Paul Haggis on Crash

Oscar-winning writer Paul Haggis made a name for

himself on American TV before penning Clint
Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. He talks to
Film4.com about his directorial debut, Crash.
Million Dollar Baby provoked controversy in
America among the Christian right, while
Crash takes on contemporary race relations.
You have said before that you're drawn to
volatile material. Why take such risks at a time when so many people are
playing safe?
Well, I'm a bit of a contrarian. I left television when everyone was rushing to it. When Jerry Bruckheimer
was going, My God! Television! It's taking over, I was going, You know what? I think I'll go into
independent film. I guess I've never been interested in taking the path that everyone else takes.

Do you have a political background? I know that you're involved with

organisations such as Artists for Peace and Justice, and The Centre for the
Advancement of Non-Violence.
I can't say I'm overly political. I'm just as concerned as the next citizen and feel that if you're concerned,
you have a responsibility to do something about that. So, you know, we're just doing little things here in
Los Angeles to make actors, writers and directors a little more aware of what our country is doing in our
name. You know, if we can each do our little bit then maybe, eventually, something will happen.

We've mentioned taking risks. When you were writing Crash, did you ever ask
yourself whether you had the right to put the kind of words that you do into
the mouths of your racially diverse cast of characters?
Oh completely. Every day we sat down, I said to Bobby [Moresco, his co-writer], What the hell are we
doing? We're two white guys. We're going to be killed. We don't have any right to say these things.

One of the bravest scenes is the one where a black couple, played by Thandie
Newton and Terrence Howard, talk about black identity. Did that feel
particularly risky for you?
Yeah, absolutely. But, oddly, it's the black community that's really embraced this film more than any
other. And those were the ones I was most worried about. The white liberal community, whenever you

talk to somebody, they say, What are you talking about? We don't have this problem. We've solved all
this nonsense. Why are you bringing this up? But I was most worried about the black reaction to it.

"If you talk to most white critics, or most white writers, directors, or
producers, they'll tell you, It's fair, it's representational, and we're doing
our best to do a bit more. You talk to someone who's Latino or Hispanic,
or a lot of black actors, and you find out different."
Was there anything that was off-limits? You don't have any Jewish or any Arab
characters in the film, for instance.
No, there was nothing off-limits. I didn't have a graph and say, OK, I'll have two Asians, two Jews, two
Arabs. I just followed the characters. We started with the two carjackers, because I knew them. They
jacked my car [a Porsche] and I created a life for them over 10 years in my head. So I knew who they
were. They were now my protagonists. They were my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and I knew what
they were going to do. So I started with them and I said, Well, who do they bump into? And they bump
into myself and my wife an affluent white couple. I fictionalised us, took it home, and said, Well,
what did we do? We changed our locks at two o'clock in the morning, because they had our house keys.
The guy who had come, what if he had been Hispanic and what if he had looked like a gangbanger?
Would I have felt safe? I had to admit that I wouldn't have felt safe and I was so deeply troubled by that,
so shamefully, that I said, Ooh, ooh, I want to do something. So I just kept following the characters
and when they bumped into people, I wrote about them.

Why did you wait a decade before you started writing the screenplay? You have
said that 9/11 focused it for you.
Well, it did. I never actually set out to write this. I never thought there was a movie in this. I just kept
asking myself different questions. Then, after 9/11, I have a black friend, he's a writer, who said and he
hated admitting this that he felt kind of good about all these Arabs and Muslims who were now being
searched on the aeroplanes, because now it was someone else's turn. I went, Ooh, that's interesting.
So that was one of the kicking-off points and I started to investigate it more. Because I wanted it to be
universal. I was interested in the deeper responsibility, more the human aspects of our fears than the
sociological aspect of it. So that was where it started.

To what extent does the fact that LA is such a car-based society a point which
is central to the way Crash works determine the way people there view and
interact with each other?
Very much. We are all strangers to each other. But it's not just Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it's the world
now. Every time you step out of the urban centre you just lose contact with anyone who looks different
than you do, because we can now choose where our walled communities are. And we all do this. Every
single ethnic group decides that they want to live within their own communities, whether it be Little
Ethiopia, or Little Italy, or wherever.

How much do you think the racial dynamics in LA impress themselves on the
way different groups are represented in Hollywood films?
Well, it depends who you talk to. If you talk to most white critics, or most white writers, directors, or
producers, they'll tell you, It's fair, it's representational, and we're doing our best to do a bit more. You
talk to someone who's Latino or Hispanic, or a lot of black actors, and you find out different.

Were you responding at all to the stereotypical images that we normally see on
screen? Was that in your mind when you were writing the screenplay?
No, I try not to think about other films when I'm writing or directing. I guess the images that I have are
pretty clear, from small instances of racism I've seen on studio lots to the LA riots. We have these riots
and then gasp we're all horrified, shocked, horrified. It's as if we live in Casablanca, you know? And
then a year later we go, Thank God we have cured this problem, and we've done nothing. Then three
years later we wonder why people are still unhappy. Gosh, why? We just love to live in a state of
delusion.

"We asked him to produce the film with us largely because I knew he'd
bring a credibility that I didn't have. People look at him and they know
he's associated with quality films. Also, actors want to act with Don
Cheadle. He's an actor magnet. He's like Sean Penn."
For me Crash is one of the most upfront treatments of racism in an American
metropolis since Do the Right Thing. Did that make it difficult to finance?
Oh, it was terrible. No one wanted to do it. First of all, I was an unknown director. I had directed for
television but that's actually worse. It would have been better if I had been a complete unknown. Also,
it's very hard to tell the tone of the movie from the script, because it could have come off as really
preachy, or rather the characters preaching and being didactic, and the film could come off that way,
which I didn't want to do. I wanted to lampoon these characters who were saying these great, wonderful
things. So we took it out of the studios, where no one wanted it, and we took it to quite a few
financiers. And they liked the script but didn't want to do it with me as the director. Finally, we found
Bob Yari and Cathy Schulman, and they said, Yeah, we'll put up a little bit of money, to get it cast. So
it took us a year and a half to get the right cast that worked for them so they'd put more of the money
up. All the actors worked for nothing. We all waived our fees.

How difficult was it finding a cast? I know that Don Cheadle played a major role
in bringing people on board.
Don was great. He was the first person on board. I was terrified taking this film to Don. For one, I didn't
know him; I didn't know any of these actors. He was the first African-American actor who read the script,
and also, I have so much respect for him. So when he came to sit in my living room, I had no idea what
he was going to say. He might have just come to say, Listen, I just want to say what a racist bastard you

are, and I want to say it to your face. He didn't. He sat down and said, I want to do the movie. I said,
Great. What role? He said, I don't care. Any role. He actually went back and forth between the role
of the television director and the police detective for six months. Every week he'd phone and go, You
know what? I changed my mind. He finally made up his mind six months later. We asked him to produce
the film with us largely because I knew he'd bring a credibility that I didn't have. People look at him and
they know he's associated with quality films. Also, actors want to act with Don Cheadle. He's an actor
magnet. He's like Sean Penn.

Rodney King Beating Footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW1ZDIXiuS4