He earned a lot of respect from me by his answers in this interview.
Brook: Ultimately, though, a studio is your paymaster. Don't you have to obey the paymaster?
Shyamalan: I've said this many times: I believe that this relationship between artists and business works best when the artist inspires the businessman. When a businessman says 'you know how we can make a lot more money with Lady In The Water is if you cut out that scene,' that's not going to fly with me. But if that same person said 'I get lost in the movie at this point and it's because of this scene and this is why I got lost creatively,' I would seriously consider cutting the scene. You need to come from an artistic point of view. Because ultimately I believe, and a lot of people don't agree with me, that the audience is smarter than we are and the better product that we put out the more they're going to come.