The director on his failures, his successes, andGlass.
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Thinking about the philosophy of things is definitely what I spend my days doing, he says.
My family is ODd on it.
You gave thecommencement speechat Drexel last year.
This seems like a fraught moment to be a young person starting out in life.
I wanted to say, This is what Ive experienced so far.
I know this is going to ring true to you because we feel the same things.
We feel like Superman one day and feel like were the worst the next.
How does that work?
And not getting confused about the two.
Can you give me an example?Say youre a songwriter.
You write a song, and suddenly everyone loves you!
It seems like you have control over the fact that everyone loves you.
And Id say, Well, I want to do this.
And theyd say, Hmmm.How about this instead?
Then Im like, Yeah, maybe youre right.
When that happens, Im lost.
I was the one who allowed that to happen.
I did not make the right decisions.
And youre complicit in all that when you take that much money to make a movie.
Was that one of those moments of feeling powerless?Yes that moment of everybody passing.
And then the call I got afterward from my agents.
There was one agent in particular who was in charge of that sale.
That particular agent was on the phone and was pretty callous about [the films prospects].
When I got off the phone, the bottom … in essence, the bottom had dropped out.
Because it felt like what was ahead was so dark.
Because thats as much as I can think about right now.
What did you do?I was like, Well, theres an editing room.
Why dont I just go in there?
But what motivated you to keep working on it?
Literally a roomful of distributors had just passed on it.I went, Well, I have zero options now.
So let me just go work on the movie.
Do you remember the first change you made?It was a music thing.
I really enjoy humor, but Im like, You know what?
Maybe I have to honor the thriller first.
Because it felt like the buyers didnt even realize it was a thriller.
So I excised those music cues.
Okay, why dont I cut it in a way thats tighter?
I showed it to him, and he loved it.
AndThe Visitwound up doing very well.It made $100 million.
Then I wroteSplit,and on and on.
David and the Horde bump into each other at the train station, and David follows him.
So why did you take that part out?Its a narrative issue.
Whenever you raise the stakes, you cant unraise them.
That was always the idea.
To make a sequel that you didnt tell anybody was a sequel.
That was the audacity of it.
Take the most commercial aspect of the movie and never tell anybody about it.
The threshold for what defines success is so low.
It didnt need to be anywhere near as successful as it was for us to consider makingGlass.
Now you must be facing the opposite question: Can this universe keep going beyondGlass?It could.
Theres no danger in that.
Or not enough danger, lets say that.
Im just not good at it!
I just cant Avengersand movies like that I mean, I dont even know how they do these things.
ButSplitmade nearly $300 million globally.
Really?I have the sequel rights to most of my movies, essentially for the reason tonotdo them.
The Last AirbenderandAfter Earthwere budgeted at around $150 million each.
The more crew you have, the more expensive everything gets.
And there are tiers to how much people get paid.
Once you kick over into a certain budget tier, everyone gets paid more.
You just cant make these movies with me.
Would that be right?That would be right.
In fact, I could argue it could make it a less effective movie.
And when something is a hit, likeGet OutorSplit,its huge.
Its almost like hes hacked Hollywood.He has hacked it.
And then I took his thing, and Im hacking it more.
How?Im like, What if you’re able to give peopleAvengersfor nothing?
Cast whomever, crew whomever, shoot it however, reshoot however, dont shoot whatever.
Already, the pitch is over.
The pitch is over.
Why?Its been shown that no one wants to see children in jeopardy.
So thats a no right off the bat.
Were really done at this point.
Theyre saying, just leave.
c’mon leave.
2.But wait, I got more!
Two of the girls get physically eaten.
Wait, theres cannibalism?
Its cannibalism, girls get abducted, theres cross-dressing.
Are you with me so far?
They have a connection.
And he lets her go.
So should we make this movie?
Youre going to get zero out of that pitch.
How did you end up making that movie at all?Because I made it for so little.
And I paid for it.
The small budget allows me to follow an instinct.
Even if a million times someone would say, Thats not going to work.
In fact, they did say that.
My agent at the time was like, Nobody is going to do this movie.
No star is going to do this.
You saidagent at the time.Do you have a different agent now?Yeah.
How did James McAvoy get involved inSplit?
So I write this part that basically almost no one can play.
So that knocks out so many actors right there.
Theres only a handful of guys you’re free to even consider for this.
He was like, Hey.
His hair was growing back fromX-Men,so it was very short.
He has big eyes.
He was talking, and he was funny and kind of sweet.
I was like,This is the guy.
Did you offer him the part right there?No.
But I sent him the script.
He read it and said, This is nutso!
He was so incredibly fearless.
He was born to play this part.
You had said not long afterThe VillagethatWilliam Hurtwas the best actor youd ever worked with.
Is that still true?[Laughs.]
Thats a tricky question.
But really, no.
Its totally his call.
However he wants to interpret it.
WhenThe Happeningwas coming out, you said you wanted it to feel like the best B-movie youll ever see.
In your mind, what characterizes a B-movie?I think its a consistent kind of farce humor.
You know, likeThe Blob.The key toThe Blobis that it just never takes itself that seriously.
Do you feel like people missed that element ofThe Happening?
The self-conscious humor?I think I was inconsistent.
Thats why they couldnt see it.
But now I would go back and tell my younger self, That column is not your concern.
Failure is very cleansing, and success is very confusing.
When no one is calling you, it helps you do that.
And whats confusing about success?It keeps whispering to you that you have control over this other column.
Youre one of the few people who has control over this column!
Thats just a lie.
I used to do that when I was a kid.
Slowly that gets usurped by Heres a lot of money.
But as you take the money, youre giving your power away.
You got accused of that a lot.What Im interested in saying now is that everyone is superpowerful.
The hubris thing is when you say, I am more powerful than you.
The Insiderwas that year.
Election, Being John Malkovich, Three KingsFuck, what a year.
Original and alternative movies, thats what film is now!
Because that year basically ended that era.
I dont know that I would put it in binary terms of good and bad.
But theyre in the system.
I dont want Quentin Tarantino making studio movies.
I dont want Wes Anderson making studio movies.
I want them being them.
Do you consider yourself in that camp?Im still one of those accent people.
Its not even me if you take away the accent.
Night cant not take criticism.
Has your relationship to criticism changed over your career?Yeah.
I tend to do it more with audiences, though.
Wow, I didnt mean that at all.
Do you regret participating in it?Im much more careful now about relationships to the media.
That causes people to say, Who do you think you are?
Whereas nobody is saying to Vin Diesel, Who do you think you are?
So for people to be like, Who do you think you are?
Im the guy who spent two years on the movie!
Early in your career, your name famously became associated with big-twist endings.
Did that become a burden for you?I dont see it that way.
Its not like its a dance move.
Its not the moonwalk.
How do you see it?Its a form thats inherent to a thriller.
A thrillers a mystery, right?
So you might as well learn that answer along with the main characters.
What story are you telling yourself now?Im continually changing the ending.
You feel like you had a bad marriage.
The ending reorients your whole experience.
So I keep having a new ending every time I open a new movie.
Lets pretendGlassis a success.
Thats still not the end of my story.
There may be a fallow period again, and theyll rewrite my story again.
Theres a psychological term called negative capability.
If you dont have a negative capability, you shouldnt be in the arts.
What does that mean?To be okay with uncertainty.
Its one foot in the complete unknown.
I know youre a big basketball fan and a big Sixers fan.
Whose career would I aspire to have.
Just year in and year out hes a contender.
