Paul Haggis Quotations

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.

I was trying to talk about where we are right now as a society, and talk about the fear we all live in, and certainly since 9-11, how it's affected us and the world.

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.

For me, the most interesting people are ones who often work against their best interests. Bad choices. They go in directions where you go, 'No no no nooo!' You push away someone who is trying to love you, you hurt someone who's trying to get your trust, or you love someone you shouldn't.

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.

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.

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?

I'm such an antsy type of person. I can't write in a room without other people around. I write in coffee shops.

We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.

I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough.

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.

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.

As artists, we have to be brave. If we aren't brave, we aren't artists.

As a general rule, I don't plan to travel with my Oscars, but we may have to make an exception.

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.

I like to write about things about which I have no answers, questions that trouble me. These things trouble me.

We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

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.

My one guiding rule for success in the film world would be, be careful of your friends.

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.

I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me.

The great majority of Scientologists I know are good people who are genuinely interested in improving conditions on this planet and helping others.

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.

Even a modicum of celebrity is hard to deal with. You see it with actors and directors all the time.

Even in a comedy, you have to make people feel. You have to put your hand inside their soul and twist out their heart.

Every 10 years, I know less about love and relationships. The smarter I get, the less I know.

I don't pay much attention to the press. My films always get good reviews and bad reviews. I just try to make the best film I can.

I like it when an actor is secure enough to ask questions, and the director is secure enough not to be threatened by that.

I try not to think of actors as I'm writing because I think you do them a disservice by writing for things they've already done.

Irish and Italian are my two favourite people.

The wonderful thing about Clint is you can never second guess how he is going to react to anything.

Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly.

We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets.

You don't make a film because the audience is ready for it. You make a film because you have questions that are in your gut.

A lot of films made me love the movies, everything from Hitchcock to Godard. But the ones that really grabbed me were Costa-Gavras's films like 'Z' and 'State of Siege.'

I just asked myself, what piece of that man's soul did he just chew off and swallow to get next week's assignment? You know, just to live, just to work as an artist, or to feed the family?

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.

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.

In 'The Next Three Days,' even though it was a prison breakout movie, I was asking myself, 'What would I do? How far would I go for the woman I loved? How far would I go, and what would I do when the person then told me that they were guilty? Could I still believe in them?' So it was very personal.

'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.

I don't know how much credit I can take for 'Walker, Texas Ranger,' because I only worked on it for three weeks. I re-wrote the pilot, and then my name was on it forever.

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.

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.

I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with In the Valley of Elah. I said, Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax. And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.

My kids paid the price for my career. We can say it's for our family, but it almost never is. It's about us. It's just some of us can pretend better than others.

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.

When I discovered European filmmakers, it affected me so deeply. It redefined what cinema could be. I mean, 'Blow-Up' ends with a dead body and mimes playing tennis. What?

You can't plan for people to like your movies. I knew that people were not going to run in droves to the theater for the 'In the Valley of Elah.' I knew they might not want to see it, but I still had to the movie; I felt very strongly about it. Wanting to keep telling a good story is what you want to do, a compelling story.

Of course I feel guilty about manipulating the audience, playing on their preconceptions in that way, ... But that's my job.

None of us expected this. We had a tiny picture, and we opened at the wrong time.

None of us expected it. You hope, but we had a tiny picture...this was a year when Hollywood rewarded rule breakers.

I can't imagine anyone else in that role now.

He's becoming a hard guy to get hold of, ... You could see it starting with the Crash reviews. And then Hustle & Flow. I couldn't be happier for him.

My questions were all about things that bothered me personally. I wanted to explore how good people can do bad things.

My mind was just mush. I was shocked.

I was hoping to do something to twist people's point of view just a tiny bit, to make them look at things just a hair differently.

We were so shocked. I'm still trying to figure out if we actually got this.

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.

When you finish a movie like that, you?re so raw.

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.

As a filmmaker, it's a great thing to feel you've really affected them, one way or another. I'd much rather have that than have someone say, 'Nice film, man.' That's a stake through your heart.

This all came from the time in the '70s when it actually snowed in Los Angeles. I figured, you know what? If it can snow in Los Angeles, anything is possible. Maybe there's actually hope for us.

They're talking to three to four girls right now. Every week I read there's a new Bond girl, and I call them and they say, No, you idiot.

They managed the campaign very well, getting the DVDs into the hands of the viewers, believing that the picture would sell itself. I thought that we had absolutely no shot at the Oscar, though I hoped that some of the actors would be remembered.

This is the year that Hollywood rewarded rule-breakers.

'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.'

I knew if we did it right it would get under people's skin, and they would react one way or the other. So it doesn't bother me when people say they hate it for this reason or that. It got to them, it made them look at something they would rather not have looked at, so the movie succeeded, at least for me.

I'm really thrilled to be doing this. This is something Bobby and I have been passionate about doing for a while.

I avoided the phone this morning because this (the DGA nomination) was the one I knew I wouldn't get. When my friend called to tell me, I made him repeat the sentence three times.

I'd only seen him as the hero or the foppish best friend - so I felt predisposed to like him. On the other hand, Granger's character is not particularly attractive at all - 1950s film heroes were supposed to be strong and confident, yet here is this rather tediously weak man, who allows himself to be pushed around by women.

got the point and let me go back the next day. I finished the film much healthier than I had been two weeks before.

You have to be careful of the advice you take.

When I started to allow the characters to go where they wanted to go, I just had to follow.

We think we know what's right. With excessive pride comes blindness.

This is our fault. My fault as much as the next man's, because even if I was against the war, I didn't do enough to stop it.

The wrong one will start saying things like "withdraw with honor." We've heard phrases like that before, and they led to thousands and thousands of deaths. Democrats always want to look tough...

If you change the right mind, then that person can perhaps change the world.

You don't do pictures because the audience is ready for them. You do them because there's something gnawing at you, something inside.

Independent films are very hard to get made, but I'm lucky enough to get them made, so I'm going to keep doing it. I like my independence. I like being able to tell a story the way I want to tell a story. I don't like developing it with a team. I like coming to a story and deciding whether I want to do it or not.

I found two true stories. One was in 2003. One was the beginning of 2004. I decided to meld them. Richard Davis' story which is the largest portion of this, a lot of the events are exactly as you saw, exactly what happened and the locations. Exactly as it was said with the chicken house and the strip club. Richard's parents were on the set and they'll tell you that the story is different than their son's. I was very concerned because I called them to say, 'You understand I'm fictionalizing this story?

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.

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.

As soon as you think you know Clint Eastwood, you don't know Clint Eastwood.

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.

I like to really respect the audience and let them come through on answers.

If you believe in someone enough, and you just don't stop believing in them, mo matter what, no matter how much they push you away, and no matter how often they prove they're only there to use you.

If you're in a relationship and you try to trust somebody who's completely untrustworthy, when trust is the basis of any relationship and everyone else says not to trust, is love transformative.

I just always try to find an interesting story and tell it well. That's a hard enough thing to do, whether it's a piece of fiction or it's a small piece of reality. I just look for good story.

We never did just one take. Multiple takes. Many. I did a bunch. Sometimes I do one take. Sometimes I did 20.

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.

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.

When we're threatened, it's very easy to appeal to our basic natures.

You hear this story that we're all on the left, but when there's a demonstration, you count how many actors actually come out. If there's a half dozen, that would be a big day.

We are manipulated by fear and the fear of others, and how we're often manipulated into doing things and voting in ways that are against our own best interest. Look at healthcare. People will tell you that healthcare is socialism and communism, and they're doing this while their wife needs an operation and their kid needs braces.

Walk through Santa Monica and try to find somebody who knows a young man or woman who's in this war. Here, war is an intellectual concept. If you lose your son or daughter, it's no longer an intellectual matter.

I wanted to do a political film that is as nonpartisan as can be, because I wanted to do a story that was American. I wanted to tell an American tragedy.

It turns out that good actors can make anything believable.

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today.

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.