Paul Haggis at Banff

I've got a dispatch from a special anonymous guest blogger who took in Paul Haggis' talk at Banff yesterday. Here's what they said:


Paul Haggis was funnier than I expected, for the guy who wrote a couple of
the most depressing films ... not to mention Facts of Life. Very
self-deprecating sense of humour, used kind of as a way of pointing out that
he's not exactly the poster boy for how to succeed in Hollywood (except
maybe the talent thing). He makes it sound like he succeeded in spite of
himself – he's terrible at pitching, gave away his services for free at the
beginning of his career, tells producers he's probably not the right person
for the job, and talked about Crash being all Act 2, no Act 1 or 3.

He started on sitcoms, though that wasn't where his interests lay, after
offering to cowrite for free a script for One Day at a Time, for a writer
whose regular partner wasn't available and the script was due in a few days.
He didn't get money or credit, but the writer offered to give him something,
so he picked a ratty chair, which he still has in his bedroom and will never
get rid of it. He suggested (joking? Not joking?) that giving away your
writing is a good entrance into the biz ("my edge was that if I wasn't good,
I'd be free"). But that writer told the producers he'd cowritten the script
and it led to his work on Diff'rent Strokes (somewhere in there was a story
of him trying to persuade producers that he wasn't a sitcom writer, that all
his specs were psychological thrillers, but if they wanted to hire him
anyway, OK). He talked disparagingly of the work he did on sitcoms, but with
affection at the actual time of getting paid to do what he loved and getting
into the business. He moved to thirtysomething after asking the creators why
they wanted to hire him, since all his experience was in sitcoms ("I think
you're making a mistake, but if you want to hire me, OK.")

He said he pitched EZ Streets as "It's about moral ambiguity," then when the
studio wasn't convinced, said he was going to go write it and show them what
he meant. They tried to dissuade him but he did it and they bought it. He
wrote what's now going to be The Black Donnellys soon after that failed, but
it took 10 years (and I'm guessing, two Oscars) for NBC to get interested.
He said he's great at critically acclaimed disasters, and said The Black
Donnellys will likely "fail brilliantly."

At his In Conversation With session, he said a nightmare about seeing his
tombstone engraved with "Paul Haggis: creator of Walker, Texas Ranger"
inspired him to go into independent film to wipe away that credit with
something more substantial. With Crash, he knew he wanted to direct it
because he felt it had the potential to go very wrong. Studios rejected the
script anyway, and he went through several independent producers before he
found anyone willing to let him direct.

He said he wrote the script very quickly, just taking character moments and
building on them until they bumped into other characters, and not worrying
about plot. Though he wrote it quickly, he did a year of research as he and
Bobby Moresco revised the script. He conceived of it as a TV show at first,
it was rejected by CBS and HBO, and he decided to do it as a movie, but
didn't know how to plot it as a movie. The scene between Matt Dillon and
Loretta Devine as the HMO worker, where he tells her about his father, who
was a great man who lost his job and family when he lost a contract due to
affirmative action policies, came from hate mail Haggis got while working on
Family Law. ("I always respond to hate mail. I don't respond to anything
else. Canadian, you know. 'I'm really sorry, it will be better next
week...'")

He mentioned his unusual experience with Million Dollar Baby, his first film
with Clint Eastwood, which was filmed with no revisions to the first draft.
Haggis said about Eastwood's decision to do that: "I lost respect for him
immediately." He pointed out that it's possible Eastwood is just lazy. But
more seriously, he said that on Unforgiven, Eastwood had worked with writer
David Peoples on draft after draft, decided they were making it worse, and
went back to the original draft – which Peoples didn't know until he saw it.

He said people forget that it was kind of a sweet, funny story until the
twist that hit audiences upside the head: "I just like fucking with
audiences." He said that applied to EZ Streets and now The Black Donnellys
too – just when the audience loves a character, he gives them a reason to
hate them, and vice versa.

He recently finished Flags of our Fathers for Eastwood and Spielberg, after
telling them in the initial meeting that he thought he had about a 10%
chance of making a script out of the original book. (Apparently Spielberg
wasn't quite as sanguine about Haggis's neuroses as Eastwood, but Eastwood
convinced him Haggis was their man.)

He also did the rewrite on the upcoming James Bond film, which he says might
ruin the franchise for everyone for all time. When they called him to do it,
he says he wanted to ask if they had the right person, and what the fuck
were they thinking (I think we can guess his favourite swear word, if he
ever makes it on James Lipton). He said he wanted to explore how Bond became
an assassin and a misogynist, and took on the project because "I like to do
things that scare me."

His writing process: go to office, answer emails, make phone calls, see if
there are any more emails, around 1 p.m. he starts to feel guilty so starts
to write, but has to check to see if he's got any new emails. It's all about
planned procrastination: "guilt is what drives me." He said Bobby Moresco is
an ideal writing partner, he loves writing with him, because he's "one of
the most annoying human beings on the face of the earth" – he says you need
the sand in your shoe to make you better.

At the awards lunch earlier in the day, Haggis had mentioned that EZ Streets
is the show he's most proud of, and it set a record for brevity, premiering
on a Sunday and being cancelled on Thursday. He worked for 8 days rewriting
the pilot for Walker, Texas Ranger, which gave him a co-creator credit, and
the show ran for 10 years. "The gods of television are cruel motherfuckers,"
he said.

Hmm. I think it's time to change the headline quote on this blog.

Thanks, Guest Blogger! Enjoy the mountain air!