‘The Sixth Sense’ With Sean Fennessey, Chris Ryan, and Jason Concepcion
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So this is the last non-new episode that we're posting in 2024. After that, we are going to keep going and going. But I wanted to post one last episode from our Rewatchables 1999 series, which we did five years ago in 2019. We broke down a bunch of movies. It was a little spinoff.

for the rewatchables for Luminary. And it was on there for a few years. And now we got those episodes back. And this is the last one we really need to run. And now it's getting, you know, it's been five years. It'll still hold up. It's still really good. Sean Fantasy, Chris Ryan, old friend Jason Concepcion, the three of them breaking it down, one of the best twist movies ever.

really the last 40 years, I have a complicated relationship with this movie because it makes me mad that I didn't figure out the twist. Usually I'm pretty good at figuring out, um, wait a second, something doesn't smell right. Wait, why is, and I just, I just missed it. And it really upsets me when I watch it. I watched this a couple of weeks ago cause I was debating whether we wanted to do a brand new episode about this movie or not. And I,

i'm not positive if it's like uh i want to re-watch this 20 times movie once you know the twist for some people it is because the filmmaking it's m night shamlon's first movie the bruce willis part was the part that was really fascinating to me because you know he has this run starting with die hard and moonlighting in the late 80s goes all the way through makes three die hard movies he's in the last boy scout

And then by the time we get to like the 93 range, he's doing Striking Distance, a movie that I really like, by the way. And Color of Night. And he's in North. And it feels like it's starting to go sideways a little bit. Then he comes rallying back with Pulp Fiction, which we covered a few weeks ago. Die Hard with a Vengeance. And then he just kind of keeps crushing it through the 90s. He's in 12 Monkeys. He's in The Fifth Element. He does The Jackal, which some people like. And he does Armageddon. The Siege.

And then The Sixth Sense. And it is this 12-year run that's about as good as any A-plus lister from a popcorn movie standpoint. Not quite on a scale of one to Michael Douglas, not maybe as good as the 12-year Michael Douglas run, but really, really good. And this is an important movie for his portfolio. So I think that's why I enjoyed rewatching it the most when I watched it a couple weeks ago. But Sean and CR and Jason,

We'll be breaking it down right now on the rewatchables. Let's go. Cole, what's wrong? Don't move. Don't make a sound. I want to tell you my secret now. You ever feel the prickly things on the back of your neck? That's them. The Sixth Sense, rated PG-13, starts Friday, August 6th.

Jason and Chris, we're here to talk about The Sixth Sense. And when we do talk about these movies, we tend to have these very open, breezy conversations at the very top of the show. And one of us always asks, when did you see this movie? This movie is a perfect time to talk about that kind of question. Jason, I think you said that this was a top three in-theater experience for you in your life. Yeah. Well, I was working in movie theaters at that time. And I had heard nothing about this movie. I knew nothing about it.

And I watched it. And I thought, so I thought the scene with Cole and his mom at the, they're in the traffic jam from the accident. I'm like, oh, this is the climax. This is emotional. This is amazing. So when, spoiler. Yeah.

We discover that Dr. Malcolm Crowe was actually dead the whole time. I was waylaid by it. It knocked me out. As a movie theater employee, did you see this movie in chunks? Or did you see it straight through and then swing by? I saw it straight through. It opened whenever in August something. And so I went on a Sunday, like the first Sunday on my day off because I could just get in for free. And I was...

blown through the back of the theater after it. It was an extremely affecting movie. First of all, Toni Collette, I think, may be the best on-screen crier of my lifetime. Wow. I've never seen anybody cry like that, where I'm like, man, am I going to cry? And so I'm opened up by that scene with the grandma's pendant and the whole thing, and then he's dead? I was just not ready for it. And also, you know, we...

M. Night Shyamalan's shtick is played out by this point, but you just were unprepared for a twist of that level. I'm really excited to talk with you guys about the idea of twist endings. This is a very resonant thing, not just in this movie, but in a lot of movies at this time. Chris, what about you? Did you see this in theaters? I did. Not a fan. No, of course not. 99 was just such an incredible movie theater year. Blair Witch, this, The Matrix, Fight Club, going to see the movies and having these moments and then...

I think being pretty respectful of like... I don't know. It was inconceivable to go to a bar or go up to a dude and be like, guess what happens at the end of this movie. Yeah. It's like you really did respect the process. You respected the sanctity of...

fuck dude, you gotta go see The Sixth Sense. Just trust me. Like that was it. And that was like a much different way of communicating enthusiasm and the word of mouth was much different back then. Just a remarkable experience. Obviously I was like all in because of Philadelphia. This is sort of marked a little bit of a filmmaking renaissance for Philadelphia as a setting with Philadelphia, the movie, 12 Monkeys and Sixth Sense and really showed off the city in a cool way. There's a little bit more, I feel like,

Back in the 90s, they just spent a little bit more money on shooting places in different locations. It wasn't all Atlanta or Louisiana. And you can really tell. I think it gives it a lot of character. I was really, really super into Bruce Willis in the 90s. I just loved his movies. He had such a weird up-and-down career. And on the surface, this seemed almost like, what's Bruce Willis doing in this movie with a kid? Yeah. What's up with this?

And then you get introduced to the possibility that you got a new Spielberg on your hands. And that was really the vibe around this movie and around Shyamalan at the time.

Yeah, I've told this story in the past on other podcasts, but I did not see this movie in movie theaters. This was the August before my senior year of high school, and I was at basketball camp when this was happening and just didn't get to participate. Just dominating? Yes, I was working on my silky drop step, just posting up five, six foot dudes at Bruns basketball camp at Manhattan College. Just watching for his great tape. Yeah. And so...

And so I didn't get a chance to see it. What I did see was a segment on The Daily Show that fall, and there was a comedian slash cultural critic named Frank DiGiacomo. This is back, I believe, in the Craig Kilbourne days of The Daily Show.

And this motherfucker came on TV and spoiled the movie. Who did? Frank DiGiacomo. Unbelievable. And it might have been like three weeks, five weeks. I don't know how far afterwards. But you guys remember too in terms of seeing a movie like that distance between theater to blockbuster is also a very sacred time. To your point, Chris, you're right. There was a lot of respect amongst fans. And...

This guy went on TV and spoiled that Bruce Willis was dead. Can I tell you the most 90s sentence ever that is applicable to me? I had the usual suspects spoiled for me by a piece in Bikini Magazine in which Dave Navarro and his brother

did movie reviews and their blurb for The Usual Suspects was literally just what the ending was. Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey as Kaiser Sosa.

That's all the review was. That's how that movie was spoiled for me as I was traveling to like the Wild West, Washington, D.C. for like the Congressional Students Honor Society. So we got to get Dave Navarro and Frank DiGiacomo on a spaceship and send them to fucking Mars. That's what we learned. Beat them with a paddle. Let me give you some key data points. No, Dave DiGiacomo and Navarro would basically be the guys who were like walking out of screenings and being like,

Some interesting third act twists in this movie. On like the five minutes after the embargo lifts. Yeah. Dave Navarro invented film Twitter. It's really a tough beat. The Sixth Sense was written and directed by, as we mentioned, M. Night Shyamalan. This is his second movie, but definitely his breakthrough. Yeah. Very notable producorial credit on this movie. Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, two people we'll talk about a little bit later on in the show. It, of course, stars Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, and...

Donnie Wahlberg, Misha Barton, and fourth build Haley Joel Osment, which in hindsight is bizarre because, man, what an amazing breakthrough, incredible performance by this kid. And it's funny to see him come forth because he is the star of the movie, even though Bruce Willis is by far the biggest movie star. This movie was shot by Tak Fujimoto. Tak Fujimoto, Jonathan Demme's longtime cinematographer, literally one of the most interesting and progressive cinematographers ever. This movie was released by Buena Vista Disney. Mm-hmm.

Does not seem like a Disney movie, but it is a Disney movie. So is Spyglass like an offshoot of Disney? I believe that's Barry Mendel's production company. Barry Mendel got his hands on this script and sold the movie to Disney. Gotcha. It was budgeted at $40 million and it earned $672.8 million around the world. That is what we call a global smash. 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. As we know, that doesn't matter. This movie was nominated for six Oscars. Woo!

Best picture, best director, best original screenplay, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, and best editing. That's a lot for a weird thriller released by a no-name guy in the middle of August.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote of this movie, "I have to admit I was blindsided by the ending, much like Jason. The solution to many of the film's puzzlements is right there in plain view and the movie hasn't cheated, but the very boldness of the storytelling carried me right past the crucial hints and right through to the end of the film where everything takes on an intriguing new dimension."

Should we talk about twists now? Yeah. Let's do it. I want to just say up top that upon re-watching it, I don't think I had ever noticed this before. I'm sure there are pieces written about this very take, but just believe me when I say I feel like I am coming to this pretty fresh. I didn't notice how much this movie is very simply a magic trick. Yeah. And right down to the things that you know are the staples of a magic trick of The Pledge, Disturbed Kid...

begins talking to a therapist. The turn, the kid can see dead people. The prestige, turns out the therapist is one of those dead people. It's such a perfect, it's not even like three-act structure. It's actually a perfect magic trick and I'd forgotten that they talk about magic tricks in the friggin' movie. And that's sort of the ingenious part of this. You know, we've spent so much time talking about 99 movies and thinking about movies from this period and a lot of ways, a lot of ways

I think you could divide them up into two different categories. There's movies that you feel like could be released today, whether it's like The Matrix or Fight Club, I think both would have like the style and the technical bravado with which they are made. You just wouldn't blink if they were in theaters today. There's nothing wrong with this film technically, but...

It's so unencumbered by any other crap. It's just the trick. Yeah. There's no B-plot of crime-solving until, like, the very end. There's no set pieces with CGI or bad monsters or really... All the ghosts are very, very...

appropriate for the place that they're in. And there's no overarching mythology that you have to weave through to be like, oh yes, obviously the Native Americans who were here did this. So we have to, you know, and now we have to, like, it's none of that. It's just a trick. And sometimes a trick is enough. Yeah.

So this movie falls into this interesting lineage of movies from the 90s and early 2000s that applied this. Jason already mentioned The Usual Suspects, which was, I would say, probably the first in this run of films that had the kind of like, oh shit feeling at the end of the movie. Also among them, Seven, Fight Club, which we talked about in 1999, Scream, and then in the 2000s, Memento and the others. Would you throw Crying Game in there?

Wow. Wow. I mean, that's earlier. That's like 93? Because Crying Game, obviously a different kind of twist, but it was another one where it's like, don't spoil a Crying Game. That's true. Yeah, that's true. That was a part of the marketing campaign for sure. I think that the difference was that these movies were a little bit more...

pulpier, a little bit less prestigious in a way. The Crying Game was presented as such an Oscar film, Neil Jordan movie. This is a genre movie. Right, exactly. I remember, obviously I was furious about the reveal when I learned it while watching The Daily Show, but in general...

I'm really nostalgic for this period of movie going. And now it's like, did Thanos snap everybody out of existence is the big twist. And, you know, we don't want to spoil that either. And there is this kind of false sanctity around talking about what happened. And, you know, I was in the middle of negotiating an interview with a director recently. And it's a filmmaker I really like and I'm looking forward to talking to this person. But they were like, did the director like to come on on this date so that he can talk about spoilers from the film?

So that completely alters the nature of the conversation. Sure. I wonder what it was like for somebody like M. Night to kind of be arranging and strategizing his career around these kinds of, you know, personal and creative choices, you know? Yeah, it's... You have to... Going back to 1999, you're talking about early internet. I don't even... I think I might have had email for like a year at that point. There was just...

much less of a chance that you would actually get you had to get spoiled by basic cable and even then it felt like a sin yeah yeah uh so unlike today where it's like you can just you can just turn on your phone and get spoiled by any old thing you know trying to engage with your work email trying to look at twitter look at instagram for any old reason you get spoiled back then it felt like it was much easier to get a movie a plot twist like this through i'm

Thinking about what you said about a magic trick, casting of Bruce Willis, I think, was really so important for that. Because you just are primed to think, this guy won't die in the first 35 seconds of this movie. He's our hero. He's our hero. He's going to be there the whole way. And...

Of course, he is in the movie the whole time, but that subtle psychological bias that you have is so important for making this whole thing work. Because as Ebert says, when you watch it again, watching it again this morning, it is all right there. It's all right there in front of you. Like when Cole says, I see dead people, finally tells the secret to his psychologist. The camera very subtly pans in on Bruce and Ebert.

That should be a tell, but you just don't feel it. Famously, Frank Marshall, the producer of this movie, wanted to cut that cut to Bruce Willis because he thought that that was a dead giveaway of what the story was. And it's interesting that they decided to keep that. And frankly, most people just didn't catch on to that. Now, I will say,

While this isn't really one of my favorite movies of all time, I feel like it's one of the first movies to redefine the notion of rewatchable. I was just going to bring this up. So go ahead. Well, there's this whole thing of like, especially before streaming services, when albums would hit a certain level of like platinum status or, you know, when Hootie and the Blowfish is like just absolutely ubiquitous.

ubiquitous. It's not just because everybody is buying it. It's because they're also buying copies for friends. You go into a certain level of evangelism, but also shareability and also people who are like, I want to recreate this experience for other people. I think this similar thing happens to certain blockbuster movies like The Matrix and Sixth Sense where people are going back

to rewatch it because there was not YouTube Easter egg videos. There were not explainer videos. You had to go back and be like, I'll pay $7 again. Yeah. And I'll go to a matinee on Saturday because I want to see if he ever notices or is, is Haley Joel's character aware that he's dead the whole time? Or is it, you know, all these things that are questions that you would immediately on a Friday night. Now, if you saw six cents, you'd go home. And the three of us here, uh,

make this content where we're like here's what you need to know about this movie yep we like single-handedly like are we are part of the industry that keeps people from being like I guess I gotta see that movie right

And it's such a different time now. The rewatchability of this movie as a case that you go back to over and over to try and solve is, you can't understate how important that was. Yeah, let's lift the curtain a little bit. When we're doing a podcast like this, obviously we prepare, we rewatch the movie, particularly if you're in the seat that I'm in right now, which is hosting and you have all the categories in front of you, you have to take notes while you're doing it.

and I was doing the typical strategy for recording a show like this for this movie, and inevitably I'm looking at my computer a lot and not watching the screen, and you can't do it that way. I got an hour into the movie, and I was like, I have to start over again. I have to watch the movie and not take any notes because what's interesting about the movie are the tells, the things where...

M. Night is kind of indicating, oh, watch the check get pulled away at the restaurant quickly. Watch the expression on a person's face. Watch the lack of interaction between two characters to indicate that one of them is a ghost. You know, it's not rocket science, but there is a lot of care put into preserving and maintaining this story in a smart way. And I do think that that's a new way of rewatching. There's also, like, I forgot that

I can't remember... You tell me. When you saw it in the theater in 99, there's a feint that Cole is evil. Or could be vulnerable to that kind of thing. Because when she goes into the kitchen in the beginning and he's opened all the drawers, or she thinks he's opened all the drawers to look for Pop-Tarts, and he's like, I'm looking for Pop-Tarts. And...

And the whole Stanley the Stutterer thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole thing with the teacher. That's the part. That's a great point. And it's like, what's up with this kid? And if you go back and watch it, you're like, man, they don't make him this innocent, like this innocent, clear hero character who's being besieged by ghosts. You're like, something's up. I just don't know what it is yet. That's a great point because you don't actually see the ghosts until well into the movie. That's right. What you get is...

The fact that he's doing these kind of free associated writings that seem very dark and violent. The scene you're talking about, that really wonderful shot of all the drawers open in the kitchen where it's like the camera follows Lynn into another room. She comes back and the drawers are just open. And that's a

I remember starting it. There's a couple of these that are so incredibly staged. Really effective jump scare. You get the thing where he's locked into the crawl space and he's freaking out. And I remember at the time thinking, oh, is it like...

He's like a troubled kid who has some kind of like telekinetic powers maybe and is doing this stuff. Like you just didn't know. So let me read actually a synopsis of the movie because I think that that indicates some of the feints that we're talking about here. So in this description of the movie, it says Malcolm Crowe is a child psychologist who receives an award on the same night that he is visited by a very unhappy ex-patient. After this encounter, Crowe takes on the task of curing a young boy with the same ills

As the ex-patient, this boy sees dead people. Crow spends a lot of time with the boy, much to the dismay of his wife. Cole's mom is at her wits' end with what to do about her son's increasing problems. Crow is the boy's only hope.

This description makes it seem like the person with the problem in the movie is the boy. And the person with the problem in the movie is the dead guy. And that's such a genius construction. There's something so amazing when you get to the end of the movie, it's the catharsis is with Bruce Willis. It's not with this boy. To think about getting everybody from every level of a studio on board with, we are going to lie to people. Not J.J. Abrams is going to go out there and say Benedict Cumberbatch is not

Khan lied to people, which didn't work anyway. But we are going to misdirect everyone about what this movie is literally about.

And, you know, and that's that takes from Disney, from a company that spends 18 months before a movie comes out being like, don't worry, it's going to be OK. There's going to be Star Wars stuff in these new Star Wars movies and telling you and repeating that and and seeding it for such a long time to be like, let's see if we can fuck with people a little bit. What a different time needed to be a word of mouth phenomenon. It truly was. It was a movie that people like you saw in theaters. You were like, holy shit, this blew my mind. Yeah, it's blown away.

Should we go to the categories? Sure, let's go. Today's the most rewatchable scene is brought to you by Paramount+. A mountain of movies awaits on Paramount+. That means a mountain of heart-pounding action with blockbusters like Top Gun Maverick, Mission Impossible Fallout, and Gladiator. Three movies we've done on the rewatchables.

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I've got a few nominees here. You know, I find this to be, in keeping with what we were discussing, sort of like looking at clues and also looking at what were the most effectively staged scares, I feel like is the best way to approach this. But if you have other things, feel free to nominate them. The opening shooting of Malcolm Crowe and the sequence with Vincent Gray and Donnie Wahlberg. I don't want to be no more. I waited 10 years for you. I'm not giving you nothing. Some people, they call me freak. Ronald Sumner.

I am. I am a freak. You know, I think also one of the most shocking aspects of this movie is realizing that that's Donnie Wahlberg. Yeah, I did not know. Him being like, it's important for me to lose 40 pounds for this role. For 90 seconds on screen, shaving his eyebrows. Yeah. He's like, Christian Bale, get on my level for the mechanic. When you do the mechanic in eight years or whatever it is, get on my level, dude.

That's a really, that's how you know you're in an upsetting movie. Because the tension that comes with what Grey is saying to him and revealing is really well staged. Dinner with Anna Crowe on their anniversary. Very short sequence. Yeah, yeah, great. But very, very, very interesting the way that it's shot. The way that Olivia Williams literally never raises her head to make eye contact with him. Yes, never.

Malcolm and Lynn Sear wait for Cole to come home. So this is right before the sequence where Malcolm has the conversation with Cole where he kind of takes steps forward and steps back as he asks him questions. But just watching the two of those characters sit in those chairs facing each other, not making eye contact, not speaking to one another, and not thinking that that was weird. There's a lot of things when you rewatch the movie and you think, huh, it's really strange how Malcolm Crowe doesn't talk to anybody. He doesn't have interaction with any character except for Cole.

The I See Dead People revelation. The locked in the attic sequence or the crawl space. I just wrote down, Lenny, you're a terrible husband. That ghost moment. Yeah. The woman revealing her suicide. That's a great like Kubrickian kind of shining moment. Exactly. The hanged trio in the school, which kind of pays off the stuttering Stanley explication.

Kira, her first appearance when Misha Barton hits the screen vomiting from her mouth because her mother has been making her sick. This movie felt very ahead of its time in terms of Munchausen by proxy syndrome. It's amazing to look back on that. I had no idea what that was when I first saw this film.

And then the car sequence at the end in which during the accident, Cole explains his connection to the dead and his mother's revelation of what's really wrong with him. Any other candidates? I mentioned the drawers and the Pop-Tarts moment and just the reveal of like, is there something, does this kid have telekinetic powers? Is this kid evil? I thought that was a great unnerving moment. But for me, it's by far the car accident sequence at the end. Yeah, that's the same thing for me. Me too.

Rewatching again. I think it's worth mentioning that

I don't know when you want to talk about what happened to Sean Malone after this and what his movies are like after this, but I think- You got a little category called, what's aged the worst? Sure. Well, then I'll save my bit for then. Okay. Yeah. Today's The Most Rewatchable Scene was brought to you by Paramount+. From action blockbusters to thrillers to favorites for the whole family, find something new to watch every week. A mountain of movies awaits on Paramount+. Plans start at $7.99 a month. Start streaming now.

Just as a runner-up, it's not even probably a top five scene in this movie, but there's that little scene of Lin and Cole coming out of the supermarket where he's in the shopping cart, and she pushes him, and he puts his arms out, and it's wonderful and absolutely nails down

the emotion and chemistry and the love that they have for each other. It just like sells it. And it makes those reveals that come later in the film just hit like a hammer. I love that you said that. When I was watching that sequence last night, I was like, it's insane that this is not a gift that we see all the time in our timeline. Because the look on Haley Joel Osment's face, it's pure elation. It's great acting. He's such a great actor. And we'll talk about that in this next category, which is called What's Aged the Best.

I wrote down the tone and pacing of the movie, which unfurls slowly and patiently. And to be this patient in a summer blockbuster is powerful and rare. And we don't... We really just don't see it from the movies that we come to expect as event movies now. And I...

Again, even though this is not a movie that I would say that I love, I'm still impressed by it. It's still shocking how somebody as unseasoned as M. Night Shyamalan brought all of this skill into what is effectively his first movie. I think Wide Awake was the name of his first film. So I noted that. We already talked about the aha endings of movies in the late 90s. I feel like those movies, for the most part, hold up really well. And in fact, I miss them. I wish that we had more of them.

And Haley Joel Osment, greatest child performer ever. Yeah, up there against Anna Paquin in the piano. Gosh, I can't even. We could get into Judy Garland stuff. Yeah, I think it's in the conversation. The Shirley Temples of the world and all those figures. All the kids in the Charlie Chaplin movies. Billingsley, right? Yeah, Peter Billingsley. Christmas Story, one of the icons. He just crushes it and gives you a range of emotions like sadness, sadness.

The elation talked about like real anger.

That scene you were talking about where Haley comes home and Lynn and Malcolm are already there and he's got to walk into the room and see Malcolm and there's got to be something like, when you watch it again, fear on his face because he's terrified. He's seeing this ghost in his living room. But you've got to read that also as trepidation of like, here we go again, another psychiatrist in my life, this person I have to talk to. And if you don't get that performance, it's over.

and he gives it to you. Haley Joel was not completely unseasoned when he made this movie. He appeared five years earlier in Forrest Gump in a very memorable performance as Little Forrest. Yeah. He was in a handful of movies. He was also in this movie Bogus that came out three years before this. I think he was 11 at the time of this movie, and the character he's playing is nine years old, and he's just got an eerie command. Yeah, I mean, I think whenever you have

very adult mannerisms and very adult emotional spectrum within a kid that young, it's just always going to be gripping to watch. There's something really strangely, like for as much as I think we always respond to movies like The Goonies, where kids are like, hey, ride this BMX with me. It's like there's something very magnetic about seeing adult

in someone so small and so young. But not, weirdly not,

like achingly precocious. You know, he doesn't, he's not like Abigail Breslin. Right. Where someone's using a lot of big words and they seem kind of smarter than everybody in the room. Right. There's like a, there's something emotional about what he's communicating. I think it's because, I think his character is very finely drawn in the sense that like, this is a kid who spends a lot of time by himself, a lot of time reading, a lot of time playing by himself, a lot of time like just looking at stuff like, all the stuff he says about Vietnam when he's like, do you want to play with my like,

6th Battalion, 4th Marine Corps in the Nha Trang province. How did he actually even know all that? It is something that kids get weird and start reading stuff and then memorize it. One of the things about child actors is when they put in a notable performance, it's always like the question, at least in my mind, is always...

okay, are they good or is this character just so in line with their actual personality that they just nailed it? And it was just clear that there was too much stuff like that that was weird, but also part and parcel of what it is to be a kid, all these disparate influences that you would just remember and then spit out, that it was just clear that this was a

unique acting performance. There's also like, kids are strange. There was definitely a point in my life where I could not really multiply, but did know a lot about King Arthur. You know what I mean? Like you just get focused like, oh, it's like I could tell you exactly what happened during Custer's last stand, but I can't divide anything. And how is that true from right now? I don't know. Okay, so any other what's aged the best?

I mean, you mentioned Toni Collette also as just a really powerful performer, Oscar nominated. This is her only Oscar nomination, which I was surprised to hear. There was a big campaign for her last year when Hereditary came out, which is in keeping with the tortured mother surrounded by ghosts theme of her career. Yeah.

She's just an amazing actress. I tend to forget she's Australian. Yes. I would say that, I mean, just to reiterate what I said during our intro is just the idea of Philadelphia as this both living and dead piece of history. And the idea that everywhere you walk, this is true, everywhere you walk in Philadelphia, there's some little plaque that's like, in 1779, this happened here. And you're like, oh, this is a good...

a bodega, but it's also where they, where they signed this piece of paper. So it's, they do a really good job of evoking that, that sense of living history in Philadelphia. Okay. So this is a, I'm going to spoil a what's aged the worst question, but Tony Collette comma Philadelphian, you buy that? Uh, no, it's like, just kind of like a,

ambiguous eastern seaboard mostly New York kind of accent it's a little closer to Brooklyn that she's doing and not so much Philadelphia yeah I don't necessarily buy it but I also think that everybody in M. Night Shyamalan movies are kind of a little bit off so it works oh yeah what a nice save yeah I should have been a producer on this movie any other what's age the best

You know, the performance by Haley Joel, I think, is still... It stands the test of time. It's incredible. I just want to give every award to Tommy Tomasino. Tommy Tomasino is great. We're going to get to him. Don't worry. Love my guy, Tommy Tomasino. What's age the worst? I wrote down M. Night Shyamalan's Twist Ending Factory. Yeah. You want to vamp? You want to do your thing? I mean, my thing is just that...

He somehow found a story that was appropriate for the way he writes dialogue, which is super weird. Yeah. And stilted. And the way I would imagine, given seeing all of his movies, he directs actors, which is super weird and stilted. And when Zoe Deschanel is delivering that dialogue, it becomes borderline like The Room. Yeah. And when...

Haley Joel Osment is doing it. You're just like, I'm creeped out. This is really effective and atmospheric. I think that there are highs and lows. I don't know that I ever actually saw a lady in the water. It's quite bad. It also makes the cardinal sin of creating a character that is a film critic and is eaten by a monster. Right. Oh, good. And you can imagine what he was trying to say there. Is that a metaphor? Yeah. I kind of like signs.

Yeah, so let me go back and just give a little bit of M. Night history. I said this was his second film. It's actually his third film. He made a movie in 1992 called Praying with Anger that he wrote and directed. And then in 1998... In 1992, M. Night was 22 years old. He made his first film when he was 22. When this movie came out, he was 28 years old. It's very, very hard to get films made in Hollywood. It's very, very hard to have three films done in Hollywood by the time you're 28 years old. He also...

did an uncredited rewrite on the script for She's All That in 1999, and he also has a screenwriting credit on the film Stuart Little. Wow. The god of 99 is M. Night Shyamalan.

I'll read down his films really quickly and then Jason, you can explain kind of what's your hierarchy of Shyamalan work. Sure. So immediately after this, he makes Unbreakable, which was an extraordinarily prescient and interesting movie. Imperfect, but very interesting. Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth, The Visit, and then this quote unquote comeback with Split and Glass. What's your take on the shape of his career now that we've got 20 years of it? Well,

I remember being absolutely confused as to how he could still be free from movie jail after Lady in the Water. Out there making movies like The Happening. I think I loved, obviously loved Sixth Sense. I thought Unbreakable was great. I really enjoyed it. The Village...

I liked until I realized what was happening, and then I was like, come on, this is the Twilight Zone. This is like a... Twilight Zone episode. This is a Twilight Zone episode, and it's 45 minutes too long to be that. And then it just kind of went downhill. You know, like, The Last Airbender is not his IP, so you can't really blame him for that, but I was, like, almost offended by that movie. And then his kind of, like, I'm going to create my...

M. Night Shyamalan interior universe. Yeah. Like, and kind of like stealth sell it back to you. Like rejuvenation is actually one of the most amazing comebacks in film history. It's a crazy flex. And like, it's to go back to what has aged the worst. It's his early flex of putting himself in the sixth sense as the doctor and

But I mean, it just shows you the confidence he has in himself to then come back and be like, actually, all that early stuff, let's go back, let's do sequels of those. And you're not even going to know that there are sequels of them when you go see the movie. It's really interesting, the fact that he never went to movie jail, one, and two, seemed to come to a comfort level with his own process. It seemed like there was a moment there where he was like, where even he was like,

okay, I guess I just do twist ending thrillers. Is that really what I do? And then at a certain point, certainly by split, he's like, yes, that's what I do. That's what I do. And here it is. I am the Hitchcock of this, of whatever this is. So really a unique character

and weird career. I give him a lot of credit for having the foresight to know that it's important to have a brand, which is kind of a shitty thing, but also something that most great filmmakers were very conscientious about. John Ford was very aware of this. Alfred Hitchcock was very aware of this. Quentin Tarantino has always been very aware of this. It almost doesn't matter if your movies are good or bad, but to say an M. Night Shyamalan film

For that to mean something to audiences is powerful. Obviously, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and that whole generation of filmmakers did the same thing. I give him a lot of credit for that. And I give him a lot of credit for just having a lot of gall. Yeah. He definitely follows through on all of his ideas, even when half of them aren't good. I think also it's worth noting that the comeback really happened with The Visit. And that it kind of needed something like Blumhouse to be out there, to be sort of like, just make the movie you want to make with this limited amount of budget. And we think the margins are going to be right here. Right. And...

It was the perfect size canvas for his ideas. I think it's crucial that Sixth Sense is 90 minutes. I don't think this guy is an intergalactic epic storyteller. It's the big difference between all the people who get kind of touched with the you're the next Spielberg story

and can't quite fulfill it, whether it's Colin Trevorrow or M. Night or whoever, there really is only one Spielberg because there's only one guy who understands how to tell intimate human stories on such a huge, huge screen. But there are a lot of people who can do different things that feel Spielberg-y. Right. And he's one of them. He can tell us this really amazing story about,

That really can, you can suspend disbelief while you're there. When you're watching The Visit, when you're watching Glass, when you're watching Sixth Sense, when you're watching Signs for me, you're like, oh, wow, this makes a lot of sense. And I'll tell you what, even the beginning of The Happening

before people start really acting, you're like, this is kind of cool. The setup is good. The setup is good. It's just as soon as people have to start actually interacting with one another and you realize like, oh, this is what this whole movie is going to be is them being like, did you hear the trees? The trees? I heard them.

I've always wanted to be a fly on the wall in hearing an M. Night pitch in the room. I've always wanted to be there when he explains the concept of one of his movies. This movie in particular, you can imagine being a studio executive. And even though it'd be hard to figure out specifically how you're going to promote a movie like The Sixth Sense, to hear someone explain the story to you for the first time, similarly to watching it for the first time, you'd just be like, oh my God. Yeah.

We got somebody who has incredible invention inside of them. Inevitably, you get to the happening pitch meeting and they explain that it's the trees and you're like, I got a lot of regrets about throwing a lot of money at M. Night Shyamalan. Nevertheless, I do think that it's interesting how his approach and his persona has aged badly, but his career is back on track. You know, I think Glass may be slightly underperformed, but for the most part,

M. Night Shyamalan is now maybe the most successful director of original movies that is alive right now. And self-financed the last few of them, right? Is that correct? In conjunction with Blumhouse. I think he took on a lot of risk in order to make these movies. Right.

Has largely, like, lived outside of, like, the Hollywood ecosystem. Like, lives out in suburban Philadelphia in some huge spread. Right. Shoots his movies, I think, in Philly for the most part. You know? Courtside at the Sixers. Courtside at the Sixers. Too busy studying J.J.'s jumper. Yeah, but it's a completely different world than being out in Malibu and just putting together these after-Earth-type debacles. Let's talk about some more What's the Age of the Worst stuff. I just, I wrote down Bruce Willis Child Psychologist. I'm not sure he's terribly convincing. Yeah.

I think there's probably some complicated notions of mental health in this movie. Yeah. Like, if you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty. Sure. Not the gentlest examination of what happens to young kids. Also, the mayor of Philadelphia gave a child psychologist an award? Sure.

And then later, when we hear his tapes of... There's not a ton going on in Philly. What are you doing? When we hear Malcolm's tapes of him in therapy with Vincent, he's literally just like standing up and doing other stuff as his patient is breaking down crying. My follow-up note was one who clearly mistreated a young boy who grew up to be a murderer. Yeah.

Not what you want if you're the mayor of Philly. Any other what's aged the worst? Now you're really making me rethink Philly mayors. There's actually a pretty checkered history of Philly mayors. I do think, though, that we expect mayors to just always be doing big-time boss shit, but there's a lot of like, I'd like to present this to the greatest banana vendor the Reading Terminal has ever seen. Johnny Banana. You know, like, it's just, there's a lot of,

small town bullshit that goes along with it. I think M. Night probably has to win this category just because of the endless amount of content he's provided us over the years. This episode is supported by State Farm. Think about your first reaction after you have an accident. What do you do? You scream, oh no, or man, why did this happen? On the flip side, let's say you buy a new car or you lease a new car. Get in there and it smells great and you're like, man, this is awesome.

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The 1999 award for the most 1999 thing.

A couple of candidates. VHS tapes. There's a lot of VHS tapes in here. Landlines. There's a lot of landlines here. Love a landline. I just thought the decor of kind of dingy Eastern seaboard

homes in this time. A lot of the glassware and the tabletops. Transitioning out of the 70s into an Ikea-dominated world, but not quite there yet. Yeah. I feel like just homes look different now. Yeah. And there's something, this felt more like a period piece re-watching it. It's interesting how that changes because in its time, it seemed like a fairly authentic representation of what it was like to live in a Philly...

low house. Yeah, I mean it does and it was also before I think a lot of there was like a lot of gentrification and regeneration happening downtown. So somebody like Toni Collette's character could definitely afford an apartment wherever I think it's on. I think it's like in and around Locust Street or something like that. Okay. Is that like a nice neighborhood? It is, yeah. Now it is. I mean it's always been like fine but like it's a little bit more Toni now. She's hustling two jobs to make it work though. And you know how important those two jobs are.

Any other candidates for the 1999 award? Just a complete lack of cellular technology, gadgetry of any kind. Yeah, I wonder... Just nobody Googles... He doesn't Google Dr. Malcolm Crowe. But I do think that actually a remake of this movie would be easier because cellular technology and phones have...

decreased the amount of human interaction we have so the idea of Malcolm Crowe not talking to anybody would be more believable now there's just so many people that are just spent all their time looking at their devices does he ever eat in this movie I don't think so no also was he well we'll get to nitpicks in a bit I have some nitpicks here Chris any other candidates for this category

What's the age of the worst? No, I think the M. Night thing you got there is right. What about 1999? Oh, 1999. I think the clothes are good. They don't seem too dated. I always really am sort of fascinated by Willis' wardrobe because it's just like that rumpled...

He looks like Philip Marlowe. Yeah, and it is a classic kind of like Rumpel detective look, but at the same time, you know, you can kind of buy him. He's like wearing all brown all the time. I know color is a very important part of this movie. The red, the use of red is a huge thing. But yeah, I've always really liked the wardrobe and the set design like you were talking about. Okay, let's go to the next category. Casting what ifs. I could only find one. Marisa Tomei was considered for the role of Lynn Sear. Well...

What do we think about Marissa Tomei instead of Toni Collette? So would that have been post-cousin? Yeah, post-My Cousin Vinny. I think it would have probably been more authentically Philadelphian. Oh. But I don't know if you get that moment in the car. Yeah, I don't think you get it. With no disrespect to Marissa Tomei, of whom I am a huge fan. Same. Marissa Tomei did not work in the year 1999. Oh. Did not make a film. Prior to that, she had made Slums of Beverly Hills and Welcome to Sarajevo.

Wow. What a weird time for her career. What a mood swing that is. Yeah, from Oscar nominated to Welcome to Sarajevo. Next category. Saw that in the theater. Did you now? Yeah, I did. Was your mind as blown as it was when you saw The Sixth Sense? I was like, man, I am bummed out. The Dion Waiters Award for biggest heat check. Donnie Wahlberg.

Oh, yeah. Misha Barton. M. Night Shyamalan as Dr. Hill. That is a heat check of casting, yes, to cast yourself. Who do we think as a performer is really heating up? So you're not putting Trevor Morgan in here? Well, Tommy T. Yeah. Crushing it.

I put him in the Saul Rubinick Award. Okay. So we'll get there. Harsh but fair. Okay. You want Tommy T in the list? No, I think one shot, losing 40 pounds for about 90 seconds of screen time is as Dion Waiterzy as you could get. 43. 43 pounds? Yeah, I just love like, I need to know the process. If I'm him, and that's the end result of everything I did for this movie, and while you can always be like, I was in Sixth Sense, you know, I was Vincent, you know, thank you, thank you for your plaudits.

I just don't, you're never going to get me to do anything for another acting role ever again. I'm just going to show up on Blue Bloods wearing exactly what I wore that day. I'm eating Whataburger every day. What's this? What's this? Wahlburgers? I'm eating Wahlburgers every day. I'm not losing a pound. I'm not gaining a pound. I'm not changing my hair. I'm not shaving my eyebrows. Can I read you the names of the movies that Donnie Wahlberg had appeared in before this movie? This is real.

1996 Bullet okay 1996 Ransom good movie 1996 Black Circle Boys never saw it 1998 Body Count 1998 Butter and the Denouement 1998 Southie that's his film work to this moment he's pretty good in Ransom but he's like the 8th henchman yeah

Very unlikely, very strange. Donnie, the eldest member of the New Kids on the Block, transitioning to his acting performance well after his brother rose to significant fame. Now, if I recall correctly, the reason he did this was because he wanted to be taken seriously as a serious actor. Yes. And so then I'm on his IMDb now, and his roles after this were the practice TV series, Diamond Men. Never heard of it. Bullfighter. Yep. Big Apple, the TV series. Yes.

Band of Brothers, excellent. He's excellent in that. He's good in Band of Brothers. He's excellent in that. And then a bunch of other stuff. It is unclear to me whether he could have gotten these. Do you think Band of Brothers is the most highly approved piece of culture from people our age to our father's ages? That's a great question. Like, does anything have a higher approval rating across the board by guys age like 35 to 75?

The prized demo. Sure, yeah. I buy that. I want to shout out Boomtown, too, which was a really good TV show that Donnie Wahlberg was the star of. Created by Graham Yost, who would go on to create Justified. I feel like we have to give this award to Donnie Wahlberg. Yeah, definitely. Half-assed internet research. Boy, I've got a lot. How much of it should I read? Well, you've got to tell the story about the producer. About the guy at Disney. Okay. Okay.

David Vogel, then president of production of the Walt Disney Studios, read Shyamalan's spec script and instantly loved it. Without obtaining corporate approval, Vogel bought the rights to the script despite the high price of $3 million and the stipulation that Shyamalan could direct the film. Disney later dismissed Vogel from his position at the studio, with Vogel leaving the company shortly thereafter. Disney, apparently in a show of little confidence in the film, sold the production rights to Spyglass Entertainment while retaining the distribution rights and 12.5% of the film's box office receipt.

So I have a ton of questions. Yeah. How does one get to pull the trigger on a $3 million check? You could just go off the rest like that. But you still could get fired for it. Right. Do you know what I mean? Like you're either, to me it seems like it's something that you can either be like, I can get these funds and that, cause that's the position I hold.

But somebody comes back from vacation and it's like, Vogel, what have you been up to? And he's like, I cut this guy M. Night a check for three million, starring Bruce Willis and a kid no one's ever heard of about ghosts. And they're like, you're fired. What's the story there? I got to know. Like, does he just have a checking account number that he can put on his corporate card? It has to have something to do with the fact that he, if I recall correctly, agreed to let M. Night direct also. Yeah. Yeah.

Which, wild flex by my guy, M. Night. Respect it. But it has to have something to do with that, right? That was seen as going off the res...

Like, you can say a lot of stuff to people. You can be like, we're going to do this. You and me, they're going to see us next year at the Oscars. It's going to be nothing but stacking checks and putting projects in development. But at a certain point, you have to take it to the guy above you and be like, so what's up? Right. Every company is different. The president of production has a lot of power. It's a lot of power.

at certain studios, especially back then when Buena Vista was making far more films and could more aggressively green light films. And there was more competition for hot scripts. So it's possible to me that David Vogel made a big promise to an agent and that agent held his feet to the fire. And Disney knowing, let's say that agent, for the sake of conversation, this is not a fact at all, but let's say that agent was Michael Ovitz. If it were Michael Ovitz and you gave him a verbal agreement over the phone and you were the president of production at Disney,

Michael Ovitz would fucking hold you to that word. And it's possible that David Vogel got himself into one of these situations. I don't know. There was a story in 2015 in the Desert Sun. Here's the title of that story. Mogul to mentor. To understand Digicom and its metamorphosis, you first have to understand David Vogel. Okay. This is the man who is dismissed from Disney and is now clearly the subject of a profile in the Desert Sun.

Fascinating piece of filmmaking production arcana, I guess there. We'll probably never truly know what happened. I'd like to know who dismissed him. Yeah. Reportedly, Haley Joel Osment got the role of Colesier for one of three reasons. One, director M. Night Shyamalan was surprised when he asked Haley Joel Osment if he read the part. Osment replied, I read it three times last night. Shyamalan was impressed, saying, wow, you read your part three times. To which Osment replied, no, I read the script three times. That's like Elizabeth Warren reading the Mueller report in one night. Just being like, I read it.

Where you at? It's very similar to that. Yes. This movie was rented by 80 million people in 2000, making it the year's top-rated VHS and DVD title. Yeah. Sleeper hit. In Entertainment Weekly's 134-film summer movie preview of 1999, The Sixth Sense was not even mentioned. In M. Night Shyamalan's early drafts of the script, the Bruce Willis character was a crime scene photographer and not a child psychologist, which I think perhaps explains his wardrobe. Yeah.

This was the first of two movies that Bruce Willis owed Disney after he caused another production, the Broadway Brawler, to be shut down due to him firing the director. He was also paid $10 million, which is half of his usual salary at the time.

Bruce Willis... Tough times. It's difficult to talk about him. I'm not sure if there's a big-time movie star with a worse reputation. He is a person who repeatedly, if people who have worked with him are interviewed about their experience, they do not have nice things to say about him. I would highly, highly recommend that you guys check out this video of Kevin Smith telling a very, very, very long story about doing rewrite work and appearing in...

Live Free or Die Harder. And Bruce Willis' attitudes about Timothy Oliphant. Oh, good. And the way in which the John McClane character should be portrayed. And also, I think Fox's attitudes about

how much goddamn money it was costing to make what was going to be a not great Die Hard movie. And it is high key amazing to listen to this story. So you can find it on YouTube. It's really, really funny. I will look that up. I was recently reading an Oliphant interview where he was talking about, you know, why he made those movies. And he's like, I bought a house. I bought a house. And I was like, oh, what's that? Die Hard in Russia? Yeah. Good. Okay. Pays the bills. Yeah.

When Cole and his mother are sitting in the kitchen, there is a glass on the table that can only be bought in Philadelphia. It originally comes filled with pen-made sour cream, which is not readily available anywhere else. I feel like that's fake news. Does that jump out to you at all? That's fake news. I've never heard of that before. That seems like something someone from Long Island would say about Philadelphia, and I think it's suspicious that you're saying that. Well, this is half-assed internet research, not fully-assed internet research, so we'll never know.

This is an important filmmaking aspect of this. The color red is intentionally absent from most of the film, but it is used prominently in a few isolated shots for anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world and to connote really explosively emotional moments and situations. Exactly.

Examples include the door of the church where Cole seeks sanctuary, the balloon, the carpet, and Cole's sweater at the birthday party, the tent in which he first encounters Kira, the volume numbers on Crowe's tape recorder, the doorknob on the locked basement door where Malcolm's office is located, the shirt that Anna wears at the restaurant, Kira's mother's dress at the wake, and the shawl wrapped around the sleeping Anna.

I don't know if there's much to explore here other than it's kind of like film class 101. Like, use a color in a smart way. But it is well done. And it's...

it's nice to have these things. It's nice that there are choices that are being made and that we can understand what those choices mean and that they're clues. You know, M. Night Shyamalan is like a little bit of a Hitsbong Once guy. Yes, he's never smoked pot. A little? Yeah. But just like every, you can see he really is proud of his ideas. Yeah. And he's proud of this idea, but it works. It works visually.

This is a weird fact. The novelization for Young Sherlock Holmes uses the line six cents. Frank Marshall produced both movies and Steven Spielberg later directed Haley Joel Osment and AI Artificial Intelligence, which was also produced and also produced Holmes. Young Sherlock Holmes still slaps. Great movie. Yeah. I'm a big fan of that movie. Hmm.

All of the clothes Malcolm wears during the film are items he wore or touched the evening before his death, which included his overcoat, his blue rowing sweatshirt, and the different layers of his suit. Though the filmmakers were careful about clues of Malcolm's true state, the camera zooms slowly toward his face when Cole says, I see dead people. In a special feature, the filmmakers mentioned they initially feared this would be too much of a giveaway, decided to leave it in. Okay, this is a weird one. According to M. Night Shyamalan, the movie was inspired by an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yeah. Called The Tale of the Dream Girl.

in 1994 directed by David Winning in which leading characters are ignored by somebody and do not realize that they are dead until the final moment. In the tale of the dream girl a brother discovers that only his sister can see him and she ultimately shows him his own obituary. Did you guys ever when you were kids like pretend like that another kid in the room wasn't there? No you weirdo. Yeah you're a psycho. I don't know. I don't know.

You never did that for real? You bullied children into believing they were dead? No. We were just having fun. Just having a laugh. You guys never did that. This PC culture these days won't allow you to ignore a kid until he believes he's dead. Snowflakes. Respect all dead kids, Chris, alright? I mentioned the Munchausen by proxy syndrome aspect of the story. The soundtrack release of this movie gives away the ending. The final song on the CD is called Malcolm is Dead.

Come on. The thing is that actually is pretty common. Like when you go and like when you look at like the Moneyball soundtrack, it's like we won the pennant. But it's not. John Williams doesn't write Darth Vader is Luke's father. Right. That's not a song. That's my favorite song. Any other half-assed internet research you wanted to point out? No. I'm so shamed by like trying to connect with you guys and you're dunking on me. Sorry. Apex Mountain.

M. Night Shyamalan? Yes. At the top of the Himalayas. Yeah. I mean, this is, you would know better than I, isn't this one of the most profitable movies of all time? Definitely.

I mean, yeah, this is his absolute pinnacle and set the template for the rest of his career. The only movie that I can really, I feel comfortable comparing it to from a cultural impact perspective, from an award season perspective, and from a profitability perspective, and essentially the launching of a filmmaker is Get Out. Get Out is really one of the only examples I can think of a person who instantaneously transformed their life and career with one movie that had a great idea.

And Get Out similarly is premised on a great idea and so is The Sixth Sense. And that can happen for a filmmaker. Bruce Willis, Apex Mountain? No. Absolutely not. No. Haley Joel Osment? Yes. But I would like to ask whether or not this represents a shorter peak of Willis. I'm trying to like break it down here because where is Sixth Sense? 99.

You know, I mean, he was still doing, he was on a pretty good run here in the late 90s, I guess, with Armageddon and the Siege. So, no, obviously Die Hard is his apex mountain. This is like one of the, this 98 is absolutely bizarre. Write it down. Mercury Rising.

quietly but interesting early on I think it's kind of is there a kid performance in that one too? there's a kid performance he sees the code that is like about assassinations right right right uh Armageddon which I'm on record as you know it's the most entertaining right wing movie of all time uh the siege which has become prescient now uh

Ally McBeal. Whoa. Well, sorry, that's over. So the siege, and then the siege. So the siege, that is just wild. And he plays like a militant army general, right? Yeah, he's the reluctant, he's the guy who's like, don't make me do this. And the president is like, you have to. And then he goes in and he's like, he's a fucking asshole. So it is Haley Joel's Apex Mountain. We agree. Tony Collette, no. Any other nominees? Tak Fujimoto? Trevor Morgan?

We're getting to Trevor Morgan. Tommy T. I mean, Donnie Wahlberg. No, it's probably it's Band of Brothers. Yeah. The Joey Pants Award.

I've got Glenn Fitzgerald as Sean. You familiar with Sean? Olivia Williams' would-be paramour? I am. Very tough stuff for him. He's a real that guy. Yeah. I've also got Bruce Norris as Stanley Cunningham, stuttering Stanley the teacher. You guys know Bruce Norris is one of the most celebrated playwrights of his generation? Did not know that. He's a longtime member of the Steppenwolf group. Oh. And has written some award-winning plays. So him and Cole make up after he flips out at him? I guess so.

Because at the end, he's like, ready to go out there, stable guy. I guess they do. Any other Joey Pants nominees? No, I'm going to go Norris, though. You're going Norris? Yeah, it's a good one. Check out Bruce Norris' playwriting. Apparently, it's quite good. I haven't read it. Saul Rubinick Award for Overacting. M. Night as Dr. Hill. Pretty understated performance. Just a lot to cast yourself in that role. Yes, quite a bit. Okay, I disagree. Bruce Norris, Stanley Cunningham.

and Trevor Morgan as Tommy Tomasino. He's doing a lot with his face. He gets more backstory than almost any other character in this movie. He gets a tremendous amount of backstory. And we get to see the commercial. You get to see his commercial. He talks about improv. He's a bully. He gets a whole arc, really. Yeah, it's like when I say this movie is unencumbered by B-plot, it's because Tomasino is taking up the entire B-plot. We get that comeuppance of him as the bit guy

character in the play. Village idiot. And it's like, yeah, come! And we get that tight two-shot with his face where we can read the disappointment of not being cast as King Arthur. And it is satisfying. It's just so weird when he's like, did you like how I put my arm around you, freak? That's called improv. What? That is wild! M. Night, meet one child! No one talks like that!

I feel like it's actually a subtle commentary on what most child actors are like and how much they suck and how good Haley Joel Osment is. Trevor's performance. Just that whole character. You need a great child actor in this movie to make it work and you've cast a shithead

child actor character. I mean, you heard it here first from the stars of Take Hunter. This is a bad performance by Trevor Morgan as Tommy Tomasino. Did you know that Trevor Morgan would go on to play young Dexter Holland in the music video version of Christy Are You Doing Okay by The Offspring? Iconic. Christy Are You Doing Okay. Can you hum a little bit of that? Actually, I'm unfamiliar with that tune. Okay. Can you hum it? No. Okay. Are you pretending like I'm dead now? No.

Keep on this line and then we'll see how far we get. I think that's more than enough about Trevor Morgan, who is definitely the winner of the Saul Rubinick Award for overacting.

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It's a Camry vibe. Learn more at Toyota.com slash Camry. Picking nits. He was in the Patriot as well. Wow. Cool. Should we cancel him? I don't know. I feel like I might need to do some long form on Trev. From Thomas Emo to the Revolutionary War to SoCal Skate Punk. I smell a 10,000 word cover feature right here. I see dead Patriots. Can we get Juliet to do a special build for this?

Moving on, picking nits. You know, I don't know how much of this we want to do. I think if you can really take apart a lot of the continuity errors and mistakes in this movie, there's a lot of stuff. The internet points out a lot of things where like a blanket is up against somebody's neck and then in the next shot it's down at their waist or there's, you know, somebody's wearing a shirt one way and then there's a button buttoned up or there's a patch of hair that is stray.

A lot of this stuff comes from trying to make a complicated movie and being a fairly unseasoned filmmaker. I don't really want to dig into too much of that stuff. I have one, though. Go ahead. It's a picking it. It's an unanswerable question, I guess. But I have some questions about the funeral. Okay. And just...

what the vibe would be like if a little kid brought you a VHS tape at your daughter's funeral. And they're just walking in without an adult? Who is this kid? Just a little kid with a box. Just going to hunt in the dead girl's room for a bit. Is that okay? And then he comes up to you and he's just like, here's this box. And you're like, cool, let me watch this right now. Let me watch this at my daughter's funeral. And then the wife is like, damn, red-handed.

Owned. She's just like, there's no like, hey, whoa, what are we doing here? She's just like, shit, kid detective caught me. That's the only Scooby-Doo moment of this movie. Right. The fact that there's no extensive police interview. Excuse me, young man. How did you come to arrive at this funeral of a girl who you do not know?

to then find the evidence of her murder... Underneath her bed. A place you have never been before. Can we discuss this for a bit? The fact that that is not discussed at all with the law enforcement of Philadelphia is wild. There's a lot of suspension of disbelief. All those cops are just eating sour cream. Yeah, those pen-made fat bastards. Too busy smearing it all over a bagel.

Okay. There is one weird nitpick, though, that I did notice when I was watching it and then it was confirmed on the internet, which is that during the I See Dead People scene, which is the most rewatched scene in the movie, Cole is facing Malcolm and a tear runs down his face. When Cole turns away, his face is dry with no trace of a tear. We got to do better than that. Shades of Bob Myers? Oh, fuck. Let's go right to best quote.

I could go down the list. There are actually quite a few interesting interactions. I don't know if there are a ton of standalone singular quotes, but obviously the conversation between Cole and Lynn at the end in the car is kind of a masterclass in revealing screenwriting. I think you ever feel the prickly things on the back of your neck? And the tiny hairs on your arm, you know, when they stand up, that's them. They get mad.

That's very good. I want to tell you my secret now. There are a couple of things like that that I think work really well. I don't want to be scared anymore. A lot of coal stuff is what works the best. She says she's sorry for taking the bumblebee pendant. She just likes it a lot. Yeah. I did enjoy Keep Moving Cheese Dick.

Yeah, I stopped on that one as well. Is that a thing that people say in Philly? Constantly. Really? All the time. Cheesedick? No, I've never heard it before. I do think that there's no question that the best quote is I see dead people, right? Yeah. It has to be I see dead people. It's kind of like, it's sort of like the Apex Mountain. It became a meme before we knew what that was. Yeah. Could this work as a 10-episode Netflix show in 2019? God, no. It could work as a...

five episode Netflix show. First of all, I'll tell you why. Somebody would watch it the first night and be like, holy shit, the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense, a show that came out last night that you haven't had 10 hours to watch yet. That's a good point. So that wouldn't work. And I just think that

Unless you're going to really, really delve into Tom Simo, what do you spend time, what do you spend those 10 hours doing? And also, like, the more you show him interacting with Olivia Williams, the more Wallace interacts with, like, the more, I think, skeptical people we get. It's like, okay, she still has not talked to him. This movie is exactly the right running time. I agree with you guys. Unanswerable questions. Philly classic? That's an answerable one. Yeah, totally. Philly classic. It's on the Rushmore.

Nice. Okay. This is, I think, the key unanswerable question, but we can have opinions about it. Sure. Is this a good movie if you already know the ending going in? So this was the first time I rewatched this movie in at least a decade. And I would say that I was entertained, but not like emotionally involved. Okay. So I think the answer is somewhat for me. What do you think, Jason? I'm going to say yes, both from a structural standpoint. It's just really interesting to see

how right in front of you the tells are, and then to analyze, like, why didn't I see this stuff? And then, you know, from an emotional standpoint, the...

the car conversation at the end still bangs for me. That really absolutely hits. It crushes. Like, I got emotional watching it again. So many of the movies we talk about on Rewatchables are rewatchable for a line of dialogue or a particularly poignant moment or a particularly funny moment or you start to notice, like, oh, the details in the Pacino performance that you never saw before. This is not that. I don't think... I think the performances are... are... like,

like they're on purpose flat the dialogue is very generic in a lot of ways like a lot of like the stories they tell are just kind of like what the hell are you talking about so I don't think it has a lot of the same resonance that a lot of rewatchable movies do have but I think from just appreciating the mechanics of it like you're saying it's still a remarkable movie

What about you? Well, I did see it after having it spoiled for me. And so the first time I saw it... You're just not letting that go. Hugely anticlimactic. No, but it radically alters how you experience it. Sure, yeah. And...

I've come to admire it more and more over time. And like Jason, I remember loving Unbreakable and loving Signs and liking The Village a lot. And I remember believing in his storytelling power. Probably too much so in hindsight. Yeah, but it can't be sort of underrated that for people our age, he and Tarantino, while nowhere close to being alike as filmmakers, were kind of like the kind of guys where you're like,

could I do this? Could I work at a video store and then become a guy? Could I be 29 and be a filmmaker and make my version of E.T. or my version of Raiders? It seems a little bit more in touching distance. It's very true. I think with that, it kind of answers who won the movie. I think it has to be M. Night Shyamalan. Yes. There's a case for Haley Joel.

who obviously has sort of revived his career in the last four or five years, done some funny stuff in the Entourage movies, done some serious performances in movies of late. But, I mean, M. Night Shyamalan basically becomes a movie industry for the next 10 years. And the fact that he's come back around. Did the last one do well?

Yeah, like I said, slightly underperformed. But still, I mean, Glass probably cost $30 million to make and made $200 million. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. He has figured out something, especially in working with Blumhouse, that I think is just going to allow him to continue to be successful because he eventizes his movies. Yeah. And it's so interesting for kind of like the socioeconomic sphere that his movies exist in. I was...

Thinking about this, is there even such a thing as a sleeper hit anymore? Like in the same way that The Sixth Sense was a sleeper hit? I guess Wick would be like in some ways. I mean there's hits that are kind of like catch on on demand. Right.

I think it's more likely that a show, a TV show becomes a sleeper hit. I agree. Like Stranger Things where it's like that kind of rolled out and nobody knew anything about it and then all of a sudden it became a phenomenon. This movie had a very, had a pretty successful opening weekend but it had a long tail. And I think the thing that's really changed about movie going is that there is no long tail anymore unless you're Endgame. It's very hard to get people to come out in week 10 of release to see a movie. Yeah. And,

So I guess in that respect, no. That sort of consistency in theaters for a long period of time. I think you're right, Chris. I think that the sleeper hit is the TV. It's you saying 10 days after it's out, did you watch The Society? There's some cool stuff in that that we should talk about. That is more likely to kind of gain steam over time. Guys, any other final thoughts on The Sixth Sense?

No, I mean, revisiting these 99 movies, it's so nostalgic for not only the films themselves, but for the way in which I interfaced with pop culture back then. So it's always such a trip to go back and talk about these things because it really, really was a different time. Yeah. Jason, what was the best movie you saw while working in a movie theater in 1989? Run, Lola, Run. Oh, huh. Like, I walked out of the theater...

And I had that thing of, you know when you play Grand Theft Auto for too long and then you get behind the wheel of a car and you're like, actually, I shouldn't drive. It was that where I was like, if I walk out into traffic and get hit by a car right now, will my life start over? I really was mentally broken for a couple of hours after that movie. Just thinking about time and the way time can arc and branch. And also...

And also that's just such a kinetic, like there's not a spare moment in that movie. It's so kinetic and lean. That's a great answer. I feel like something that that movie and so many of the other movies we're talking about on this series in particular is that they were just purely unpredictable. You had no idea where they were going. Transporting. Yeah. Even in a Marvel movie, you know, ultimately, like, we have a general sense of where things are going to go, even if it surprises you. That's part of what makes these 1999 movies so great. Thanks for listening to The Rewatchables 1999 presented by Luminary Media.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Sean and CR and old friend Jason Concepcion. Thanks to Craig Horlbeck for producing, as always. And we will be back with an absolute world-class heater of a banger next week on The Rewatchables. Don't forget, Ringer Movies is the YouTube channel. If you want to subscribe to that, see you next week.