Movie Trivia: The Sixth Sense

I missed the Movie Trivia post for last week, so we're doing a double feature today. Grab yourself a bowl of popcorn and some M&Ms and enjoy! By the way, if you're one of the few people who hasn't seen The Sixth Sense by now, I'm going to recommend that you stop reading, because a lot of my trivia revolves around the plot twist. There, you've been warned. I'm jealous of people who have never seen the movie, actually - this is one of those films I wish I could go back and see again for the first time.

• We don't see a drop in temperature when Malcolm (Bruce Willis) is around Cole (Haley Joel Osment) because the cold only occurs when a ghost is angry or upset. Malcolm is never angry or upset around Haley Joel.

• I knew there was a reason I liked this movie: M. Night Shyamalan says the movie was at least partially inspired by an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, which was only like my favorite show on SNICK back in the day. The episode was called "Tale of the Dream Girl" and centered around characters who had died but didn't know it.

• Lefty Bruce Willis learned to write righty so we couldn't easily see that he wasn't wearing a wedding band (presumably his wife received it when he died).

• The color red is used to represent "anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world," M. Night Shyamalan says. A few examples: the red sweater Cole wears when he gets attacked in the attic, the red dress Malcolm's wife wears when she visits the restaurant where they got engaged, the doorknob in the scene pictured and right and the red tent where the little girl who was poisoned by her mom appears to Cole.

• I didn't know that Malcolm's old patient (and killer) Vincent Grey was played by Donnie Wahlberg until years after the fact. I probably didn't recognize him from his New Kids days because he lost somewhere around 43 pounds for the role. He told M. Night Shyamalan that he was going to drop some weight for the role, and Night basically said, "Sure, you do that," thinking somewhere along the lines of 5-10 pounds. Wahlberg showed up to the set to film his scenes and Night didn't even recognize him at first because his frame had gone from muscular and athletic to extremely wispy and thin.

• This is probably common knowledge at this point, but in case you don't know, the little girl who is poisoned by her mom is played by a young Mischa Barton. It was one of her first few roles. • Michael Cera (Arrested Development and Superbad) has said that his first-ever audition was for the role of Cole Sear.

• Although he was only 11 at the time, The Sixth Sense was far from Haley Joel Osment's first acting gig. He has been acting since the age of four, including notable roles such as Forrest Gump, Jr., and Avery Brown (Murphy Brown's son).

• The whole movie was filmed in sequence.

•As with all of his movies, M. Night Shyamalan has a little cameo. You can catch him as the doctor who examines Cole after he has the incident in the closet at the birthday party.

• All of the clothes that Bruce Willis wears throughout the movie are variations on the clothes he was wearing the day he died.

It's too bad that Shyamalan hasn't had the critical success he had with The Sixth Sense. I really enjoyed Signs and am probably one of the few people who didn't hate The Village, but yeah... they weren't quite the same. Maybe it's because we're all expecting the plot twist at this point. Anyway, what did you think the first time you saw the movie?