How much of this was biographical?
Paul Haggis:All of it.
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Seriously?
No, I mean, what I do is I start out by asking questions.
I start obviously with relationships Ive had.
Things that have failed.
Things that have worked.
So thats really what I did.
Often its children who pay the price for our selfishness.
I moved to Hollywood when I was 22.
I had a kid right away.
You love your kids, butI think anyone who is pursuing a career seriously has to answer those questions.
So thats the guilt I carry.
Its a very real guilt, its just in a fictional form.
Julia [Mila Kunis] asks Rick [James Franco], Why do you get to play God?
Its a question I have as a filmmaker and also as a human being, because often.
Pride is my biggest sin; its the reason why its one of the seven deadly sins.
We often think we are good.
We often think we are right in a relationship.
We often that we are the sensible one and whatever.
If Im finally completely vulnerable to you.
If I open up and I trust you completely, youll just betray me.
And that but/if is how I write this movie.
Its something that always haunts me.
And playing God as a writer, but especially the person is something that haunts me.
Yes, because also, its exactly what you said, theres always a third person in a relationship.
You just often dont know who that person is.
I dont keep a journal.
Theres an erratic nature to your characters.
I dont know if its intentional.
Or is Liam Neeson writing in some things himself, changing as he goes along.
For me, the most interesting people are ones who often work against their best interests.
They go in directions where you go, No no no nooo!
At some point I thought, What if the wrong person is really the right person?
What if it’s crucial that you be with the wrong person?
Maybe thats what you truly need and even want.
Theyre completely wrong for each other and yet some of it works out and some of it doesnt.
I think theres not much logic involved.
Can you share some of the memories of the funny things that happened as you were filming?
The most stressful things?
What the cast is like?
There was surprisingly little friction on the set.
Youre burning [me you] son of a bitch!
Oh, oh, sorry, action!
He was waiting very patiently in there for his action cue for way too long.
When he came out he was quite red.
I felt so bad because I almost fried the poor man.
One of the little pleasures in the movie is seeing Liam Neeson not have a gun in his hand.
But hes one of our best actors.
And he really wanted to do it.
It was something I hadnt written but something I was planning to direct.
So, I talked to my financiers and theyre like, I dont know.
Liam Neeson… Hes not really worth a lot, you know, foreign value.
I said, Hes a brilliant actor.
Im going to go meet him.
So I had lunch with him.
I realized he was perfect for the role.
Hes such a lovely man as well.
And then at the end of the dinner he said, Paul, I just did this little film.
I just did it for the movie.
It was kind of obscure; I hope no one sees it.
Thats how fickle our business is.
I never ended up doing the movie, but thats how fickle our business is.
Not for a second.
I chased him from the moment I finished writing the script.
And women love him, thats the thing.
The women really do like him.
Did some of the actors ad-lib or did they stick to your script?
We didnt have a lot of rehearsal time.
We had very little, in fact.
I gave them the freedom to improvise, but most of them didnt.
You have to be in on that from the beginning.
and she said, Okay, I can do that for you.
She knew what the scene was too, but she knew what that scene was.
And she made it so comfortable for us in a way by saying its not a big deal.
Of course, I closed the set.
Of course, it was only me, the DP, and the cameraman.
The Mercer Hotel and the Saint Jacques we built completely on a stage in Rome.
She just embraced it.
[Laughs] I wanted it to be joyous.
I didnt want it to be sleazy in any way.
And its so much fun to watch her: shes so vulnerable in that moment.
What was your fascination that you would make the characters somehow intertwine one way or the other?
The first one was a holocaust movie.
Im not going to do a holocaust movie thank you very much!
Its been done too well before; I dont know anything else I can say about it.
My first instincts were to reject it, and I went, Thats interesting.
And so we started talking, this movie wrapped and we were both heading back to New York.
Then she went away after a week or so.
I sat there and started thinking of mine and where I had failed.
Youre not a stupid person; youre a smart person.
Is that amount of acceptance transformative?
Its a very romantic notion, and something I tried at a point in a relationship.
Whats the flip side?
What if you damn somebody?
What if you insist on saying, This is you.
I know who you are.
I know what you did, you wont admit it just admit it and everything can be fine.
Do you win that way?
So that became another story.
Its a very cynical view.
But if someone finally opens up to you, do you then inherently betray them?
That came to me very slowly.
After about a year.
Ohhh, this is what Im writing about!
Can you talk about Julia [Mila Kunis] the character?
It was hard to see which parent was destroying their poor little kid more.
Yes, I know.
And then he makes it safe for her to confess, and she does.
Then he betrays her and as hes pulling her out she says, I lied, I lied!
Is that was shes doing there?
But all of the characters really do have an ambiguous ending
Yes.
If thats the case, is that an optimistic thing or a pessimistic thing?
No, I dont know if the stories themselves are ambiguous.
The movie is ambiguous, but the storiesyou pretty much see who wins and who loses in this film.
And its not always the same thing.
There are those who trust and dont always win.
Olivias character trusts but doesnt always win.
You see the Gypsy and Adrien they decide to trust each other and you see how that turns out.
Do you think of yourself more as a writer or a director?
And obviously do you draw on biographical inspiration?
All my work is partly biographical.
I mean,Crashwas absolutely that, absolutely.
But you just wouldnt recognize me in most of those characters.
Things that I had thought in my deepest, darkest heart.
I just project them on other people: mostly villains.
But you just wouldnt recognize me.
I always write like that.
How far would I go for the woman I loved?
Could I still believe in them?
So it was very personal.In the Valley of Elahas well.
And the people around me sometimes recognize themselves and sometimes dont.
And I went, oh, thats good and I wrote that down.
And that was your ex-wife?
My ex-wife is my best reader, and shes always been my best reader.
She always did and still remains my best friend and my best reader.
Third Personis now playing in select cities.
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