Pride goeth before the fall

IN Hollywood, a town where tales of self-immolation are passed along like hot new scripts, everyone has been frantically trying to score a copy of “The Man Who Heard Voices,” Michael Bamberger’s new book about M. Night Shyamalan and the making of “Lady in the Water.” The fascination with the book has only been heightened by the poor opening of “Lady,” which arrived practically dead in the water over the weekend, making a paltry $18.2 million, the filmmaker’s worst opening ever.

As one wag put it, there’s been an outbreak of Shyamaladenfreude.

If there is a recurrent theme in Bamberger’s book, it’s that Night is different from the rest of us. Like the mythic creatures who populate his new movie, he is not subject to the same mundane laws of gravity that keep us moored to the ground.

Early in the book, Night (everyone calls him by his second name) is at a meeting in his agent’s office here when the conversation turns to basketball. “I believe if I had unlimited time to practice,” he says, “after two years, I’d be able to shoot with any NBA player.” After the meeting is over, his longtime agent, United Talent Agency partner Jeremy Zimmer, admonishes the scrawny filmmaker, who is, at best, a good Sunday morning pickup player. “You can’t say stuff like that.”

But “Voices” is full of stuff like that. Most of the buzz about the book, which was written with Night’s cooperation, has focused on a disastrous meeting between the filmmaker and the top brass at Disney, where he’d made four straight hits. After Disney production chief Nina Jacobson bluntly dissected the “Lady” script’s failings, Night opted to take the film to Warner Bros., in part because studio chief Alan Horn, after seeing “The Village,” had called to say the movie really touched him.

This was the kind of truth Night wanted to hear. At the end of the calamitous Disney meeting, Zimmer, trying to smooth things over, says, “We’re thankful for the truthful response you’ve given us.” Night instantly retorts: “I don’t agree. I don’t think it was a truthful response.” For all his insistence on being the least “Hollywood” of directors, living far away on his bucolic 75-acre farm in Pennsylvania, Night has a perfect grasp of movie-town insincerity. In Hollywood, where everyone is carefully trained to never tell a filmmaker what they really think about their movie -- unless they actually loved it -- the truth couldn’t possibly be the truth if the truth hurts.

It wasn’t just Night’s story that bothered Jacobson. “Lady in the Water” is a fanciful fable about a stuttering motel manager (Paul Giamatti) who happens upon a willowy Narf (Bryce Dallas Howard) when she surfaces one night in the motel pool. She is followed by other strange, made-up creatures, including a snarling Scrunt and a prehistoric eagle who transports Narfs from the human realm to a watery Blue World. Jacobson worried that Night was asking for trouble by casting himself as a writer whose prophetic work ultimately helps change the world, and making the movie’s least likable character a sourpuss film critic (who is dispatched by a nasty Scrunt).

Night has said that “Lady in the Water” began as a bedtime story he told his daughters. But it’s Bamberger’s book that has become a grim fairy tale, a bracing reminder of how many of our best filmmakers, having achieved success, wall themselves off from reality and succumb to childlike self-importance. Jacobson has emerged as a hero, especially after being fired from Disney last week in an especially callous way -- getting the bad news after calling her boss from the hospital where her partner was having their baby. Though the book claims Night had “witnessed the decay of her creative vision,” the opposite had happened. In a world of enablers, Jacobson had not only tried to protect Night from himself but also tried to preserve the U2-style emotional connection his films had with his audience.

What makes the book especially damaging, despite its relentlessly sycophantish portrayal of the filmmaker, is that Night violated Hollywood PR Law No. 1: Never let people see you as you really are. In an era when stars hide behind their handlers, who vet writers, limit their access and keep them miles away from any dirty laundry, Night let Bamberger see it all -- straight, no chaser. If Night weren’t so insufferable, his honesty would almost be charming. In one scene, he is put out that Jacobson is late arriving home from a children’s birthday party to meet Night’s assistant, who is delivering a closely guarded copy of the “Lady” script.

As Bamberger puts it, “Night felt the reading of his script shouldn’t be considered work. It should add to the weekend’s pleasure.”

Night’s supporters say that, despite his bad reaction to Jacobson’s criticism, he was not unwilling to listen to advice. In fact, Warner Bros.’ Horn says the filmmaker made a number of significant changes based on studio notes and research-screening reactions. “I found Night to be both collaborative and surprisingly humble,” says Horn. “He wasn’t arrogant at all. He was always willing to engage in dialogue with us. I like what he set out to do and what’s inside him.”

However, “The Man Who Heard Voices” depicts an artist who is controlling one minute, racked with insecurity the other. After an early script read-through, Warner’s production chief Jeff Robinov tells Night, “Good job.” Obviously meant as quiet encouragement, it sends the filmmaker into a tailspin of doubt.

“Maybe he really doesn’t like it -- maybe that’s why he kicked up the project to Alan Horn,” Night broods before going to sleep, according to the book. “Maybe there wasn’t magic in the room -- the one guy not hired by me says, ‘Good job.’ ... Maybe Nina was right.”

Every artist has a different way of handling this crushing anxiety. Night takes solace in numbers. After a few loyalists read the script, their responses were turned into scores ranging from 1 to 10, then compared with the scores his other scripts had earned. When the Warner Bros. brass visit the film set, Night gave the visit a grade: B-plus.

If anything is clear from the book, it’s that Night, like so many artists, has a desperate need for approval. Although he remains obsessed with Jacobson’s lack of approval long after heading off to Warners, he has an equal longing for Horn’s approval long after the studio chief has given him $70 million to make the movie. In one rambling monologue, Night tells Horn: “I was always going to be a child to Disney and you treated me like a man, but more than that, I just wanted them to show respect for me as an artist, as you did when you called me in Paris that time ... we were on a rowboat in the Seine and I had just lost a bracelet in the water, and then you called ... is this making any sense?”

Apparently accustomed to this sort of talk -- a good studio chief often assumes the air of a soothing therapist -- Horn responds: “Yes, of course.”

Predictably, the knives have been out for the book and the film. Many have asked: Didn’t anyone tell Night it was a bad idea to lay out his life in a book? Or to play the role of a martyred visionary in his own film? Or to kill off a critic in the picture? He didn’t respond to my interview request, nor did Jacobson.

His agent, however, says he warned him. “I told Night, ‘You’re going to get killed doing this book,’ ” recalls Zimmer. “And he said, ‘I’m getting killed already.’ He feels the press has been consistently negative about his films. You have to understand that the book was meant as a primer about the moviemaking process, not a tell-all. When everything went weird with Disney, he could’ve stopped the book, but he let it go. He thought it would be a great experience to learn about himself.”

Zimmer says he also counseled Night against playing the sensitive-writer role. “I told him this was dangerous -- that the press will fixate on it. But he saw the movie with himself in it. And you know what? It’s his vision. And if the business doesn’t support it, he’s not going to run away and say, ‘Oh well, I’ll do “Jumanji 3.” ’ You can say he’s preachy or self-important, but who else is telling original stories out there? He should be applauded, not derided.”

Scott Rudin, who produced “The Village,” says Night’s assurance is mistaken for arrogance. He simply has enormous confidence in his own instincts. “He plays for the upside,” Rudin told me. “He doesn’t know fear -- he loves taking risks. He’s not always going to be right, but he always has a certainty about his films. He has his own voice and the courage to listen to it.”

For all his narcissism, Night does possess a stubborn integrity. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he has not put his muse to work doing sequels or remakes of old TV shows in a quest for a payday. What he has done with this book is let his hubris undermine his art. Night’s unyielding certainty has resulted in something creepier than any of his movies: a strangely unsympathetic character who bears an uncanny resemblance to himself.

The Big Picture runs each Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.