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Lady in the Water
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 Lady in the Water Production NotesTagline: Fate won't let you hide forever.
Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) has been quietly trying to disappear among the burned-out light bulbs and broken appliances of the Cove apartment complex. But on the night that irrevocably changes his life, Cleveland finds someone else hiding in the mundane routine of the modest building – a mysterious young woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), who has been living in the passageways beneath the building’s swimming pool.
Cleveland discovers that Story is actually a “Narf” – a nymph-like character from an epic bedtime story who is being stalked by vicious creatures determined to prevent her from making the treacherous journey from our world back to hers.
Story’s unique powers of perception reveal the fates of Cleveland’s fellow tenants, whose destinies are tied directly to her own, and they must work together to decipher a series of codes that will unlock the pathway to her freedom. But the window of opportunity for Story to return home is closing rapidly, and the tenants are putting their own lives at great risk to help her.
Cleveland will have to face the demons that have followed him to the Cove – and the other tenants must seize the special powers that Story has brought out in them – if they hope to succeed in their daring and dangerous quest to save her world...and ours.
The Story & The Storyteller
A master storyteller can craft a single image or a line of dialogue that resonates with audiences for a lifetime. Years after seeing a film, the mere suggestion of it instantly recalls the emotional impact of the story and our experience of watching that cinematic moment unfold for the first time.
In 1999, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan captivated audiences with his internationally acclaimed thriller The Sixth Sense, a multi-layered ghost story powered by equal parts suspense and emotion. The movie became a worldwide cultural phenomenon and added a new dimension to the character-driven blockbuster. His succession of hit films that followed, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village, has established Shyamalan as a prolific storyteller with vision and purpose.
In an era when reality programming has saturated the airwaves and cinematic imagination often seems stalled, Shyamalan consistently brings original, inspired stories to the big screen, captivating audiences with deft storytelling that bears his signature blend of suspense, drama, humor and heartfelt emotion.
His uncommonly assured visual style – characterized by thoughtful framing, scenes that unfold in long takes and little to no “coverage” – is as provocative as the stories he tells and underscores his passion for storytelling.
“My movies are an expression of who I am and where I am emotionally,” Shyamalan says. “Each film has its questions that I’m wrestling with at that time. I believe in being honest with the audience, so I try to talk honestly about the things I’m dealing with in the context of a fictional story that everyone can enjoy.”
The $2 billion that Shyamalan’s films have earned in box office and DVD sales suggest that his movies are as universal as they are personal, resonating with audiences not only for their originality and honesty, but also for their intelligence. Whether he’s delving into the extraordinary or the painfully intimate, Shyamalan asks us to consider not only the most personal aspects of the human condition, but our relationship with the universe as well.
And he doesn’t rely on violence or heavy visual effects to make his point. “Night is not afraid of anything in his work, and I think that’s why people are so drawn to his films,” says Bryce Dallas Howard, who received international acclaim for her performance in The Village, her first starring role in a feature film. “Audiences know that they’re going to see something that is inherently fearless.”
Perhaps his most original and daring film yet, Lady in the Water began as an impromptu bedtime story Shyamalan invented for his two young daughters. “The way I tell stories to my kids is very freeform – whatever pops into my head and comes out of my mouth,” he says of their nightly ritual.
“Do you know that someone lives under our pool?” is what popped out of Shyamalan’s head on that particular night, sparking a story that played out for days and weeks on end. “It developed into this kind of odyssey,” he recalls. “There was something at the heart of this story that made me want to tell it every night, and to keep it going. After the story finally ended, my daughters and I kept talking about it and
Lady in the Water tells the legend of Story, a mesmerizing nymph-like young woman, and Cleveland, the broken-spirited building superintendent who discovers that she is actually a Narf – a character from an ancient and epic bedtime story – who has journeyed to the human world to fulfill a vital and sacred purpose. Temporarily trapped between realms, her mission and maybe even her fragile existence in jeopardy, she has taken refuge in Cleveland’s building, living in the cool dark passageways beneath the swimming pool.
Story’s quest to return to her world is fraught with danger, inhibited by ferocious creatures whose attempts to stop her carry catastrophic consequences for the human realm. As Cleveland and his fellow tenants work together to unravel the mystery of her destiny, they discover that they too are fated to be characters in this extraordinary story unfolding in the real world around them.
Like Cleveland and the other tenants, Shyamalan came to believe the story himself. “I had to absolutely one hundred percent believe in this story for it to come to life as a film,” he says. “My hope is, if I tell you the honest truth – that I do believe in these kinds of possibilities – that you’ll be open to receiving that message.”
Shyamalan’s decision to share the story with a wider audience was largely a matter of timing. “I got the ideas for The Village and Lady in the Water at the same time, but I was in a darker place, and The Village is an expression of the questions I was grappling with. How far would I go to protect my family? Would I run away from society? Would I make questionable choices? I wasn’t ready to make such an optimistic statement yet. What I feel now is inspired and hopeful, and Lady in the Water is a reflection of that.”
With Lady in the Water, Shyamalan has created a brand new mythology in the tradition of The Princess Bride, E.T. and The Wizard of Oz that encourages us to have faith in something greater than ourselves; to believe in a world of possibilities beyond those we can see or fully comprehend. “The problem with us when we grow up is that we forget that anything is possible,” Shyamalan believes. “So the things that used to be possible had to become stories. And then we became so cynical that these stories had to become children’s stories. So things that were once true are now disguised as children’s stories.
“In Lady in the Water there is a whole ecosystem of creatures who exist right outside this apartment building,” he continues, “but the tenants have to go back centuries in their thinking to become like children again and believe anything is possible so that they can connect with this other world that coexists with theirs.”
“I think the reason we tell bedtime stories is to remind us that we’re a part of a story ourselves,” Howard muses. “We’re part of something that is grander, and even though at times it can be chaotic, there is an ultimate plan.”
While the film furthers Shyamalan’s exploration of faith – a key theme in each of his movies, most notably Signs – Lady in the Water also examines the significance of finding one’s purpose in life. “Whenever I veer off the course of doing what I’m supposed to be doing, I’m really unhappy,” Shyamalan admits. “When I see people who are not glowing, who do not have that glowing feeling you recognize in people who inspire you, it’s because they are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. They haven’t found their purpose.”
Lady in the Water represents the latest chapter in Shyamalan’s journey as a storyteller, his seventh film in a canon of distinctive stories united by a common purpose: to inspire and entertain. “When people come out of this movie,” he says, “I hope they feel a sense of hope for themselves and for others; hope that everybody finds their purpose and we’ll all be able to do what we’re supposed to do on this planet.”
The Characters
Running from his past and miles from his purpose, Cleveland Heep “has suffered undeniable loss,” says writer-director M. Night Shyamalan. The former doctor has taken refuge as the superintendent of The Cove, a run-of-the-mill apartment complex in the Philadelphia suburbs, where he buries himself in the busy routine of quick fixes and all but anonymous interactions with the world around him. But Cleveland’s attempts to suppress his tremendous pain and sadness have manifested into a stutter, leaving the other tenants to regard him, as Paul Giamatti describes, as “a bit of a sad figure – a guy with a cloud over him.
“Cleveland is trying to turn his back on the past,” Giamatti elaborates. “He’s taken this simple job and sort of shut himself off. He’s hiding in his little house at The Cove.” Shyamalan began writing the character for Giamatti, an Academy Award nominee for his performance in Cinderella Man, after seeing the actor’s hilariously heartbreaking performance in the indie hit Sideways. “I was blown away by his humor, his humanity and his ability to be a leading man. I felt for him in a way that very few actors make me feel,” Shyamalan says.
A screening of American Splendor and a subsequent meeting with Giamatti convinced Shyamalan that he had found his guy. “Paul and I felt a common bond right away. We have a similar sense of humor and share the same point of view on a lot of things. Like all of us, Paul grapples with stuff, but he’s a light.”
Giamatti was intrigued by Shyamalan’s vision for Lady in the Water and the audacity of his storytelling. “It’s a huge idea, and he’s telling it in a really bold way,” Giamatti observes.
“Paul Giamatti is my Richard Dreyfuss,” says Shyamalan, who cites Jaws and Close Encounters as two of the films that inspired him to become a filmmaker. “He can make you laugh and yet feel the depths of his character’s confusion, and then emerge with a hopefulness for mankind.”
“Paul Giamatti is such an intelligent man and such a good actor. I’ve never seen someone so technically proficient,” marvels Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays Story, the young goddess who changes Cleveland’s life. “Paul isn’t one of those actors who needs to go off into a corner and get into a certain state. He’s very focused and he can go anywhere. At one point in the film, my character reads Cleveland’s journal. Paul wrote some entries in the actual journal we filmed with, which I read. They were incredibly helpful. He had tapped into complete and utter darkness.”
When Cleveland finds Story hiding in the shadows of The Cove, he is jolted from his disconnected reverie and compelled to help this powerful and alluring creature make the treacherous journey back to her fabled home, The Blue World. “Cleveland needs to father someone. He needs to give of himself and nurture somebody, but he’s not aware of this until he meets Story,” Shyamalan says.
At the same time, Story connects to something in Cleveland beyond his kindness. “She makes him think about things he had wanted to put aside,” says Giamatti. “He was trying to sleepwalk through life, and her presence won’t allow that.”
“Story recognizes that Cleveland is a very sad and lost man,” Howard adds. “She can see that he hasn’t found his voice. It’s a beautiful relationship that they have because she helps him find his way and he helps her find her way.”
Howard sees her highly intuitive character as “an angel who shows people what they are capable of, because she believes in them.” Yet Story has great difficulty believing that she is destined to have a lasting impact on humankind.
“She’s the most important figure in this story when it comes to the future of the earth, but that’s strange to her because she thinks she’s not even good at her job as a Narf,” Howard muses. “I think it’s really poignant that even somebody who is an embodiment of God can’t see that they’re extraordinary and exceptional. It’s beautiful that Story has to find her voice just as Cleveland does.”
Howard became involved in the project early in Shyamalan’s process of translating Lady in the Water from the bedtime story he created for his children to his multi-layered screenplay. On the last day of filming on The Village, he shared the story of Lady in the Water with Howard. Months later, after screening The Village for the actress and her parents at his farm, Shyamalan told her that he wanted her to play Story. “I sat down on the floor and started crying,” Howard recalls. “I know that’s sounds really dramatic, but I feel very close with Night and it was a big deal to be invited to be in this film.”
“It was a big moment,” Shyamalan agrees. “It was an act of faith. I hadn’t written the script yet, but I knew I wanted her to do it.”
“Bryce is really talented and she works her ass off,” Giamatti says of his costar. “I hope someday to be as good a film actor as she is, because she’s amazingly assured…which hopefully will rub off on me in some way.”
It took approximately three hours a day of full-body, waterproof makeup application to transform Howard into the nearly translucent Narf. “Story is not a creature who is used to being in the sunlight,” Howard notes. “She lives primarily in water, so the texture of her skin is different in order to cope with that.
Story is searching more consciously – and more urgently – than the other tenants at The Cove for the next step in the path toward her destiny. She must unravel an intricate riddle to find a series of people who will come together to enable her journey back to The Blue World. But Story is forbidden from talking about her quest with anyone who is not meant to be part of it, and the inexperienced Narf’s missteps have left her in great peril. Meanwhile, she is growing weak from a poisonous attack by the Scrunt, a fierce hyena-like creature determined to prevent her from returning home.
Time is of the essence, and Cleveland reaches out to an eclectic group of residents at The Cove to help him decipher the mystery of Story’s fate before it’s too late. One of the first tenants Cleveland approaches for help is Mr. Farber, a discontented film and book critic who has recently moved to Philadelphia from the West Coast. “Farber is a curmudgeon,” says prolific actor and director Bob Balaban, known for his roles in the mockumentaries Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, as well as his recent turn in the Oscarwinning drama Capote. “He’s unfriendly and very private. He doesn’t want anyone to knock on his door. And he would never invite anyone into his apartment.”
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Bryce Dallas Howard as Story and Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep in Lady in the Water.
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