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.