The Man Behind "The Sixth Sense."

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 25, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 082501np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: The Man Behind "The Sixth Sense"
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with FRESH AIR.

On today's FRESH AIR, the number one film in America, "The Sixth Sense." It's a psychological thriller about a boy who sees the dead. We'll meet the writer and director of the film, M. Night Shyamalan. Also, life in the treetops. We talk with botanist Margaret Lowman about her pioneering work studying the ecosystems of tree canopies. The leaves, insects and birds in the treetops are offering a different view of forests than scientists have had from studying the shaded forest floor.

That's all coming up on FRESH AIR.

First the news.

(NEWS BREAK)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

"The Sixth Sense" has been the number one film in America for the past three weeks. It's the story of a boy with a terrible secret. He sees the dead and is traumatized by what he sees. The dead who visit him have horrible wounds and seem to be the victims of accidents or murder. Bruce Willis plays a child psychologist who tries to help the boy.

My guest is the writer/director of the film, M. Night Shyamalan. His first feature, "Praying with Anger," was set in India. Shyamalan is of Indian descent. His second film, "Wide Awake," was about a boy and his sick grandfather.

Let's start with a scene from "The Sixth Sense" in which the boy reveals his secret for the first time to the child psychologist. Here's Bruce Willis and 11-year-old actor Haley Joel Osment.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP - "The Sixth Sense")

HALEY JOEL OSMENT: (whispers) I want to tell you my secret now.

BRUCE WILLIS: (whispers) OK.

OSMENT: (whispers) I see dead people.

WILLIS: In your dreams? While you're awake? Dead people, like in graves, in coffins?

OSMENT: (whispers) Walking around like regular people.

WILLIS: How often do you see them?

OSMENT: (whispers) All the time.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GROSS: M. Night Shyamalan, welcome to FRESH AIR.

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN, WRITER/DIRECTOR, "THE SIXTH SENSE": Thank you.

GROSS: When you realized that the child in your movie would be visited by the dead, he would see the dead, how did you figure out what kind of dead people he would see?

SHYAMALAN: Well, when I first started to write it, it sounded -- it felt very fake, very -- something I'd seen before and cheesy, you know? It has flavors of other ghosts that I'd seen, and so I was -- you know, I wanted to have it, you know, mature and have a certain respect for the material that hadn't been shown before.

And so when I started to think about who is this person that was coming to this child, then I started going, "Well," you know, "it's a real person, and this person had problems and -- so let me -- let me insinuate those things" in the moment that he sees this person come into their bedroom, coming down the hall. Even though they're very scary, you can insinuate a whole life and also, most importantly, what they're upset about, why they're still hanging around in the kind of -- the middle world.

GROSS: Is this film based at all on any fears that you had when you were a kid?

SHYAMALAN: Yes. Yeah.

GROSS: What fears?

SHYAMALAN: You know, I -- I think I have the sixth sense in a normal capacity. You know, you feel uncomfortable in people's houses, some people's houses or some houses. You feel -- you know, you feel like there's someone else in the house when you're alone kind of thing -- I mean, normal things where people get -- just get kind of freaked out a little bit.

But I used to feel that all the time when I was a kid, and probably till I was 13, 14, 15 maybe. And so it was always a big, traumatic event whenever I had to be alone in the house, even, you know, 12 years old or something. My parents are both doctors, so when they'd be late from the hospital and my sister was out, you know, it was a torture session being at home and -- "What was that? Who was that? Was that somebody in the bedroom? Is that someone there? I'm certain someone's in. I'm going to lock the door."

And so by the time they got home, I'd be, you know, scared to death in the corner, and they'd just -- you know, they'd have talks with me about, you know, "You're a big boy. Don't get scared of these things." And of course, I outgrew it, you know, as I said. But I mean, much like the kids that I research (ph) in the movie, you know, they outgrow it, too.

GROSS: So what you were afraid of wasn't so much somebody, like, breaking into the house, you were afraid of spirits that were -- of ghosts that were haunting the house?

SHYAMALAN: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't even, like, a separation of the two. They both felt the same. I mean, that -- and that's why -- how I kind of portrayed them in the movie, that they were -- it was real, it wasn't, like, a glowing person walking down the hall, but you felt like someone was in the house. And how could they have gotten in the house? That kind of feeling.

GROSS: What were you told about death when you were growing up? Your parents are both doctors, and I imagine they had to work with people who were very ill and...

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: I'm sure they had patients who died. They were probably close to death, professionally, in that respect.

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: What did they tell you?

SHYAMALAN: No specific conversation, you know, where the parents sits you down and talks to you about death. I don't remember that. But I -- you know, I pick up on things, you know, because we're Hindus and all. There's certain rituals they do to acknowledge spirits and things like that.

And so, you know, I'm not a big religious person. You know, I don't go to temple or anything all the time. But those things affect you, you know, when you're a child and you see -- when you move into a new house, and they do a little ritual outside the house to expel any spirits that may be there. It's just a ritual they do. It takes, like, 10 minutes or anything. But you're there, and you go, "Mom, why are you doing that?" And then she tells you, and you -- you know, you understand that they in some way acknowledge it.

GROSS: When you were coming up with the story for "The Sixth Sense," why did you think that the dead people, the spirits, would visit a child, as opposed to visiting an adult?

SHYAMALAN: Well, again, much like myself closing off the belief that there was someone in the house, you know? Whereas, you know, now if I hear a noise in my house, I go, "Well, it's clearly my cat," you know, or "It's clearly the air conditioning." The doors are closed, and that's that, you know? And it's going away, the possibility of anything else unexplainable.

I think you're more open to believing -- clearly -- not "I think," we are more open to believing in everything when you're a child. If I said -- you know, if I said to a child "There's someone in that closet," and I describe them, they'd believe me completely, but the adult wouldn't necessarily believe me.

And I think that -- that was just my own beliefs. But when you look at, again, the accounts of people who claim they've seen ghosts and all, and children that have seen ghosts, they say that, you know, children are much -- have a -- like, a brighter life force (ph) and things like -- their explanation for it all is much more specific, you know?

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is M. Night Shyamalan, and he wrote and directed the new film, "The Sixth Sense," which is the number one film in America.

Now, the movie stars an 11-year-old actor. He was 11, I think, when you made the film.

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: Haley Joel Osment is his name. And he's really terrific. And I know he's already had experience as an actor. This wasn't his first film. He was Forrest, Jr., in "Forrest Gump" and...

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: ... was Jeff Foxworthy's kid on "The Jeff Foxworthy Show."

SHYAMALAN: Apparently, yeah. I haven't seen it.

GROSS: Yeah, me either! (laughter) But you know, he's been in a bunch of things. You didn't find him right away, I believe, in the auditions.

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: Tell me what the audition process was like before you found him. What -- how did you go about testing kids to see if they would be good for this role, which is a pretty difficult role. The kid has to be, like, exceptionally smart, exceptionally sensitive and also exceptionally vulnerable.

SHYAMALAN: Well, you know, it started off with a very pure intention that I was going to get a non-actor kid, just get a real kid, that there was the belief that there was some kid in some school somewhere that I was going to just see, talk to him, and that would be our kid. And he wouldn't really be acting. He would say the words as I said them, you know, as I wrote them, and do the -- go through the arc of the emotions, but that his basic personality he would not be acting, that, you know, I was going to find that child. And that was my belief that I was going to do that.

And I -- before Haley, I -- that was my belief, and I have had kids in my other films that you don't -- when you hire a child actor, you're not really hiring an actor. You're hiring that child to be himself and read those lines, you know? Whereas an actor can become someone else, and I didn't think that a child was capable of doing that, from my experience.

So I went through a long, tedious process of looking for children all around the country, you know, kids that haven't acted. And I preferred the less experience the better, and looking for a particular look, you know, a pensive look, you know, somebody who was holding things back, that wasn't saying everything that was on their mind, which is kind of a child trait, but held things back. And you'd say something, and they'd be quiet. Those kind of traits I was looking for.

And so I narrowed the field down. You know, and then, so, before I finished the search, I said, you know, "Let's just be thorough, and let me see a handful of children in Los Angeles."

GROSS: Of real actors.

SHYAMALAN: Real actor kids, right.

GROSS: Child actors.

SHYAMALAN: Because I was getting nervous about -- about pulling this off because, yeah, I wanted to be pure and all that, but I still had to nail the film in the 38 days I had to shoot it, and that's my job, so -- went to Los Angeles, and I said yes. I saw some tapes before I went, and I chose five children to see. So -- and one -- you know, they were pretty -- pretty well-known kids. One of them was a "Star Wars" child, starred in "Star Wars" and stuff. And most of them -- the problem (INAUDIBLE) Los Angeles, actor children are blond and blue-eyed and, you know, that's who you're going to get, you know, blond and blue-eyed. And that wasn't necessarily how I saw the part, you know?

So I went there, and I saw -- I saw the first three or four and got pretty much what I thought I'd get, which was better chops, more professionalism but less humanity and -- than the kids that had not done anything before, you know? So I was feeling kind of depressed. And then Haley comes in, and Haley is -- was the only one -- only child probably of the entire thousands of kids that I'd seen on tape and the hundreds of kids that I met in person that was dressed up. Now, this may not seem like a big deal. He was dressed up like he came to, you know, a dinner, a fancy dinner or something. But that -- that was the first sign. I was, like, "Who's this little kid that came?"

GROSS: Why did that impress you that he was dressed up...

SHYAMALAN: Because...

GROSS: ... because the character always dresses in suits?

SHYAMALAN: No, because it showed respect for me, for the event of having an audition, for the movie, for the -- you know, these other kids were dressed, you know, baggy jeans hanging off their hip and chains and T-shirts and very cool-looking kids, all of them. And they were all just being kids, and that's fine. Even the ones that I was interested in, they were all just dressed like little kids.

But this child came in dressed differently than everybody else, you know? He came in, his hair was combed perfectly, and he sat down and -- he was shaking a little bit -- you know, just a little shaking. He was nervous. And I said, you know, "Have you read the scenes that I want you to do?" because, you know, I had three scenes I wanted everybody to do. And some of them had not even read it, so I had to talk to them, and they didn't -- some of them didn't even get explained what the movie was. So it was a very frustrating process. And sometimes they'd get scared, and so I didn't want to have that situation in the room.

And he said, "Yes. Well, I've read the script twice." And I said, "What? What do you mean?" And I didn't understand what he said. He said, "Well, I read the screenplay twice." I said, "You read the entire screenplay twice before you came in to the audition?" He said "Yeah." So already now you have two things to tell you we're in a different situation.

And then he sat down, and we talked for a while, and he's a super-intelligent child, and we got along really well. And he was a very sweet, sweet child, so already he was matching my character, which was a really compassionate child who understood emotion. Then he sat down and he read it, and it was -- oh, it was breathtaking when he sat down and read it! It was -- I had heard the words butchered for months, and then suddenly perfection.

GROSS: My guest is M. Night Shyamalan. He wrote and directed the new film, "The Sixth Sense." We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(ID BREAK)

GROSS: My guest is M. Night Shyamalan. He wrote and directed the new film "The Sixth Sense."

Now, this isn't the first time you've worked with a child actor. Your previous film, "Wide Awake," had a child at the center of it. What did you learn from that film that you were able to apply to this film?

SHYAMALAN: Well, it was -- well, that there will come a point where the child is burned, you know?

GROSS: Like, burned out?

SHYAMALAN: Yeah, and they don't want to do anymore. They don't -- they don't...

GROSS: They don't want to play anymore?

SHYAMALAN: Right. "This was fun, and now that's over." And you know, it happened really early on "Wide Awake." It happened on Halloween on "Wide Awake," when, you know, we had to shoot, and the child wanted to go trick-or-treating. And you know, every year of his life, he's been able to go trick-or-treating whenever he wanted, and not today because we were shooting and we were behind.

And Mom was, like, you know, "We're behind," and "What are you doing?" And I -- you know, you feel guilty. You know, you want the child to have a thing, but, you know, I got to do my job, and -- and so it was -- like, I think that began a thing of, you know, "This isn't fun anymore. I want to go home" kind of thing. And to be very careful and wary of that.

Now, Haley is a very different person.

GROSS: Because he sees himself as a professional already.

SHYAMALAN: He's just amazing, just an amazing professional. And as an actor, he's just an amazing person. But I think that he -- he reached that point where I had to -- not quite the same way, but he reached a point where he got burned out a little bit, only on the last four days of the shoot.

GROSS: And how did he express it when he got burned out?

SHYAMALAN: He lost his instincts to do it, and so I had to walk him through it, you know, more like the other child actors that I'd worked with before, you know? He was tired, you know, and it was the day after Bruce left the set. We had, like, four days of clean-up work to do, and it was -- I remember the moment very specifically when he did it, and he couldn't -- couldn't show me fear legitimately. He was faking it, and I said, "OK." So then I walked him through the mechanics of how we could fake it. And I ended up shooting over his shoulder to avoid it completely, and that's actually what's in the movie.

GROSS: I want to play another scene from your movie, "The Sixth Sense." And in this scene, the young actor we're talking about, Haley Joel Osment -- he's describing some of the reasons why everyone in school thinks he's a freak.

SHYAMALAN: Right.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP - "The Sixth Sense")

OSMENT: We were supposed to draw a picture, anything we wanted. I drew a man. Got hurt in the neck by another man with a screwdriver.

WILLIS: You saw that on TV, Cole (ph)?

OSMENT: Everyone got upset. They had a meeting. Mom started crying. I don't draw like that anymore.

WILLIS: How do you draw now?

OSMENT: Draw people smiling, dogs running, rainbows. They don't have meetings about rainbows.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GROSS: This idea of -- of the child thinking that everyone sees him as a freak -- that use of the word "freak" -- where did that come from for you? Did people ever think that you were a freak, or did you notice someone who was afraid people thought he was a freak or...

SHYAMALAN: No, it wasn't -- you mean -- you know, I definitely felt different than other children, not for the same reasons at all that Cole did, you know? I grew up in Philly and mainline and only Indian kid in almost every school I've ever gone to, including film school. So imagining my main characters as children that are isolated is pretty easy to do.

And I wanted him to -- you know, in imagining the life of a child like this, I'd imagine that, in reality, he's probably kind of normal, but that he does things that creep out people and creep out children that are around him, and then he gets labeled as the freak.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is M. Night Shyamalan, and he wrote and directed the new film "The Sixth Sense," which is the number one film in America.

Now, why did you want to work with Bruce Willis in this film? You needed, you know, someone who was playing the role of a doctor, child psychologist. And you know, it's a very thoughtful role, and Bruce Willis, let's face it, is most famous as either being, you know -- you know, a wiseguy or an action hero.

SHYAMALAN: Right. Well, I guess I never saw him that black-and-white, first off, you know? Everything he's ever done has had some effect on me, you know? I even -- the first time I saw him was in the Levis commercial, where -- you know, that's the first thing he got was the Levis commercial, playing the harmonica...

GROSS: Oh!

SHYAMALAN: ... walking up the street and he -- they started that whole campaign of just showing someone lively and, "Wear Levis. You'll be like this guy." And he just played a harmonic and walked down the street, and I remember that image of him. And I was, like, "Wow, that's cool." And then "Moonlighting" was such a big thing during high school with me. So then, you know, he captured me that way. And then when I saw "Die Hard" -- he kept reinventing himself, you know? That was the third time he had reinvented himself to me and had hit me all three times.

And so he stuck with me a lot. And then I -- you know, I'd seen little flashes of things that I hadn't seen in other actors. You know, I saw him play a bad guy in a movie called "Mortal Thoughts," where his ex-wife, Demi Moore, was in also. And he played a bad guy. When I say a bad guy, he played a bad guy. Nowadays, you can't play just a bad guy. If I write a bad guy and whoever's going to star in it, the guy has to be brilliant and bad.

GROSS: And funny.

SHYAMALAN: Or funny and bad or sexy and bad and witty and bad, whatever it is, but there has to be some redeemable trait. Now, this guy that Bruce played had no redeemable traits whatsoever, you know? Just an awful person. And it was so brave a performance by him to just be hated. And then I saw him do just a kind of a softer role, but light, which it showed a lot of restraint, was "In Country," when he played a Vietnam vet. Showed a lot of peace if he wanted to. He could just have -- just be there and let peacefully things happen.

GROSS: So what did you tell Bruce Willis about how you wanted him to play this role in your film, "The Sixth Sense"?

SHYAMALAN: Well, I said, "You know what? I want to make sure the number one thing is that you come off vulnerable because you have an air about you from the films and from being a superstar of invulnerability."

And I think that that is the kiss of death for most of the stars, when you can no longer see the down-and-out boxer that wants to just prove himself once. You know, all that he wants -- he feeds turtles, and all he wants is to prove himself once. Then you forgot Sylvester Stallone, and now you see the $20 million movie star who owns Planet Hollywood. And when he can't be vulnerable anymore, you know, it's -- we've lost the connection with him.

And I think Bruce in the original "Die Hard" had that kind of vulnerability. He was very flawed. You know, didn't know how -- he couldn't keep a marriage going. And he -- you know, he was frustrated, you know, and he allowed his frustrations and his weaknesses to be shown even in that situation, you know, that farce, that movie.

GROSS: M. Night Shyamalan is the writer and director of the new film, "The Sixth Sense." He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with the writer and director of the new film "The Sixth Sense," M. Night Shyamalan. The film stars 11-year-old Haley Joel Osment as a boy who is visited by the dead and Bruce Willis as the child psychologist who tries to help him.

Now, you have a cameo in "The Sixth Sense" as a doctor.

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN, WRITER/DIRECTOR, "THE SIXTH SENSE": Right.

GROSS: And I guess it's no surprise that you gave yourself the role of the doctor, because your parents are both doctors.

SHYAMALAN: Yes, it was just a little gag for my family. My family is all doctors. My uncles and aunts are all doctors. They all married doctors. And my parents are both doctors, and I am not a doctor. And so I went into obviously a very different field, and it was nice.

GROSS: But you play one in the movie.

SHYAMALAN: But I play one in the movie. It was fun, it was a fun little gag to do that.

GROSS: Now, you starred in your first independent feature, "Praying With Anger," and I think you played an American of Indian descent who's sent to India by his mother because he's not doing well in school, and she wants him to straighten out...

SHYAMALAN: Right, right. Right, right.

GROSS: ... in India. Was that based on an experience that happened to you?

SHYAMALAN: No, that was fictional. But, you know, I went through very similar things that the character went through when I went to shoot it, you know. It was the first time I'd been there as an adult, and kind of the assimilation, you know, and learning about my culture, because I'm so American.

And appreciating it by the time I was done in a different way than I thought I could ever possibly appreciate it. So, no, it wasn't a true-life thing.

GROSS: How were you changed by the experience of spending a lot of time in India?

SHYAMALAN: Well, you know, it was a very great first step for me, because that was my first feature. And I'm -- I don't perform well under adverse emotional conditions, you know, if someone's being -- you know, "You don't know what you're doing," and if they treat me badly and yelling and, you know, "You're just a kid, and what do you know?" I don't -- you know, like most people I don't do my best work then.

And in India, you know, that you're the director is -- that's all they need to know. And it was a huge amount of respect that was given to me as the first -- even though I was -- my first directing gig. And they had done 100 movies, each of the crew members had done 100, 125 movies, and this was my first one, and yet they gave me the full respect, as if I was, you know, a master filmmaker.

And that really helped me feel competent and take that first step the right way.

GROSS: When did your family first come to the States? Was it your parents, grandparents?

SHYAMALAN: Yes, my parents, right.

GROSS: What brought them here?

SHYAMALAN: I -- they both wanted to be doctors in America. They had become doctors in India, and my dad wanted to choose between Philly and Boston. And he liked the historic value of them.

GROSS: So you grew up in Philadelphia.

KELLY: I did.

GROSS: "The Sixth Sense" is set in Philadelphia. And I'll tell you, when I saw the movie at a Philadelphia movie theater, the first time there's a street scene and you see -- I guess it's the kid's home...

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: There's just this -- like a little gasp in the audience, like "Ahhhh! What street is that?" you know.

SHYAMALAN: (laughs) Yes.

GROSS: And every time there was, like, you know, a skyline shot or something that was clearly Philadelphia, you would just hear people kind of muttering to the person next to them or just kind of, you know, breathing loudly.

What's to like to shoot a scene in your home -- to shoot a whole movie in your home town? I mean, you know the location shots much better than you're going to in any other place.

SHYAMALAN: Well, it's great, I mean, you know, I wasn't going to do this job, making films, unless I could do it from home, if I could do it like a normal job and maintain a normal life. If it didn't work out, I was going to try writing novels or something else, you know? I mean, luckily I'm wide awake. I got the chance to shoot in Philadelphia.

And so once I had done it on that budget, which was $7 million, then when I have $38 million, $40 million budget on "Sixth Sense," you know, I really just said, you know, We have to shoot in Philadelphia.

And it's just a great thing to wake up in your own house and then go to work, and go to a location. And yes, there are big stars there when you go to work, but it's -- you know, you're working on South Street, or you're working downtown. And it's a great way to get to know your own home town.

GROSS: What are some of the things about Philadelphia that you wanted to take advantage of for "The Sixth Sense"?

SHYAMALAN: Well, clearly because it's a historic town. You know, it's a very old town, and the movie's about ghosts. And, you know, if this is a brand-new town, you know, with modern-day -- only modern buildings and all, it doesn't have the right atmosphere for the story. And I probably wouldn't even have written it.

But, you know, walking around Philly and the historic buildings and the cobblestone streets, and my friends live on this -- (INAUDIBLE) they did live on this little alley right off of South Street, and it's so eerie, you know, it has little cobblestones, and the weeds are coming up, and a black, like, lamp that's there, and the ivy's growing over it. And it's just really kind of "Exorcist"-y kind of place.

And -- well, you don't get those things in a -- in most cities, you know. So it was a great place to show another level of another world, you know, without being too overt about it.

GROSS: My guest is M. Night Shyamalan, and he wrote and directed the new film "The Sixth Sense."

In your previous film, "Wide Awake," the child, after his grandfather dies, goes in search of God.

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: And a lot of -- like, the clergymen who he sees around him, he feels like they don't really -- they haven't really spoken to God.

SHYAMALAN: Right.

GROSS: But he wants to find Him. Was that -- has that -- I mean, have you been in some kind of religious pursuit yourself?

SHYAMALAN: Not -- I -- you know what's amazing, I don't think about religion at all until I sit down and write. It's a strange thing, you wouldn't...

GROSS: Why do you think you think about it then?

KELLY: I don't know, I have no...

GROSS: It's a potent subject.

SHYAMALAN: Yes, it is. I don't know why, you know, and I -- you know, eat burgers and play basketball, and then all of a sudden when I sit down in write, I'm thinking about all these spiritual issues.

Not quite sure, I mean, clearly it comes from a combination of being from a religious Indian family, one, and going to a Catholic school for 10 years, two. So bombarded by two intense types of religious, you know, sides. And so whether I sided with either of them, I was definitely -- it was definitely somewhere on my mind all the time, you know what I mean?

GROSS: What were some of the most striking differences between what you were taught about religion in Catholic school and what you'd learned at home through the Hindu religion?

SHYAMALAN: There's one in "Wide Awake" -- a scene in "Wide Awake" which is probably the most vivid of those kind of conflicts, where we were in class -- this is actually -- really happened, and then I put it in "Wide Awake." We were in class, and it was religion class at my Catholic school. And we were learning about literalists and the Bible, and people think that the Bible -- some people think the Bible's literal, and things like that, and that the Bible is the truth, you know, and that all the answers are in there.

And there was this part where it says, you know, essentially, if you don't, you're not baptized, you're going to go to hell. And I said, you know, What's up with that? you know. You know, everyone else in the room -- I'm going to hell, what's up with that? Everybody in the room's going to heaven, but I'm going to hell.

And she said, like, "Well, that's not really how it works, you know, that's not quite... " You know, it was really of a tough one there, I threw that, lobbed that ball out, didn't get a great answer back. And so it seemed conflicting. You know, I said, "You know, I got (INAUDIBLE)."

So a kid in Ethiopia has never heard of Catholicism, he's damned because he didn't get a chance to hear -- I don't understand, that doesn't seem fair. And, well, it's different in different cultures, and this (INAUDIBLE) kind of thing.

So that was an interesting -- I came home and told my mom, and she was kind of, like, Why do you say that? The nuns won't like you.

GROSS: But it sounds like the nun handled it OK.

SHYAMALAN: Yes, oh, I -- yes, I mean, I thought everybody -- you know, they had a -- You know, I remember one time where the head nun brought me up in front of the school and said, "I just want to say something to you all. Do you know that -- who got the highest grade in religion class this year? And he's not even Catholic, he's Hindu." And so she brought up in a -- it was kind of me to mock everybody, I guess. I don't know what it was, but it was funny when it happened.

GROSS: And how did that make you feel, like you were...

SHYAMALAN: I was embarrassed.

GROSS: Embarrassed, yes.

SHYAMALAN: You know, at that moment I was embarrassed, but in retrospect it seems kind of funny -- (laughs) -- to go, "Look at you all."

GROSS: So when you see people now who have seen your movie, do they all have questions for you that they want you to resolve about the film?

SHYAMALAN: Oh, about the film. No, not really. I mean, they're more about expressing how they caught on, and what clues they saw, and, you know, an appreciation for the two layers of thought that went into the movie, what they think they first saw, and what they saw the second time.

But what they do come back with, when people see the movie, is, ghost stories, you know, everybody comes and tells me their ghost stories.

GROSS: You've met a lot of people who have them?

SHYAMALAN: Almost everybody, yes. You haven't yet, but I'm waiting. (laughs)

GROSS: (laughs) No, you'll have to wait a while for that.

What kind of stories?

SHYAMALAN: Oh, you know, I was -- about someone who died, a girlfriend who died, and then, you know, I saw them in a dream and I swear they were in my room, and they said, "It's OK," or, you know, an uncle who had died, and then I -- something of his was left behind somewhere where no one would have put it, right in the middle of the room, or, you know, things like that. And each have their own stories and what it meant to them of how they felt like they touched that other world.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you very much for talking with us. And congratulations on your film.

SHYAMALAN: Oh, thank you very much.

GROSS: M. Night Shyamalan is the writer and director of the new film "The Sixth Sense."

Coming up, a botanist who works in the treetops of rainforests studying plant, animal, and insect life.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: M. Night Shyamalan
High: Writer and director M. Night Shyamalan, the man behind the new #1 hit film, "The Sixth Sense," about a boy who sees the dead, discusses his career.
Spec: Movie Industry; Bruce Willis; Haley Joel Osmont; "The Sixth Sense"

Please note, this is not the final feed of record

Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: The Man Behind "The Sixth Sense"

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 25, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 082502NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: The Mysteries of Tree Canopies
Sect: Science
Time: 12:45

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

GROSS: Margaret Lowman is a botanist who has spent much of her professional life in the treetops of rain forests. The animal, insect, and plant life up there was until recently out of reach and out of sight.

Now that scientists like Lowman have the technology to get up into the trees, they're discovering things that are changing preconceptions about the ecosystems of rain forests.

Lowman has written a new memoir called "Life in the Treetops: Adventures of a Woman in Field Biology." She's a professor of tropical biology and directs research and conservation at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida.

I asked how the ecosystems of treetops compared to life on the forest floor.

MARGARET LOWMAN, "LIFE IN THE TREETOPS": The tops of the trees are very much like a desert. There are many species of cactus up there. It's really windy and hot and dry. And when I work up there, I have to take lots of water and lots of snacks, because I get really hungry, compared to the shady, very calm and sheltered forest floor.

The other really interesting thing is that the leaves at the tops of trees are totally different from the bottom. Sometimes they are only about a 10th the size. They're a lot thicker, they're a different color. And they even do a lot of different things for the tree.

So it's almost like you have two different species in one individual. So that's kind of amazing. And we have really changed our way of thinking about the forest, because now we can study the whole thing, the whole tree, not just the very bottom part of it.

GROSS: How are science's views of how to preserve forests changing now that we know more about the ecosystem on the tops of trees?

LOWMAN: I suppose one thing that treetop exploration has really led us to conclude is that -- is the rain forest is a very, very precious and valuable place. There are millions more species living in the treetops than we ever believed before inhabited our forests. Some scientists say there are up to 100 million insects in the tops of trees.

So it's an enormous place for biodiversity, and very important, because we don't know which species are most important, which might contain medicines and other things.

And also, we're finding out now that the treetops, of course, are this amazing machine for productivity. These funny small, thick leaves that I just described actually are the most important place in the planet, perhaps, for productivity.

And so we're all really dependent upon these forest treetops for our planetary health and the quality of our climate.

GROSS: When you first started going up in the treetops, the whole profession was really pretty young. Did you get a sense of climbing into a new frontier, of being in a place that was pretty undiscovered?

LOWMAN: I did. It was adventurous, and it was pretty rough, because all of our equipment was rudimentary. I sewed my first harness by hand and made my slingshot. So I guess it was kind of crazy. But at the time, it did seem to me just like a way of answering some questions that I was really curious about.

And yes, it was a new frontier, but perhaps I was just more frightened and worried about falling than being totally aware of how new that frontier would turn out to be.

GROSS: Well, I guess that's pretty understandable. The technology that you use to get up there has really changed. What did you use at the beginning? And this was when, in the early 1980s?

LOWMAN: Right. In 1979, actually, I climbed my first tree. And I did describe that in the first chapter of the book. I did take seat belt webbing that I purchased and sewed into a harness over in Sydney, Australia, where I lived at the time.

Over there, they had no mountaineering stores like EMS, or something like that, to avail me with equipment. And I also made a slingshot and used that to propel the rope. And I had some cavers that taught me how to climb using similar techniques to what they used when they went caving, except they were going down and I was going up. So we had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to adapt their methods into the treetops.

GROSS: So how are you getting up into the treetops now?

LOWMAN: Now there are all sorts of wild and wonderful ways to get into the treetops. Probably my favorite is the hot air balloon, although there's only one in the world that's dedicated to science, and that dirigible is operated by a French team of scientists, so we get together every couple years and use it.

Probably the best and most tried and true method now is the canopy walkway, because it's a really great thing to build for conservation. A lot of forests are using them for ecotourism now as well as for research. So that might be the most useful in terms of what's going these days in the canopy.

GROSS: Would you describe what a canopy walkway is?

LOWMAN: Sure. This is a bridge, built usually out of wood, sometimes aluminum, and it's composed of platforms that rest in the tree branches and bridges that connect the trees. So it provides a wonderful sort of Disney World type of walk for visitors to go through the treetops. And it sways sometimes a little tiny bit, which makes it exciting and fun, and it has rails to hang onto.

But for the scientist, it's great, because we can reach all sorts of neat canopy animals and plants up there to measure and to study.

GROSS: I guess you have to be careful that the bridge doesn't hurt any of the leaves or the insects.

LOWMAN: We do, and we are finding out a couple things that are kind of funny. I have a platform and walkway system I use in Peru, for example, and lots of lizards have decided that it's a great way to walk around the treetops. So people can't study lizards down there any more because we know that the populations have been affected.

So you do have to watch out for those funny things as a scientist.

GROSS: Now, tell us about one of the more interesting discoveries you've made in the treetops.

LOWMAN: I guess perhaps discovering new species has been interesting as well as exciting. The first time I discovered a new species of beetle was when I was working in Australia in the forests high up in the clouds. And it was just kind of really neat, and kind -- like being a detective, I guess.

And in this case, it was a very important insect because it ate about half of the canopy of a species of tree. So I was really determined to figure out what it was. And you have to contact lots of scientists around the world to confirm things like that. So that was kind of neat.

But maybe my most interesting but practical discovery was the fact that it took me three years working in the canopy to actually find the insects. And I went out day after day, and every day it was really quiet, and there were all these holes in the leaves, and lots of damage but no insects.

Until one night I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and I heard all this munching over my head. And I found out that most of the insects are active at night and not at day. So sometimes scientists make actual discoveries by accident.

GROSS: So once you found out that this beetle was eating a lot of the leaves on the treetops, besides documenting it, what did you do? Did you try to prevent the beetles from eating more, or just observe them doing it?

LOWMAN: I was a little angry early on in my career because I was trying to study leaves, and I get -- got frustrated because the beetles kept eating up the leaves. But in actual fact, that relationship of the insects and the plants together led me into studying this whole phenomena called herbivory. And so now I'm really interested in what kinds of damage insects cause to trees.

Believe it or not, sometimes it's good. A little bit of nibbling on a tree by insects can actually lead to more vigorous growth and better health for the tree. So it's not all a bad thing. I think it's just that we get the idea in our gardens that we hate to see our leaves with holes in them. So sometimes we get a little prejudice if we only see our gardens and we never actually get into the canopy of a natural forest.

GROSS: How do the bugs that live in the treetops get there? Do the crawl up the tree, or do they first fly there and then lay their eggs?

LOWMAN: That's an amazing miracle, if you ask me. It really is truly incredible that a lot of insects live in one tree, and if they fall out of it, they're doomed to death. They never can return and find this very special food that they have come to eat.

So, yes, the adults do fly into the tree and usually lay the eggs in some of these cases, and I did some experiments, believe it or not, with caterpillars, watching what happened to them when they fell out of a tree after a bird had landed and frightened them. And none of them ever made it back to the treetops to get their food.

So in actual fact, it's a pretty devastating thing if you're a bug, and you fall out of your branch, I think it's the end.

GROSS: My guest is botanist Margaret Lowman. Her new memoir is called "Life in the Treetops." We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

GROSS: My guest is botanist Margaret Lowman. She studies the ecosystems of treetops in the rain forest.

In your memoir, "Life in the Treetops," you write not only about the science, but you write a little bit about your personal life and how difficult it was to become a scientist. You went to Australia to study, and there you married a man who raised sheep on his family's sheep station in the Australia outback.

And your husband and his parents really expected you to stay home and be a full-time mother and homemaker. And they were very disturbed at the idea of you being a serious scientist or a serious academic. And to -- you -- what -- what -- how -- what -- what -- what did you find frustrating about the life that you were living, and the dictates of your new family?

LOWMAN: I guess for me, because I had studied my whole lifetime to be a scientist, I found it really shocking when suddenly there were people around me and close to me that didn't feel it was a good thing for me to pursue. I do appreciate that in those conventional and conservative situations, such as the outback, they probably were trying to give me the best advice that they knew of at the time.

And I now appreciate that I grew up in America, where perhaps a lot more choices for women were available in the early 1980s. So I did get really frustrated, because I really wanted to try to balance both the family and a career. I thought that would be healthier for the children and for the family and basically for the development of me as well.

So I had this mapped out, and suddenly I had these great hurdles in front of me because people said, "No, no, you shouldn't do it that way."

GROSS: Did you not find that out till after you were married?

LOWMAN: I didn't find it out till after the children were born, so that's the funny thing. I guess maybe in this case it was OK to pursue a career when there wasn't a family at home to be looked after. So I was naive, I realize that, but I also was surprised at the outcome of what the babies brought on.

GROSS: You first left Australia just to accept a six-month visiting professor position in the United States. And after you got here and tried that out, you really wanted to stay and not go back to your home or to your marriage in Australia.

You tell in the book how you wrote Jill Kraconway (ph) a letter. And she grew up on a sheep station in Australia, and she left that life to study in the United States and eventually became the president of Smith College and a best-selling author. What advice did she give you when you wrote her?

LOWMAN: I had never meet Jill, but I had had been sent her book by my mom while I was living in Australia, and it was really neat, because it turned out that her farm was almost next door to ours. It was within an hour's drive.

And her advice to me when I was a visiting professor at Williams, right away, was, "Get a divorce and never go back." And it's really interesting, because I certainly share with her that emotional feeling that I had when I returned to the States. I really felt that I had found some intellectual freedom that I'd been missing for a long time, and I hadn't quite recognized how important that is to life.

GROSS: So did you take the advice and get a divorce?

LOWMAN: I did. I went and saw her lawyer, got some good advice. At that time my now ex-husband had also wanted a divorce. He had moved on and found a much more presentable wife over there. So in actual fact, in the end, we both reached that mutual agreement at the same time.

GROSS: So then you became a scientist and teacher and single mother. You took your children, I think, on a lot of trips with you over the years. Did you have to teach them the proper etiquette when meeting a scorpion or a snake?

LOWMAN: I did. I had to keep them from grabbing the tarantula on the ceiling when we were down in Belize, and I always was a little bit worried about the fact that they might pick up a poisonous snake or want to poke at a scorpion or something. Kids are curious by nature, and so that's certainly not their fault. But it was something that concerned me as a mom, because I was taking them out into these unusual playgrounds, not the normal, conventional stuff around.

GROSS: Did you ever worry that your colleagues who were studying with you would be irritated by the presence of your children, that it would be a kind of imposition on them?

LOWMAN: Absolutely. I invested, I think, a lot of energy and was always very anxious about that particular situation arising, and I actually had a secret little code with my kids. We had a little hand squeeze that we used when they shouldn't talk and things like that. Because I told them that sometimes some scientist might get a little bit more short-tempered, and I had to do my work, and that they understood the importance of that.

So we had our secret code, and that made it more fun. And basically I was also worried that if they woke up at night or got ill with an earache or something, they might wake someone else up if we were staying in a lodge or some little cabin somewhere.

But we got through it all, and in the long run, I think it probably broadened the horizons of some of my colleagues. I now have some really great male colleagues who call me for child care advice because they want to take their children to Costa Rica or do something similar.

So I guess in a sense it might have been infectious.

GROSS: I think you've given us a sense of how exhilarating it could be up in the treetops studying the canopies. Give us a sense of what's happened to you that's been scary up there.

LOWMAN: Sure. Well, I've been pretty lucky. I had one small fall one time that I describe in one of the chapters of the book, and it was really just my own error because I forgot to clip on. But the scariest things maybe that have happened to me are the rapid onset of a lightning and thunderstorm right when I'm in the middle of doing something wonderful, and really concentrating.

And that has happened a couple times. Lightning is probably one of the few enemies of canopy scientists, and so we do have to climb down pretty quickly. So that's what's happening when lightning comes, and that's probably my worst danger. I've slept out at night and been rained on, and none of that's really a problem. And also I'm not too worried about snakes up there, because there are many more poisonous snakes on the ground than in the canopy.

So all in all, it's a pretty safe and wonderful place to be.

GROSS: Well, Margaret Lowman, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

LOWMAN: Thank you. Well, it was really great.

GROSS: Margaret Lowman is the author of the new book "Life in the Treetops: Adventures of a Woman in Field Biology." She's the director of research and conservation at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida.

(MUSICAL BRIDGE)

GROSS: FRESH AIR's interviews and reviews are produced by Naomi Person (ph), Phyllis Meyers (ph), and Amy Sallett (ph), with Alan Tu, Kathy Wolfe (ph), Monique Nazareth, and Anne-Marie Boldonado. Research assistance from Sarah Scherr (ph). Roberta Shorrock directs the show.

I'm Terry Gross.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Margaret Lowman
High: Botanist Margaret Lowman, a pioneer in research on forest canopies, their inhabitants, flowers, fruits and morality, discusses her new book: "Life in the Treetops: Adventures of a Woman in Field Biology."
Spec: Science; Animals; "Life in the Treetops"

Please note, this is not the final feed of record

Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: The Mysteries of Tree Canopies
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.