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" We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'. "
Paul Haggis
Feel
You
Watch
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" We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets. "
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" There's nothing more painful than writing. "
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" I miss my mother very, very much. "
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" 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. "
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Decision
Rejection
" 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. "
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Family
Price
Say
" 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.' "
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Made
Love
Movies
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Choices
Work
Trust
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Heart
Me
Thought
" 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? "
Paul Haggis
Man
Live
Soul
" Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly. "
Paul Haggis
Interest
Lose
Really
" You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer. "
Paul Haggis
You
Knowledge
Compassion
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Talk
World
Trying
" 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. "
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Things
Done
You
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Woman
Prison
Myself
" The great majority of Scientologists I know are good people who are genuinely interested in improving conditions on this planet and helping others. "
Paul Haggis
Good
Great
Know
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Church
Best
Kind
" 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? "
Paul Haggis
Mean
Me
Body
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Ethics
Doubt
You
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Good
Dark
Thought
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Theatre
Job
Good
" 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. "
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Easy
Sympathy
Create
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Support
Work
Night
" 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? "
Paul Haggis
Relationship
Love
Win
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Growing Up
School
Society
" '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.' "
Paul Haggis
Myself
Experience
Funny
" 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. "
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Son
Daughter
Fight
" Even in a comedy, you have to make people feel. You have to put your hand inside their soul and twist out their heart. "
Paul Haggis
Feel
You
Soul
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Care
Us
He
" 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. "
Paul Haggis
Film
Celebrity
Yourself
" '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. "
Paul Haggis
Questions
Myself
Me