Paul Haggis
Paul Haggis
Paul Edward Haggisis a Canadian director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known as screenwriter and producer for consecutive Best Picture Oscar winners, 2004's Million Dollar Baby and 2005's Crash, the latter of which he also directed...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth10 March 1953
CityLondon, Canada
CountryCanada
bad devoured filmmakers growing point run school society teens
I loved American filmmakers when I was growing up. I didn't get to film school or anything. I was a very bad student. I just devoured film, but there was a point in my teens when I started to run a little film society.
antagonist both characters enriched influenced
I'm a filmmaker, and I was most influenced by Hitchcock's films. How he could plant such deep enriched characters and then make us care both about the antagonist and protagonist was masterful.
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'Crash' was incredibly personal to me. So was 'In the Valley of Elah.' There were things in 'The Next Three Days' that were questions I was asking myself but couldn't answer, like how far would you go for love? Can you believe in somebody who can't even believe in themselves? But this is highly personal.
against cynical damn good lied reason send
I don't think I'm against all wars, but you'd have to have a damn good reason to send your son or daughter to fight, or to go yourself. So often, we are lied to and manipulated by our governments for their own very cynical reasons.
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I just figure if you have a modicum of celebrity, you need to use it, and you need to use it for more things than just promoting yourself or your film or your image or your product.
affect argue cause filmmaker love people seeking worst
The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, 'That was a nice movie.' But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk... I think we're all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience.
figure trying
We were so shocked. I'm still trying to figure out if we actually got this.
challenged dumbest either incredibly people reasons various
You either get the movie or you don't, and if you don't get it, it's just the dumbest movie of all time. Some people are really challenged by it. It makes them incredibly uncomfortable, I think, and they come up with various reasons why that's not their fault.
blowing difficult journey reinvent trying ways
We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28. It's very difficult to think of new ways of blowing things up. It's the journey that's the thing--finding a new journey for the character.
emotional filmmaker logical
Film is an emotional medium; it's not a logical medium. It's not an intellectual medium, so every decision you make as a filmmaker and an actor has to be emotional in some way, even in the rejection of logic.
characters create damaged drawn easy empathetic good guy strive sympathy
I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl.
accept asking changed comment corners episode good producer questions wrote
I wrote an episode for 'thirtysomething,' and a producer said, 'That's really good, but what is it about? What does it say about you? What questions are you asking yourself?' I had never thought about that. This comment changed who I was, because it made me look at my own soul, the dark corners in my soul, and accept that dark side.
antsy people type
I'm such an antsy type of person. I can't write in a room without other people around. I write in coffee shops.
absolutely characters fears partly recognize single work
All my work is partly biographical. I mean, 'Crash' was absolutely that, absolutely. But you just wouldn't recognize me in most of those characters. But I was in every single one of those characters in 'Crash,' because those were all fears that I had felt. Things that I had thought in my deepest, darkest heart.