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
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.
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'Crash' came from personal experience. I saw things inside me from living in L.A. that made me uncomfortable. I saw horrible things in people and saw terrible things in myself. I saw a black director completely humiliated, but the three people around me just thought it was funny. 'No,' I said, 'that is selling your soul.'
bad good life loved writer wrote
I made a very good living as a bad writer. I wrote a lot of comedies, 'Diff'rent Strokes,' 'Facts of Life,' while all my friends were doing the good shows, like 'Cheers,' but I loved it because I got to be a working writer in Hollywood.
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The great majority of Scientologists I know are good people who are genuinely interested in improving conditions on this planet and helping others.
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I moved to Hollywood when I was 22. I was married. I had a kid right away. And I had worked as a furniture mover amongst various other jobs, and I'd work eight, ten hours a day to support my family - and I'd come home and write for two hours a night or two and a half, or three hours a night.
guiding success
My one guiding rule for success in the film world would be, be careful of your friends.
near normal
In Scientology, in the Ethics Conditions, as you go down from Normal through Doubt, then you get to Enemy, and, finally, near the bottom, there is Treason.
characters knowledge
You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.
good
I don't know if 'Crash' is a good movie or not because I didn't set out to make a movie. Really, what I wanted to do is more of a social experiment.
As artists, we have to be brave. If we aren't brave, we aren't artists.
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.
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I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist, but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them internally.
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.
believe core impossible love questions relationship win
I have so many questions about love. How do you win at it? Especially if you're in a relationship with an impossible person? What if you believe in someone who's completely untrustworthy, who at their core can't even believe in themselves?