Reading Voices

This evening, I finished reading the book The Man Who Heard Voices. I don't typically read much non-fiction, but an excerpt from this book, published in an Entertainment Weekly not long ago, caught my interest. (Well done marketing, that.) This book chronicles M. Night Shyamalan's journey in making his recent movie, Lady in the Water. You'll perhaps recall that I was a big fan of it, which raised still more curiosity in me about the book.

Having now read it, I'm rather more fascinated by the book itself than the events it covers. It sort of comes off as a case study of someone coming under the sway of a cult of personality.

In the book, M. Night Shyamalan is not always portrayed in a flattering light. Indeed, the book shows him more often as insecure than confident, and occasionally shows him behaving quite badly. But the book also really strives to convey how important it is to the director to have people "get" his films, how important it is to him to win over an audience. He's described in the opening pages as someone with a very powerful charisma and powers of persuasion. Before long, it becomes clear that even though the author of the book is showing both good sides and bad to his subject, he's not really being objective. He's been drawn fully -- perhaps even a bit against his will -- into the "cult of Night." Which all by itself makes the book a fascinating read.

Unfortunately, it also feels like a rather incomplete tale. Since the events that close the book (set in April of this year), the Disney exec that "didn't get" the Lady in the Water script has been fired, and Night's movie has gone on to be a relative box office failure largely trashed by critics. These events seem like more than a missing epilogue to the tale, but rather like the ending, wholly absent. The reader can't help but be interested in how Shyamalan reacted to it all. Maybe there will be an extra chapter or two in a forthcoming paperback version of the book.

Anyway, it's a quick and worthwhile read for anyone that thinks the subject matter might be interesting.