We talk ‘The Happening’ with Shyamalan, Wahlberg, Deschanel, and Leguizamo

Though The Happening–in its eerie examination of the nature of belief and fear–is reminiscent of director M. Night Shyamalan’s previous films, it also forges new ground for the filmmaker. For starters, it’s his first R-rated film, which Shyamalan claims is entirely appropriate, seeing as how it presents the tragic results of an apocalpyptic scenario hitting the northeastern United States. Tossing aside pretense, however, Shyamalan readily admits he’s made a B movie, in the tradition of the paranoia-soaked atomic-age sci-fi thrillers of the ’50s. But this B movie boasts one of the director’s strongest casts in recent memory, with Mark Wahlberg in the lead role of Elliot, a high school science teacher trying to make sense of some decidedly unsensible circumstances. The charmingly quirky Zooey Deschanel plays Alma, Elliot’s wife, who’s wrestling throughout this crisis with a secret she’s kept from her husband. And the multi-talented John Leguizamo is on-hand as the couple’s friend–and Elliot’s colleague–math teacher Julian, who seeks only to protect his own wife and child.

We spoke with Shyamalan and his cast at the film’s New York press junket yesterday, where they shared with us how they prepped for their roles, their experiences with the unexplainable, and of course their greatest fears…

Note: After reading this, be sure to check out all of our video coverage of The Happening. And be sure to stop back tomorrow for our exclusive one-on-one with Zooey Deschanel!

Warning: The following interview contains spoilers! Read on at your own risk!

How closely does this storyline reflect your worldview?

Shyamalan: You know, they’re all a little bit like therapy, all these movies—about something that’s bothering me or family things. I’m always working them in, in kind of like a journal way. But it does represent the things that are on my mind. I think everybody in our generation is starting to worry about these types of things right now, certainly in an election year, think about the future. It’s interesting, the slew of kind of end-of-the-world movies. There’s an anxiety that’s in the air, and it sort of mimics the 50s, the same kinds of anxieties that were about our future…where are we headed? Are we going in the right direction? Is it too late to change course? [I had that] all in the back of my head. I never thought I was actually all that serious a person. But when I sit down to write I guess more adult things come out.

This is your first film with the R rating. How freeing was that? What did you get to do in this film that you weren’t able to do in the other films?

Shyamalan: I got an R on two other movies—on The Sixth Sense and The Village. I got an R initially, for the intensity of certain scenes. We were right on the line, and I could always just pull back and resubmit it; and they go, “Oh, it’s much better.” All I did was take out some sound effects. It’s always the impact; the emotion was different than what I actually showed. But this one, the screenplay that I wrote, there was just no way to do it any other way. One of the movies I was thinking about was Pan’s Labyrinth. I was thinking about that a lot when I made the decision, because I didn’t want to make it as an agenda. You want to make an organic decision about what does the material want to do. And when I thought about Pan’s Labyrinth—which had visceral moments of violence, juxtaposed against the softer kind of things that are going on against the canvas, it gave it authority and some teeth, whereas a PG-13 version of Pan’s Labyrinth for me wouldn’t have had that kind of impact. It wouldn’t have stayed with me the way that movie has stayed with me. And so it felt like the right balance of things. It was exciting, and it was disturbingly easy to shoot all those scenes. I had such a fun time.

The idea of plants having consciousness is kind of a non-western world view. Did you consider that as coming from your other influences. Could you guys talk about how your non-western experiences have influenced you? And could you talk about the spiritual side of the film?

Shyamalan: Definitely. It’s interesting because the Native American culture, that’s all it’s about. My middle name, Night, it’s an American Indian name. That is what I felt so attached to when I was a kid—from the American Indian culture—the relationship to nature, and worshipping the sky, the earth, the rock. That relationship felt correct then, as a kid, and it feels correct now, as an adult. It’s interesting how in all our religions, so little is said about how we should feel towards nature. It’s an interesting thing to kind of get the hierarchy back in line. We’re just one of many living creatures on the planet.

Did you guys have any thoughts about the spiritual aspects of this film?

Wahlberg: Well, I think Night cast me because of my strong faith. But then we’d do a take, and he’d be like, “That was great. What were you thinking about?” I was like, “Jesus.” He was like, “Oh, we got to do it again!” Literally.

Shyamalan: We had this conversation. “What were you thinking about?” “Jesus.” “What?!”

Wahlberg: He said, “Oh my God. I really liked that! What were you thinking about?” I said, “Jesus, baby.” “We got to do it again.” But obviously, you know, yeah, I think he cast me because of my faith. Somebody asked me why Elliot survived. It’s because he had so much faith and hope.

Deschanel: I mean think it can be interpreted as a philosophical message as much as a spiritual message. In that faith can be spiritual or it can also be a philosophy. So I think the movie raises questions, and any time you’re raising questions, you’re inspiring people to think about things. Because I definitely came out of seeing the film feeling like I wanted to question my own beliefs.

Leguizamo: I haven’t seen the movie. I didn’t see the flick. I don’t know why. Probably because I’m a pagan, and people who have no faith weren’t allowed to see it. [Laughs.]

Wahlberg: No, because it will convert you, baby. You will be touched by the hand of God. Trust me.

Leguizamo: I’ll be touched by something. [Laughs.] But what I loved about the script—and I think great writing has some heart, and has something to say about the world and the state of human beings and the human condition…and that’s what I love about the script. That is was that message, that’s missing in so many big Hollywood flicks that don’t have a point of view, or don’t have some visceral thing to say to make us feel something. And I loved that about the movie—I loved that it had a point of view, and that it wasn’t afraid of that.

Your protagonist is a science teacher, and you also have a scientist at the end who talks about the limits of rational thought. How does that tie into the whole spiritual aspect?

Shyamalan: Right. Well, you know, I was reading the Einstein biography when I was writing the screenplay. I don’t know if you’ve read it. It’s just fantastic. The new one, by Isaacson. A beautiful, beautiful book. One of the things I was struck by—and when you read the book you may not even see that it’s in there, but I saw it in there—was that Einstein was this guy…

Wahlberg: He converted?

Shyamalan: Yeah, he rejected religion and became atheistic, did his wondrous things in his twenties and got really into it. Then in the gaps in science he started seeing a hand, you know? In his point of view, the hand of God. A divine kind of “Is there something there?” His life struggle was finding an overall formula, an overall thing that could define the design of things, and a belief that that was there. And then he became very religious. The ultimate man of science became a man of faith. In a way, when I was writing Elliot, it affected Elliot. He’s just a high school science teacher. He has plenty of gaps in the knowledge of science. I said, “You’re just a regular science teacher. You’re not going to be the hero that figures out something. It’s not like that. But you see in those gaps…” He honors those things in the gap. That’s why Mark felt like the right casting, because obviously he’s a man of faith, you know? Because there are things that we don’t know. The lack of need to define it in the closest category is something inspiring when I see that in somebody, whether it’s Einstein or Elliot’s character or Mark. And so it is a kind of question of science to almost give evidence to something else.

What was it like portraying these characters–a math teacher, a science teacher and his wife?

Wahlberg: I was paranoid because I was some high school dropout. I wasn’t a good student and I had to portray a teacher who was actually really good at his job and the kids loved him. I didn’t tell Night that. I don’t know if he knew too much about my past. But I definitely got a GED science book, and spent a lot of time walking around the Ben Franklin Institute, following kids around on their class field trips. In other films, I’ve spoken other languages; and it’s one thing for me to be able to say the words, but I obviously need to feel confident enough to understand them, to convey them.

Leguizamo: It was a departure for me to play somebody I guess of…a little upgraded kind of character, in that intellectual way. But I tutored Calculus in college. The kids all failed, but… I transferred to a different college after that.

Deschanel: So they couldn’t find you? [Laughs.]

Leguizamo: I also tutored Spanish. The kids all failed that too. But there’s only so far a teacher can take students. That’s why I washed my hands of that. But I felt confident. I enjoyed it. Because math to me in college was sort of the only thing that I felt you could believe in, that was finite, that had answers, and it helped me through those years. And then I dropped out of college. I felt too confident. [Laughs.]

How about dumbing down to play the ditzy wife?

Deschanel: “Dumbing down”? You thought I was ditzy? I was supposed to be a therapist, with a Ph.D. That’s doctor to you!

Shyamalan: When I wrote the characters they all had some aspects of me, of things I was struggling with. Or thinking about. Zooey’s character is kind of the person that’s scared to be vulnerable. They’re scared to be vulnerable, and use humor to deflect that feeling of “I don’t want to risk myself.” The movie’s really about the state of where we are now in the world—the paranoia, how we feel toward strangers, to each other, to other countries, to everything. In the sense that we don’t trust anybody. I was saying that Mrs. Jones is kind of the ultimate version of her character. Like, if she kept on going, she would close off everything and distrust everybody. So we went that way in talking about her, and really that’s the part of me that wants to protect myself, and kind of jokes about it, and tries to undermine it, but it’s really a delicate thing of me to kind of go, “It’s better to protect myself. Let me protect myself like everybody else is protecting themselves.” Which is exactly the opposite of what I tell my kids. I tell them, “Be completely vulnerable. Take every hit you can, because that’ll allow you to feel all those great things that are gonna come—love, all the joy, creativity, all that stuff. It will always outweigh the amount of hits you’re gonna get. Although you want to protect yourself from those little hits. So really the struggle of the movie was her struggle, which is my struggle, which is “Is this an appropriate way to be, this person?” Which is the way I am naturally. “Is this an appropriate way to be, or is this the right way to be?” The struggle of whether to question it or not.

John’s character for me is… I’m the guy with the numbers. It always comforts me to give numbers—“There’s a thirty-four percent chance that we’re gonna be okay.” Again, in many ways, they’re similar, because he sees beauty in math as well. So when he tells that story when they’re dying in the jeep…he tells that beautiful riddle and says, “If you just double that penny at the end of the month you’ll have over ten million dollars.” It’s amazing, the properties of math. And he tries one last time to teach this girl in the jeep, “Isn’t math wondrous? Do you want to hear one more story about it?” Again, they each see something kind of bigger in their fields. Whereas Alma’s the person kind of deciding whether the world is that way, or if it’s really a kind of crappy place. So that was what they were all setting out to do. And in all of them, the first thing I wanted to do was… Literally, it was an agenda. I know this sounds silly, but I wanted to put the most likable cast that I could possible put at the center or the movie. Because you can get a great actor, but they come from a dark place, you know? And then if you put that at the center of this dark movie the movie would just become unbearable. But they all come from a place—they don’t know it, they don’t know why they do it, that’s their gift; they come from a place of light, all three of them. And to put those guys and all the rest of the cast… Even Betty Buckley, who chose to play Mrs. Jones, kind of trying to have light, and then it just messes up. A whole cast of actors coming from light was right at the center. That’s why the movie, even though it’s so dark, has such a great light to it.

Do you see this as a popcorn movie, and is it possible to have a popcorn movie with a [personal message]?

Shyamalan: Yeah, definitely. One of the things that I said to everybody, the cast and crew, I said, “This is a B movie here. Let’s get ourselves straight here. This is just a grade B movie. We’re making the best B movie that we can here, but that’s our job. We’re making a B movie. If the movie has something that sticks with you, great. But we’re not gonna put that in front of the movie. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. It’s a paranoia movie. We just need to pound away. That’s our job.” I was really clear about that. So in that way it was meant to be entertainment, but all of my movies are a little bit of… I think one reporter yesterday was saying, “How come you just don’t go make a pure popcorn movie and then go make your art movie? Because it seems like you want to do…” The problem is that both are my instincts, to have one leg in each place, which sometimes pisses off one group and sometimes pisses off the other group. My wife says, “Just make one or the other.” I wish I could, but as it ends up, I do think about all these kinds of spiritual things. And I do love cheeseburgers and I do Seinfeld and I do love Coca-Cola and I do love Michael Jordan. It’s just me. So if I took one side away, the side that really loves to read about philosophy and I just pretended that didn’t exist, it would be a lie. And if I pretended I wasn’t jumping up and down watching the Celtics last night that would be a lie as well. So it’s that balancing act. I keep trying to be honest here.

This film presents an ultimate nightmare scenario. Could you share your greatest fears in real life?

Leguizamo: We’re getting a little personal here. [Laughs.] I’ll share with you my second biggest fear… My big fear? Wow. Being asked about my big fear—that’s my big fear! No… That Obama doesn’t win this fall. That would be terrifying. That would be my most horrifying fear; that would really depress me. And math wouldn’t even help me then.

Deschanel: I would have to agree with you. That’s a big fear.

Leguizamo: That’s terrifying.

Wahlberg: I don’t even want to think about that… You guys ever been to jail?! Then you’d be scared.

Shyamalan: I’ve changed my thinking, and my analysis of fear has come down to the factor of being alone. It’s all based on versions of that. Take random things that you’re scared of… I’m scared to fly or you’re scared of the new job that you have. It’s all related to the feeling of “I’m gonna have emotions, and no one else will have those emotions. I’ll be alone in some manner.” So if you’re scared of flying but if you talk to the pilot or you talk to somebody else you don’t feel as scared. It’s the human connection. You’re not alone anymore, you have commonality. And I’ve said that art, I believe, is the ability to convey that we’re not alone. That’s the power of art. It’s always been in our genetics, since we were cave people. Fear protects us—“Don’t go down that road, you’ll be alone. We don’t know what’s down that road. You’ll be alone. Being alone is not good. Together we’re safer.” And the person that didn’t have that, didn’t survive, right? And now it’s kind of flipped on us and become a limiting factor. Now we’re scared to put our kids in the backyard now, because our neighbors might do something. But our neighbors are wonderful people; the assumption is wrong. It’s the same stats that it was when I was a kid running around on a bike. We’re so much more scared now, but nothing has changed. Nothing has changed, except for fear. And the fear builds on itself, because we get more and more isolated like Mrs. Jones, until you’re fear has been realized—you’re all alone.
Source: FearNet