SCI FI Network lied about M. Night Shayamalan biography

POSTED BY: Haken
UPDATED: Friday, July 23, 2004 22:16
VIEWED: 7280
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Damn. I have to admit, it worked. Made me wanna watch it to see what inspires Shyamalan to tell the kind of stories that he does. I'm watching it anyways since I'm a fan, but, damn, got me good. I actually wouldn't have minded finding this out after I've seen it. I guess NBC is the big party pooper here.

From CNN:

Quote:

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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.

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I think it's time to get rid of Bonnie Hammer...things have just gone from bad to worse with her at the helm of SciFi. I really resent their attitude that scifi fans are emotionally immature, sexist, sensationalistic little dweebs that will buy anything they throw in front of us just because it says "scifi" on the label.

Oh, and the little "space vamipires" they're throwing into Stargate:Atlantis made me lose interest REAL quick on that show...

"We gotta go to that crappy town where I'M a hero..."

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Did you believe "The Blair Witch Project" was real, too? I don't think the "guerilla marketing" of the two are that different.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by Hell's Kitten:
Did you believe "The Blair Witch Project" was real, too? I don't think the "guerilla marketing" of the two are that different.

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As soon as I saw the promo for the MNS bio, I turned to my husband and said, "ah, they're doing a Blair Witch set up!" I just think people are more sophisticated than to believe all the hype about "buried secrets", etc.

I wish SciFi would treat their viewers as having higher than normal intelligence, because I would expect that the demographics for scifi fans probably does skew towards higher IQ scores. Now, this doesn't mean that there aren't issues with social and emotional functioning among some fans, but that's no reason to treat us as unable to tell truth from fiction, just because we choose to spend time in fictional universes...

"We gotta go to that crappy town where I'M a hero..."

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That's a valid point - the best Science fiction from Novels, to movies to TV is the kind of fiction created with higher intelectual principles in mind. (Be they technical of philosophical)

Just from looking at the marketing of alot of stuff it's easy to see that the principle behind them is

Sci-fi = weird shit = Nerds = cult audience = money for years to come cause those wacky nerds will buy anything so long as we say Sci-fi.

I don't have the sci-fi channel but looking at there out put....... I don't know. I think what I'd expect is a network with the sensibility towards making fiction (Drama or comedy) that HBO do except that the fiction that they make is centered around things a little more other worldly.

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Bonnie Hammer must go. Period.

Nuff Said?

"Observe Analyze & Respond"
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