Blue Carpet: Lady In The Water

Love him or loathe him, one thing is clear about helmer M Night Shyamalan – he’s doing his own thing and we in the totalfilm.com basement applaud the maverick lenser for that.

Arriving in Leicester Square for the European unveiling of his new bedtime story fantasy flick, Lady In The Water, Night and his stars paddled up a blue carpet as they smooched and schmoozed with the gathered fans and photographers.

Total Film nabbed the helmer inside the cinema just before he dived into the auditorium to introduce the movie – which begs the question, how exactly do you introduce a film that can only really speak for itself?

“This is the issue,” the gracious lenser says seriously. “The point of the movie is, it’s not in a genre and so it has a very unusual language. It makes it very difficult to sell which creates the problem of how to get this movie out to an audience. So they find one aspect and push it and hopefully when you watch it you get more than that, you get humour and emotion.”

After the successes of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village, Shyamalan continues to create his own worlds on celluloid, steering clear of taking on a big studio movie with a ready-made script and marketing scheme.

“Whenever I’m considering a studio movie I’m always weighing it against the idea I have in my head and how could I possibly give that up? My wife thinks it would be a lot less hassle though,” he laughs.

So, any chance of giving us a couple of hints at what movies he might have turned down in the past? “That wouldn’t be nice to say, a lot of cool movies that turned out to be big, big successes and when I see them, my dad always says ‘why didn’t you take that one? Are you crazy?’”

TF also managed to chat with the two leads of Lady, both of whom have exciting news that broke earlier in the day.

Bryce Dallas Howard revealed she is a mum-to-be (co-star Paul Giamatti quipped, “I had nothing to do with it”).

Giamatti himself confirmed the rumours that he is to star in a Phillip K Dick biopic.
“Oh yeah, that’s definitely one in the works, yes sir. I’ve got no idea when, just at some point in the future. There’s no script yet, that’s a little way off but I’m very much a fan of Phillip K Dick, so it’s something that’s very interesting to me.”

We couldn’t let Bryce leave without a quick comment on her role as Gwen Stacy in the hugely anticipated Spider-Man 3, from franchise helmer Sam Raimi.

“It’s looking fantastic, even if I do say so myself! It’s been such an amazing experience and they’ve really created a third film that’s three times as big as the first two films combined.”

Howard told us that despite Spidey being her first experience of hooking her wagons to a big, bustling summer blockbuster, Raimi has a style that makes everyone feels comfortable.

“Sam has a way or working where he makes a film like an independent and then because of his devoted fan base, they are released in this huge way and that’s such a very exciting way to work.”