmaker chokes up at several points in the video, including when he reflects on his younger self’s emotions in the days immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks (“Signs” began filming shortly afterward). He also cries while recounting a moment he shared with Gibson at the end of production.
“‘I hugged Mel for the last time and squeezed his face. His eyes feel filled with tears. He said I was the ‘rarest kind of filmmaker,’” Shyamalan read, choking up and telling viewers, “Gosh, this is heavy duty. I don’t know if I can go through this, thinking about all the moments of your life.”
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