Drummer Boy

Watching my own movies is such a scary thing. In those days I could just go and sit anywhere in the theater and hear the audience. I remember watching once and there was a guy with a girl sitting next to me and he was being snarky at the beginning of the movie … commenting on this or that and just trying to be a smart aleck, and I’m sitting next to him—of course nobody knew me then—and he slowly gets quieter and quieter, and then silent.  I could tell by his body language and everything that he was completely enraptured by what he was watching.  I could feel the whole audience become one.  Where at the beginning he was an individual, the room became one entity and he became a part of it, and by the end when it finished he said, “that was incredible” to his girlfriend and he had awe in his voice.  It was really incredible to watch that happen – an individual become part of a larger entity in the experience of watching a movie, which is exactly what the movie theaters are meant to do.

M. Night Shyamalan