Consider This from NPR - 'The Sixth Sense' and a career of plot twists

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Twenty-five years ago this month, one film, and one filmmaker, became synonymous with the big plot twist.So what was it about The Sixth Sense that made it such a cultural phenomenon at the time of its release? And how did that shape the rest of controversial director M. Night M. Night Shyamalan career?Haley Joel Osment joins Scott Detrow in conversation to reflect on the impact it had on his work, and how he used that success to propel his career forward.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

25 years ago this month, one film and one filmmaker became synonymous with the big plot twist. I see dead people. Now, if you're someone out there who has not seen The Sixth Sense, I promise we will not ruin it for you. But it is no spoiler to say that the film became a phenomenon and its director, M. Night Shyamalan, an overnight sensation. You know, in the 90s, there were a lot of breakthrough directors. A great time to sort of go from almost nothing to superstar. That's Brian Hyatt, a senior writer for Rolling Stone. He says Shyamalan's career has had twists and turns to rival his movies. The faster the rise or the bigger the rise, the sort of harder the fall.

And Shyamalan's rise was fast and big. The Sixth Sense became the second highest grossing film of 1999 and was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture. By 2002, Newsweek magazine touted him on its cover as the next Spielberg. But in 2004, with his gothic thriller The Village, things began to go wrong. Backlashes don't happen all at once. They kind of actually can happen in slow motion. And that was the first hint that a backlash was coming.

It was 2004. It had a pretty mixed reception. The promotion of the film was a little bit overdone at the time, and a lot of people thought the twist was just flat out dumb. His next films were not only critically panned, they also flopped at the box office. By the time he made the almost universally hated After Earth in 2013, many moviegoers decided that Shyamalan was a sham. Brian Hyatt says Shyamalan himself took notice. So he gave this amazing commencement speech

at Drexel University a few years ago. And it was incredibly confessional. And he said, I find myself questioning myself and every thought that comes out of my head. The world of my industry decides I have no worth. I have no worth. I am a cautionary tale. But like any good Hollywood redemption story,

Hyatt says Shyamalan made a comeback by betting on himself. Starting with the 2015 found footage film, The Visit, which he partially financed with his own money. He stripped everything away. He made it bare bones, took his ego out of the equation. Hyatt says that stripped down approach has helped fuel a run of recent successes, and Shyamalan hopes that includes his recent film, Trap. You know the butcher?

The frickin' nutjob that goes around just chopping people up? Well, the feds already heard that he's gonna be here today, so they set up a trap for him. Consider this. How do you let early successes propel you and not define you? As it turns out, the young star of The Sixth Sense also has thoughts on that. from NPR. 25 years ago, The Sixth Sense reimagined the psychological thriller and helped redefine the summer blockbuster.

Starring opposite Bruce Willis was young Haley Joel Osment. He was 11 when the film came out. And like filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, he grew up in the shadow of the movie's success. It makes me very happy that 25 years later, he's got an incredible run of movies. Like his director, Osment never really stopped working. Dramas, comedies, fantasies, voiceovers. He's now 36 years old and still busy. But I started our conversation by

taking us back to the making of The Sixth Sense. One of the luxuries that we had doing this movie, it's a really rare luxury, especially these days, was weeks of rehearsal and conversations with, you know, me and Knight and my dad would go off and have a conversation together. And then me and Knight would Bruce and Bruce would meet all these small groups of discussions then leading into rehearsals and hanging out in the, in this, the spaces where we'd be shooting the film. And that just really was a great opportunity to get into the, the feel and the tone and the atmosphere of the project. And I think I remember the very first conversation I had with Knight in his office after getting to Philadelphia was him being very adamant that this would be, you know,

I don't even know if he called it a horror movie, but he's like, in horror movies, someone's walking down a dark hallway and there's a scare because a hand grabs him on the shoulder, but oh, it was just their friend. He's like, we're not going to be doing things like that in this movie. We're not going to be doing things like that in this movie. We're not going to have cheap scares. It's all going to be coming out of real behavior. And I think that set a really good tone for us. And one of the best things my dad said to me

when I was rehearsing for the audition was saying, this is a movie about communication, not a movie about ghosts. And that's where I think the real horror and emotion comes from is there's there's no greater fear than not being able to to communicate with the people you love right i mean this isn't an original observation but i was i was thinking about it so much watching it last night before i talked to you that i feel like i feel like so much of the power of your performance comes from really subtle facial expressions and really subtle eye movement.

Just the way that this kid feels a ghost presence or gets frightened or becomes very vulnerable. Like these little movements go such a long way. Was that something that was actively part of those conversations about how to approach this? I think a lot of it just came naturally. I mean, it's all part of Knight's brilliant direction, but the environment we were shooting in was this, I think it's gone now, but it was the old Philadelphia Convention Center, which had been abandoned except for film productions. And even a studio film like this seemed dwarfed by this cavernous space with these hallways that kind of looked like uh when bruce comes above ground in

12 monkeys and everything's covered in spider webs and everything so it's a great kind of haunted house environment shoot and then there were these repeated scenes where we drape the set in tarps and then pump in cold air so that you could see our breath this was not a time when people were using cgi for that effect it was really a time when people were using CGI for that effect. It was really a freezing temperature. And so something like that with great material and having, you know, spent a lot of time rehearsing it, it really, a lot of these decisions really came naturally. But a lot of these shots that I think you're referring to, the camera's right up in my face. So there's really no question of whether it's going to capture all the subtleties and feelings. And as an actor, you really don't have to think about projecting that or showing

that stuff. As long as you're feeling it, the camera is going to capture it. There has been a lot written about how a movie like this can be so successful. It kind of traps people in a certain way. I think with him, obviously, the plot twist became a big part of his career and something that's just incredibly hard to keep up movie to movie to movie. And, you know, you are in a situation that so many other actors have faced where you're this breakout child star. And then in many ways, people freeze you in their mind at that age. How did you navigate over the years? Because it seems like you did it in a way that worked for you really well. Yeah, I feel very lucky to have been able to play all these different roles that

I've done. And yeah, that is something that can happen when you're a part of a project that is a big hit like this one. And if you're a kid, like you, you are kind of frozen in people's minds at that age. And I guess career wise, that can be a challenge, but as an actor, it's, it can be an opportunity because you can find all these ways to, you know, camouflage yourself or, you know, one of the most gratifying things you can have happen as an actor is people go like, oh, I didn't realize that was you in something, you know, which is, I think actors get a kick out of. So I'm 36 now. And I feel like, you know, all these new opportunities for roles are opening, opening up to me because of my age. I was able to play so

many different types of roles. And now I've, uh, I've never been afraid of getting older because it's just, it broadens the, the horizons of the different types of characters you can play. And, um, if you've had, you know you've had experiences like I've had with these movies when I was 10 or 12 years old, it's always kind of playing off of those expectations that people have. And that's something that can, I don't know, it kind of motivates you as an actor. I'm going to try hard to continue our streak of not spoiling anything.

We've done a really good job, haven't we? Yeah, I'm proud of us. So this is the most challenging question on that front. What do you think all these years later, what do you think the most powerful scene is? That's really hard. I mean, there's the most famous scene with me and Bruce. Yeah. But I just statistically, the scene that people would come up to me and want to talk about,

back then and to this day, is the scene with me and Tony in the car at the end. Oh yeah. When I finally reveal what's been going on to her. I'm ready to communicate with you now. Communicate. Tell you my secrets. And Tony Collette is such an amazing

especially like this is the first time I've seen this movie since I've been a parent and just the emotion that's coming through oh yeah is overwhelming

it's an incredible incredible performance you think I'm a freak look at my face I would never think that about you ever got it I'm curious you know we're talking about 25 years

and all the different things that mean and I'm wondering to put it in the Simpsons terms 25 years later do you still deal with people trying to ask you to say the line and how do you handle that that doesn't happen too much anymore but I'm still shocked at uh how many times i see the line out there this was a while ago i remember tiger woods rolling down the window of a buick van in a commercial and saying the line uh while i was watching golf on tv that was a surprise um i remember seeing yasiel puig say it on the big screen at Dodger Stadium for some player movie quiz that they did in between innings. Yeah, I mean, the fact that it's on, I believe it's on the AFI list of quotes right behind Peter Finch's I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

That's it's a big honor to be attached to something like that. That was actor Haley Joel Osment talking about The Sixth Sense. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers. It was edited by Tinbeat Aramious and Patrick Jaranwadanana. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. Thank you to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. You can learn more at plus.npr.org.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.