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
war long-ago car
I optioned the magazine article. That was end of 2003. It was a time when the war was incredibly popular here and everyone was driving around with flags on their car, if you remember not too long ago.
jobs thinking giving
I don't think it's the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre.
broken institutions persons
I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me.
country war responsibility
If you make a film and then two and a half, three years later, suddenly the country's changed and you look like you just happened to hit it. I actually like being contrarian. I would have preferred to come out three years ago when everyone was disagreeing with me. But hopefully it asks a lot of questions about our responsibility in sending young men and women to war, especially a war that's so complex, where there's no right answer, where they're forced with impossible decisions every day.
character giving judging
We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.
war blue political
I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society.
writing interest uneasy
Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly.
years four thirty
I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.
awards people risk
I just want to thank people who take big risks in their daily lives when there aren't cameras rolling. I want to dedicate this award to people who stand up for peace and against injustice and intolerance.
dream fighting boxing
If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.
character writing men
Now we really like to put people in boxes. As men, we do it because we don't understand characters that aren't ourselves and we aren't willing to put ourselves in the skin of those characters and women, I think, terrify us. We tend not to write women as human beings. It's cartoons we're making now. And that's a shame.
long boss towns
The radical rightwing pegs Hollywood as a leftist town, which is completely wrong. There are a lot of actors, writers, and directors who talk a liberal agenda... but all the studio bosses, for as long as there have been studios, have all been as far rightwing as you can possibly imagine.
home men facts
What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We're just shoving them under the carpet.
jobs insecure actors
All the studios are owned by multinational corporations, which are not usually bastions of the left. So all the actors, writers, and directors - or at least a great majority of them - live in fear because we're all insecure, we all want that next job, we all want to be loved, and we don't want to piss off some studio chief who won't hire us for the next movie.