Random Behind Scenes, ‘Sixth Sense’ Was A Weird Underdog Story (19 items)

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  (#7) Donnie Wahlberg

  The former New Kids on the Block member lost 43 pounds in five weeks in order to portray the role of Vincent, a tortured patient of Dr. Malcolm.

  Wahlberg told The Hollywood Reporter that Shyamalan said his scene had to "kickstart" the whole movie. He explained that he tried to ignore the burden of responsibility and just honor the script and focus on what he needed as an actor to play the part.

  It was after the first table read that Wahlberg came up with the idea of Vincent being unclothed in the scene. Both Willis and Shyamalan liked the idea, so the actor began the process of dropping the 40+ pounds, staying with a friend in New York City and living without having his credit cards or any money.

  "I would fast for a couple of days at a time and then just eat vegetables, chew gum all day and then walk the streets," he told THR. "When I got to Philadelphia, I slept in the park one night and was going through this really crazy process." 

  Because the film's producers were aiming for a PG-13 rating, Wahlberg's original plan to be bare in the scene was nixed. But his dedication to his role didn't go unnoticed - one day on set "[Willis] just made this speech, talking about the efforts I went through and the sacrifice I made for his film," Wahlberg recalled in the THR piece. "I was just blown away."

  Shyamalan was also impressed by the actor's dedication, telling THR that Wahlberg "really set a bar for us in a wonderful way of unexpectedness and standard of verisimilitude that really permeated the whole production. We went from 'Hey, this is a fun movie' to 'People are really taking this seriously.'"
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  (#5) Bids On The Spec Script Had To Start At A Minimum Of $1 Million

  When M. Night Shyamalan went to Los Angeles in 1997 to pitch his spec script for this psychological horror film, he had a reputation in Hollywood as a talented screenwriter, but had yet to have any commercial success as either a writer or director. That didn't keep him from putting stipulations on The Sixth Sense's script - if anyone was interested in it, bids would have to start at $1,000,000, and Shyamalan would have to be attached to direct the film.

  In 2019, Shyamalan told The Hollywood Reporter that he hadn't been bluffing about his demands. He remembered that he told his agent, "It's fine if no one wants to pay that money for it. If they don't want to make it, I will shelve it."

  The writer-director's faith was rewarded, as the script became the object of a bidding war that was eventually won by Hollywood Pictures at a price of somewhere between $2.2 and $3 million.
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  (#3) Bruce Willis

  • Actor

  In 1997, Willis was slated to produce and star in a romantic comedy entitled Broadway Brawler. But when a dispute between the actor and the director led to the film being shut down just weeks into production, Disney and Willis came to an agreement in which he would commit to star in two other films for the company instead, at a reduced fee of $10 million each. One of these films turned out to be The Sixth Sense.

  David Vogel, the head of Buena Vista Motion Picture Group, sent the script to the actor's agent thinking Willis wouldn't want to do a small-budget film with an unknown writer-director. He was surprised to learn the actor wanted to play the role of the child psychologist.

  "When I read [the script for] Sixth Sense, I was as fooled when I turned that last page, that last couple, the last three pages of that script, I was blown away by the fact that my character was dead," the actor said in a 2002 interview with Reader's Digest. "I didn’t see it coming. And that’s what made me want to do it. I went, 'If we can pull this off, it would be brilliant.'"

  At first, there was a condition to Willis playing the role. "The script is good, but Night's [Shyamalan] not directing," Willis's agent told the executive. So Vogel thought Willis would withdraw from the project after being told that Shyamalan would indeed direct the film. Luckily, his agent backed off from demanding that Shyamalan be replaced.
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  (#12) Toni Collette

  • Actor

  Collette had a shaved head when she auditioned for the role of Lynn Sear in The Sixth Sense. Although she gave a strong audition, Shyamalan worried that her shaved head might cost her the part. "I didn't want to show the video to the studio for fear that they could be concerned with her appearance," the director told Variety in 2019. 

  Instead, he told the studio, "I want to cast the woman from Muriel's Wedding." Willis backed up the director's choice, and Collette ended up getting the role without the studio seeing her audition tape.

  Her hair had not grown back by the time filming began, so Collette actually wore a wig - "I think it's from Velvet Goldmine," the director told Variety.
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  (#18) The Film Was Filmed In (Almost) Chronological Order

  Shyamalan was able to film much of The Sixth Sense in sequential order, which Osment said really helped him deal with the emotional journey his character went through over the course of the story.

  "When you have actual memories of going through earlier scenes earlier in the story, it really helps build the reality of the world over the course of the film," the actor told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019.
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  (#16) Willis's Role Was A Departure From The Action Hero Parts He'd Become Known For

  Although Willis first achieved fame by playing a wisecracking detective in the television comedy-drama series Moonlighting, by 1999, he had become more known for his starring roles in action thrillers and science fiction films like the Die Hard franchise, The Fifth Element, The Jackal, and Armageddon.

  His role as child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe in The Sixth Sense was a departure from is action hero reputation. Shyamalan, who had wanted to work with the actor for years, thought the emotional underpinning in Die Hard was the relationship between John McClane and his wife. The director thought that The Sixth Sense put the actor in another love story - and that it was the type of role Willis would be eager to take on.

  "He was so excited about doing that," Shyamalan told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. "He’s the guy who didn’t have the gun. When Donnie’s [Wahlberg] character shows up in the beginning, he doesn’t know what to do. He [Willis] loved playing somebody who didn’t know what to do."

  The director and actor have worked together several times since completing The Sixth Sense, as Willis played the character David Dunn in Shyamalan's Unbreakable trilogy.

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