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

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  (#1) No One Knew 'I See Dead People' Would Become A Cultural Staple

  Although Osment's "I see dead people" has become one of the most memorable lines in movie history, the actor claimed that no one connected with the film had a clue that it would have such a major impact.

  "Even when we were shooting that scene, nobody was pointing to that line or singling it out for special attention," Osment told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019.

  The actor believed the line only really started to have a huge impact after the movie was out and "I see dead people" was emphasized in the advertising.
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  (#2) Haley Joel Osment

  • Actor

  When Shyamalan saw Osment's video audition tape, he didn't think the young actor was right for the part of Cole. The writer-director envisioned Cole as a brooding, enigmatic kid, and he saw Osment as a "really sweet cherub, kind of beautiful, blond boy."

  Then Osment had an in-person audition. "There was something magical about his audition," Shyamalan recalled in a 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "He nailed it with the vulnerability and the need... He was able to convey a need as a human being in a way that was amazing to see."

  The writer-director told THR that after Osment's audition, he remarked to the casting director that he didn't know if he would want to make the movie if Osment didn't get the part.

  The young actor was well prepared for his audition - when asked by Shyamalan if he read his part, Osment replied that he read the entire script three times the night before (reportedly on the urging of his father, himself an actor). Osment was reportedly also the only child auditioning for the role who wore a tie.
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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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  (#4) Osment Thought He And Collette 'Whiffed' Their Big Scene

  Osment didn't think the pivotal scene where he tells Collette his secret about being able to see dead people was nearly as well done as it should have been. In a 2017 interview with SYFY Wire, the actor explained that he felt rushed while filming the delicate moment: "We did seven takes of it, and we just felt like we weren't getting it, and by the seventh one we felt like we had gotten some good stuff but there was still this unsureness."

  Osment went on to say that while he was nervous they might have missed the mark, he felt much better after the director showed the cast and crew the scene during that night's dailies.

  In a 2019 interview with Variety, Shyamalan recalled his own doubts about how the filming of that scene had gone:

  I felt I had all the pieces, but I was not 100% sure, because we didn’t do [the scene] in full takes that I felt comfortable with. We had to move on. I walked away, and I was talking to somebody else and then the AD came over and said "Hey, they’re both [Collette and Osment] really upset." And I went back to the car and they were both crying, and they said, "Are you sure we got it? Are you sure we got it?" And I go, "We got it," and I gave them reassurance. I said, "I’m pretty sure we got it."
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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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  (#6) The Executive Who Bought The Script Ended Up Getting Fired

  David Vogel was the President of Disney's Buena Vista Motion Picture Group at the time that he decided to buy Shyamalan's spec script, with the additional clause that Shyamalan would direct the project.

  The problem was that Vogel had not gotten the go-ahead to buy the script from any of his superiors. His decision to purchase the project - along with his refusal to give up some of his power - is thought to be among the reasons that Vogel ended up being fired.

  Disney seemingly had so little faith in the project that they not only fired Vogel, but also sold the production rights to Spyglass Entertainment (although the studio did retain distribution rights and got a percentage of the box office receipts).
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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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  (#8) A 'Cold Room' Was Built For Scenes Where We See The Actors' Breath

  Among the scenes in the film where it was important to see the character's breath is the one where Osment is lying in a freezing cold bed and he tells his psychologist he can see dead people. Instead of using special effects to simulate breath, the production used a more natural - and colder - technique.

  "What they did was they would drape this huge plastic sheeting over the sets and then pump in freezing cold air so that it would be below freezing, and you could see our breath," Osment told Variety in 2019. "There was a limited time that we could be in there because it was so cold and most of the scenes I’m in my underwear or something."

  "CGI at that time was not perfected to the place where I felt comfortable that it could do breaths," Shyamalan confirmed in the same article. "[Osment] wasn’t acting, it was cold, and you could see the physicality on his skin and the way he’s shivering. And even now, with CGI, I might do it the same way because of what it makes the actors do."
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  (#9) The Original Script Was More Of A Serial Killer Thriller

  Shyamalan's first draft of the script was more of a serial killer film along the lines of The Silence of the Lambs. In the original version, Willis's character was a crime photographer rather than a child psychologist, and Osment's character would have been Willis's son, a boy who saw visions of the prey his father photographed.

  It took Shyamalan 10 more drafts before finally landing on what would be the film we have now. 
• 

  (#10) Frank Marshall Worried The 'I See Dead People' Scene Would Tip Audiences Off To Final Plot Twist

  In the scene where Osment says, "I see dead people," the camera then slowly zooms in on Willis's face. According to a special feature version of the film, Frank Marshall, who was one of the producers, worried the shot would tip audiences off to the fact that the child psychologist [SPOILER ALERT] has been dead all along, thus ruining the plot twist at the end of the movie.

  He wanted the scene altered, but when no one at a test screening appeared to pick up on what they were hinting at, the scene was left intact.

  Anyone who bought the soundtrack for The Sixth Sense prior to the film's release, however, would have had the surprise plot twist spoiled for them anyway, as the final song on track listing is called "Malcolm Is Dead."
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  (#11) No One Was Aware During Production Of How Scary The Film Would Be 

  It wasn't until after production wrapped that the cast got a real idea of how scary The Sixth Sense was. In 2019, Osment told Variety that the first time he understood the impact was when a friend of his got really scared during a screening on the Disney lot.

  Mischa Barton, meanwhile, got an idea of how frightening the film was when her younger sister freaked out during a post-production viewing.

  "You know how you’re not supposed to make any noise in ADR? She screamed at the top of her lungs," Barton recalled to Variety. "My mom was like, 'Oh, my god.' She had to take her outside. My sister’s like, 'That’s the scariest thing I’ve seen.'"

  Barton was just 13 years old when she did the movie, and she told Variety that her life was different when she went back to school after the film's release. She related, "All these kids went to the movie theater and they were like 'Is that you?' The whole school treated me differently. I don’t think the teachers knew what to do with me."
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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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  (#13) Mischa Barton

  • Actor

  Barton played Kyra Collins, the memorably frightening little girl who appears to Cole after her mother - who suffers Munchausen by proxy - poisons her.

  To simulate vomit, the actress had to hold a mixture of breakfast cereals in her mouth and then spit up the concoction. She recalls that she was given the choice of using bananas or cereal.
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  (#14) Collette Would Wake Up At The Same Time Every Night While On Location 

  In a 2012 interview with Slant magazine, Collette opened up about the spooky experience she had while filming The Sixth Sense: "In the hotel room I was staying at in Philadelphia, I started meditating a lot, and then I would wake up at night, roll over, and look at the clock, and it was always a repeated number - 1:11, 3:33, 4:44. That started to really spook me."

  The actress went on to remark that the same thing happened to her years later, when she was filming the movie Hitchcock.
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  (#15) One Scene Got Cut Because It May Have Been Considered Too Frightening

  A few years ago, Osment revealed in a Reddit Q&A session that he filmed a scene where his character looks out of the hospital window and sees an entire wing full of horribly disfigured people standing in the other windows, but that Shyamalan cut the scene from the finished film.

  Osment thought that was the right decision because instead of being too gory, The Sixth Sense allows the audience's imagination to take over - which is often more terrifying than anything shown on screen.
• 

  (#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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  (#17) Shyamalan Deliberately Subverted Horror Film Conventions

  In a 2019 interview with the New York Daily News, Shyamalan said he didn't see The Sixth Sense as a horror film.

  "I took what typically would be done in a horror genre, but [did] it in [a] psychological thriller," he told the paper, claiming the distinction between the genres mattered because "horror has its goal... as solely scares, while [The Sixth Sense] is something that's a mystery. 'What is that noise in the other room? I thought we were alone...' And then there's a mystery added: well, who's there? And what is it? Where is this going? How does this affect the story?"
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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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  (#19) M. Night Shyamalan

  Willis acted as the DJ for many of the cast parties that took place during filming and he ended up being responsible for the 28-year-old director's very first hangover.

  "[Willis would] always keep giving me shots that he kept calling candy: 'Here’s candy, here’s candy.'" Shyamalan recalled in a 2019 interview for Variety.  He continued, "And then the next morning I could not get off the sofa. And I didn’t know what this throbbing pain in my head was. He was just laughing his butt off."

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