R5Realty News and Notes

Market Snapshots and Commentary on Value and Quality of life along the former Main Line of the Pennsylvania Rail Road, up until recently called the R5 Line, and now officially known as the Paoli /Thorndale line. R5Realty runs from Center City Philadelphia through the walkable, Westward outlying Towns & Townships.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

M. Night Shyamalan's Intern Now Lower Merion Real Estate Agent Haunting Philadelphia and its Suburbs


Lower Merion's Favorite Son: M. Night Shyamalan
 In the mid-1990s, while still transitioning from our unraveling family wallpaper business into residential Real Estate sales with Prudential, I volunteered to work for a then all-but-unknown, aspiring filmmaker by the name M. Night Shyamalan. At the time, Shyamalan kept ground-floor office space in the lovely villa-inspired confines of the Whitehall Apartments (now Casa Del Sol) on Lancaster Avenue in Haverford, Lower Merion, while working on what I turned out to be a wonderful screenplay adaption of  E.B. White's Stuart Little.

With little in the way of other employment prospects or pressing expenses at the time - and under the guise of "do what you like and the rest will follow.' (I like movies!),  I indulged the Shyamalan's  summer "internship" with a similar position at Philadelphia's community non-profit Scribe Video Center.

`Casa Del Sol' Apts. housed Shyamalan's Office
  What followed at Shyamalan's office included several weeks of monitoring then print-only edition of  "Variety" magazine to help keep M. Night and his team up-to-date with industry news and developments. I also assisted in upgrading Shyamalan's internet navigation crew regarding what was, at the time, a mysteriously burgeoning "information super highway" aka The Internet.  Things were going smoothly for a week or so until I was sat down in front of the VCR-TV to screen Shyamalan's first two feature films, his NYU student-feature Praying with Anger, and the in-the-works to be released Miramax family-film "Wide Awake," starring Rosie O'Donnell. and Dennis Leary. Following the viewings I was asked how I liked the films.

I Admit to Having No 6th Sense Re: Hollywood 
With no aspirations of becoming an unpaid sycophant (not that I was pressured to be one), I gave my honest gut reaction to "Praying with Anger" and "Wide Awake"  Thus ended my ephemeral connection to the now world-famous celluloid auteur. I shook hands with he who would become Lower Merion's most famous film-maker of the 21st century, was graciously thanked for my time, and was shown the door. 

Eventually, I really enjoyed Stuart Little and of course, the wonderfully creepy Sixth Sense. I had no idea the diminutive, young director of the two videos which I viewed in the basement of the Whitehall Apartments would go on to produce such majesty and success.

No regrets. I never had any film production chops and no matter how hard I might have tried to ingratiate myself, its wildly unlikely I would have taken a glittery-ride on Shyamalan's coat-tails. The she-bang left with me with an interesting anecdote and an awareness to always keep an open mind about  my own 6th Sense.