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July 19, 2004 Sunday night, the Sci-fi Channel aired the documentary The Buried Secrets of M. Night Shyamalan. I tuned in expecting to see a show about the director, his movies, and maybe even a tidbit or two on his upcoming film The Village. What I got was a big disappointment. There was a story ahead of the documentary’s airing announcing that Shyamalan had cut ties with director Nathaniel Kahn and producer Callum Greene. This was indicator to me that the hype was not all it was cracked up to be. While Greene contends that Shyamalan quit cooperating, the conclusion I draw from watching the documentary is that Greene and Kahn went too far. They showed a lack of integrity and a reckless disregard for the truth in their quest for information about Shyamalan. Rather than conducting the approved interviews and releasing the material Shyamalan and his people requested, Kahn and Greene, out of frustration, began delving deeper into the director’s background. Kahn’s approach seemed rather innocuous at the beginning when he approached a group of Shyamalan’s devout adolescent admirers. One member of the group claimed that he knew that the director was in touch with “the other side.” Kahn, seeing this as an opportunity, interviewed the teen. My impression is that this was an anxious fan seeking to get on camera. Kahn dug deeper still, interviewing people that were not on the director’s approved list. Greene showed little interest in stopping Kahn. With each unapproved interview, Kahn started to paint a different picture of Shyamalan. He started to reveal a mysterious, reclusive movie director. Kahn even went so far as to pose as a documentary director filming about historic house architecture to gain access to a home Shyamalan apparently lived in when he was ten. As the documentary dragged on into its third hour, I began to draw my own conclusions. Was this the real M. Night Shyamalan that Kahn was showing us, or was this all an elaborate public relations stunt? Word got back to Shyamalan’s publicist that Kahn had overstepped his boundaries, and he began to lose his credibility. One of the celebrities that Kahn was scheduled to interview refused to speak to him. Kahn and Greene made their biggest mistake in confronting Shyamalan with the information they had gathered. This was no longer a documentary, but a long, drawn out investigative report. What should have easily been a one-hour special about the director and his upcoming movie ballooned into fluff piece with very little factual basis. Kahn and Greene did try to go back to the director and get another interview, but to no avail. Instead, they received a phone call from an angry Shyamalan. All Kahn was left with was an unscientific poll he took of Philadelphia residents about the supernatural to end his documentary. There was a serious lack of ethics on the part of the film makers in their approach to the documentary. I also see what appears to be bad judgement on the part of Sci-fi in airing the documentary. Sci-fi should have had someone check out the facts and theories presented in the film. Instead, the channel approved the documentary to air. It appears that the network chose its bottom line over the truth, whatever that may be. ------------ About the author Jose Galvan: I'm a 27 year old writer from Texas. I just recently got out of college, and decided to pursue freelance writing. Email: galvanj@stthom.edu Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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