The Twisted Mind of M Night Shyamalan - The Sixth Sense: Media Club Plus S02E01
Transcriber: jay (8325)
Introduction        1
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[1:00:00]        35
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[2:00:00]        72
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[3:00:00]        107
Introduction
[“Doctor Malcolm and Friends” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]
 Keith: Greetings from Media Club Plus, a podcast about plunging into the media that thrills us and the stories that chill us. As always, we’ve been dragged to you by Friends at the Table. Before we start our next season, we’ll be subjecting ourselves to the twisted mind of M. Night Shyamalan. My name is Keith J. Carberry. You can find me online @KeithJCarberry. You can find the Let’s Plays that I do at youtube.com/runbutton. Joining me for the first time is Art Martinez-Tebbel.
Art: Hi, um, I’m Art. You can find me on Bluesky @AMTebbel. Um, do you think it might have been a bad idea to have the person who doesn’t have experience with the director write the intro?
Keith: No.
Ali: No.
Art: All right. Well, I’m glad we got to hear from the Cryptkeeper at the top of the—
Keith: I, to be clear, I wrote that after watching this movie and deciding that it absolutely wasn’t a horror movie. And then going, I bet none of these are horror movies.
Art: Well, I think one of them is a—one of the ones we’re definitely watching is a horror movie, and one of the ones that I’m going to complain about us not watching is a horror movie.
Keith: Okay. Uh, and also joining us this season is Ali Acampora.
Ali: Um, hi, my name is Ali. You can find me reluctantly over on Bluesky @ali-online. I don’t post there, but you can follow me. Um, you can also find me on friendsatthetable.cash, which is our Patreon. I host a show there called Gathering Information about Friends at the Table, a podcast you might have heard about, and you can find me on our Twitch channel on Mondays at 12:30 PM Pacific time.
Keith: If you haven’t heard of Friends at the Table, that’s the podcast that we all do together with another half of people who aren’t here, um, some of whom you’ve heard on Media Club Plus before. But if you haven’t checked it out, you should check it out. Uh, also returning from last season is Sylvi Bullet.
Sylvi: Hello, it’s me. It’s fan favorite coming back. We killed the other two. We didn’t do that.
Keith: Well, that’s actually the last one we’re gonna do is M. Night’s first, um, documentary, which is going to be about the murder of two people in order to cover—
Sylvi: Of Dre and Jack.
Keith: Yeah, in order to cover a podcast involving his movies.
Sylvi: Um, yeah, hi, I’m Sylvi. Uh, check me out on your, your internet websites @sylvibullet. Check out sidestory.show. It’s a gaming podcast that we’ve—Ali, have you been on that yet?
Ali: I was. I was, um, I was there to talk about Lunar, and then we talked about Fantasy Life instead.
Sylvi: We’re officially like, so deep into doing that that I can’t remember, like, specific episodes. And by that, I mean, like, two months, three months.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Everyone has been on. Art was just on. We did, we did a sports episode. And by sports, I mean, uh, Uma Musume and Pokémon and MLB and, uh, uh, NBA 2K. 
Art: I’m the last person on every show. That’s the rule.
Keith: Is that the rule? Well, Janine hasn’t been on this.
Sylvi: Yeah, so—
Art: Oh, shit.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: We’ve broken the rule. Sorry, we’ve broken the rule.
Art: I quit.
Keith: Well, I am a rule breaker at heart.
Ali: Hmm.
Keith: Oh, did we lose someone?
Ali: Oh, no. Art just left.
[hysteria]
Keith: Art left. Art quit.
Ali: Wow.
Art: Did that play?
Keith: When we started Friends at the Table, Art said, I swear I will never break a rule.
Ali: Hmm.
Keith: So this is tragic. This is tragic, Art.
Sylvi: It’s sort of—you two have a sort of one of us always tells the truth, one of us always lies situation, but one of us always follows the rules and one of us always breaks them. Yeah, is the arrangement.
Keith: Why don’t we go around the horn and talk about our—this is the horn, by the way. Um, the four of us is the horn. Uh, our experience with M. Night as a director, as a famous guy. Um, Ali, this sort of was your idea and mostly was your idea. Do you want to start?
Ali: I don’t know if it was mostly my idea. I think that other people— [Keith: Floated it.] Yeah.
Sylvi: I was very enthusiastic.
Keith: Yeah, it was mostly the two of you.
Ali: I think for the Friends at the Table audience, I think the seed was planted when I mentioned Lady in the Water during our Palisade postmortem. Um, but yeah, I’ve, I’ve been a big M. Night Shyamalan fan, uh, I guess my whole life. Like, I feel like I saw The Sixth Sense in theaters.
Keith: Wow.
Ali: And that was 1999 when I was 10. So I, you know, I was in seats. I was a day one fan, I suppose you could say. And, um, going back to—
Art: And also you could say that 10 is when your life started.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: It’s, it’s, it’s certainly when you could claim to have, have taste, have a taste.
Ali: Yes, this is true. As far as, as far as my media, you know, influences go, this was a very early one in terms of somebody I could honestly say, like, I am a fan of his. I think his work is interesting. These movies make me think. I’m a teenager. Um, but, and I, you know, going back to them, I think they hold up.
Keith: Um, Sylvi?
Sylvi: I, I’ve got a kind of like, a weird like, big gap for my M. Night, uh, knowledge, but I would consider myself a fan. I really think I am someone who developed more of an appreciation for him with his later stuff. Like, I’d seen this and I’d seen Unbreakable before, um, and then there’s just like a huge jump to like, The Happening. We can get to that when we get to that.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Sylvi: And then another jump to like, Knock at the Cabin and Trap, and those movies like, really hit for me. Um, so I’m excited to see like, if I—it’s just a thing where a—because I really liked watching this. We’ll get into it, but I’m excited to see if it’s a thing where I have always—where now I just like his style of directing. Yeah. Or if like, there was, there was a reason why it didn’t stick the first time I tried getting into his stuff.
Keith: Art?
Art: Yeah, I also saw The Sixth Sense in theaters. I was older than Ali was because I am older than Ali is.
Ali: Interesting.
Keith: That checks out. Yeah.
Art: I liked it a great deal. I also liked Unbreakable a great deal, which we’ll see how that goes. Looking at the Wiki, I watched the whole Buena Vista Pictures era of M. Night and then skipped his little walkabout to other studios. And then when he got to Blumhouse in 2015 with The Visit, I was like, back in. With the exception of I have not seen Glass, Old, or Knock at the Cabin.
Keith: It’s going to be really tough trying to remember the difference between The Happening and The Visit for me. I don’t know wh—
Art: It’s not. They’re very different movies.
Keith: Until we get to them, I—or maybe forever, I will just be thinking that one is the other. I’ll always have to ask which one is the plant one? The Happening.
Art: The Happening.
Keith: Okay. 
Ali: That’s The Happening.
Keith: Yes, The Happening. Right. Yeah. That’s a question that will come back up for me. People who know me from Run Button, Friends at the Table will, will probably know that I’m not a scary movie guy. And I always felt like M. Night Shyamalan was making scary movies. So I have zero M. Night experience except for when I was 13 or something, uh, I watched the last third or last half of Signs on DVD or on TV. I can’t remember. Um, so that’s the only thing. And I remember Signs being huge, but also being like, kind of split. Like, I feel like people kind of not liking Signs was the first thing I ever heard negative about M. Night Shyamalan.
Art: I don’t want to talk about it.
Keith: Okay, that’s going to be tough for when we do the episode.
Art: I think we need to save it for the episode.
Keith: Yeah, we’ll save it for the episode.
Art: There’s a lot to think about Signs.
Keith: But for this movie, I’m going to tell you right now, I loved it. I thought this was really great.
Sylvi: Yeah, I had a fantastic time.
Keith: Yeah, this was really good. This is—it was different than I thought it was going to be. It was not—it was much more—it was really like a, like a family drama with a supernatural coat on.
Ali: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Keith: Which to me is great.
[musical sting]
Art: Yeah. Can I say something and then you just put it ahead of what Ali just said?
Ali: Yeah, totally.
Sylvi: Wow.
Art: If you have—if you have not seen this movie, and you don’t know what it’s about or like what the thing about it is, turn this podcast off and go watch it. Like, I don’t even want you to know that. That’s why I want this put in front of Ali, because I don’t even want you to know what, what she said about it. If you can go into this movie completely cold, I envy your—I envy you so much.
Keith: Yeah. In, in my recap, I will note that I—that someone doesn’t know the thing of the movie to be so implausible. But if that, if that does apply to you, then yeah, you really should. That you would—you owe it to yourself to watch a movie that, like—it would be like not knowing that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father and then getting an opportunity as an adult to— [Sylvi: What!] Oh no, egg on my face!
Sylvi: Oh my God.
Ali: It would like be—
Keith: It’s like being able to go and, and experience that as an adult in the 2020s, without having already known that.
Art: But that person must exist. I don’t know if they, they’re our listener, but like…
Sylvi: I feel like—I think—they’re more likely to exist now than they were 10 years ago or something like that, because like there was a cultural saturation point with Shyamalan that I’m sure we will get into throughout the series, uh, that definitely like disappeared when he kind of fell from grace during the sort of ‘10s and like late aughts. Um, and I, I feel like because of that, you know, I found out about the twist from this movie in a really stupid way. I was gonna say from TV, but that’s not true. But I did see I Saw—I See Dead People. Sorry, I’ve Seen Dead People, to quote Keith. [laughter] That was before the show.
Keith: Don’t quote me!
Sylvi: Yeah, you said that. Um, Like, that’s—that was like referenced in all sorts of stuff. Yeah, that was on TV when I was a kid, that like, it’s not being done in the same way. Like, I can fully believe that people just haven’t been exposed to Haley Joel Osment’s psychic gifts. Yeah, I was—in the way we were.
Keith: I was seven when this movie came out, and I remember like, probably not when it was in theaters, but probably when it was on home video. I remember, like, kids at recess, like, whispering, I see dead people, like, as, like, a—as just, like, a punchline to nothing. It was just, like, a meme that, that, like, 8- and 9-year-olds were doing.
Sylvi: And now they still do that, but they think it’s a Kendrick thing.
[musical sting]
Ali: Yeah, and I feel like you’ll—you’ll see that tone kind of repeated. I mean, these movies were billed as thrillers sort of at the time. And, you know, I think the more popular it became and sort of the zeitgeist around, like, oh, what’s the twist going to be? And, like, so much of the response around this movie being, of course, Haley Joel Osment, who, like, does this incredible performance.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: But it felt like the culture at the time was just, like, talking about, like, the I see dead people and the ghost aspect of this movie. and not how much—how intimate and tender a lot of the actual story is. The cinematographer for this movie was Tak Fujimoto.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: And I’m glad that I looked this up because he worked with M. Night for a few other movies. Signs, The Happening, and some other stuff you might know him from are Silence of the Man—Silence of the Lamb, or The Manchurian Candidate. Sorry.
Sylvi: It seems like, um, Jonathan Demme was the other guy that he worked with a lot, uh, who did, um, Manchurian Candidate and Silence of the Lambs. Um, the one that stood out to me was that like, his second movie is being one of the 3 cinematographers on Badlands by Terrence Malick, which is like really, really revered, at least, uh, was when I was in school. Um, yeah, this movie looks—
Art: This is a totally bonkers filmography. You told me the same filmographer did The Sixth Sense and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
Keith: Yeah. Yeah. And Gladiator?
Art: I would have been—and Gladiator. Wait, that must be a different Gladiator.
Keith: Oh, that’s ‘92.
Ali: Yeah, that’s a different Gladiator.
Art: That’s not—that’s a different Gladiator.
Keith: Um, Miami Blues though.
Ali: Yeah. Um, and the, uh, the, the, uh—
Keith: He also worked on Star Wars, look at that. Camera and electrical department. Uh, A New Hope.
Ali: What? Oh, damn.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: This kid’s been around for a while. Um, but yeah, the, the music was done by, uh, James Newton Howard.
Keith: Allie, are you reading from my intro that I’m about to read?
Ali: No, I’m sorry. Am I taking it? I just thought it would be a good idea to say it at the beginning. But if you have that—
Keith: I do. I have all of it. Okay.
Ali: Okay. Okay.
Keith: Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan with director of photography Tak Fujimoto, composed by James Newton Howard, starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, and Olivia Williams, 1999’s The Sixth Sense might be one of the most famous American films, full stop. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Editing for Andrew Mondshein’s work, I can guarantee whether you’ve seen it or not, this is a movie you know the ending to. The twist ending. The twist ending. But ending aside, this is a film about a boy who no one understands, who feels like a freak and is terrified to live in a world full of ghosts that only he can see and few can even sense. A lonely world where even the ghosts can’t see each other, and the only person willing to listen is a man whose biggest fear is failing another little boy.
Sylvi: Nailed it.
Art: Yeah, that’s the movie.
Keith: That’s the movie.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: You didn’t mention Donnie Wahlberg, but I’ll—
Keith: Donnie Wahlberg! Really great performance from Donnie Wahlberg.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: It’s definitely the performance of Donnie Wahlberg’s career.
Keith: Yeah. I was shocked. I was like, who is this? And I was like, that’s Donnie Wahlberg?
Ali: That’s Donnie Wahlberg?
Sylvi: That is Donnie Wahlberg in his little tighty-whities
Keith: And his nipple ring.
Ali: Okay, I—
Keith: You missed the nipple ring?
Ali: I did. Well, okay, so I just Googled this, obviously. Maybe people heard me typing, but I saw Donnie Wahlberg in the credits and I was like, huh, that’s weird. And I just didn’t think about it. And then right now I was like, maybe he was one of the kids. And now I’m like, what the fuck? Good job, Donnie.
Keith: Donnie shows up.
Art: Donnie Wahlberg, who was an adult when he was in New Kids on the Block 10 years before this movie came out, did not play one of the children in this movie.
Ali: Listen, I don’t know.
Keith: Uh, Donnie Wahlberg is at the very beginning of this movie almost. Um, uh, an old filament bulb lights up a corner of a wine cellar, and a woman in a dress coming from a party or something—it’s not either of those things—she comes down and carefully picks out a bottle of wine before getting our first chill of the movie. This is a movie that is full of chills, literal chills. Characters are always getting chills.
Sylvi: And a couple spills.
Keith: And a couple spills. Yeah, there’s a little bit of a spill in this first scene here with Bruce Willis as Dr. Malcolm Crowe receiving an award from the city of Philadelphia for his work in child psychology. And he’s kind of drunk and being like, a, weirdly a stinker about it. I think he has low self-esteem.
Sylvi: Yeah, maybe. I thought this scene was kind of cute, honestly.
Keith: Yeah, me too.
Sylvi: The like, little like, Dr. Seuss riff they do. I’m not going to say it feels realistic, but it feels lived in. I don’t know how else to put it.
Keith: It’s funny and cute.
Sylvi: And they’ve got chemistry. 
Keith: They do have chemistry. He gets a plaque. There’s a really great shot of them reflected in this, like, mirror plaque that they have. This movie looks so good.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: This is something, you know, like, I think this is an exaggeration, but something I’ve been saying since I saw the mid-reviewed late ‘70s Richard Dreyfuss movie The Big Fix about a year ago. I just had it in my head, like, you can pull any C, C+ movie off the shelf before the 2000s. Well, at least before, like, 1995. And it has a chance of looking better than anything that I’ve seen in the last 20 years.
Sylvi: Yeah. Yeah, I kind of agree.
Keith: Yeah. I mean, I—when I saw The Big Fix, I was like, wow, this is really good. And I read the reviews and people were like, this is a totally average movie. I was like, this is what an average movie used to look like.
Art: I just saw an interesting graph about average Rotten Tomatoes scores and how it’s gone like, like way up in the last, like, couple decades.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: That’s interesting.
Art: And I think it’s like, that’s why we’re like, so this movie is average. And then it’s like, well, it’s really that we’ve had some weird inflation of—
Keith: Of what average means?
Art: What average means. Yeah.
Keith: Is this the—no, that’s not it.
Ali: Yeah. More, more opinions in the pot, I guess, in terms of—get those opinions out of the pot.
Sylvi: Rotten Tomatoes should be shut down.
Keith: Uh, this, um, oh, sorry, Ali, go ahead.
Ali: Yeah, I just want to say, like, how good this first scene and how smart this first scene in the movie is, because it’s unsettling from the jump.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Like, even in the quote-unquote good times of what we see of Bruce Willis’s life here, like the—like, her being in the cellar and sort of having this audience feeling of, like, is this supposed to be scary? She’s alone.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: You know, is something gonna happen here? Like, I think that it sets the foundation that the rest of the movie is able to sort of, like, divert your eye around because you’re in this sort of, like, tense feeling from the jump. So you’re not, like, looking about, like, you know, what’s the truth of the situation, as much as you’re like, is something about to happen?
Keith: Yeah, and it does a really good job of connecting like, little moments of like, fear or discomfort in like, real human life to the symptoms of the ghosts in this movie. Like even from the beginning, we see her get the chill in the basement, and then when Donnie Wahlberg shows up and he says, I know why you’re scared when you’re alone, and then fast-forwarding to Haley Joel’s monologue about—or not monologue, he’s talking to Bruce Willis about the hanged men and like, like, what it feels like when ghosts are near. You know, this is really good horror movie stuff. Like, we want you to think about this movie when you’re in the dark by yourself. And that’s scarier to me than anything that happens in the movie. This plaque, it says, in recognition of his outstanding achievement in the field of child psychology, his dedication to his work and his continued efforts to improve the quality of life for countless children and their families, the city of Philadelphia proudly bestows upon its son, Dr. Malcolm Crowe—that’s you—uh, the Mayor’s Citation for Professional Excellence. During her reading of this, he’s like making bubbles in his wine.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: It’s, it’s very funny. She has to scold him to pay attention. I’m curious why he’s like this about the award. Does he not think he’s doing enough? Does he think it’s stupid to compliment him when he already knows that he’s not helping these kids the way that he’s supposed to? What is this?
Art: Whoa. I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to feel about him.
Keith: Well, he’s—well. We see Donnie Wahlberg. Donnie Wahlberg says, you’re not helping kids the way you were supposed to, and then shoots him with a gun. And to me, if this scene is anything, like—because why is he being so weird about the plaque? He’s like, making fun of it for being in an expensive frame. He wants to hang it up in the bathroom.
Art: I think they’re just showing him as like, a kind of like, a not serious guy. And so then later, he—when he’s way more serious, you sort of see this, the change that him being shot brings about in him.
Sylvi: Yeah, it’s the same reason why you need the chemistry between him and his wife early on, so when they—you have scenes later where things feel really strained, you notice it.
Keith: That’s—I think the question is, is he being frivolous or is he being self-effacing? That’s what—which is, I think, is an open question.
Ali: Yeah, I think there’s something in how Bruce Willis usually plays sort of an everyman character. I read the Roger Ebert review for this before sitting down just to have some context. And I think an interesting thing that he said there is that, like, in Bruce Willis’s movies, he is such a grounding presence that, like, the supernatural around him seems less obscene. And I think, like, having Malcolm come out as a character who is not overly confident in his ability, or, you know, self-centered, or, like, having a big ego, or, like, sort of seeing the, like—the plaque isn’t the work sort of thing. I think it’s interesting in the scene that even when she’s complimenting him, his wife is like, all of the—every sacrifice that you made, putting me second is like a— [Keith: Yeah, that’s a good point.] Again, I think it’s the thing of, even the good times weren’t great, sort of foundation in what you see in the rest of the movie.
Keith: Um, even at this, I have already written in my notes, this movie looks really good and it’s funny. This is where it’s when, I think it’s when, uh, when, uh, she’s like, just sort of quietly goes, they called you their son about being called son—a son of Philadelphia.
[Keith laughter]
Ali: It’s so cute.
Keith: It’s really funny.
Ali: I also love when they like, go upstairs and they’re like getting undressed and it’s like, not sexy at all. It’s so cute.
Sylvi: It’s great.
Keith: I wrote—I have written down here, great dancing. Wow, look how good at dancing. Um, while they’re going upstairs—
Art: That’s such a funny fucking thing to write. Wow, so good at dancing.
[laughter]
Keith: Uh, they go upstairs. She sees a broken window, uh, and stuff thrown on the floor, the phone off the line. Um, you know, he steps sort of in front of her. They see a shadow go past them. She screams. Um, someone is in their bathroom. Some—a musician, weirdly.
Sylvi: Shut up.
Keith: Who’s—who is this in the bathroom?
Sylvi: What’s his name? Vincent Gray.
Keith: Vincent Gray, yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah, it takes him a couple names to like, get to it, but he starts like going, what? I don’t have the exact stuff that our friend Donny is saying here, but—
Keith: I actually have the whole—I have a button for it.
Sylvi: Do you have it? Oh, I love a button. Go for it.
[audio from The Sixth Sense starts playing]
Malcolm: This is 47 Locust Street. You’ve broken a window and entered a private residence.
Vincent: You don’t know so many things.
MALCOM: There are no needles of prescription drugs of any kind in this house.
Vincent: Do you know why you’re afraid when you’re alone? I do. I do.
Anna: What do you want?
Vincent: What he promised me! I want what he promised me.
Anna: Oh my God. 
Malcolm: Do I know you?
Vincent: Don’t you know me, hero? Don’t you even remember your own patients?
[audio ends]
Keith: Uh, yeah, this is when he starts cycling through those names and finally lands on Vincent Gray. Uh, Vincent says downtown clinic, single-parent family, possible mood disorder. And now he owns—co-owns Wahlburgers.
[Ali laughter]
Sylvi: He really recovered from the stuff that happens to him at the end of the scene. Wow.
Keith: Yeah, one of these characters ends up dead, and it’s not the one that you think.
Art: Well, they both—
Sylvi: No, no, no, they do.
Keith: How can he be dead? He owns Wahlburgers.
Ali: Is this—I don’t know how much we want to make this obvious to the audience about pre-production discussions or to let Art make his argument here. But returning to this movie, I was like, Sixth Sense is great. It’s just some guy and a kid and they’re figuring out ghost stuff together without—and then I was like, oh. Bruce Willis is a therapist.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Like, the weirdness about mental health and the treatment of it and the stigma that was, I mean, obviously different 20, 25 years ago. Yes, 25 years ago. It’s obviously culturally, it was different. So it makes sense that the movie is reflecting some of those ideas. But the fact that it is something that M. Night keeps going back to again and again in his movies, and to see it from his sort of, freshman breakout movie being such a central thing is, you know, the audience should remember this because I think it’s going to be something that we’re going to end up having to talk about again and again. For some of the sins that I think some of his later work does, the portrayal here is interesting because I think Malcolm is such a compassionate person with his patients. I mean, even in the scene where he’s like—obviously, he’s in a dangerous situation, but he’s still trying to, like, you know, he can still sort of have that sort of Rolodex in his mind and go through these names and sort of speak to the history and, you know, eventually actually remembering who this person is. But, like, you know, I think other places where it misses is, like—oh my God, my wife is on antidepressants? It’s like, what? I, you know, isn’t—if this is your field of study, this shouldn’t seem so, um—
Art: Oh, that’s not how I interpreted that scene. I think it’s strange if your wife—if you’re a therapist and your wife is taking antidepressants and didn’t tell you.
Ali: Oh sure, yeah, sure.
Art: That’s, that’s a strange thing to happen.
Keith: I had—I actually had both of your thoughts. I had like both of those thoughts kind of at the same time where I was like, they do look at—he does look at the bottle of Zoloft like, oh my God. But it would be weird if you didn’t know that your wife was on Zoloft.
Sylvi: I was just trying to see if we had the same dosage, her and I.
Keith: It’s funny because, um, there was an anti-psychology thing happening in the late ‘90s. 
[30:00]
Keith: Every once in a while you’ll watch a late ‘90s movie and they’ll be like—kind of anti-psychology will be a main theme or like a, like a throwaway gag. I recently watched Jumanji for the first time in a while and there is like so much kind of like, anti-therapy in, in Jumanji, I was like, wow, at every turn they’re like, they’re almost trying to draw a straight line from, from psych—from, from talk therapy to like, woo-woo crystal psychics.
Sylvi: Because it was seen as similar for a long time.
Art: Yeah, it’s—and I think there’s a generational component to this, that our parents’ generation were—and especially their parents’ generation were very anti-psychiatry, that like, yeah, seeing a psychiatrist means you’re bad, damaged, evil. And, and we’ve come a long way on that. And if you’d like to hear more about this topic, the next full season of Media Club Plus is gonna be for you.
Ali: Oh yeah [laughter]
Keith: And it’s, it’s interesting that this, this movie kind of—it’s it is like, I think talking about that Americans are interested in psychology and have questions about it without being really clear on what it’s saying, to me anyway, because Bruce Willis is a psychologist and he’s intensely interested in helping these kids, especially Haley Joel Osment. But on the other hand, like, his psychology is totally unequipped to deal with what, uh, Cole Sear is going through. Um, and we see, like, when Cole kind of finally opens up to him about what’s going on, uh, something that’s been clear to us for you know, dozens of minutes of runtime. Um, the next scene is Bruce Willis talking into his tape recorder to introduce the fact that he has a tape recorder, um, being like, this kid needs meds and hospitalization. Um, and like, we already know that that’s not true. That’s not what’s happening.
Art: Um, we don’t know that though. Yeah, you only know that because you saw the preview that said, I see dead people. The movie has given us no information at that point that Cole is—is that seeing ghosts?
Keith: Is that true? I thought that there was a full ghost thing that happened before that.
Ali: No, there’s no—
Art: This movie has so much restraint. Cole doesn’t say, I see dead people, until 52 minutes in, and you don’t see a ghost until two scenes after that.
Keith: Okay, I thought there was one for real ghost thing that happened already.
Art: He, he gets the information about his teacher, but you don’t see—
Keith: Okay, okay.
Ali: Oh, and there’s the, there’s the voice in the staircase.
Keith: Yes. I’m counting those as for real ghost things. Well, Stuttering Stanley, to me, is a for real ghost thing.
Art: Wait, is the staircase before the hospital?
Ali: Yes, because the staircase happens and then he goes to the hospital and he confesses in the hospital. 
Art: That’s right, okay. Yeah.
Keith: What was my—what was the original scene that I was—oh, right. Okay. So yeah, then he says, I see dead people. And then Bruce Willis goes, this kid needs to go to a hospital. And I think it is important at that—at that moment that the audience believes that Cole can really see dead people so that they know that Bruce Willis is getting it wrong again.
Art: But I think that—I think we’re supposed to see Bruce Willis’s conclusion there is very understandable.
Keith: Yeah, totally. Understandable, but wrong.
Ali: Yeah. I mean, thinking about his ability, it’s funny because it’s kind of a filmmaking thing where, like, they’re giving information to the audience who does not have this sort of background in mental health. But it also seems kind of laughable that, like, somebody with his career would still be looking through books and circling things like, sometimes marks on a child’s body are self-inflicted.
Keith: Yes. That was very silly. The—those—the cuts that they see on Cole look so much more like self-harm wounds than look like self-defense wounds from someone attacking him. And it’s just, I think you’ve just got to chalk it up, Ali, like you kind of said, to the audience not knowing about this stuff.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Let’s introduce Cole, though. In a cute little, extremely symmetrical neighborhood in South Philadelphia, Dr. Malcolm is going over case files of Vincent Grey. This is the next fall, by the way. And his new patient, Cole Sear, if you can believe it. Cole Sear.
Sylvi: Wow.
Keith: Cole Sear.
Sylvi: Because he loves to make sure his steaks are well done on both sides, but not in the middle.
Keith: Yes. He loves Maillard reaction.
Sylvi: Yes, exactly.
Keith: Another child of divorce suffering from anxiety and social isolation with a possible mood disorder. Cole exits his house, locks up on his own, puts on these dorky glasses that are extremely cute that we later learn he just stole from his father because it’s like, just like, stuff from around the house that are his dad’s he keeps wearing.
Sylvi: What a hipster wearing glasses without lenses. Come on.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: And then Malcolm watches him run to church. This is, this is when like, I really still hadn’t figured out what this movie is going to be. Like, Ali, you talk about remembering that Bruce Willis was a, was a psychologist. That’s like one of the only things that I knew. And yeah, I said, does he play in the church to escape the demons? Does he assume Malcolm isn’t a ghost because he can enter the church? I got my answer right away as soon as he took the doll—the—not the doll. As soon as he took like, the Jesus statue on his way out.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: I knew this kid knows for sure that Malcolm is a ghost.
Sylvi: Um, the—shit, I had something and then I lost it. Don’t worry, I’ll come back.
Keith: He’s playing with Civil War figures and speaking in Latin. Um, and then, uh, 
Art: Well, they’re not all Civil War, right? Because the one who speaks in Latin is like a—he’s got like a spear, right?
Keith: Oh, I thought he had a musket. It was, it was a little bit. 
Art: Oh, maybe that’s right.
Keith: Malcolm says, in the olden days in Europe, people used to hide in churches. It was called sanctuary. This is like, immediately interesting to Cole because he’s like, that’s what I’m doing. I’m hiding out here because of sanctuary. And then I really liked this. He says, do all your soldiers speak Latin? No, just one. And, uh [Sylvi: Good shit.]  What’s that?
Sylvi: Good shit.
Keith: Yeah, it’s good shit.
Sylvi: It’s like worth mentioning too, I really love the performance of Cole. Like, I think he’s a—it’s a really well-acted, uh, like sad—I called him, uh, like a golden retriever with the wettest eyes in the world is kind of the vibe. Yeah, when we were streaming, like, it works really well.
Keith: When we were streaming Virtue’s Last Reward yesterday, I called him the most pathetic kid I’ve ever seen. Yeah, he’s like, he’s extremely pathetic and pitiful.
Art: But it’s an incredible performance. It’s an unbelievable performance for like a 10 or 11-year-old. It’s, it’s unbelievable. It’s, it’s a triumph of acting. It’s a triumph of direction.
Keith: It’s a shame he didn’t win Best Supporting Actor because of how rare it is to have that caliber of a performance from someone that young.
Sylvi: Uh, it’s why, um, was it Jacob Tremblay that got the, like, reaction after Room? I think it’s—it was kind of a similar thing where it’s like people were so shocked to see a kid give that performance. Except didn’t he actually win the award?
Keith: I don’t know. I don’t know—I don’t know Room.
Sylvi: I can’t remember. I’ll check later. Sorry, Ali, you were gonna say something.
Ali: No, it’s okay. I, I, I think what’s definitely significant about it is how much the movie relies on his performance. Like, Haley Joel Osment is the center of most of the scenes, is the person in most of the scenes, is arguably the star of the movie in terms of just like—
Keith: I agree.
Ali: Sheer minutes on the screen. You know what I mean? So to like, not only be able to get that performance out of him, but sort of have that confidence in an actor to sort of, you know, let the movie lean on him in that way is just astounding.
Keith: Art, I, I was looking through my things here, so it might be this, uh, knight with the mace that, uh, or the maul or whatever this is, that’s the one that speaks Latin.
Art: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s—
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: This is after he was speaking Latin, but I didn’t—I forgot that there was anything but soldiers there. But yeah, the very cute—he, he like, he’s ducking behind the pew and sticking his fingers up on the ledge of the pew in front of Malcolm. It’s very funny. Yeah, it’s tough to call him the supporting actor, seeing as how the main—the, the, the main character technically cannot talk with anyone else. Cole is free to talk to whoever he wants to.
Art: No, I don’t mean to get too filmy here, but he’s definitely—he’s definitely—Bruce Willis is definitely the main character of the movie. [Keith: Yeah?] It’s his, it’s his arc that pushes the, the action, you know. It’s him. He is the one who has to change for the movie to resolve. He has to believe his patient, which is the conflict at the beginning.
Sylvi: Yeah, I guess you could argue though that Cole also does go through the arc of like, not being afraid, like facing his fears and stuff like that.
Keith: Yeah, but Malcolm has to push him through.
Art: Yeah, but Bruce Willis drags him through that. Not drags him, but you know.
Keith: If the first scene was about—was Cole being a freak and then being like, wow, I wish someone would come along and help me not be a freak anymore. And then we got the introduction of Bruce Willis, then… I think this is the distinction that you’re trying to make, right?
Art: And of course, yeah, of course. I only mean like in this like, classic, you know, academic approach to screenwriting, who gets nominated for what Academy Award is random and arbitrary, right?
Sylvi: Yes, that is.
Keith: And mostly sort of based on game theorying where you think you might win.
Art: Yeah, that was less true at this time, but it’s certainly true now. And I don’t know if we’re gonna talk about it, but the movie that beat this for most of the Oscars is a movie that has not aged well. [Keith: Oh yeah?] And that, that no one would—if they redid these Oscars today with the same nominees, Sixth Sense would win.
Keith: What was the movie?
Art: More than this—it lost to American Beauty.
Keith: Oh, okay.
Sylvi: Oh boy.
Art: In Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay.
Keith: I’ve never seen it, but that is a movie that I, that I felt in the 2010s went from a movie that people really were affectionate about to a movie that people really didn’t like. And then now, of course, Kevin Spacey is in it.
Art: Yeah, it lost Best Editing to The Matrix, and that’s probably fair. And it didn’t lose either of the acting categories to American Beauty. And I’m gonna be honest, I haven’t seen any of the films that it lost to in, you know, 20 years. So I can’t—
Keith: That’s fair.
Art: Say that. But, but I will say that I thought Toni Collette and Haley Joel Osment were amazing in this.
Sylvi: They were fantastic together, especially.
Keith: Yeah. Where are we? Does anybody have anything about this church scene?
Sylvi: Oh, I do—the church stuff, I think we’re gonna get back to it later, but I definitely immediately started noticing he really loves the use of the color red in this movie. Uh, and I, I’m not getting into like a big like, what—it’s like a—red shows that it’s like connected to the afterlife or whatever. I’m not doing that. I just—later on you see him sort of like adopted, like wearing a red sweater, and like he’s—his like, his blanket fort is red. And I, you re—I read that as like he heard the sanctuary thing.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: And now he’s trying to make his own, just in everyday life, and it really made me sad, but in like, the way you want a movie to make you sad.
Keith: So the thing, the thing that I said—so here’s the thing. He turns to Malcolm and he says like, am I going to be seeing you more often? And this is great because I know that Cole knows that he’s a ghost.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And Malcolm doesn’t know that he himself is a ghost.
Sylvi: Nope.
Keith: And so what he does when he learns, like, Malcolm’s going to be around from now on is on his way out of the church, he grabs the Jesus figure from the little—I don’t know what this is, this little like, the offering table. And later on, we see, like, he has all of these figures, and it feels to me like each one of these represents the ghost that he knows and that maybe there’s a, there’s a reason why there’s some—each one of them means something to him. A lot of them are religious and a lot of them are like, soldiers, and there’s not a lot of other things there. So it just sort of feels like, good, good ghost, bad ghost dichotomy.
Ali: Yeah, I wonder… With M. Night’s stuff, I feel like—I mean, he grew up in Philadelphia, didn’t he? So—
Sylvi: Oh, yeah.
Ali: I feel like there’s a lot of Philadelphia as character in this movie, especially, just in terms of how much the city ends up getting centered and how much you can pull on the fact that a history is—the city is filled with so much history that you can kind of tell this ghost story in terms of there’s this child that can connect to those other things. Like the sort of early—I would argue to say that the film’s first clue of what the truth of what’s happening to Cole is, is when he says, they used to hang people in this building, when his teacher is trying to say—
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Trying to explain, like, lawmakers came here and it’s great, and, you know, they were great people and they didn’t do anything wrong. Um, whereas, you know—
Keith: He says those are the people that hanged everyone. 
Sylvi: Yeah, great line. 
Ali: Yeah, Cole was able to get this other perspective. Um, I forget where I was going with that but I do think that, like—
Keith: Philadelphia as a character, being from Philadelphia and the history um, like, yeah, he, he does seem interested in, like, getting a second version of the, of the like social studies lesson. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I really love when he takes that figure though on his way out of the church. Malcolm goes back to his house and finds a half-eaten meal. His girlfriend’s sleeping surrounded by tissues. He goes downstairs to work.
Ali: Wife.
Art: Yeah, wife.
Sylvi: Wife.
Keith: Oh, sorry, they hadn’t said her name at this point. And they hadn’t introduced the wedding video. So at this point, I—when I was writing these notes, I wasn’t sure if it was his girlfriend or his wife. So I wrote both in different places.
Art: And they were roommates.
[laughter]
Keith: He goes downstairs, pulls out a Latin dictionary to look up what Cole was saying in the church.
Art: A Latin dictionary like we all have in our basements.
Keith: De profundis clave ad te Domine. Is that what it was? I—it autocorrected whatever it was to claim, so I don’t remember what that word is anymore.
Sylvi: I only have—
Art: Let’s have Austin dub in the real thing.
Keith: Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. This is chilling, a chilling thing for a child to be saying. Uh, you know, Malcolm is like, this kid is tortured. He learned Latin just so that he could cry for help to God? Um, but obviously this is, this is just some shit a ghost says, right?
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, it’s funny to me, like, how much less sick Cole is when you realize that the troubling things that he’s doing is mostly just like, stuff he’s repeating from ghosts he knows.
Ali: Yeah, I mean, I do—I mean, the—yeah, I—the thought that, like, each of the figures that he plays with represents a specific ghost that he knew is, you know, interesting here when he is not only doing that, but, like, reenacting what he thinks their lives are.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Ali: With these little figures.
Keith: They’re terrifying to him, but also they’re his only company besides his mom. 
Sylvi: Mm-hmm. 
Keith: I really love—this is where this—the movie changes for me visually. The—up until this point, we’ve had like, a lot of really—and we never lose this—but a lot of really interesting framing of a static camera, like interesting composition of uh, like rooms and people in them. Um, and see this scene here where we go back to Cole’s house for the first time, inside the house. Um, you know, you know, it’s like a small townhouse. It’s messy. There’s a puppy sleeping in the clean laundry basket. Um, uh, Lynn Sear sort of hurriedly getting ready for one of her two jobs. Uh, Cole getting ready for Catholic school. Uh, it’s claustrophobic. The camera is moving, following her around. Like, they don’t—it feels like they don’t have enough space to be in there with her. Um, uh, which I think is a really cool effect, um, as she’s like trying to get everything read. She like goes to get him a new clip-on tie. The clip-on tie appears many times in this movie, uh, and returns for like, a character’s first big scare. Oh no, second big scare. Seeing Donnie Wahlberg was a big scare.
Sylvi: Always is.
[Keith laughter]
Keith: Yeah, I scared when he showed up, and then when I Googled “who is this guy” and it said Donnie Wahlberg, I got scared again. All the cabinet drawers were open, and she like, screams because obviously that’s insane.
Ali: Yeah.
Sylvi: A movie we probably should like, think about with this is like, The Exorcist. Like, they’re doing so much classic haunted kid stuff here.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, and it—I don’t know, it really hit for me. I’m like, I, I—because I forgot a lot of the minutia. Going into this, I mostly just remembered the really big moments, right? So like seeing the way that they evoke the haunting in their little apartment with the cupboards opening. And then when he lifts his hand, you can see his handprint from the temperature lowering.
Keith: Really good.
Sylvi: Um, it’s great. It’s like, really well done. 
Keith: I thought maybe it was a ghost hand.
Sylvi: Oh.
Keith: Yeah, it was a ghost that was there that had left a handprint. Um, ‘cause ghosts do leave little bits of evidence. Sorry, Ali, what were you gonna say?
Ali: I always thought that it was like his palms were sweaty because he was so scared. And it was sort of this thing of like, what is this kid so afraid of?
Keith: Three different fear interpretations. 
Art: Yeah, that’s, that’s what I thought—that’s what I thought it was. Well, I guess it fades immediately, and that’s more cold than—
Keith: Yeah, it does fade, and she’s like, scared of the handprint too, and less like, is he sick? Does he have a fever? I—Sylvi, I’m glad that you brought up The Exorcist, a movie that I haven’t seen, but I did have it in my head. Like, I didn’t know that Cole wasn’t going to end up being like, evil or being like, pals with these ghosts in a, in a sinister way. All throughout the movie, I had like, this inkling in the back of my mind that at any moment it could be revealed that Cole knows more than he’s letting on. And, and that he could be like, manipulating Malcolm.
Art: That would be thematically bonkers.
Keith: It would be thematically bonkers. But, but I don’t—I didn’t know. Well, there’s, there’s a couple, there’s a couple things. So there’s—there was this, this—because I had early on, I had connected the ghosts with the toys. And I thought that this image of like, the kid who can see ghosts like, kind of playing with his collection of ghosts as something. And there’s another scene later where Malcolm finally believes in the ghosts and he comes back into the church and Cole has like, this very strange tone of like, do you have questions for me?
Sylvi: He’s such a little mob boss.
Keith: Uh, he’s—
Sylvi: You’ve been running around town. Like, it’s so funny.
Keith: Yeah, I looked at the script. I read a little bit of the script, and in the script that stuff is even more pronounced, so. So I did have in my head like maybe—because, because the thing that I didn’t know was how does Malcolm finally learn that he’s a ghost? And it was, to me, it was the weakest part of the movie. But I, I can’t really judge it because it’s the one part of the movie that I knew was coming.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: So I thought that I, I imagined it being a little bit more intense and a little bit less like, Sherlock Holmes-y, of like—
Art: Oh, I think it’s very intense, I think—
Sylvi: I like it.
Art: I think that scene rules, frankly.
Keith: I was expecting Cole to have to tell him to his face, you’re a ghost.
Art: And you think that would be better?
Keith: I thought that it would be—it would be a conflict. And instead it’s sort of like, I’ve—at the end here, I’ve put the pieces together.
Ali: Right.
Art: Well, because he’s the protagonist of the movie, he has to solve his own problem.
Ali: Well, yeah. And also, we get the sort of—I mean, I don’t want to get too ahead of where the direction of the film actually goes. But we get the reversal of what the, quote unquote, ask is. When Malcolm ends up finding a solution for this ghost stuff, they spread it to other people who are affected. And then he has this scene with Haley Joel Osment—with Cole sort of giving him his advice about, you know, here’s what you should do. And then that’s sort of like—if Cole is a vector of which people can move on, having that sort of reverse of like, you’ve helped me figure out a solution for this, I am now going to give you my advice. And then having Malcolm’s sort of crescendo or whatever, realization happening through that, just feels like a sort of nice baton pass in terms of Cole also serving his purpose for Malcolm.
Keith: Right.
Ali: You know what I mean?
Art: Well, and he says, I’m not going to see you anymore, am I?
Ali: Oh, shit.
Sylvi: Yeah. Yeah.
Keith: Because he gives him the—he knows, if I give you this advice to talk to her in her sleep, which is where—which is like, the whole movie is like, I can’t talk to my wife anymore. And he’s like, thinking it’s because she hates me, but actually it’s because he’s not experiencing time or reality properly. Um, yeah, and getting the advice—he does get the advice from Cole. I thought it was going to be more direct. Uh, but this scene with the ghost, with the—oh, this is another thing. That very early on, all the cabinets opening up, that’s very ghost to me. That seems impossible for it to—for ghosts not to be real. With these cabinets opening up.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: I know that I’m—I have a confirmation bias of like, knowing—that being the only thing I knew about the movie. But I do feel like the movie does lean ghosts are real up until the reveal. I have a very funny line here before, before he runs out to go to school with Tommy Tammisimo, his rival.
Sylvi: This fucking guy.
Keith: This fucking guy. Before that, when Toni Collette finds—when Lynn Sear finds all of the cabinets open.
[audio of The Sixth Sense starts playing]
Lynn: Something you were looking for, baby?
Cole: Pop-Tarts?
[audio ends]
[Keith laughter]
Keith: He’s making excuses for the ghosts.
Sylvi: It’s really good. 
Ali: It’s so good. Yeah. The thing that I was starting to say there is that, you know, going back to what we—the Exorcist comparison, what brought us on that tangent. You know, with the slow burn of the movie centering all of the supernatural stuff just on Cole and Cole’s singular experience and sort of having these adults move around him and sort of like, seeing that something’s off, but feeling like they don’t have access to something is, like, so smart to pull on that sort of, like, kids see what adults don’t. Kids have access to things that, you know, they see a world—they see the world at a different perspective. And, you know, it’s such a—it’s such a, like, a cinema tro—I don’t want to say trope, but that’s the word I’m going to use.
Keith: You’re allowed to say trope. Cliché. Do you want to use cliché?
Ali: Trope cliché. Yeah.
Art: Don’t be afraid. Don’t let the trope people take trope from you.
Keith: Yeah, it’s true.
Ali: I wanted to say something more complimentary from trope, but like the movie kind of swirling around what your expectations could be in terms of who is this kid? What is he experiencing? What’s the truth of this here? Like, being like, oh, this kid is, you know, something is wrong with this kid and not what’s surrounding him, you know what I mean? I think is something that really keeps you in that discomfort, the sort of constant questioning, the sort of manipulation of what the audience is focusing on away from Malcolm and to Cole.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: So, part of this is that when you watch this movie again, it’s like, as soon as Malcolm says in the first conversation that he has with Cole, like, are you a good doctor? I used to be. Like, you watch it a second time and you’re like, right, okay, yeah, everybody should have known when they saw this the first time what was going on. But there’s such good sleight of hand happening with what the movie wants you to consider in these early stages that you kind of get distracted from Malcolm’s whole thing, even though he got shot and we never hear about the injury again. It’s just an umbrella hanging over the entire story the entire time.
Keith: There’s two things I want to pick up on here. Coming directly off of that, Sylvi, in the, in the doc you wrote, the movie still works knowing the twist—how knowing the movie still works knowing the twist versus how easy it is to flub that. And I think that’s totally right, I think, of course I knew the twist coming in, and I really, really liked the movie. But I also the whole time it was like, it’s hard to imagine with the—the sheer volume of clues, it’s hard to imagine not picking up on it. And I know that that is, you know, I’m just confirming the thing that I already knew. Like, I already knew it, so I can see all of the clues. But there’s so much stuff, and I really want to know about the experience of people first having seen this movie, from the three of you to listeners, of like, you know, so his last name—first of all, his last name is Sear.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: I mean, I saw this movie without knowing what the twist was.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: I knew there was a twist.
Keith: Right.
Art: And I can tell you the exact moment I figured out what it was, but it’s way later than here.
Keith: Okay. The other thing was like, how weird it is to me that the psych—the psychologist is like with him at school, with him at home, not talking to anybody else. Follows him to church. Like, not—dude, they’re never in an office. [Art: But movies are like that.] What’s that?
Art: Movies are like that. This is also—
[1:00:00]
Art: It’s not, it’s not weird that you don’t see all the like connective tech—like threads because, you know, it’s like, how like it’s, it’s, it’s a cliché that no one ever says goodbye on a phone call in a movie. They just hang up the phone, right? And it’s like because movies need to like get on with it, that it’s not that weird that you never have like—oh, there’s never a scene where—
Keith: It’s not that there’s—
Art: Lynn introduces Malcolm to Cole because like, that doesn’t do anything for the audience. [Keith: No…] Unless it would, you know, you could make the scene do something for the audience, but like you don’t, you don’t need the scene. And so the fact that it’s not there doesn’t feel that—
Keith: It’s not, it’s not as much like, oh, you know they never—Lynn never talks to Cole about therapy. Although that’s like a little—there’s—- That’s a piece of it, and it’s not just that they never are in a psychiatrist’s office. Although that’s also a piece of it, but it’s, it’s like, it’s so conspicuous watching it with the foreknowledge that Malcolm never talks to anyone. There’s a couple little tricks where they trick you into thinking that someone’s talking to him.
Ali: Yeah. And I think that’s the significant part of that because those tricks work the opposite way if you don’t know. Like, when you—when the scene opens on Malcolm sitting in Cole’s house, he’s deliberately in a chair that’s across from another chair. And we know that Lynn is in the house. So, there’s this sort of—
Art: No, Lynn’s sitting there with him.
Ali: Oh, does she?
Keith: She’s literally sitting—
Art: They’re literally sitting right across from each other.
Ali: There’s this sort of like, assumption that like they were talking about Cole and then Cole comes in and she removes herself from the situation so they can talk to each other.
Keith: And she even tells him, hey, you know, they do the little bit of like, pretending that they each had a much better day than they actually had.
Art: That’s such a sad scene.
Keith: So sad.
Art: Oh my God. Especially because like, hers is like really wild and his is just like, I was good at kickball today. It’s like, oh my God.
Keith: Every week she hears something.
Ali: Oh, my God. I mean, it’s getting to the emotional reality of what they want. And the sort of theme around his relationship with his mother being like, I don’t want her to think that I am strange, so I have to hide myself from her. But the—I don’t think that it’s wild to be like, the dream that I had today was being free from financial burden, in the same way that I don’t think that it’s wild for his to be like, I was accepted by my peers. It’s like just such like, a—these are these characters, these are the perspectives that you have to know them in, that it’s just like, it’s like one of my favorite movie—things in the movie.
Art: No, I’m just saying his is sadder.
Keith: His is sadder. His—yeah, hers is a, is a, her audience is a child who she wants to be silly and fun for. And his audience is his mom who he like—he has such a limited worldview and he’s like, yeah, the best thing that I can think of is like, not being bullied at school. and having people like me. His school, by the way, St. Anthony’s Academy. Of course he goes to a Catholic school. Patron saint of lost things, including lost souls.
Art: Oh, I put in the chat because it sort of sounded like what Keith was saying. It’s something my wife sent me this week after we watched the movie, and it’s Nate Bargetze talking about The Sixth Sense and the twist and what it’s like.
Keith: Oh, interesting.
Art: You know, we probably don’t—we probably can’t and shouldn’t put it in the episode, but I think, you know, it’s especially worth it for Keith to—
Keith: Should we watch it now and then talk about it?
Art: I don’t think we need to.
Keith: Okay.
Art: But I think it’s funny and interesting.
Keith: Yeah, I guess.
Art: Yes.
Keith: Or we can watch it later. Yeah, it’s relevant. Let’s watch it now. It’s a TikTok. It can’t be that long.
Ali: Yeah, it’s a minute and a half.
Keith: All right, let’s do a 3, 2, 1. All right. 3, 2, 1.
[whistle sounds]
Ali: That’s what it was like.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: I mean, that again, that is a big part of it. It gets shot right at the beginning. And we do—we live—we live in a post-Shyamalan world. I know movie twists existed before M. Night Shyamalan, and that M. Night Shyamalan movies without twists exist, I assume.
Art: I don’t know about that. Maybe—I haven’t seen The Last Airbender, but—
Keith: Yeah, the twist was it was supposed to be a good movie.
Art: Well, then they blew that way early.
Keith: Yeah, [stutters] but yes, him, he gets, he gets shot. He doesn’t have to—they—but they do, they, they have all of these really great moments, like, because I’m watching it and I’m like, oh, that works. Like, when, when they’re—the reason I brought up her having the conversation where they’re like, I ate the chocolate mousse and I quit my job because I won the lottery, whatever, whatever, it’s because it ends with her saying like, I’ll make you triangle pancakes, you have an hour. And that doesn’t—all that that means is I’ll be ready to give you pancakes in an hour. But what it feels like is obviously you’re about to have one hour’s worth of therapy.
Art: Yeah, I mean, it’s also weird. I’ve made pancakes before. It doesn’t take an hour.
Keith: I think she probably had some other stuff to do.
Sylvi: No, she’s really got to make sure they’re equilateral. 
Ali: Yeah, I mean—
Sylvi: Gotta do that mathematics—
Keith: She only—she doesn’t have a scale and she only has a quarter teaspoon. So she’s got to do—she’s got to do like—
Sylvi: That’s how you know that they’re in financial trouble.
Keith: Yeah, she’ll do like, hundreds of little quarter teaspoons to make enough batter. But yeah, I think all of these things like, that try to keep you from feeling like maybe Bruce Willis is a ghost. I also just think I’m the kind of watcher who, when I’m having fun with a movie, I’m in my head, I’m like, maybe this is happening, maybe this is what’s going on, maybe the—like, I—like, Sylvi knows from us playing 999 and VLR, like, there’s—I—it feels honest. I know that it also feels like a brag or like, uh, like I’m smarter than movie watchers thing, but I feel like just even by accident I would have hit on he’s dead, he’s a ghost.
Art: Um, it’s hard. I, I did figure it out while watching it, but I always thought it was cheating because I knew there was a twist. And so like, there’s a moment in the third act where I’m like, okay, we’re getting toward the end here. What does the twist have to be? And I just like, sort of ran it down. It’s like, oh wait, he’s never talked to anyone. He’s dead.
Keith: There’s, um, there’s even a great lampshade moment where Malcolm is telling him a bedtime story and he’s like, there’s got to be a twist.
Sylvi: It’s so funny.
Keith: It’s really funny.
Art: But I don’t know that you can count this because everyone knows the twist. And even if you didn’t know the twist, everyone knew there was a twist.
Keith: Of course, this is totally un-falsifiable.
Art: Yeah, there—it’s, it’s—
Ali: I was, I was ten, man. I wasn’t talking about movies with people. I was watching it and I was like, holy shit…
Keith: Of course, you were ten, Art, what were you, 14 or something?
Art: Yeah, 14 or 15. What week did this come out?
[Keith laughter]
Keith: Let’s get really granular on it.
Art: Yeah, this was the summer after I turned 15, yes.
Keith: Okay.
Ali: Oh, great movie watching time.
Keith: That is a great movie watching time. I watched some of my favorite movies that summer.
Art: It’s like how the last movie I saw before 9/11 was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Ali: Wow.
Keith: That was, if, if nothing else, a pre-9/11 movie.
Art: Yeah, it sure, it sure is.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Okay, so one thing that we missed, it’s kind of important. He has his friend Tommy Tammisimo who walks him to school because his mom somehow made a deal with Tommy’s mom that he has to walk him to school. Yeah. Tommy pretends to be his friend because he is like, like, narcissistically obsessed with being a good actor because he was in a cough syrup commercial.
Sylvi: It’s so funny.
Art: I think his mom was also making him. I think that’s the—
Sylvi: Because I knew kids like this.
Keith: Like, you knew kids that were in cough syrup commercials?
Sylvi: No, I knew kids that were extras in Degrassi [Ali gasp of delight, Keith hysterical laughter] And it gave them—it gave them an inflated sense of ego. That’s—I went to high school with a lot of people that were on Degrassi.
Keith: That’s really funny.
Sylvi: Um, and they were pricks.
Keith: Yeah, I bet.
Ali: I believe it. Good show, but I believe it.
Keith: I don’t know anyone who was on Degrassi who isn’t a prick.
Art: Yeah, me neither.
Sylvi: I don’t know, that guy in the wheelchair seemed nice. What’s he up to these days?
Keith: That’s the—the person saying that is also the person that didn’t know the twist of this movie.
Sylvi: Um, but also like, the, the being an ostracized kid whose mom tries to make like, playdates or like, things like walking to school together happen so you can make a friend is like, so real to me. That shit’s visceral. That, that and the awkward getting to know your child psychologist, those are—those things gave me flashbacks.
Keith: Yeah, shout out to Dr. Robinson.
Sylvi: I went to too many to remember their names.
Keith: This is just my first one when I was 5.
Sylvi: Okay.
Keith: Because he worked so close to Cunningham Elementary School. This is a—this is a great bit here. This is exactly what we were just talking about. Oh, there was one other thing that I wanted to mention, Ali, because the first one of these happened and I didn’t know about this. You wrote in the notes here in the doc, the iconic M. Night long camera shot. I didn’t know about this. I didn’t know that that was a thing about him.
Ali: Yeah, I—
Keith: But the first shot through their house is one of these long, unbroken, moving cameras.
Ali: Mm-hmm. And I think that he spends a lot of time on single shots as well. The movement between Malcolm and Cole’s face when they’re meeting in the house and having this sort of—since we haven’t explained the scene fully, sensing Cole’s reluctance still, because this is their only second conversation, Malcolm makes this sort of deal with him that’s like, from where you’re standing, which is at the entrance of the room, I’m going to say things out loud, and if I’m right, you can come closer, and we can sit down, and we can have a longer talk. And if I’m wrong, you can move away from me, and you can leave, and we don’t have to do this. And he goes through things like, you’re afraid to talk to me because you know that your mom went to therapy. Your dad gave you your watch. You’re a good kid in school. And Malcolm’s sort of moving back and forth. But yeah, the sort of length that it spends on each of the characters, the—I feel like this sort of, you know, focus on a particular item, um, is—or like in a particular shot is something that we’re gonna see kind of develop through M. Night’s career as we, we continue it.
Keith: Something notable I think about Hollywood is how, um, shrunk the average shot length in a movie has become. In, in the last 100 years, we’ve lost like, um, nine seconds on the average length of a, of a shot, of a single shot for a movie.
Art: Huh.
Keith: Which is wild to think about. Like, the average length of a shot in the movie, like the ‘20s and ‘30s, was like,  in the 10 to 15 seconds, and now it’s under three.
Ali: Yeah, and some of the—I was just reading through M. Night’s stuff in preparation for this, and I think I was actually reading a review for Lady in the Water…? But somebody called out this sort of like, this focus of cinematography, and that the average length for his scenes at that point were 12 seconds, when he’s doing this sort of really granular, like, this is all I want you to look at. I think Haley Joel Osment’s face in the “I see dead people” scene is also a part of this.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: I think some of the scenes, like, when he—
Art: Are you using shot when you mean scene?
Ali: I mean shot when I’m saying scene.
Art: That’s not—I’ve, I’ve seen Lady in the Water. That’s not true.
Ali: Yes, I do mean single shot. Um, I, I do mean in terms of like how long the camera wants to look at something, wants to spend on something, is really good. I do think like, what’s more significant in this movie is the way that the camera moves. You mentioned it a little before with the wine cellar scene. I think the scene of him meeting his wife in the Italian restaurant and having the camera sort of move with the waiter as it goes from Malcolm back to his wife.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Ali: And it’s because he’s sort of having this monologue to her, and she comes back into the scene with the movement in the—comes back into the shot with the movement of, you know, people in the restaurant sort of breaking the bubble that he assumes that they’re in. So, it’s a good movie.
Keith: Yeah, there’s this interesting—and I’m not an expert on cinematography or anything, but there’s this kind of blending of what looks to me like a clearly post—it’s hard to not be Spielberg. There we go. Jesus Christ. It’s hard to not be post-Spielberg when you’re post-Spielberg.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: But there’s like, there’s very like, you know, a still camera that’s sort of tracking people as they move, sort of interesting framings of it, like very, very Spielberg cameras mixed with this sort of tense kind of thriller like, claustrophobic movement thing mixed with these very long still shots that to me look like an older Hollywood kind of thing, that make this movie feel like it’s like, got multiple different ways of showing you scenes like, that it can pull from whenever it wants to, which is really nice. It’s a very dynamic movie in that it’s shooting things in different ways at different times.
Art: Mm-hmm.
Keith: You were talking about the, the dinner scene, Ali.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: This is one of those moments that to me was like a really, really good and clever and subtle way of keeping you within the reality that Malcolm is alive.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: When he shows up late and he makes the joke, he’s like, I thought you meant the other restaurant that I asked you to marry me in, which is a funny joke. But it’s also like, I don’t believe him that he’s that thoughtless, but he’s talking about like, yeah, I just like, can’t seem to keep track of times and I have this case.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: It’s just like not looking at him or acknowledging him at all. And it’s like, it is getting to the point where it, it, it’s breaking sense. It doesn’t—it’s starting to not make sense that she’s just ignoring him that hard. Uh, but she’s signing the check. They draw—the waiter drops the check, he goes to reach for it, she seemingly snatches it from him. And while he’s saying something, someone behind him laughs loudly and she looks up. Look—it looks like she’s looking right at him for the first time, but it’s, it’s because someone had made a loud noise back there. And I thought that was great.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: And then she says happy anniversary and gets up and leaves, which is again like she’s not talking to him, but it’s conceivable that she is. I like it.
Art: It would be such a messed up thing to say. To say happy anniversary to someone and then just walk out like—
Ali: Well, he, he missed their anniversary dinner to go be with this kid. You just got shot, man. Come to dinner with me. Weren’t we just talking about how you do that too much? Yeah, you put me number two, yada yada.
Keith: It’s true. It’s totally true. Yeah, they do a really good job of just—that’s the thing is like at the same time as they do a really good job of keeping you not guessing that he—but there’s so much stuff. Like, I found it to be very rewarding to see all of the ways that it’s so obvious that he’s a ghost. Like, this is a rewatchable movie with a twist, which is tough.
Ali: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think like the—that he’s almost like monologuing to her as he’s explaining why he’s, he’s so dedicated to this kid as a way of completely concealing the audience from being like, well, why isn’t she responding?
Keith: She’s giving him nothing.
Ali: Nothing. Yeah.
Keith: It’s brutal.
Ali: It’s—yeah, I—that’s the other thing, part of—the rewatching this movie and just like, realizing how much of the time is being spent on what is actually her grief.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: What is actually a life that she is trying to live post the death of her husband, of still having dinner at the place that they would have dinner at their anniversary, like, you know, constantly watching their wedding film, you know.
Keith: Turning down advances from an Amish-loving guy.
Ali: Right. Yeah, turning them down and then sort of—
Sylvi: From her employee.
Ali: Yeah.
Sylvi: Let’s be—the guy does work for her.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: No, I was—one of the things I told Jessica when we were watching this movie, that if I get murdered in our house, I want you to move. I don’t want you to just like, stay. We don’t have a wedding video, but I don’t want you to like, stay here just wallowing.
Keith: It’s true. It is one of the things I like about the movie is how they show early on that that, that, uh, that Anna Crowe is sensitive to this kind of thing. She like, can’t see ghosts, but she can feel them. She thinks of—like, the look on her face when, uh, Vincent Grey says, I know why you’re scared when you’re alone. Um, like she recognizes that, that there’s truth in there. There is a reason why we’re scared when we’re alone. And then when she’s talking about her antiques and she’s like, when people die, they leave, they leave their imprint on their items and they have a story. Like, she can feel this stuff. And I think that Malcolm being unable to move on is like, almost like a psychic tether for her. Like, she can feel that he’s still there, which is why she can’t move on.
Art: Well, that is not my interpretation of that scene. I thought she was lying to sell an expensive ring to someone who obviously couldn’t afford it.
Ali: It’s so weird. It’s such a weird vibe, though. Like, to have this wedding ring and have your fake story not be like, oh, I think the person who owned this ring was really happy and in love. And instead, I think that this ring defines yearning. Like, the assumption that it was from this person with an unrequited—uh, un—whatever.
Keith: Unrequited.
Ali: Yes! Um, an unreciprocated love for this fucking couple who’s about to get married and is already having weird vibes. It was just like—
Keith: Yeah, they’re doomed, and this is the best joke in the whole movie, by the way, which is like, does he have like curly hair? Does he have wavy hair? And whatever. Like, she has—she’s thinking of a guy. She knows who the, the, the longing is, is for.
Ali: It’s, it’s such a bizarre sales pitch that it’s like, so funny out of the context of what this movie is about.
Keith: Yeah, I, Art, I think it’s both. I think that like, I think that she believes this stuff. Even if conveniently also having these little pitches is a good way to sell antiques.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: Sure. 
Keith: And maybe it’s true. Maybe she can feel—I think she could probably pick up on some of that latent psychic energy in there.
Art: Man, I got some rings to sell you.
Keith: Sick. I love rings. Tell me who died in them.  
Art: Famous people. 
Keith: Oh, awesome. Elvis. Do you have an Elvis?
Art: I do.
Keith: Nice.
Sylvi: If you want more of Keith enjoying Rings, listen to Friends of the Table’s season Partizan.
Keith: True. Um, we’re, we’re, we’re at the scene that I think marks the turning point between, uh—oh, did we talk enough about, um, Malcolm’s, like, psychic guessing game.
Sylvi: We talked a little bit about it, uh, but we mostly just talked about it in the context of concealing the, uh, like, the twist. The twist. Yeah, like, we talked a little bit, but that’s it.
Keith: He does, like, a psychological profile. This is, like, one of the things where it’s sort of like, the film is kind of leery of psychology, where, you know, Malcolm is head-shrinking Cole, being like, I can reduce you to the profile of a troubled kid.
Art: Oh, that’s not how I read that scene at all.
Sylvi: Really?
Ali: Yeah.
Art: We’re really far apart on this one. Yeah.
Keith: What—tell me what you thought about it.
Art: I think he’s doing good work. He’s just—he’s wrong because he doesn’t know that he sees ghosts.
Keith: Well, I, I agree. He is doing—well, I think he’s doing someone else’s version of good work. Uh, like, if this was a movie where psychology was, um, sufficient to explain the problems of kids, uh, then it would be some good work. He starts to gain a little trust by like getting some things right. Uh, but I, I think that there’s like, this kind of presumption of the medical industry that it can like, fit you into a box, especially a kid. Like, I can reduce a kid to a profile of a kid, uh, even though I think—and I think they’re both true. I think like, he is doing good work, but also it’s good work that the movie is not sure is good work, if that makes sense.
Ali: Yeah, I, I think I ended up kind of in the middle here because I found myself wondering while I was watching the scene of like, as Cole is moving away, is he deliberately saying untruths because it is a way to get Cole to open up? Because in each sort of round, I guess you can say, of their game, Cole is saying more about himself than he has—
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: I mean, this is the second time talking, but still, he’s at least engaging in a way that he’s not just saying, yes or no?
Keith: He’s giving more than was required to him by the rules of the game, where when Malcolm was wrong, he tells him why he was wrong.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Art: Sure.
Ali: [crosstalk] And this is sort of—
Art: [crosstalk] And like—oh, sorry.
Ali: No, you go on.
Art: I bet he’s used that before and it’s worked, you know?
Keith: Yeah, totally could be. Yeah. I really love this line when he says—he talks about—Malcolm is like, you’re a good student, you know, you’re quiet. But you don’t get into any real trouble. And he takes a step back and he says, he talks about, like, I made a drawing. What was the—what was it of? Like, a man using a screwdriver to hurt another man or something like that.
Art: Used to stab it in the neck. It was really—
Keith: And they—everyone got upset and they had a meeting. And I don’t draw like that anymore. He says, how do you draw? This is one of my favorite lines in the movie. He says, well, how do you draw? He says, I draw people smiling, dogs running, and rainbows. They don’t have meetings about rainbows. I really like that.
Sylvi: It rules. And then later you see his drawings.
Keith: You see his drawings of the, of the happy stuff. Yeah.
Sylvi: Every single one’s got rainbows. Yeah, I think in that scene, it’s also the one where he’s wearing pajamas that have like dogs on them, which is really funny.
Keith: And I think that, I think that this is one of those, those scenes of like, Ali, you talked about like, kids seeing more than adults, or at least seeing more than adults expect them to see. And I think this is like a very real thing of a, a troubled kid who knows—who’s smart enough to know how to not seem that troubled.
Ali: Yeah, I—yeah, I think the, the reason why I ended up questioning, you know, is this another deceit of the film, is because I was sort of wondering, like, is there a perspective that you can have of this scene where Malcolm knows about the trouble that he’s had in school? You’re sort of assuming that his mother’s involved in this process, that he would have access to this information. And by, you know, making this assumption about Cole to him, that Cole can correct on—because you’re seeing that the—he’s this sort of kid who’s intelligent and closed off, but wants to appear smart and interesting. And that maybe the sort of like, oh, you’re just a good student, you haven’t gotten in any trouble. And the sort of like, no, that’s not true. The defensiveness that Cole can have there. Is that—is there a way of viewing this movie if you haven’t seen the twist of being like, oh, he’s working him. You know what I mean?
Keith: Right.
Ali: That I thought was kind of interesting. I do think the—in terms of vulnerability, the way that he gets things wrong and the sort of—the first thing that makes Cole step back is this thing of like, your dad gave you that watch, didn’t you? And instead, the response is, no, I took it. This sort of like—
Keith: Yeah, he found it in a drawer.
Art: He found it in a drawer, I wouldn’t call that—
Ali: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this sort of assumption of warmth that Malcolm is making that isn’t there is, I thought, was, you know, significant in a screenwriting perspective.
Keith: Yeah, there’s definitely a way where, you know, seeing this movie for the first time, like, you would have heard more—Malcolm would have heard more about Cole by talking extensively with his mother and maybe with the school, and that we can assume that he has that knowledge, even though now we know that he wouldn’t because he doesn’t—he can’t talk to those people.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: But this is the scene—the next scene with the two of them is like where their relationship, I think, kind of starts to turn for a very funny reason. They’re walking down the street. He tells him that he doesn’t—Cole tells Malcolm he doesn’t tell his mom things because she doesn’t look at him like he’s a freak, like every—everyone else does. And then Malcolm is like, don’t think like that. That’s bullshit. And it seems to me Cole really liked that he swore in front of him. He’s like, you said the S-word.
Sylvi: I think that’s one of the reasons why the performance works so well, is because he flips between being the like really troubled broody kid to just being a wide-eyed 9-year-old in one scene—like, like that, in a lot of scenes.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: And that one’s maybe my favorite of them.
Keith: Which is realistic, like, what is—
Art: Feels—yeah, it feels very authentic.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah, exactly.
Keith: How else are you supposed to live if sometimes you have to go to school, sometimes you have to hang out with your mom, and sometimes you have to escape the demons that haunt your house.
Sylvi: Don’t talk about Tommy Tammisimo like that. I don’t think he’s going in their house.
Keith: This is, I think, an interesting thing that like that not a lot is done with but is really important to the end of the movie where Lynn is cleaning the house and is like cleaning the pictures and notices that in all of the pictures of Cole, there’s like little glints of light that are like behind him or near him.
Art: Well, and he’s looking away.
Keith: Yeah, looking away.
Art: He’s never looking, he’s never looking—his eyeline’s always off, looking at the glints.
Keith: Yeah, I really like that. And then, and then we cut to like the most sort of conventional therapy that happens maybe in the movie, where Malcolm is getting Cole to talk about—talk about free association, you know, finding ways to express yourself if you don’t feel comfortable speaking directly, saying like, and maybe you would even get caught on purpose. 
[1:30:00]
Keith: And while this is happening, there’s a montage of Lynn still cleaning, headphones in so she can’t hear her kid talking to nobody, cleaning the house, turning up the—keeps turning up the heat because it keeps getting cold. Um, and, uh, she finds his—the—this writing that starts as like, a journal about his, uh, feeling lonely because his dad is gone and becomes like demonic writing, like Exorcist writing, um, about like killing babies and starting fires. Um, Cole calls these upset words.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: Deeply creepy scene.
Keith: Very creepy scene. What do we—what do we get—
Sylvi: I love that the variety of stuff being written down on the page. I love that some of it’s like, oh, I had it written down.
Keith: Some of it’s instructions.
Sylvi: Some of it’s about like a witch being burned.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah. And I want to know why he does this. Where does this come from? Because like the rules of the, of the—of this—of how the ghosts work. It doesn’t seem like they can compel him to do this. Christ, break the freaking glass. Oh no, God no. What the hell is going on? Quiet the damn baby. I’ll call—I’ll cut you, I swear. Um, I’ll cut you, I swear. Someone—
Art: Oh, he’s telling you. It’s free association. He’s telling you the thing that he’s doing. The dialogue in the scene is telling you what the—what’s happening.
Keith: No, I totally, totally—I, I 100% agree that they’re—that, that Malcolm is say—is talking about free associating because Malcolm has seen these letters and is like, you left these on your table so that your mom would find them. And he’s like, you’ll start writing words you didn’t even know you had in you. So I guess he’s channeling the ghosts.
Ali: I think what he’s doing is transcription. The first, you know, the first hints that we get of his—his sixth sense.
Sylvi: Whoa....
Art: No, I think another therapist asked him to do this free association writing.
Ali: You think so?
Art: I mean, that’s what I think is happening in this scene.
Ali: You know, the thing of, like, quiet the baby, I’ll cut you, and then the ghost haunting his house is a wife who is having a fight with her presumed husband and being like, you can’t hurt me anymore, and she is cut, is sort of this, like, you know—and, you know, what I was saying, that his sixth sense is—we first get it through these words of the ghost, and then we get it through him hearing the ghost. And then it’s, you know, half an hour later, and we see a ghost for the first time.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Like, this sort of slow burn of, like, having those—that perspective actually come into the film, the sort of, like, perception of these other—this other presence, that this is the start of the slow burn. And it’s like, these other words spoken by another person is very successful.
Keith: Yeah, I just think like, [Ali: It’s really creepy.] It is super creepy. I just think like, like it—he stops in the middle of his normal journaling to say like, this ghost stuff. The only thing I’m wondering is, like, why or how that happens.
Ali: Mm.
Keith: That’s the—and I think really the answer is to produce the shot of the creepy pages. Like, I think the answer is, like, it’s a practical way to get something creepy that we can show that he’s like—that something is wrong with Cole or happening to him.
Ali: Yeah. And I think it’s another thing of, like, how these experiences are sitting with him. Like, as an—you know, I said before that this is sort of like the first voice that you hear of this ghost. But really, the first time that happens is when Cole is directly quoting Latin in the first scene.
Keith: Right.
Ali: So, it’s this even slower burn of actually being able to hear and experience these things through him, where he is sitting with this all of the time. And whether it’s like, I was just journaling, and I started hearing these things, and I started writing down what I was hearing, or I was just journaling, and it’s free association, my hand is just moving, and it’s obviously going to these things—like, these horrific things that are stuck in my mind because I feel like I can’t tell anyone about it and I don’t know what to do about this.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Is, is I think how you kind of get from A to B there and sort of imagining with a practical sense of why that happens.
Keith: And, Ali, while you were, while you were saying that, I think really the, the thing that clicked with me is how many sort of like, ghost hunting techniques this movie goes through. Like later on we see Malcolm hearing a ghost in the tape hiss of a thing.
Ali: Yes.
Keith: That is like classic ghost hunting stuff. And it occurred to me like they’re trying to show automatic writing. This is like he’s doing spirit writing by mistake. Like, and, and the reason it doesn’t fit with how it seems like the ghost—the ghosts work normally for him is because they’re just like trying to get like, ghost hunting—show different ghost hunting techniques happening kind of by accident.
Art: Wait, I also don’t—I also disagree with this interpretation of this scene. Okay, I think he’s hearing the kid talk to the ghosts.
Ali: Wait, which kid? He’s—
Art: He—that’s a tape of him talking to Donnie Wahlberg.
Sylvi: Oh no.
Keith: So that—so to me, so Vincent Grey. He’s, he’s recording his conversation with Vincent Gray. [Art: He leaves the room.] He leaves the room, and then when he’s listening back to the tape, he hears something. So he turns the volume up, and in the very background of that tape, he can hear a ghost speaking in Spanish saying, I don’t want to die. Why is this happening to me?
Art: No, I thought—I think he’s hearing Vincent, like, like Cole, speaking in a language he doesn’t know.
Keith: Oh, no. I think that that’s a ghost.
Sylvi: That’s a ghost talking.
Ali: I think that’s two different voices. Yeah. ‘Cause I remember listening to that scene and thinking, did they have Haley Joel Osment be the voice of Vincent in this scene? Because it’s such a young voice, and it sort of feels really familiar when you hear it the first time. And the Spanish-speaking is... You know, sounds adult. It sounds accented. It sounds like somebody not stumbling through Spanish. It feels like it’s somebody having their—
Art: Um, oh sure, yeah, there’s a credit, Spanish ghost on tape.
Keith: It’s also, um, the other thing is, uh, uh, Vincent is audible speaking at like 2 on the volume slider, and he has to turn it up to 10 in order to hear the ghost at all. And, uh—but the ghost sounds like he’s talking at full volume, which is like, to me, that’s—
Art: Well, I mean, Keith, if I were talking to you, I would speak at a different volume than if I were whispering to all the ghosts in this room.
Keith: But he wasn’t whispering. The ghost was talking. Was like, like, uh, it sounded like the ghost was really, really far away but speaking at a normal—like, it wasn’t a—it wasn’t ghost whispers, it was ghost dialogue.
Ali: Right. And the fact that you—like, that scene is so good because it’s—when he repeats it, and then when he finally gets to putting it on full volume, the, like, what Keith was saying about the sort of, like, associating it with ghost hunting, the immediate, like, dead air and, like, crackle of, like, these, you know, room noise that is gonna be edited out of this podcast and just exists on recordings everywhere, you know?
Art: Yeah.
Ali: The, like, this sort of, like, suddenly the room is filled with this other atmosphere because you’re having a ghostly experience is, I think, really good. And that, you know, it sort of supports that, like, this voice is happening behind everything else.
Keith: Um, I think at least I have a, uh, the end of this little session here on an audio clip of, uh, I don’t remember exactly where it starts, so if I, if I repeat what the clip is saying, then I’ll just edit it out. But Malcolm wants to know what Cole wants to get out of therapy, which is a very therapist thing to say, I think. Be like, why don’t you think about what your goals are for our sessions?
[audio from The Sixth Sense starts playing]
Malcolm: Can you do something for me? I want you to think about what you want to get out of our time together, what our goals should be.
Cole: Something I want? 
Malcolm: If you could change something in your life, anything at all, what would it be? 
Cole: Instead of something I want, can it be something I don’t want? 
Malcolm: Okay. 
Cole: I don’t want to be scared anymore.
[audio ends]
Keith: This poor kid.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Um, yeah, I, I—this is another section where I think it works really well. What would—like, what Malcolm is thinking versus what we, what we now know Cole is thinking. Like, Malcolm thinks that this kid is being abused, and so he’s like, I—can I wish for something to stop happening? And he’s—and then that makes perfect sense to Malcolm. Meanwhile, Cole is like, can I stop seeing ghosts? Is that—? And then who wants to talk about the Amish guy? The Amish-liking guy. The Amish-knowing guy.
Art: Yeah. What a weird way to describe this character.
Keith: I just—for the, for the majority of the movie, the only way I know him is the guy who goes to the Amish, to where the Amish are.
Art: Because he does that… once?
Keith: Well, it’s the only thing he does. It’s the only thing he does until he carries a table. If the first thing he did was carry a table, I’d call him the table-carrying guy.
Ali: And you can assume in that scene that’s an Amish table because of prior information.
Keith: Right.
Ali: I thought so, at least.
Keith: Totally. Oh my—Ali, it is an Amish table! Of course! Didn’t even occur to me that was an Amish table.
Art: No, it’s an antique.
Keith: Amish have antiques!
Sylvi: Amish people don’t have antiques?
Ali: I don’t know.
Art: There are Amish antique dealers?
Ali: Okay, I’ll be the one to explain the scene to give some of the context here. [Sylvi hysteria] What we see is somebody come to Malcolm’s house while Malcolm is presumably in the basement studying, but there’s some weirdness about the basement. He’s—maybe he has an office somewhere else that isn’t that cellar.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah, I think it’s like a study.
Ali: Yeah, we see him constantly trying to access that place, and he’s unable to. And then he’s also mysteriously in a basement, and I think that that’s weird, but maybe they have a second basement. Anyway, so—
Keith: Yeah, they have a basement and a wine cellar.
Ali: That might be true because his office has, like, a window, and it feels like it’s a lower floor than where their living room is. But I mean, it’s a beautiful Philadelphia brownstone, so who knows?
Keith: It’s a beautiful home. It is a beautiful home.
Ali: So, somebody comes to the door who’s obviously familiar with Malcolm’s wife, whose name—anna. Anna. And he’s, like, sort of inviting her out. He’s saying, I’m going to the Amish country. Do you want to come with me? I’m going to get furniture. You can come together. And she’s like, no, that’s okay. I’ll just see it on Monday. Which sort of supports the idea that what he is doing is going to Amish country to buy things for them to sell at their store.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Ali: And he—you know, the thing that he says directly to her in the scene is, you know, are you sure you don’t want to come? You’ve just seemed sort of down lately. And she’s like, no, no, it’s okay. And then he makes this other attempt to check in on her, which is like, hey, when I come back, I can stop by here and show you what I got, so you don’t have to go do the thing, but you still won’t be alone tonight. Um, and she still refuses, and, you know, whatever happens. Um, and then the scene shifts to Malcolm’s perspective of seeing this person walk away from the doorstep and being like—I got it.
Keith: I got it. I have it. I have it. Don’t worry.
Ali: I have it.
[audio from The Sixth Sense starts playing]
Malcolm: Keep moving, cheese dick. 
[audio ends]
Keith: Keep moving, cheese dick.
Art: Um, you’ve been a little down lately is a wild way to describe someone who’s still sad that their husband died.
Sylvi: Been a whole year, get over it.
Keith: Maybe, um, maybe the Malcolm apparition is—has been more active since he took on the Cole case, and it’s been psychically draining recent—more so recently.
Ali: I also think what’s significant here is that it is the month/week of their anniversary. So, this sort of like—this idea of like, oh my God, she’s obsessed about the past, when really, this is the moment in her life. This is the first anniversary that she’s had without her husband. So, of course, she’s revisiting their wedding over and over again is, again, a really good concealment about what the emotional truth of what’s happening to her is.
Keith: Right.
Art: Counterpoint, get over it, lady!
Ali: But this idea—
Art: No matter how sad you are, he’s—it’s not gonna help. That’s what M. Night Shyamalan says.
Sylvi: Yeah. Yeah.
Art: I don’t think that is what M. Night Shyamalan is saying, but, um.
Keith: We’ll find out later what he’s saying. Yeah, he says some words in this movie.
Ali: Oh yeah, indeed.
Art: Yeah. I also don’t think that represents his opinion, if we’re—
Keith: No, I, I agree. I’m gonna self-insert so that I can, I can speak the truth of my film, which is that this kid didn’t have a seizure.
Art: This kid didn’t have a seizure and is being abused.
Ali: Audience, please remember this because M. Night Shyamalan and who he casts himself in his movies that he constantly shows up in, I think is a significant thing that we will keep hitting on. [Keith: Really?] Yeah, he’s in most of them.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: And what he decides to be becomes increasingly significant and interesting.
Keith: He starts off as a doctor, so he’s doing pretty well.
[Sylvi laughter]
Ali: Yeah.
Sylvi: It’s the same guy in all of them, so we need to keep that in our hearts.
Keith: That would be very funny if there is the, the Shyamalan—the M. Night Shyamalan-verse where the, the, the main thread connecting them all is that M. Night Shyamalan plays the same doctor.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Um, who wants to talk about this history class? This is very—I found this to be a very fun scene.
Art: Sure.
Sylvi: I can take it if you don’t want. Oh, go ahead.
Art: No, I can take it. Um, I feel like I’ve been—hold on, I hit my desk to stand up and now it’s making a lot of noise in the background of me talking.
Keith: That’s okay.
Art: Um, but I feel like I’ve been not doing enough scene description. Um, so yeah, Cole is in history class. We’ve touched on this already where the—he’s like, does anyone know what this building was? And Cole’s like, they hang people here. And he’s like, no, it was a courthouse. They wrote laws. And, and, uh, you know, he and—he and they have this back and forth about the hanging. And then he’s like, did one of these kids tell you that? And he’s like, don’t look at me. Cole tells him in this, you know, very—Cole gets to a 10 very quickly in this scene.
Keith: This is where they’re, they’re like, totally showing why everyone thinks he has a mood disorder.
Art: Yeah. Uh-huh. Because ghost or no ghost, he is, he is taking this up to, to a high level very quickly. Yeah.
Keith: He’s like, don’t look at me like that. People don’t like it when you look at them. And I, and I want to know, like, what this is from. Like, they never, like, really fully say, like, what part of Cole is reacting this way to this teacher. Um, he seems very sensitive about being perceived as a freak, so this might be like actual psychology that’s happening. This could be because the school also happens to be filled with a lot of really violent, uh, and, um, angry spirits. So it—maybe it’s just like evil psychic energy.
Ali: Sure.
Art: I mean, if you had to hang out in your grade school for the rest of eternity, you’d be really mad too.
Keith: Yeah, totally.
Sylvi: Oh God.
Ali: Uh, yeah, it’s funny because the, the sort of like, don’t look at me like that, um, thing is repeated again and again in the film. And this isn’t even the first scene that it shows up. The first time he says it is when he’s walking with Malcolm down the street, and it’s before they’re even present in the scene. The camera is on Philadelphia, like, it’s on just the street, and you don’t even really see their bodies moving on it. And that’s when Malcolm first says, don’t look at me like that. I don’t like when people look at me like that. You know, people look at me like I’m a freak.
Art: Cole. Cole says that.
Ali: Cole. Yeah, yeah, sorry. So, like, the sort of—it’s hard to describe what sets Cole off in the scene, but it is the teacher giving this sort of half-hearted, you know, half-dismissive and half-sympathetic, but in a non-genuine way of being like, you were just lied to about this thing, and you should stop saying that. The sort of, like, little smirk that he gives Malcolm that’s this kind of, like, like, I do not want you to feel bad for me. I don’t want you to be treating me as other. Um, you know, is an extreme reaction. It sure is. But the sort of like, I can see—
Keith: The whole class is looking at him now too, though. Like, it’s not just the teacher.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: One of the things that happens when you tell people not to look at you is that people who are around will look at you.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Yeah. I, the, the, like, God, there’s like, the kid like, doing the Bart Simpson thing of like, writing I will not whatever, whatever on the, the class board over and over again. It’s so funny. And then Malcolm just like interrupting this lecture by being like, people were hung here, and there’s literal like, a record scratch from the chalk squeaking against the board is so funny.
Sylvi: He does the like, comedy like, he’s in the middle of writing and now there’s a line down because he got distracted and looked away.
Art: Although again, the child is Cole and Bruce Willis is Malcolm.
Ali: Oh, sure, sure. Yeah.
Keith: Details, whatever.
Sylvi: What I also like about this scene is it, it once again is kind of like, making you warm up to—I mean, I don’t think at this point—I think at this point it’s already pretty solid, but, um, it makes the relationship between Cole and Malcolm feel a bit better in comparison because he talks to him like a person while his teacher talks to him like a like a little kid basically, which he is a kid to be clear.
Art: Sure, but then he destroys the teacher.
Keith: He does psychologically ruin the teacher.
Sylvi: You know what though, but it was kind of funny.
Ali: Yeah, and I think—
Keith: They put the teacher in fisheye too.
Ali: I think, I think, you know, it’s really difficult to be a teacher and have like a kid lying and disrupting your class, but you can’t call that kid a freak. Like you just can’t. You can’t call him a freak.
Sylvi: Dr. Wilson from House, you can’t do that.
Keith: Especially because we know this guy was called a freak.
Ali: Yeah, man.
Keith: How do you know? How do you—who do you think is the ghost that tells Cole that this guy used to be called Stuttering Stanley?
Sylvi: I thought it was the lady that we see him talking to at the end in the dress room.
Keith: The fire? The one who burned in the fire?
Sylvi: She talks about, there was a fire here when I went here when I was a kid.
Keith: Yeah, so she was his teacher.
Ali: Yeah.
Sylvi: Or whoever, I guess.
Ali: Or whoever.
Sylvi: Yeah, someone who was at the school, either someone who worked there or a parent of another kid.
Keith: Yeah, this school does a lot of plays, huh?
Art: Yeah, the school does so many plays.
Keith: They do two plays in the span of like—it can’t be more than a month, right?
Sylvi: You got a talent like Tommy Tammisimo on your—in your school, you got to make sure you’re nurturing that.
Art: Yeah, either this school does a truly, like, unfathomable amount of plays, or this movie takes place under a way longer time period than you would reasonably assume based on everything else that happens.
Keith: The cadence, it makes it feel like they have—they do two plays a month is what it seems like.
Sylvi: I do like a bit of the obfuscating the timeline thing, though, because that’s something that Cole says in a scene is that like, ghosts don’t really have a sense of time the same way. And with Bruce Willis being our perspective character, it like, makes a lot of sense that we get jumbled up in that same way.
Art: Or they do a lot of plays.
Sylvi: Or it’s a drama school, you know? 
Keith: Well, it’s a Catholic school, so it is a dramatic school.
Sylvi: Oh, there’s no drama in Catholicism, okay.
Keith: No, I’m saying the opposite. I’m saying it’s very dramatic.
Sylvi: Yeah. Okay. 
Keith: We get—we’ve talked about this a little bit, but this is where Malcolm comes home and finds their wedding party video playing on the TV. This is where he sees the—he dramatically finds the Zoloft bottle.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Take with food or milk.
Sylvi: Take with food or milk.
Art: Gotta get that milk in there.
Sylvi: Actually, wait, the milk thing really threw me off. What was going—the ‘90s were weird.
Keith: I’ve heard that about medicine before. I think it’s because there—I think it’s because milk is so calorically dense and also has a lot of—it has fat, sugar, and protein in it.
Sylvi: That would be my guess. Yeah, it’s still just like a lot to me personally.
Keith: The wedding video is very sad. It’s obviously, you know, it’s a very sweet video of people who cared about these two as a couple.
Ali: The, the thing of like, um, Anna told me that she fell in love with you the first day that she met you on the street, and like, her friend like, crying because she’s so happy for them is just like, man, what happened to this marriage, man? When did it fall apart?
Keith: And it’s difficult because they both seem to be in love with each other and like—
Ali: The entire time, yeah.
Keith: The entire time. Like she’s constantly watching these videos and crying. Like, but he, but—he’s, he’s, you know as Cole says you know, the ghosts see what they want to see he like, can’t—he can’t put reality together like, so he has to come up with the best possible explanation for why things are weird which is that like, well she’s in love with a version of me that doesn’t exist anymore the one who didn’t have his confidence shaken by you know messing up a kid who then killed himself. Um, this scene is, uh, this scene is the most Stephen King scene to me. Um, Cole at a kid’s party. 
Sylvi: Sure.
Ali: Oh God, yeah.
Keith: Uh, he had recently gotten, uh, in trouble for the—for wrecking his teacher. And, uh, Malcolm, uh, does a joke magic trick for him.
Sylvi: Oh, I love this scene. 
Keith: So the original one or the repeat of it?
Sylvi: Both of them.
Keith: Okay.
Sylvi: Both of them. The, like, the original one is great because it’s literally just the director being like, I’m doing this to you right the fuck now, but you’re not as smart as this 9-year-old.
Keith: Well, I thought maybe I’m—maybe I misread it. I thought it was never supposed to be a magic trick. It was supposed to be a joke.
Sylvi: Well, like, yeah. 
Art: I think it’s a—it’s definitely supposed to be a joke.
Keith: Yeah, because he’s like—because he’s saying it—he says it’s in—he has a—he has it in his hand. He says, and now it’s in my pocket, but he never shows it in his pocket. And then he opens it, he’s like, and it’s always in my hand. And he was like, when do—when were you supposed to be funny, is what the kid says.
Sylvi: It’s a great line, but also like, him being shot at the beginning is the coin in the hand that we don’t see again, right? Like, yeah, the coin’s always in the hand because he’s been dead the entire time.
Keith: Yes, and Cole even tries to show him the penny later.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And he doesn’t—he just kind of ignores it. Um, the—but, uh, but yeah, he’s at this kid’s party and he’s like trying to do the joke trick for one of his classmates.
Sylvi: For the chalkboard kid. 
Keith: For the chalkboard kid. Yeah, chalkboard kid.
Sylvi: MVP of the movie.
Keith: Yeah. He goes, all the way back to the hand, uh, it started in. The kid’s like, that’s not funny. Like, okay, I want to feel bad for this kid, but it didn’t work on him either. Yeah. Like, he also didn’t really think it was funny at the time.
Art: No, he thought it was funny. [Keith: Well—] He said, I didn’t know you were funny. He’s acknowledging that he thought it was funny.
Keith: It felt kind of sarcastic to me, but he was depressed, so it could have just been an honest acknowledgment without—a humorless acknowledgment of humor.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, he hears his mom, uh, not complaining about him, but being like, uh, geez, my poor fucking kid can’t make friends. It sucks. He’s always hiding away from—
Art: Oh my God.
Keith: While he’s hiding.
Art: One of the things I really loved about this scene is this, like, attempt to do a class signifier when he was like, we were at Chuck E. Cheese, and they’re like, Chuck what? And it’s—it’s like, I understand they’re trying to say like, oh, the, the Sears are working class and these other Catholic school kids are rich.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: But I can’t imagine existing in 1999 and owning a television and being unaware of Chuck E. Cheese.
Keith: Yeah. The Chuck E. Cheese feels like kids don’t know about class like that. Like kids want Chuck E. Cheese. It doesn’t matter if they, if their mom works two jobs or doesn’t work.
Art: Yeah, kids don’t know that Chuck E. Cheese is horrible to be at.
Sylvi: Well, let’s not say things we can’t take back.
Ali: Strong words.
Keith: I think that I could—
Art: You’ve never been to a clean Chuck E. Cheese is what I’m saying.
Keith: That’s true. I bet I haven’t had it in probably 18 years. I bet I could pick out pepperoni Chuck E. Cheese pizza out of a lineup of 10 pizzas.
Ali: Do you remember that—
Sylvi: What did those pizzas do to get in a lineup?
Art: Whoa.
Keith: Various crimes, mostly murder.
Ali: Was this a weird COVID story that like, Chuck E. Cheese was delivering pizzas at some point? Because I remember hearing about this in the—
Keith: [crosstalk] I think that you’re talking about the rise of ghost kitchens. 
Art: [crosstalk] Oh, under the fake name?
Ali: No. Well, maybe.
Keith: Uh, Chuck E. Cheese had, um, uh, Pasquale’s Pizza, Pasquale’s Pizza and Wings, which was like—
Sylvi: Because that’s the name of the pizza chef.
Keith: Yeah, one of the gang. It was like one of the first ghost kitchens where Chuck E. Cheese wasn’t delivering as Chuck E. Cheese but as Pasquale’s Pizza and Wings. It shut—oh, it shut down this year. As of March 30th, Pasquale’s Pizza and Wings no longer exists.
Art: RIP.
Ali: Strange.
Keith: It was founded in 2020 due to the forced closure of all Chuck E. Cheese locations brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ali: Damn. 
Sylvi: Wow.
Keith: I should have ordered Pasquale’s pizza and wings while I had the chance.
Ali: Yeah, you should have.
Sylvi: And then eaten it blindfolded next to 10 other pizzas.
Keith: Yeah and eaten it blindfolded next to 10 other pizzas.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, okay, tell me about the crime that Tommy Tammisimo and his toady commit.
Sylvi: Well, they just want to do a pretend play.
Keith: They want to do a pretend play. So, Sylvi, what is this pretend play? Uh, and where do they find Cole?
Sylvi: So, okay, I’ll talk about what happens with Cole. Um, while he’s eavesdropping on his mom, uh, telling about the—talking about the, uh, the Chuck E. Cheese incident, um, he sees a balloon floating up the stairs, uh, and it sort of—you know, you said it was a Stephen King scene, and I realized it is kind of doing a little bit of an It play with the balloon. But up this spiral staircase, I really like how this is filmed too. I always love a good shot up or down a spiral staircase. And he goes up ‘cause he hears this voice coming from an old, I think it’s a dumbwaiter. And it’s, I mean, pretty obviously the voice of a slave who died, talking about something, ‘cause they mention, like, the—something about the master and stuff like that. Uh, and it’s very upset—like, it’s a really upsetting vocal delivery.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Sylvi: Um, and he’s sort of entranced, basically, by it when Tommy and his toady, uh, see it—like, see him up there.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Sylvi: They realize—
Keith: They can tell he’s afraid of something. Yeah.
Ali: Yeah. And I think it’s worth saying, like, how scary what is being said is. It’s like, open this door, please, please help me open this door. And then it’s like, if you don’t open this door, I’m gonna break through it and kill you.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: It’s intense.
Art: I would just like to point out that I don’t think they make dumbwaiters that go to the top of a staircase that otherwise doesn’t go anywhere.
Keith: Yeah, it might be an attic.
Sylvi: Oh, maybe. Yeah, I don’t know. I just assumed dumbwaiter.
Keith: It was a really small door.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Um, but, uh, yeah, they come up and they’re like, hey, do you want to be in a pretend play?
[2:00:00]
Keith: And he’s just happy to be invited to something, and he’s like, yeah, sure, yeah, I want to be in a pretend play. And it’s called Locked in the Dungeon. So they throw him into the room and shut him in there and lock the door, and then some amount of time later, people start noticing that there’s a child screaming.
Ali: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s Lynn. The only person who notices is his mother.
Keith: Well, there’s a couple people who notice it and then ignore it, but yeah, Lynn notices and runs upstairs. And then Tommy and, uh, whatever the fuck that other kid is, they had just been standing there watching him scream the entire time. This kid is clearly a psycho. This is the Stephen King thing to me of like, like there’s a second evil in the book and it’s like some random kid, which is also very It.
Sylvi: Shitty child actor.
Keith: Yeah, like, like, like, you know, in Stephen King, like, evil is like almost like a—it is like a spiritual currency that people have. And some people just have so much evil that it like, infects their whole life. And every once in a while, there’s just a kid who for no reason, you know, random chance proximity to some other evil becomes a total monster kid. And that is Tommy Tammisimo. Um, all of this, they don’t lean super hard into it, but, uh, uh, he like, faints in there and they, they, they—she gets him out eventually. Or no, it opens up on its own. I think the ghost unlocks it while he’s fainted already.
Art: Yeah, they don’t—they don’t focus too much on, on the how of that unlatching, but yeah.
Keith: Yeah. And then they’re in the hospital greeted by the man himself, M. Night Shyamalan.
Sylvi: Crowd goes wild.
Keith: It’s funny, I was surprised I recognized him right away. I didn’t know that I would recognize him right away. But apparently what M. Night Shyamalan looked like was, was in there the whole time in my brain. Um, this is where, uh, does anybody remember exactly what the doctor says about sort of accusing Lynn, who’s very frustrated, uh, to be accused of abuse?
Ali: Yeah, he starts the conversation by, you know, assuring her like he didn’t have a seizure, he’s, you know, um, he’s okay, he’s just gonna sleep overnight and it’s gonna be fine.
Keith: Fainted from pure fear, basically.
Ali: Basically. And there’s this sort of beat, and then he says, you know, we found wounds on your son’s body, or cuts and bruises, I think is the exact line. And Toni Collette’s face gets kind of serious, and she’s like, you know, those are from sports. That’s from playing. And he’s like, uh, you know, there’s this—I don’t think he says something as firm as officer. I think he says the woman’s name. But he says, you know, there’s this person here, and she wants to speak to you. And Toni Collette, getting increasingly visibly upset, is like, do you think that I hurt my child? And I think here is also, you know, when she says something like, I just want to know what’s going on with him, or something like that.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Um, that—yeah, I mean, you, you have a kid who’s brought into the hospital for an extreme emotional reaction, and he’s got some bruises on his body. You know, that’s the—that’s what you do. You call a cop about it.
Keith: Yeah, this is where I wrote, uh, I don’t know what these cuts on Malcolm are from, but they’re clearly from a time before everyone knew what [Sylvi: Cole.] What? Oh, did I say Cole? Did I say Malcolm?
Ali: You said Malcolm.
Keith: Sorry, Ali’s infected me.
Art: Ali is spreading.
Ali: Do I keep fucking it up?
Sylvi: Yes.
Ali: I’m going back to actors’ names.
Keith: You know, actually, I think, I think that right below where I said Cole, it said Malcolm. I think I just misaligned while I was reading. This is obviously from a time before everyone knew what self-harm cuts look like, because they’re in the exact right location for that, and it really is what they look like. And I was honestly—I was surprised when that ended up not being what they were. Like, he says towards the end of the movie, like, yeah, the ghosts were hurting me. Um, and I was like, really? Is that really what it was? That—I—and I wonder if maybe there was like a draft where that had changed. Um, because of how obvious it was. Like, that’s not what—where I would put cuts or make cuts look like if ghosts were hurting a kid. Me—that’s just me though, right?
Ali: Yeah, I mean, I do think that the—like, the reason it starts on his wrist is because it immediately introduces the question of, is this self-harm or something else. [Keith: Yeah.] And then I—you know, the second sort of beat that we get of this throughline is the scratch that Lynn finds on Cole’s body that is, like, obviously happened the night of the party because it’s a hole in the sweater that he was wearing, and then, like, a mark in the undershirt, and then, like, a—like a—it’s not like a bruise. It’s like a, like a sore or something on his, his, like a scratch or something that’s on his back that matches the, the spots of both of those things where it’s like, there was a real physicality here that it’s able to touch, you know, fabric.
Keith: Right, where he was like, grabbed and hurt through his clothes.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Um, I also wrote here, this is like saying stuff that I had been—I’ve already talked about this, but like, this is where it all kind of boiled over for me where Malcolm is in the hospital room with him. I was like, why is Dr. Malcolm here? Why was he at the school? Why does he keep having access to Cole wherever he is? Like, this is the most on-call psychologist of all time.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: Sure, I mean, I think if you’re—if a child in your care in this situation who’s like, in crisis like this is hospitalized, you would try to go.
Keith: Yeah, I—hey, I, I’ve, I’ve seen that not be true.
Sylvi: Oh, for sure. But they’re trying to make him a good—
Keith: They are trying to—he is a hero doctor.
Ali: And who, who’s also like noticeably, you know, from Anne’s perspective and from the audience’s perspective, overinvested.
Keith: Overinvested.
Ali: You know what I mean?
Keith: He tries to quit soon after this.
Sylvi: Sure.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Um, but yeah, he makes a weird sort of light joke about bedtime stories and, uh, starts telling the world’s worst bedtime story.
Sylvi: Really quick, before we move on to, uh, past the, the, um, scratches and stuff, that is also something that’s like, again, playing on the, the lineage of like demonic possession films and stuff like that.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Sylvi: The kids being taken over and having both the unexplained cuts and then also like scratching and hurting themselves while possessed. Um, thinking of the, specifically the, the mockumentary supernatural horror film from 1992, Ghostwatch, that I—is—that’s me shouting out Jack de Quidt, who showed me that.
Keith: That sounds fun.
Sylvi: Where that happens, and it made me—I don’t know, I was thinking about that a lot during that sequence, at the very least, when they were talking about the, the self-harm stuff, because that movie also kind of plays with the like, threat of people thinking you’re hurting your kids or your kids are like at risk because of your parenting when it’s actually something supernatural going on.
Keith: This is brilliant face acting from Bruce Willis when he says, okay, some twists here. I just linked the pictures. This is the face of a man who knows that this movie has a twist.
Art: Yeah.
Ali: It was in front of us the whole time.
Keith: It was right there. Yeah.
Ali: How did nobody know?
Keith: How did nobody know? That’s what I’m saying. [Ali laughing] Look, I think that—I think that they, that they composed this really, really well. Like, they do a great job of making it so obvious when you know. It’s so obvious when you know.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: It’s not like a movie that doesn’t—because it wouldn’t—it’s not a good twist if it wasn’t there the whole time.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: It’s just some random thing that happens. So I can’t think of anything, any twist in anything where the twist is so—it’s on every single page, it’s screaming off of the pages, and still, you know, millions of people were fooled by the movie. It’s great. Great job. Um, uh, Cole’s like, I don’t want a bedtime story. Why don’t you tell me why you’re so sad?
Sylvi: I’m the therapist now.
Keith: I’m the therapist now.
Sylvi: A thing that will get more and more clear throughout the rest of the movie, honestly.
Keith: Uh, Dr. Crowe, more like Captain Phillips.
Sylvi: Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. 
[Keith hysteria]
Keith: He’s like, I’m not supposed to talk about that stuff. And then he just straight away, he actually does. He tells it. He frames it like a bedtime story. Honestly, he gets a bit too personal, I think. This is a kid. This is his patient. He shouldn’t be doing this.
Sylvi: Yeah, it’s unprofessional.
Keith: But it’s for the movie.
Ali: Yeah, he’s a ghost. He has to move on.
Keith: My wife doesn’t—oh, sorry, Ali. Go ahead.
Ali: Well, yeah, I was just saying, like, he’s a ghost. He has to do this.
Keith: He has to do this. He’s stuck. My wife doesn’t like the person I’ve become. Um, we barely speak anymore. We’re like strangers. But this is it. This is the scene. This is the—this is the big thing.
Ali: Right. Yeah. I, I do think it—prefacing how he starts that story with, there was once this guy, and he was happy, and he had this patient that he didn’t fix, and he met this boy who—like, you know, the, the talking about his wife is significant, but also sort of like explaining to Cole— [Keith: That he failed.] Why he’s invested in this so much, yeah, and this sort of admitting that he’s fallible and sort of like—I like this as an emotional breakthrough because of the sort of like—the way that they started this is by him being like, you don’t think that I can help you. And Bruce Willis being able to say, I don’t think that I can help you either, is, is a good mirror of that. And I think they have a great relationship. But yeah, immediately after he kind of opens up in this way, the iconic scene. You’ve probably seen it referenced a million times.
Keith: And you’re going to hear it now for real.
Ali: Yeah. I think I saw—scary Movie probably did a thing.
Keith: Oh, definitely. Absolutely. Maybe multiple times.
Ali: MTV Movie Awards probably did multiple skits about this. Yeah. But, you know, the camera lingering on Haley Joel Osment’s face and the sort of like, I finally have the—I’m finally going to tell you my secret, I think is what he says. I see dead people.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Do you have a clip of that, Keith?
Keith: I do.
Sylvi: I do.
Keith: Here we go.
Ali: Okay, please. Yeah.
[audio from The Sixth Sense starts playing]
Cole: I want to tell you my secret now.
Malcolm: Okay. 
Cole: I see dead people.
Malcolm: In your dreams? While you’re awake? Dead people, like in graves, in coffins?
Cole: Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.
Malcolm: How often do you see them?
Cole: All the time.
[audio ends]
Keith: They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead. That is—I mean, it’s genius. It’s a genius way to, to do this. It’s so good.
Sylvi: Absolutely. It’s so well executed.
Keith: It’s really excellent.
Art: It’s another reason why it’s—while being like, oh, I can’t believe we didn’t get it anyway, people didn’t get it immediately. Like, they don’t even give you the rules in Until—I mean, again, this is 52 minutes in.
Keith: Like, yeah, yeah.
Art: If the ghosts could see each other, it’d be game over. The whole thing would be disproven right now.
Keith: Right. Um, uh, it’s, it’s really good. I really like this idea of like, being a ghost as this kind of like, lonely sort of self-inflicted hell where whatever’s happening, you just make sense of it. You can’t—you’re forced to make sense of it in order to not realize that you’re dead. And obviously, some of them do realize they’re dead. We see a girl named Kira who, who seems to understand later. But yeah, I just think it’s a very interesting version of ghosts that is—that was you know created by this movie as far as I know. I don’t know. I can’t think of another thing. where it’s like, yeah, ghosts live on Earth, they don’t know they’re dead, and they can’t even see other ghosts.
Ali: It’s good. It’s a great—
Art: Yeah, scene rules. It also, like, this scene changes the movie. After this scene, we start seeing the ghosts.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: And the movie gets scarier, I think is fair to say.
Keith: Yeah, we live—we live a lot more in sort of Cole’s life, what he deals with. Like, when his mom is asleep, like, what he has to put up with in, in his own home. Later on, we see—we actually don’t see what Cole sees, but I think it’s really good where, you know, he’s on a bus. This is after he sort of made peace a little bit with the ghosts. He sees a graveyard and he gasps and like ducks behind the window like this. This kid is terrified all the time. Because they’re everywhere.
Ali: It’s so sad.
Keith: It’s really sad. Um, and, uh, this is where, uh, you know, Malcolm leaves. He says, uh, his pathology is more severe than initially assessed. He’s suffering from visual hallucinations, paranoia, and some kind of school-aged schizophrenia. That doesn’t seem like an official diagnosis to me. Uh, medication, hospitalization may be required. And then he turns off the voice recorder and says, and I’m not helping him. Not as a declaration, but as a, as a, uh, penitent description.
Ali: It’s tough. I mean, it’s tough. Seeing ghosts is a big deal.
Keith: Seeing ghosts is a big deal.
Art: Seeing ghosts is a big deal.
Keith: Seeing ghosts is—and I think that should be on the tin, I think.
Sylvi: That’s the, like, the, like, uh, tagline if this was like recut to be just like a very—the, like, another genre is playing off the sort of like unrelated but positive male role model character. Whereas like, if this was about a boy, the tagline would be, sometimes seeing ghosts is serious business.
Keith: Um, I think about this all the time, but the CollegeHumor Fantastic Mr. Star Fox video. I don’t know if anybody remembers that. It was a Fantastic Mr. Fox-style trailer for Star Fox, where Owen Wilson puts his hand on Star Fox’s shoulder and goes, hey Einstein, I’m on your side. Uh, think about that delivery all the time. That’s what that made me think of. Seeing ghosts is a big deal.
Sylvi: Imagine Owen Wilson playing the Malcolm Crowe role.
[Keith and Ali laughter]
Keith: Come on, buddy, what’s going on? What’s wrong?
Ali: What’s wrong? I don’t know. I mean, I think Owen Wilson does a really good job of—oh, he’s like an innocence about him, and he’s like, good at being like, surprised or flabbergasted. So maybe it would work, but it would be a much funnier movie, I think.
Keith: I love Owen Wilson. I think he’s a great—I think he’s an underrated actor, if anything.
Ali: Oh yeah, I mean, I was obsessed with him when I was—when he was—when he was big and I was young and watching movies.
Art: I would need to consider more how rated Owen Wilson is before I could have an opinion on if he’s over or underrated.
Keith: That’s fair. Hey, I think that’s fair. Well, I also—I think that Bottle Rocket is Wes Anderson’s most underrated movie. So that comes from that.
Art: Again, I’d need to see some ratings.
Keith: Yeah, it is a lot of people’s least favorite Wes Anderson movie, which to me is outrageous because there’s some actually bad Wes Anderson movies, so.
Sylvi: Uh-huh.
Keith: But yeah, Art, like you were saying, you know, this is where we start—or someone said, this is where we start seeing ghosts for real. Lynn sort of brings him back from the hospital, finds the scar that Ali was talking about, calls one of the moms, maybe Tommy’s mom, and is like, tell your son to keep your goddamn hands off my son.
Art: Yeah, I think it’s weird in the, in the scene where—the two scenes prior where, where he’s rescued from the mysterious tiny door—
Keith: That there wasn’t enough punishment to those boys?
Art: Well, the other parents are looking at her like she’s the weird one when she’s like getting her passed-out kid out of the room he was locked in. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: That is maybe the least realistic thing that happens in the movie where we’re like, no one is concerned about what these kids did. Ali, were you gonna say something?
Ali: Yeah. I mean, I—yeah, I think it—what we were saying about, like, there’s a deep evil in the world, the Stephen King sense, the sort of like, you know, everybody is against these two. This sort of like—also sort of the class thing of like, we took a chance on inviting them, and they just had to go and ruin the party.
Keith: Yeah, they made sort of like, a scene.
Ali: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see, you know, if you’re a villain in a movie, I can see why you would think that. But like, if you actually had a child, I think you’d be like, you would have maybe some sympathy there. But this movie gets weird about moms anyway, so.
Keith: Uh, he wakes up in the night to pee and he’s like clearly terrified. He, he runs through the hall into the bathroom. Uh, the thermostat.
Ali: This is the classic, uh, I think you’re misreading the scene. I think he just really had to pee. No.
Keith: Well, he did.
Ali: Well, he did really have to pee.
Keith: He did really have to pee. The reason he really had to pee is because he was holding it because he’s too scared to go to the bathroom at night. So he holds it until he can’t hold it anymore.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Um, uh, as—because it—and then also, as soon as he leaves his bedroom, thermostat drops 20, 30 degrees. It becomes freezing cold. You can see his breath, um, which I think is the first time since the first scene where it gets that cold. Actually, I can’t remember if you could see Anna’s breath in the wine cellar. Uh, but this—
Sylvi: No, I don’t think so.
Art: No, I don’t think visible breath is a thing.
Keith: Yeah, this is like—this becomes a thing that the movie does, is like, there—when the breath is visible, there’s a ghost around.
Sylvi: Um, um, I just want to give a shout out to, uh, the other Tommy in my life, my partner, who just whispered, he’s vaping, under his breath when he started exhaling the, the—like that you could see the—his breath. Really funny.
Keith: Yeah. Um, younger. They’re starting younger and younger.
Sylvi: Yep.
Keith: Uh, but yeah, there’s a—there’s like a—there’s a—this is a, you know, jump scare. I think this is—I think I thought this was a jump scare. To me, I jumped scared. Uh, a, a woman—I thought maybe she was in a dress, but I guess she was in, um, like a nightgown. I think she passes by the bathroom behind Cole. Um, uh, I, I don’t remember what—how does he get from here back into his little tent where he was sleeping?
Sylvi: He goes into the kitchen and sees her, and then he just runs back down the hall.
Keith: Right. This is the—this is the, the woman with a—with the husband named Lenny.
Sylvi: Yes.
Ali: Yeah. I think that he hears a voice and assumes that it’s his own mom.
Keith: Yeah, he briefly—he briefly calls her mom. He’s like, Mom?
Ali: Right. Yeah, he, he kind of leaves the bathroom and starts hearing these voices, so it leads him into the kitchen where he has this sort of haunting.
Sylvi: He also only sees her from the back, and then she turns around and you see the, like, bruising on her face and stuff.
Keith: Yeah, she says, no, dinner is not ready, you can’t hurt me anymore, and then heavily implied that she killed herself when she holds out her wrists to him.
Sylvi: Yeah, which I also was wondering if it was supposed to be like, much like he’s repeating their words if this—
Keith: Yeah, maybe. I had that thought too.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Um, and he’s—yeah, he’s crying in his little tent. Uh, this is the first time we see his collection of toys.
Sylvi: Uh, it’s so heartbreaking that he made a little church to keep him safe and it doesn’t keep him safe.
Art: Uh, yeah, calling that a collection of toys is also a weird—
Keith: Well, it is, it’s toys.
Art: You’re underselling this dramatically.
Sylvi: His amiibos.
Keith: Wait, hold on. I have a picture of it. Here it is. Is that it? Yeah, that is it. Well, I call it toys because I still feel like they’re sort of avatars of his—the ghosts that he knows, that he, that he like, actually communicates with. Because okay, there’s like—
Art: These are statues of saints. These are things he stole from the church.
Keith: But there’s also a guy with a bazooka, a little army man, another army man. And then later he invites Malcolm into like, his battalion. He’s like, do you want to be in my battalion of, you know, the 13th Marines of blah blah blah blah blah?
Sylvi: Yeah, we’re doing the Vietnam War.
Keith: Yeah. And so yeah, it is like, half religious figurines and half army men. And I think it might—this might be an access issue. It’s easy to go steal these, these figures from the church because I don’t—I don’t—would he put the soldiers there if he was—if he wanted them to like, protect him or be a shrine to protect him? I don’t know. Maybe.
Ali: Yeah, I think it’s— [Keith: There’s a tank in the background.] Yeah, it’s a good decision to sort of obfuscate the truth here, to sort of conceal it around this, you know, the—obviously, the chapel, the red chapel that he goes to and the red chapel that he creates are two obvious—you know, the idea that he is both sort of recreating a sanctuary, but also, you know, um, because it’s a safe space for him. It’s where he wants to play. He’s—the toys that are present here are the same ones that he brings to the church with him.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Um, so I think that there is, you know, a degree of comfort in some of these things. And I think, you know, even having statues of saints is also a, uh, a search for comfort, a creation of a safe space that, um—
Keith: I definitely agree that this is him trying to create a sanctuary for sure.
Ali: Yeah. Um, but it’s sad. I mean, it does look really sad. It’s just like, it’s tough.
Keith: Big feature, big feature of the Jesus that he took after he met, um, uh, after he met Malcolm for the first time.
Art: This is how bad I am at Christianity. I have never identified that figure as Jesus. I believe you all.
Keith: It is. Yeah, it’s definitely Jesus. You can tell because of the heart. 
Ali: Oh, that’s—
Art: Jesus has a big heart.
Keith: That is like—
Ali: Oh my God, that’s so Jesus, man.
Sylvi: Yeah, that is the most Jesus.
Art: Well, you see him from behind at the first, the first time.
Ali: True, it’s true. And I guess you could think, yeah, everybody back then just had long hair or whatever, given it could have been a wise man.
Art: Yeah, long hair and a cloak is not, is not enough, I don’t think, from a church.
Sylvi: Nice man bun, asshole. He turns around and is the savior of humanity.
Keith: Um, they’re doing a school play called A Jungle Tale. Uh, Tommy is dressed as an explorer and introduces—let me see if this sounds thematically relevant—a boy who is different from all the other boys who could speak to animals.
Ali: Huh.
Sylvi: Huh.
Keith: Um, Malcolm’s in the audience.
Art: I am also saying huh.
Keith: Huh. Malcolm’s in the audience. Lynn is not in the audience. They don’t really show much of this play, but the set design is kind of cute and also very ‘90s to me. I really like—
Ali: Yeah, the—
Keith: Go ahead.
Ali: No, I was just gonna say the significance of the scene is really for Cole to say that Tony, Tommy? [Keith: Tommy Tammisimo.] Tommy thinks that it was like—
Keith: He said it sucked big time. 
Ali: Sucked big time.
Keith: Yeah, Tommy Tammisimo was in a cough syrup commercial. He said everyone was self-conscious and unrealistic. He said the place sucked big time.
Sylvi: We missed him talking—we did not mention how he talked about how he, the star of the commercial, needs a trailer at his birthday party.
Ali: Oh my God, it’s so funny.
Sylvi: It’s so funny.
Ali: I was gonna ask you, Art—did you have a trailer when you did that Six Flags commercial?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: No, I was not the star of that commercial. Um, I like am the star of that commercial, but that commercial was like, cut together with just stuff that existed. Like, I did that commercial and then they sort of like made it—I did that and they made it into a commercial that I was the centerpiece of. It was not planned as such.
Ali: Oh, sure.
Art: Like, they shot that and then the footage they had was like, I guess this guy’s the, the center point of this. I think it’s because one of my close friends was the producer on that shoot. And so he got to show me.
Ali: And you, you trailered?
Art: No, I didn’t have a trailer.
Sylvi: Yeah, not as close as you thought.
Keith: I like—
Art: I don’t even—I don’t think I got to park close to the park, and it was closed that day.
Sylvi: So things have changed since the ‘90s.
Keith: Uh, I really like that this is like, um, the thin red line of, uh, of commercials where Adrien Brody gets cut out and you get cut in. You’re the, you’re the Jim Caviezel of this Six Flags commercial.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: If you haven’t seen it, I don’t—I’m not going to find it again on YouTube. But at some point it was on social media, so.
Keith: Everybody knows about The Thin Red Line? We all know about this? We’re not all dying in laughter. So I assume that’s—
Art: I don’t know that I do.
Keith: Terrence Malick made his first movie in a long time, Thin Red Line, and Adrien Brody was supposed to be the star of it. But while they were shooting, he basically rewrote it, uh, in the edit to make Jim Caviezel the star.
Sylvi: Oh.
Keith: And so Adrien Brody didn’t find out that he wasn’t the star of this movie until halfway through the press tour of it.
Sylvi: That’s really funny.
Keith: He’s barely in it.
Sylvi: That is really funny, actually. I did not know about that.
Keith: Unbelievable story.
Art: I didn’t know this commercial existed in this form until like months and months later when someone was like, I saw your commercial at Six Flags and I had to be like, when I’m in the background of the roller coaster unloading? And they’re like, no, you’re in this whole thing, you’re getting hit with a Slurpee. And I’m like, oh, I, I didn’t think that was gonna be a big deal.
Keith: Truly, you’re the Jim Caviezel of that commercial.
Art: Yeah, I think I got paid $60 for the whole day.
Sylvi: Wow.
Art: And I’m in the background of two other spots we shot that day.
Keith: That’s funny. [Ali starts and stops] Um, go ahead, Ali.
Ali: What we were talking about is that the kid who was in a commercial, he has, he has a lot of standards about acting and, you know, thinking that his, his, uh, peers are below him in terms of—
Keith: Everyone’s self-conscious and unrealistic. 
[2:30:00]
Keith: That’s so funny to say about, about a bunch of 9-year-olds. Um, but there’s a, there’s a real horror moment in this scene when they’re, when they’re walking through the— [Sylvi: Oh yeah, great.] The halls of the, the school alone. Um, you know, uh, Malcolm is just sort of like chit-chatting with, uh, Cole and realizes Cole’s not there anymore. It’s because he’s just like froze in place because to his left is three people sort of hanging from the rafters of the school. Um, he was right, they did hang people here. Uh, this is my last—this is my last button. Do we want to hear—this is—I think maybe this is actually the best acting that, uh, he does in the movie.
Ali: Yeah, I wrote this down, so I really—I’m really glad that you have a clip of it. So yeah, I’m looking forward to you playing it.
[audio from The Sixth Sense starts playing]
Cole: Be real still. Sometimes you feel it inside, like you’re falling down real fast, but you’re really just standing still. You ever feel the prickly things on the back of your neck? 
Malcolm: Yes. 
Cole: And the tiny hairs on your arms? You know when they stand up?
Malcolm: Yes.
Cole: That’s them. When they get mad, it gets cold.
[audio ends]
Keith: I love that scene. I love how effortlessly a scene from a much scarier movie gets dropped in.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Um, the, the, the writing is really good. The way that, that, um, Shyamalan was able to bring out like, a universal feeling and put terror into it, I thought was really good. Uh, I thought that the way that, um, he feels too close to his microphone and you can hear so much of his mouth was, was really good. Like he’s almost talking into a, like, a lav mic instead of, you know, talking to Bruce Willis.
Sylvi: Pairs really well with the sort of slow camera movement in that we’ve talked about a couple times with this one. This shot slowly like, just becomes tighter and tighter until it’s like, really claustrophobic. And I think the, the sound design really adds to that with what you’re saying.
Keith: Yeah. Uh, anyway, I thought that was a—that was a great scene.
Sylvi: One of my favorites.
Keith: Yeah. Anything else about the hospital stuff before we kind of—I think that we’re about to hit like kind of the—
Ali: Yeah, the movie feels like the pacing goes so much faster than this. Yeah, to say that it’s rolling downhill is really accurate. I love the scene so much. I think that like, you know, Malcolm’s continued inability to interact with this stuff where like, the first question that he asks I think Cole says like, do you see them over there? Or Cole mentions it, and the first thing that he asks is, are you sure you’re seeing them? Or something like that. This immediate like, disbelief or refusal to sort of meet Cole on his level there. And then just the bodies hanging suddenly, and these admittedly kind of really funny old-timey outfits.
Keith: It is kind of funny. 
Ali: It’s just, they don’t, I mean, they have, they’re—
Keith: From far away, it looks good. And then it gets, there’s a, there’s a closer shot and it’s kind of funny.
Ali: And it, yeah, it looks like they’re like, um, people at like, uh, an old-timey like field trip place and not—
Keith: Oh yeah. Like where they take a picture of you dressed as a cowboy with a big fake rifle. Yeah, totally.
Ali: Um—
Keith: Go ahead. 
Ali: No, yeah, but you go on.
Keith: Uh, this is where the movie kind of transitions to bring the tension between Lynn and Cole into the forefront. The rest of Cole’s story is like he needs to tell his mom his secret, you know. She’s getting frustrated with like, being a single mother of a haunted child. Uh, that is a compounding difficulty in her. They have this really cute scene of them kind of playing in a parking lot, uh, at the grocery store where she’s like pushing him in the cart really fast and he throws his hands up and they’re laughing. And then, uh, we cut back to their home and the, uh, PediaEase cough suppressant commercial is on TV.
Sylvi: Oh my God.
Keith: He throws—what does he throw, a shoe at the TV to make it turn off or something? Um, and she’s mad. Lynn is fiddling with the thermostat. I don’t care what they say, this thing is broken. She’s already upset about something. I don’t know, paying for groceries puts me in a bad mood too.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Keith: And then she confronts Cole about moving her bumblebee pendant, which belonged to her mother. You know, what if it broke? You know how sad I’d be if it broke. And he says, sometimes people think they lose things, but they really didn’t lose them. It just gets moved. It’s like, another moment of bringing ghosts into the real world for the audience, I think, which is very effective. You know, I—as someone who knew a bunch of Catholics growing up, because growing up Catholic, Catholics love ghosts and psychics and all of this stuff. Like, name a, you know, name a middle-aged Catholic woman who doesn’t believe in ghosts. I can’t think of one.
Art: I don’t know that I should be saying this because I’m a Jewish person [Keith: Go for it. Endorsed.] But Catholics are deeply superstitious. A lot of the stuff in Catholicism is like, is like weird magic, you know? From the St. Anthony medallion all the way on down, like.
Keith: Yeah, every Catholic that I know is into ghosts and psychics and all of this stuff.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: So I love the idea of a movie that’s talking to Catholics being like, when stuff gets moved, it’s ghosts. And they’re like, I know it is, I know it is.
Sylvi: Would we be able to take five before getting back to things? [agreement from everyone] Cool.
Art: I think I’m gonna need more than five. I need to know—walk a dog.
Keith: Oh, that’s fine.
Ali: Yeah.
[musical sting]
Keith: Okay, so we talked about this, this dinner where they, where, where Lynn is talking about the bumblebee pendant, which was stolen or moved by a ghost. You know, she’s really upset. If we can’t—I don’t know if you’d noticed, but our little family ain’t doing too good. If we can’t talk each other out—talk to each other, we’re not gonna make it. He tells the truth that he didn’t move it, but it makes her upset, and she sends him away without dinner, which is very ‘90s to me. Um, uh, this is when he sees the ghost of a boy who wants to show Cole where his father keeps his gun. And the kid, uh, turns, he’s got a huge hole blasted in the back of his head. And this is like, so shocking that it sort of, sort of jolts a, um, reconciliation between Lynn and Cole. Um, but this is where, uh, uh, after seeing Amish guy again, Malcolm tries to quit being Cole’s therapist. He says, um, uh, I thought I had a quote, but that’s fine. Um, Cole says, you believe me, right? Dr. Crowe, you believe my secret? I don’t know how to answer that. Uh, how can you help me if you don’t believe me? Some magic’s real. Um, and we talked about it earlier, this is the part where, uh, Malcolm’s revisiting the Vincent Gray tapes. He wants to believe Cole. It’s very sad, and he turns the volume up and is able to hear the ghost on the thing. So he goes to find Malcolm in the church where they met. This is the last time I had in the back of my head that maybe Cole was slightly evil. Where the vibe is weird. Cole’s very confident, almost sarcastic.
Ali: And he’s positioned above him.
Keith: He is positioned above him.
Ali: I don’t know that you call that the rafters of the church, but he’s on a second floor that looks like a rafter. He’s on a rafter.
Keith: He’s like, where the organist plays.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, what do you think? Malcolm asks him, uh, because now he believes. He’s just like on board now. What do you think these ghosts want when they talk to you? I want you to think about it carefully. What do you think they want? Just help. That’s right. That’s what I think too. Even the scary ones. What if they don’t want help? What if they’re angry and they just want to hurt somebody? And then Malcolm’s like, I don’t know. Um, uh, but—
Ali: More sympathetic than that. More expressive.
Sylvi: It is.
Keith: It is more—
Sylvi: That was too Scooby-Doo.
Ali: It really could.
Keith: He thinks about it and he says, ruh-roh.
Sylvi: Yeah, he looks him in the eye and says, ruh-roh, Raggy.
Keith: And then he eats a 10-foot-tall sandwich.
Ali: Yeah. Um, that’s a ghost though.
Keith: But this is, this is like the last big scary ghost moment. Uh, Cole sleeping with his dog in the tent. Um, his mother’s having a nightmare about, about him, like about what’s wrong with him. Um, and he tries to go back, um, to bed, but there’s like, another event happens. Who wants to talk about this, this like, last scary ghost?
Ali: I can talk about this because this is like a pre-meme meme between me and my brother.
Keith: Pre-meme meme?
Ali: We would reference this scene all the time because I think in the theater we were the only two who laughed when it happened because it was so shocking. It just cuts to a girl, like, vomiting on him and, like, significantly, like, in the confinements, the safety, quote unquote, of the sanctuary that he’s been living in.
Keith: Yeah, he runs to the tent and she’s, like, behind him already.
Ali: Yeah. And I do think, you know, I—the kid that he sees before that is, like, an adolescent almost. So I think, like, it is very successful that, like, the first ghost story that we kind of see and feel invested in is this one other child the way that, like, you know, um, Cole’s able to relate to her. Um, but, uh, yeah, she just pukes on him.
Keith: She just pukes on him. Yeah, he runs away, he runs away scared, and then kind of comes back because he’s trying to take Malcolm’s advice, and she’s like, yeah, I’m feeling much better now. And he’s very scared still. Do you want to tell me something?
Sylvi: He’s trying so hard.
Keith: He’s trying so hard. And I feel like this stuff, this is like the emotional resolution of the movie. Like Malcolm on the bus with Cole, uh, going to, uh, the funeral of this girl. Cole says, uh, she came a long way to visit me, didn’t she? That’s weird. Like, do they seek him out? Uh, how would she know about him? How did she find him? She didn’t die there.
Ali: Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s the implication from the scene, the, like, photography scene where we see these, like, marks in every picture of him, even when he’s, like, a child, even when he’s a little toddler, in that, like, if he has a residence, you know, even if they’re not specifically seeking him out, by being the only thing that can be interacted with in the world or whatever. They sort of, you know, that is the, the sort of compelling thing, you know what I mean?
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Does that make sense?
Keith: Um, they, they see the sister of the, of the dead girl on, on the swing. He’s like, that’s her sister. And then this is, I think, maybe the most, um, like, present camera movement of the whole movie. It’s very obvious what’s happening with the camera. It almost—it’s almost cloying, uh, but it’s still a version of the thing that I’ve been enjoying up to this point. The camera sweeps around the reception kind of slowly, hearing everyone’s like, whispers about the girl. Um, she spent, uh, two years in bed, six different doctors, and now the younger girl is getting sick too. Um. This is the ‘90s-est room of all time.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: It’s very—it’s very ‘90s via ‘70s room.
Ali: Uh-huh.
Keith: Um, uh, like a place that feels like it hasn’t been changed in 20 years in 1995 is what it feels like to me. Um, and they go upstairs to the dead girl’s room, which is full of creepy dolls. It’s full of scary creepy dolls, which was her hobby.
Art: They’re marionettes, but yes.
Sylvi: Yeah, it’s—she’s a—
Keith: They are. Yeah, they’re puppets. They’re all puppets. She’s an aspiring puppeteer. Um, is this the last—
Art: And marionettes are creepy as shit. I’m not disagreeing with you, but yeah.
Keith: Is this the last scare of the movie? Who wants to talk about this scare? This scared me. This got me.
Art: Oh, he’s—when Cole walks by the bed and the, the hand comes out and grabs his leg.
Keith: Yeah, grabs—like, he freaks out and then she like, pushes a box towards him. And this is when I wrote in the, the, the shared document, being a ghost makes you rude and scary by accident. Like, this girl—
Art: I mean, it might.
Keith: He’s—this girl’s trying to help him help her and she scared the fucking shit out of him. Couldn’t she have said like, hey, the thing I want you to find, here it is? Instead she grabs his leg. Something changes, like, uh, the tolerance you have for, um, the niceties. I, uh, uh, um, they have no—they have no social grace, these ghosts. Um, sort of maybe the ultimate class movie. Being a ghost is the ultimate underclass of society.
Ali: It’s tough. I mean, I don’t know, I can’t speak to what’s going on with them, but, um—
Keith: This is tragic. Out of nowhere, this is so tragic. There’s a videotape in the box, which he brings downstairs to—
Ali: Yeah, it’s such a big swing for the tone of this movie, especially a movie where, I guess, aside from the mean moms at the party, that has been really positive about familial relationships. and mothers at the very least. Lynn has a really good relationship with Cole and presumably had a good relationship with her own mother. But yeah, so what we see in the tape is—and also what I wrote in my notes is, the father seeing his daughter get poisoned should have gotten a supporting role Oscar. I mean, I’m sure it’s fine that Toni Collette got it too, but he should have been nominated. But it is this video of this—it’s initially like a play that the girl’s performing with her puppets, and then she moves the box, it rolls away, and she gets back into bed when her mother enters the room. She comes in with soup and a glass of milk and pours deliberately in front of the camera that she doesn’t know is there, pours Pine-Sol into her soup.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: And it’s this really sad conversation about like, eat your dinner, don’t tell me that it tastes weird, you’re gonna hurt my feelings if you do that. And the daughter being like, I feel a lot better, do you think that I can go outside? And the mother being like, well, you know how sick you get in the afternoons. It’s like, I mean, just—
Keith: Yeah, it’s so bad.
Ali: It’s bad.
Art: And it’s devastating.
Keith: At first I thought that this was a video about the kid intentionally like getting evidence against the mom. But I only re—I realized, like, after the movie was over, I was just thinking about it, that actually what I think it is, is, um, she ran back to the bed because she didn’t want to get caught playing, because the mom doesn’t want her, like, up and playing even when she feels fine.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Which is very sad. And that it—and that catching the mom doing this was just an accident. 
Art: Yeah. Yeah. And the, the work by the father, it’s like the worst part, I think, in—it’s such a thankless part because he has like, no lines.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: And he’s just sitting watching this thing, doing all the emotions on his face, like happy seeing the play, the horror seeing his wife murder his daughter.
Keith: Having to confront her at the party. It’s his only line.
Art: And she’s wearing the red dress at their daughter’s wake.
Ali: It’s insane.
Art: Which is like, anyone who does that should be investigated for murder immediately.
Ali: Oh, wow.
Keith: You’re 100% right. I didn’t even notice that, that, that, that is an extremely inappropriate dress to wear. Yeah.
Art: I’m not saying everyone who does that is guilty of murder, but someone should at least check.
Keith: Just double check. Yeah.
Ali: I know. Yeah. I mean, for the 5 seconds that this, this woman gets to act too, is, like, the way that she is able to perform as, like, almost above it all at her own daughter’s funeral is really interesting. Like, she turns around and sees her husband with this almost, like, disinterested face, until, like, suddenly the fear is kind of coming over her as he’s confronting her.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: It’s really good. They did a really good job.
Keith: Um, the second play of presumably a procession of 100 plays at, uh, St. Anthony’s Academy.
Art: Um, yeah, the year of 100 Plays.
Keith: Year of 100 Plays. Um, uh, Cole’s teacher, Mr. Cunningham, the, uh, Stanley comes into the back room of the theater, um, saying that they’re ready for the stable boy. Um, this is the Young King Arthur play, and he’s getting wardrobe help from a ghost. Ooh!
Ali: It’s just the funniest ghost drop to me.
Keith: This is a really—this is a comedy ghost drop.
Ali: It’s—yeah, it’s still—
Keith: it’s still like gruesome, but, uh, yeah, he’s like, who are you talking to? Like, as the teacher’s walking away and she turns to look back to reveal that, that, that she is a burn victim, uh, and then he sort of tactlessly, I think, says, you know, there was a huge fire here when I was a kid, when I went to school here. And he’s like, I know.
Art: This dude is—
Sylvi: I don’t, I don’t know what this teacher’s deal is, but he’s not—get out of here, man.
Keith: I think he’s nervous about to be around Cole because Cole thanks him for letting him be in the play. And I think it was like, this is like placative. This is like, I’ll, I’m gonna put you in this play as like, a sort of apology, sort of like, staying on the good side of this weird kid.
Sylvi: Please don’t call me Stuttering Stanley.
Ali: But also this, like, this—the—that he’s introduced with this weird denial of, like, anything bad happening by lawmakers. Or, I mean, you want to have a 9-year-old not interrupt your class talking about people hanging, but to be like, yeah, this cl—this building is great and historic, and by the way, part of it burned down and it was horrible, and apparently this lady died. Like, why are you talking about this now?
Keith: Yeah, this guy is weird. This is a weird guy. Um, maybe he set the fire.
Sylvi: Whoa.
Keith: To get back at the bullies who called him Stuttering Stanley.
Ali: Whoa.
Keith: And that’s why the ghosts tell him secrets about him.
Ali: The Sixth Sense 2.
Keith: Yeah. Uh, this is really funny. This is almost like gratuitously, um, uh, maybe it’s schmaltzy is the word that I’d use. Um, Tommy Tammisimo gets cast as the village idiot.
Art: Yeah. 
Keith: And is like begrudgingly delivering these lines, um, uh, introducing, you know, the situation. And then Merlin comes out and says like, let the stable boy give it a try, the pure-hearted stable boy. Uh, and then Cole comes out, removes the sword from the stone, and everybody cheers, and they pick him up like his dream of, uh, hitting getting a kickball grand slam. Um, like, they carry him on their shoulders. It’s very sweet. Uh, and, um, Malcolm’s there. Lynn’s not there. Malcolm says, I thought you were really great in the play, Cole. And you know what else? I thought Tommy Tammisimo sucked big time.
Sylvi: He, you know, he did.
Keith: He did. He really did. Yeah. Hey, there’s no small, small parts, only small actors.
Sylvi: I do love that he did get to have the moment where he was lifted on everyone’s shoulders, like the thing he told to his mom. It wasn’t kickball related, but it’s still really cute.
Keith: It’s still really cute. Um, and this is where he—I think he know—he—well, I think he knows—he says that he knows that his time with Malcolm is up. He says, uh, I got an idea how you can talk to your wife. Wait till she’s asleep, then she’ll listen to you and she won’t even know it. Um, great advice for a ghost.
Art: Yeah, weird advice for a living person.
Keith: Right. Yes, it is. It’s almost like telling him to write a letter and then burn it, you know, if he was—if he was a human, be like, say what you want to say when—not really to her, but to her as an exercise. But it is a weird thing for a 9-year-old to tell an adult psychologist, a living adult psychologist, which of course he’s not. Um, it’s really sweet when he asks to, uh, hey, we’re gonna say goodbye, can we pretend like I’ll see you tomorrow?
Sylvi: It’s really cute.
Keith: It’s very cute.
Sylvi: Again, also really playing on the like role model, like the like schmaltzy, this troubled kid needs a good role model, uh, comedy drama that like I think kind of more had its heyday a few years later than this.
Keith: But like, yeah, he’s also, by the way, has he—I’m just looking at the pictures. Has he been wearing his dad’s clothes this whole movie?
Sylvi: Yes, constantly. He’s wearing his gloves at the table when it’s cold, and that’s why his mom wants them not on the table.
Keith: The glasses, the watch. But I just keep note—I kept—I noticed all that, but then he also had like these really big coats on, and I’m like, these must be his dad’s coats, right? Um, it’s very funny that he’s wearing these big coats. We’ve got two big scenes left, and that’s the end of the movie. Does someone want to talk about this traffic accident that Lynn and Cole are witness to?
Art: Oh, it’s such a sad scene.
Keith: It’s really, it’s really a lot.
Art: But sure, there’s—it’s a big—we open on like, a big car, uh, a traffic jam because of an accident. And, um, Cole decides to use this time to tell his mom that he can communicate with ghosts. He does this first by saying that he can see the, the victim of this accident.
Keith: Yeah. And Lynn is like, you mean right now?
Sylvi: Where is she? Yeah.
Art: And he’s like standing next to my window, and we get the reverse shot, and then it comes back and there she is standing next to the window, um, having been a bicyclist who’s been struck by a car. Um, and then he goes on to tell a story about his, his grandmother. We’ve—we know through the events of the movie, it just has not come up in our conversation, that her mom passed and, and not terribly recently, but like not too far ago, not too long ago.
Keith: Right. She’s still sad about it.
Art: Yeah. And that, you know, she’s sorry that she’s moving the bumblebee pendant. And, you know, the mom is not super buying it. You know, she’s being nice to her kid, but she doesn’t start by believing him.
Keith: Well, it seems like kids lie to get out of being in trouble for moving this thing.
Ali: Yeah, and she has an extreme reaction enough of saying, like, that’s wrong to say, like, to speak about your grandmother in that way. Yeah.
Art: And he asks, like, do you think I’m a freak? And she looks like, look at me, would I ever think that? And then he tells the story about talking to the grandmother, and she says that you asked a question when you visited her grave. And, you know, she says the answer is all the time, or every day? Every day.
Keith: Every day.
Art: And, you know, what was the question? And it’s like, are you proud of me? And now they’re both just like full-on crying. I’m sitting on my couch crying too. Yeah, it’s a very—it’s a big fucking scene, um, especially, especially if you lost a parent you had a good relationship with. Um, and yeah, it’s—it brings the two of them together and, you know, it’s signaling that Cole is going to get through this, I think, you know, the two of them are going to get through this as a family.
Keith: Yeah, they gave us both pieces. They gave us him learning how to work with ghosts to help them, and it also gave us like, both a hint that there’s ghosts that he already had good relationships with, like the grandma, and also that now he can bring these realities to his mother.
Art: Yeah, and it’s a, it’s a killer scene.
Keith: Yeah, it’s really good. 
Art: Um, yeah, it’s, it’s here where you’re like, were Michael Caine and Angelina Jolie really better than this?
Ali: I—yeah, it’s incredible. I do like—I, I think this movie would be so much worse off if it was willing to close the book on Malcolm and Cole’s relationship and not going back to the, the thing of Lynn saying like, if we can’t communicate, we’re not going to be okay together. Like, us being open require—is a requirement of our—of the health of our family, um, and our relationship with each other. So, like, you know, the—I really like the scene. I think it’s just really good. Uh, I’m glad it wasn’t on the cutting room floor or whatever, that it was still a consideration in terms of what was important, um, to—
Keith: Yeah, it’s—
Ali: To show.
Keith: It’s really good, like, late script writing to have brought the tension between Lynn and Cole into the forefront in the last half of the movie, um, and then to be able to resolve it like as a kind of C-plot, um, in a way that like, makes it one of the more powerful pieces in the movie. Um, like, you know, it’s—it’s the last plot that gets brought up. It’s the first one to get resolved. Well, no, I guess it’s the second one to get resolved because the Malcolm Cole thing kind of resolves right before this.
Art: Mm-hmm.
Keith: But then we head into the first issue that we see in the whole movie, which is Malcolm and Anna. He’s going to try Cole’s trick. I’m going to talk to my wife while she’s asleep. Maybe I’ll get through to her. And also I’m alive and I know for a fact. For a fact, I’m alive.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Revisiting this, I was surprised how, like, small this scene feels in retrospect. Like, the reveal just being that his wedding ring drops on the floor, and suddenly the reality of him leaving it, or not wearing it, is present. Like, his perspective of his own self gets shattered. And then, And we see flashbacks of all these other parts of the movie where the reason he isn’t able to open the door is because the table is there, and things have changed in the house, and he’s a ghost, and, you know. But yeah, I mean, Bruce does a really great job here of being—of acting non-vocally as he’s reacting to this.
Keith: Yeah, seeing the things in the house that are different. And like thinking—he goes through all of his evidence. He has, he has all of these—he has the movie that we just watched in his head, and he goes through and he hears Cole being like, they don’t even know they’re dead like, ringing in his head while he’s looking at the, um, the door that he thought was just locked and stuck but instead has like, a bookshelf covering it.
Ali: Yeah, and also like, sort of recoiling from himself because I feel like in this process he’s going upstairs and ends up resting down in the place that he died, right? And then we get this sort of full scene of the flashback, which is the vision of the actual wound that he got. The, you know—god, the fact that this movie just lingers on his face as he’s dying, like the motion leaving his face is just—it’s an outstanding performance, and it’s also just like, devastating.
Keith: Yeah.
[3:00:00]
Ali: To experience, to be there with him for.
Art: Although you also get to see him find the bloodstain on the back of his shirt.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: It’s one of the things that like, I didn’t notice in this movie for a long time is that he’s wearing the clothes he died in the whole movie.
Keith: The whole movie.
Art: He’s just like wearing different amounts of layers to hide it.
Keith: As a white-collar professional wearing a—wearing a suit with a blue shirt and a jacket, that’s normal to me.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Sylvi: Yeah. Um, that reminds me something I, I forgot to mention. When he’s like running away from the antique shop after he gets angry, he’s holding his gunshot wound in like the exact way he’s got his—I was like, why is his hand in his pants? Oh!
Ali: It’s so good. I noticed it happens for like 3 seconds and I was like, ah!
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah, there’s a scene we didn’t talk about where he goes, His, his ghostly rage shatters the window of the antique store when the Amish guy almost makes out with Anna.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm. Again, crazy watching this movie and not thinking he’s dead and you’re just like, wow, his wife is just going for it. Yeah, this guy’s coming to their home?
Art: Yeah, he’s in the basement. She’s like, I’m going to talk to this guy.
Keith: Yeah, he did—hey, she did—she did send him away.
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Art: Uh-huh.
Ali: And then they made out at work where he supposed—he wasn’t supposed to be. So it’s all, it’s all above board technical—no, it’s not. Don’t you dare judge me.
Keith: It’s not above board.
Sylvi: It’s not above board.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: That’s not how I hope that my wife behaves when I’m working. She’s out there right now doing that, I’m upset about it.
Keith: Well, the question you have to ask is, do you know anyone who’s interested in Amish furniture? Or like, Quaker baskets?
Art: No, I don’t think so. We live very far away from both of those communities.
Keith: Okay. Are they Quaker baskets or Shaker baskets? I think they’re Shaker baskets.
Ali: I don’t know.
Keith: Any last thoughts on this movie?
Art: It fucking rips.
Sylvi: It’s great. I really like Bruce Willis’s performance throughout, and I think it’s like a—it’s obviously super heightened but really captures the feeling of like, recalling a memory you’ve repressed, uh, especially at the end. Um, I like that it doesn’t linger really after he figures it out. It just ends. Like, yeah, you don’t get him walking into the light or whatever. It’s implied because the screen goes white, doesn’t it?
Keith: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: We fade to white and we get like, one more clip from the wedding video and then it’s credits.
Keith: Yeah, yeah. And he tells, uh, you know, right before the realization, he hears Anna saying like, why did you leave me? And he’s like, I didn’t leave you. And that’s when she drops the ring, and then he goes back. He’s like, you know, good night, things will be different tomorrow, and then he’s gone.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: It’s really good. The Sixth Sense, it’s really good. They weren’t wrong in the ‘90s when they said it was good.
Art: And I hope I feel that way after watching our next movie.
Keith: We’ll see. 
Ali: Sure, 
Keith: We’ll see. Next, next time we’re watching 2000’s Unbreakable, also starring Bruce Willis, right?
Ali: Yeah, yeah.
Keith: I didn’t know that until today. I learned that today.
Ali: Really? 
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: I think Unbreakable is really good, but I haven’t seen it in probably 20 years, so we’ll—who knows?
Sylvi: I also remember really liking it, and I haven’t seen it in a long time.
Ali: Uh-huh. I’m in the same place. I might have—I’ve probably seen it on cable once or twice since then, um, or like within the past five years or so, whatever. Keith, do you know what that movie is about? Do you want to do a guess, a guesstimate about the synopsis of that film?
Keith: I didn’t know Unbreakable existed until Art said we should watch Unbreakable for this.
Sylvi: Wow.
Keith: I think that it’s about a boxer. 
Art: Oh wow. Okay. Nobody talk to Keith about this movie.
Keith: Is it about boxing?
Ali: We’re gonna find—you’ll find out. Okay, go in blind.
Sylvi: Okay.
Art: Yeah, go in.
Ali: Oh, I’m so excited.
Art: It’s really exciting.
Ali: This is gonna be really good.
Art: I also want to know what movie Keith is thinking of.
[Keith hysteria]
Keith: Um, what’s that one that Mickey Rourke was in 6 years later? Maybe it’s—
Sylvi: That’s The Wrestler.
Keith: Maybe I’m thinking of The Wrestler.
Art: That’s not about a boxer either.
Sylvi: That’s a good movie.
Keith: It’s—well, it’s about a wrestler. Yeah, wrestling, boxing, what’s the difference?
Ali: We don’t have time to talk about it now. That’s it, folks.
Keith: Two fake sports.
Sylvi: Okay, let’s not do this.
Ali: Bye!
Sylvi: Bye everyone! 
Keith: Wait, no, not bye. Hold on. Sorry. Next time we’re watching Unbreakable, you should go on Apple Podcasts and review this, uh, so that people who haven’t seen it have a chance to see it. You should tell your friends who hate anime, hey, they’re not doing anime right now. You should go listen to Media Club Plus where they’re talking about movies. Tell, you know, make—this is the time to make noise about Media Club Plus and to try to get people that you think would like it to watch it.
Sylvi: And I have a prompt for your reviews.
Keith: Oh great.
Art: Oh wow.
Sylvi: Write in, write a 5-star review including a time that something kind of haunted happened to you. You don’t have to actually believe in ghosts, but something that has the vibes of being haunted.
Keith: Another thing that I want to talk about—
Art: We don’t have time for it, but I had a deeply haunted weekend. We can talk about it some other time. Deeply haunted.
Keith: Um, I, I will give my haunting story, which I’ve told before, on the next recording. So, uh, uh, the other thing that I want to know in your review is, did you watch this movie contemporarily and did it fool you? And when did you figure it out if it didn’t? Oh, Art, when did you figure it out?
Art: When they’re on the bus on the way to the girl’s funeral.
Keith: Got it. What was it that tipped you off?
Art: Just, yeah, I just had time. It was like, that was the first scene where I was like, okay, I know there is a twist, what’s going on here? And that’s when I had like, time to figure it out.
Keith: Yeah, it is like a little bit of downtime on the bus ride. Okay, thank you everybody, of course, for watching—listening to our first episode of the M. Night Shyamalan mini season that we’re doing. Uh, thank you, Ali and Sylvi and Art, for joining me and having the idea to do it in the first place. See you next week with Unbreakable, or in two weeks.
Ali: Thank you Keith, for hosting.
Keith: Thank you in two weeks for Unbreakable. Did I say thank you in two weeks?
Art: Thank you.
Sylvi: We’re saying thank you to you for hosting.
Keith: I’ll clean it up.
Art: Yeah.
Ali: Bye.
Art: Just, I think that should be your sign-off for this one.
Keith: Thank you in two weeks.
Art: Thank you in two weeks.
Keith: A perpetual kicking forward of the can. I’ll never thank these idiots.
Sylvi: Okay, bye.
[“Doctor Malcolm and Friends” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]