Mangled by Harvey Weinstein, Wide Awake is the twist M. Night Shyamalan’s career didn’t take
Film Features Harvey Weinstein
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week, ahead of Easter, we’re looking at films about Christianity.
Wide Awake (1998)
People who think M. Night Shyamalan immediately came out the gate with The Sixth Sense may be surprised to know that he had two films under the belt by 1999: His 1992 debut Praying With Anger (which didn’t get a proper theatrical release and mostly played at film festivals) and his 1998 follow-up Wide Awake (which did get a proper theatrical release—but we’ll get into that later). Wide Awake may come as a further shock to those who know Shyamalan as a prime dispenser of cinematic suspense. It’s actually a quiet family film that touches on themes of religion, spirituality, and higher powers—themes that have been consistent in the director’s later, more supernatural work.
Wide Awake casts a very young Joseph Cross as protagonist/off-camera narrator Joshua A. Beal, a Philadelphia kid who just lost his beloved grandfather (the late, great Robert Loggia) to bone-marrow cancer. He spends most of his fifth-grade year of Catholic school trying to communicate with God to see if his grandpa is okay, delving into other religions along the way. Of course, this concerns his family (which includes Dana Delany and Denis Leary as his parents and a pre-10 Things I Hate About You Julia Stiles as his bratty sister) as well as the school faculty, which includes Rosie O’Donnell as a baseball-loving nun. (There’s a sense that Shyamalan had O’Donnell for a limited time, since she rarely interacts with the students during her scenes.)
If you’ve never heard of this movie, you have one person to blame: convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein. Yes, Wide Awake was a Miramax release, which meant that Harvey Scissorhands poked his nose all through the production of this film. When it was done, there was a screening that ended with Weinstein verbally berating Shyamalan, prompting the young director to break down into tears. Later, O’Donnell called Weinstein to defend Shyamalan, but that didn’t end well, either. She too was slammed by Weinstein, who hit her with the b- and c-words and also made O’Donnell cry.
Weinstein ended up shelving Wide Awake (which was filmed in 1995), eventually dumping it into theaters in the spring of 1998. Thanks to an extreme lack of promotion and publicity, it reportedly made $282,175 against a $6 million budget. It’s a shame how Weinstein basically torpedoed the movie’s chances of finding an audience—this sleepy, simple film is quite the cute charmer.
Just as he proved when he made a star out of Haley Joel Osment, Shyamalan shows his gift for hiring charismatic kids in Wide Awake. Cross convincingly pulls off playing an elementary schooler whose spiritual journey actually makes him a better person, eventually finding sympathy for the bully who picks on him and the chubby kid who irritates him. Shyamalan also gets some wonderful young actors to aid in Beal’s mission, including Timothy Reifsnyder as his mischievous, atheist best friend and Heather Casler as the girl (named—wait for it!—Hope) Beal is smitten with.
Wide Awake illustrates an alternate path M. Night Shyamalan could’ve taken as a filmmaker. In true Shyamalan fashion, the film has a twist ending—but it’s less of a kick in the balls, leaving instead a warm feeling deep in the cockles.
Availability: Wide Awake is available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu and Microsoft.
35 Comments
I never really knew the background for this, but I did end up singing as one of the choir members (we weren’t actually in the scene, just provided the singing voices afterward) I think sometime in 97. So it’s interesting to not only hear about some of the details of this movie but also to hear that it’s an M. Night flick.
Harvey Weinstein made Rosie O’Donnell cry!? He should be sent to jail for that!!!!Well, that and the rape.
It’s like when Al Capone got busted for tax evasion.
This was a great movie that I caught on HBO back in the day. I loved it and everyone I recommended it to never heard of it. Now I know why
For every success story there is in the history of Miramax/TWC, there seem to be about half a dozen more about how Harvey Weinstein behaved like an egotistical prick and overruled genuinely talented and creative people, kneecapping his own success in the process, purely out of spite.
I think pre-2017 most film fans had a fairly dim view of Weinstein already over this kind of stuff, not to mention all his “improvements” to foreign films.
there was a screening that ended with Weinstein verbally berating ShyamalanWeinstein was just mad that his attempts to bang Dana Delaney and Julia Stiles were rebuffed.Also, I’m still floored the Shyamalan has a writing credit on Stuart Little.
The Twist: Stuart was actually human and the parents were mice. Stuart’s obsession with the mouse world caused him to invent a fantasy world where the roles were reversed. But studio interference nixed the ending where this was all explained.
Are you kidding…..?Weinstein was mad because he couldn’t bang SHYAMALAN!!!
This is truly a nice little film. It’s not out to knock your socks off. But if you’re looking for something on a Sunday morning, this could be the thing.
i might like this if i didn’t know who directed it. now that i know who, i would keep waiting for the crazy, supernatural twist.
I remember watching this on my local station, maybe the second half, and liked it. I looked it up and was surprised it was from Shyamalan. I think I saw it around the time Unbreakable came out.
Although it ranks pretty low on Weinstein’s litany of crimes, his seemingly random re-cut of Jaume Balegueró’s Darkness is quite staggering, utterly ruining a beautifully paced and truly creepy pic, with a truly unsettling ending, turning it into absolute garble, and also revealing a vital plot point about five reels earlier. To bring an analogy with a (an?) M. Night Shyamalan project, it’s as if Weinstein looked at The Sixth Sense and thought ’You know that twist about the main character? How about if we reveal that about twenty minutes in? I’m a cinematic genius!’If you can find a European version of the film, or anything without the accursed Miramax stamp, watch it, it’s a brilliant, underrated horror pic, although not in the US version.
Done and done. There’s a 25% chance that I heard of this movie and ignored it when it came out, and it’s always fun to find something I missed.
Everything I’ve heard about Weinstein says he has complete and utter contempt for everyone—actors, directors, people he randomly meets on the street, everybody. So of course he’d have contempt for the audience and believe in all sincerity that you can’t challenge them in any way. In retrospect, it’s an absolute mystery that good movies came through Miramax at all. As dogshit he was as a human being, and as pig-headed and destructive he was as a collaborator, I am truly baffled that he was so successful. It really doesn’t compute.
Read “Down and Dirty Pictures” by Peter Biskind. It’s an account of the rise of independent film in the late 80s to late 90s. Half of it is about good ol’ Harvey and his shitbag personality. Whether it’s his questionable taste in hacking up his own productions or his questionable bedside manner towards women, the book pretty much reinforces all of the stuff that came to light over the past few years.
I watched this back in the day after seeing the Sixth Sense. I would consider myself a fairly big fan of his. Even in his misses he tries something interesting. There’s a pretty good book written during the making of Lady in the Water where he gave the author full edit of the book. It’s interesting how the sausage gets made. I’m sure there were some interesting stories around Avatar: The Last Airbender perhaps the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a theater.
Interesting… Avatar was the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a theater.
It’s his worst imo, because he took great source material amd made it mediocre. His other bad films are at least his own ideas.
I was actually talking about Jim Cameron’s Avatar. I will probably never see The Last Airbender. Hell, I still need to watch the actual cartoon.
I was so so on Unbreakable, but I think some of the ideas play really well now that there are so many superhero movies. The scene where Bruce Willis keeps lifting more and more weight on his bench is the kind of thing the genre should aspire to. But I went from kind of grudgingly appreciating him to straight up liking him with Split. That movie was the kind of overheated craziness that requires a lot of skill to accomplish.
I think Unbreakable is, for the most part, more enjoyable to ponder after viewing than watch. Glass, on the other hand, I think is quite a fun watch that collapses under the slightest ponderance.
I think I could feasibly enjoy Shyamalan if I weren’t so aware of his fixation on trauma being the result of a trauma-free life. That’s especially difficult to swallow in Split, which wields it like a fucking bludgeon. The storytelling felt manipulative in a way it reeeeeally didn’t have to be.
Shyamalan still knows where to put the camera. Glass was a mess that started out promising and progressively got worse and worse, but there are shots and visually storytelling that you would only see in a Shyamalan film. I’m always interested in what kind of crazy he’s going to unleash next.
Exactly.
People who think M. Night Shyamalan immediately came out the gate with The Sixth Sense may be surprised to know that he had two films under the belt by 1999: His 1992 debut Praying With Anger (which didn’t get a proper theatrical release and mostly played at film festivals) and his 1998 follow-up Wide Awake (which did get a proper theatrical release—but we’ll get into that later).Um excuse me, lest we forget She’s All That?
Directed by Robert Iscove.
Tell ya what: interesting choice of words there Lindsey; “…It’s a shame how Weinstein basically TORPEDOED the…” movie!The irony is, Weinstein is likely getting ‘torpedoed’ every time he gets near the prison showers….. if ya know what I mean! Hahaha…..Yeah, and check out the core word that forms torpedoed; PEDO! That’s some crafty writing there pal, custom made for Harv the Perv…..
So happy Night got the last laugh. Rosie too.
It’s actually a quiet family film that touches on themes of religion, spirituality, and higher powers—themes that have been consistent in the director’s later, more supernatural work. http://www.enews.pk/kal-tak-31st-march-2021/
I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of folks who’ve heard of Wide Awake are familiar with it exclusively due to the podcast Blank Check With Griffin and David where it comes up like once a month
I had an unblemished record of never reading “Harvey Weinstein” and “feeling deep in the cockles” in the same article.Now I don’t.
I just hope I never have to feel it in the sub-cockle region.
I rented this as a young non-religious kid thinking I was going to get a silly comedy with Rosie.I was haunted for weeks.
“Mangled by Harvey Weinstein”In what way did Weinstein mangle this? He didn’t like it and sat it on a shelf until Shyamalan had a hit and then released it. I can’t find a single syllable in this article or anywhere else that suggests he touched even a single frame of the film, much less “mangled” it.