Never know what’ll happen
when M. Night’s in town

Robyn’s Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

I read in the paper the other day that well-known director M. Night Shyamalan is preparing to film yet another movie in and around Philadelphia. It is an apocalyptic thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, which reminded me of the time M. Night was shooting the movie Signs, his 2002 alien thriller starring Mel Gibson.
Signs not only starred a Mel Gibson in happier times before he slurred anti-Semitic shockers and became a recovering alcoholic, but it also starred Joaquin Phoenix in happier times before he too became a recovering alcoholic, although I must say his movie portrayal of Johnny Cash was played to perfection.
I think M. Night must have a thing for pre-rehabbed actors, since I recently read that the kid famous for "seeing dead people" in the director’s Sixth Sense also completed a stint. Maybe seeing all those dead people wasn’t such a good thing.
Some of the scenes for Signs were shot in Newtown, which happens to be where I live. The local newspaper reported when the cast and crew would be filming.
On that particular day I packed up our youngest daughter, put her in the stroller and went to check it out. I couldn’t believe how many other people had absolutely nothing better to do on that glorious fall day than to try to catch a glimpse of Hollywood.
But there we were: M. Night, Mel, Joaquin, 374 other women and me.
I elbowed my way to a front-row view, largely because I had the distinct advantage of being able to use the wheels of my baby’s stroller to clip the ankles — quite accidentally, I might add — of any woman who got in my way.
Not wanting to seem obvious every time I encountered someone I knew (which happens often in my town), I feigned my surprise.
"Oh my gosh, is THIS the day of the filming?? I had no idea, really. It was just such a nice day that I thought I’d take the baby for a walk and maybe stop by Starbucks for a tall decaf mocha Frappuccino . . . really," I’d say, all the while looking at these neighbors as if they were pathetic for actually being there on purpose.
Not to sound like my mom, who still insists that a line in Elvis’ Love Me Tender is sung to her — and I still have to tell her he says "darling," not "Darlene" — I’m still convinced that at one point Mel Gibson caught my eye and winked. It couldn’t have been the 374 other women jockeying for position. Most were still wincing from the pain of having their ankles clipped by a baby stroller.
That night our family went to a kids-theme hamburger place to celebrate our daughter Samantha’s 10th birthday. It was a midweek school night and we basically had the place to ourselves. That is until Rory Culkin came in. He played Mel Gibson’s son in the movie.
Apparently, Macaulay Culkin has a younger brother. And even if it wasn’t Macaulay who walked into the hamburger place, we still tell people that Rory Culkin celebrated Sammy’s 10th birthday with her, even though I’m pretty sure that’s not the way Rory explained it to his friends.
We were among those who bought Signs when it came out on DVD. With our personal connection to the movie, how could we not?
After Samantha watched it for the first time, she said to me, "Mom, you know that gross scene where the mother is cut in half and she’s pinned between a truck and a tree, and they say that once they back up the truck she’ll die?"
I nodded, familiar with the scene, but I also was breaking into a cold sweat, fearful I’d scarred by daughter by letting her watch something so gruesome.
"If that was you," my daughter told me, "I would tell them not to back up the truck."
I’m sure she didn’t mean that. But maybe it’d be wise of me to just stay home when M. Night returns to the area to shoot his next film. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net