Television network admits it lied about unauthorized biography

samcurry

Screwing with the code...
Staff member
This really sux.... i was hoping for so much more.


NEW YORK (AP) -- The Sci Fi Channel admitted that it lied last month in claiming it was at odds with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan and was making an unauthorized biography about his "buried secret."

The hoax was part of a "guerilla marketing campaign" that went too far, network president Bonnie Hammer said Friday.

The network announced in December that the reclusive Shyamalan, maker of "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs," had agreed to participate in a documentary about his life to run in connection with this summer's release of his new movie, "The Village."

Sci Fi said last month, however, that Shyamalan had soured on the documentary when the questions got too personal. Documentarians Nathaniel Kahn and Callum Greene pressed on and made a three-hour film, "The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan," without his cooperation, the network said.

The Associated Press wrote about the documentary last month, and other media also ran accounts. In an interview, Greene described how Shyamalan's "cooperation dried up." A network spokesman told the AP that Sci Fi was confident it had legal grounds to air the film and would probably never work with Shyamalan again.

In a news release, Sci Fi said Shyamalan had attempted to shut down production of the "disturbing expose."

It was all a lie, and there is no buried secret, Hammer said Friday.

The documentary, scheduled to air Sunday, says a mysterious drowning of a child in a lake near Shyamalan's boyhood home in the Philadelphia area had profoundly affected his life and fueled his interest in the supernatural. That's not true either, Hammer said.

"We created a fictional special that was part-fact and part-fiction, and Night was part of the creation from the beginning," the network chief said.

Moviegoers walk away from Shyamalan's films not knowing what was real or not, and "we wanted to do the same thing in a special about his life," she said.

Sci Fi did not send a complete copy of the film to television critics, but sent a half-hour tape of highlights this week that, in some spots, hinted it might be a mockumentary.

Actor Adrien Brody, a star of "The Village," is interviewed in the documentary saying that he was sworn to secrecy about everything in the movie. Asked if he had short or long hair in the film, he refused to answer.

"Perhaps we might have taken the guerrilla campaign one step too far," Hammer said. "We thought it would create controversy and it probably went one step too far."

Hammer said she had been in on the hoax from the beginning and took responsibility for duping the public. Sci Fi, which is available in some 83 million homes, has recently been taken over by corporate parent NBC Universal.

"This marketing strategy is not consistent with our policy at NBC," said Rebecca Marks, NBC entertainment spokeswoman. "We would never intend to offend the public or the press and value our relationship with both."

Greene, a producer of "Lost in Translation," shares an agent with Shyamalan.
 
not really idle, but they did raise suspicion. which is sad, Because everyone wanted and expected more. Night has proved now he is no better than moore. He is an attention seeker. To bad the fool doesnt realize his movies garner him the best attention he could ever want.
 
Another Blair Witch :rolleyes:

Personally, I really liked The Sixth Sense, but that other movie he made with Bruce Willis - the one his bones are really fragile - I thought that one sucked so bad, it discouraged me from seeing Signs. Maybe I'll go rent it one of these days. Maybe I'll rent The Village one of these days too :shrug:
 
I just watched Signs for the first time, last Saturday. It was better than the trailers made it.
 
kuulani said:
Another Blair Witch :rolleyes:

Personally, I really liked The Sixth Sense, but that other movie he made with Bruce Willis - the one his bones are really fragile - I thought that one sucked so bad, it discouraged me from seeing Signs. Maybe I'll go rent it one of these days. Maybe I'll rent The Village one of these days too :shrug:
The other movie with Bruce Willis was Unbreakable, but it was Samuel L. Jackson's character that had the fragile bones. Actually, he said he had the condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which is a real, albeit very rare, condition, which was actually accurately portrayed in the movie.

Here is some other interesting trivia (well, interesting to me, at least) related to Unbreakable (all from imdb.com):

-The film takes place in Philadelphia. On the wall of Elijah's workshop among the newspaper clippings is a headline "Killer Virus Released at Airport". Bruce Willis stared in Twelve Monkeys (1995), in which a killer virus was first released at the Philadelphia airport.

-In Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Inspector Cobb (Larry Bryggman) says of McClane (Bruce Willis) that "by next month he's gonna be a security guard". In this movie, Willis finally is a security guard.

-Elijah asks David what made him choose protection as a career out of all the things he could have done, such as "founding a chain of restaurants". In reality, Bruce Willis is one of the founders of Planet Hollywood, a restaurant chain.

-The stadium that Bruce Willis's character works at is actually Franklin Field at the University of Pennsylvania. It is the oldest stadium in the country and the first to have an electronic scoreboard, an upper deck, and the first site of a live radio and television broadcast.

-This was originally supposed to be the first of a trilogy, but its subsequent failure at the box office scrapped any plans for a sequel.

Here is some trivia from The Sixth Sense:

-This is the second movie with Bruce Willis in a leading role where one of the main characters is named "Cole", whom nobody believes and is considered to be insane or unusual. The other was Twelve Monkeys - in which Cole says, "All I see are dead people". Also, both movies have a number in the title, and both take place in Philadelphia.

-M. Night Shyamalan pitched the film as a cross between The Exorcist (1973) and Ordinary People (1980).

And now for some trivia from Signs:

-Director M. Night Shyamalan cites Birds, The (1963), Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) as the influences for this film.

-Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) was originally written as an older character. Paul Newman was offered the role but turned it down, as did Clint Eastwood.

-The stories of the children's' birth are actually the stories of M. Night Shaymalan's two children.

Oh, and did you know that Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little? :)
 
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