"The choice of the genre is not on my agenda"

(From Left) Manoj Night Shyamalan and A scene from The Happening

India-born Hollywood director Manoj Night Shayamalan says he loves to scare viewers of his films but would have us believe that he does not consciously choose Sci-Fi genre.
"The choice of the genre is not on my agenda. I just think of a subject and it turns out to be of Sci-Fi genre. It's just that I love to scare people," says the director now in India promoting his forthcoming movie The Happening that is set to hit the screens worldwide on June 13.
Shayamalan's previous movies like The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable and The Village are known for their supernatural storylines and he says The Happening is "a bit like Alfred Hitchcock's Birds".
Shot extensively in the East Coast of the United States, in particular Philadelphia, Shayamalan's hometown, The Happening, starring Oscar-nominated actor Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and Spencer Breslin, focuses on man's presence on Earth and explores the environment as the victim of his villainy.
The release of The Happening, a joint production of India's UTV Motion Pictures and Hollywood studio major 20th Century Fox, is important for Shyamalan because his previous two films The Village and Lady in Water did not earn critical appreciation nor impress the audience much.
However, Shayamalan claims he is not worried about criticism and would stick passionately to his work savaged by critics.
To a question about the standing of directors of Indian origin in Hollywood, Shyamalan said, "If the screenplay is good, it does not matter who you are and where you are from." As for himself, the director says, "I find myself accepted in Hollywood."
UTV Chief Executive Officer Ronny Screwvala said The Happening was the most high-profile Asian film co-production with a US studio budgeted at 57 million dollars.
Shyamalan has appeared in cameo roles in his films but does he aspire to play lead roles at some point of time? The director says he has been getting offers from other directors but playing such roles was not physically possible for him.
Even as Shyamalan is looking forward to the response to The Happening, he is already busy with his next film Avatar: The Last Airbender, inspired by a Japanese children's animation series.
Asked why he chooses Hollywood action heroes like Mel Gibson (in Signs), Bruce Willis (in The Sixth Sense) and Mark Wahlberg (as an ordinary school teacher on the run from a natural disaster that threatens the world in The Happening) for non-action roles, Shyamalan says he enjoys casting them in "surprising" roles.
"I like to cast action heroes not in action roles because they still infuse a kind of energy to the film," says the director.
That Shyamalan passionately believes in the kind of movies he makes is evident from his dour defence of them. Although his Lady in the Water, the story of a nymph living in a chamber beneath a swimming pool, flopped, he rates it as his best movie.