Paul Haggis on The Next Three Days, Scientology and Why He's OK With You Hating Crash

Lara's guilt or innocence seemed to rely on a popped button. Why is that button so important? Even if she is innocent, it's not like anyone's going to forgive them for an escape attempt.

Again, I took some criticism for that as well. Really, look at those flashbacks again. The button pops when she is guilty; the button pops when she's innocent. It proves nothing. People say, "It proves that she's innocent." Really? We want a happy ending so much in America; we want to prove our people innocent. The thing I want to explore is what he believed. He believed, despite all the evidence, that his wife was innocent. Even her attorney thinks she is guilty. His parents think she is guilty. The family thinks she is guilty. All the evidence is stacked against her and yet, even when she "confesses," he still believes she is innocent. He still believes in her. And that's a remarkable thing to believe in somebody despite all of the evidence.

There's a scene where Lara, let's just say, attempts to just give up. After all they've been through, why did she do attempt to do that in such dramatic fashion?

From my perspective, she looks at what she has done. Because of an argument with her boss, whether she is guilty or innocent, she's driven her husband to a point where he will choose her over the child we know that she loves and loves more than anything. It's like, "Oh my God, I need to stop this now. I cannot continue to live knowing that this is what I've created."

Out of all the projects that you've written or directed, I'm still the most fascinated by the fact that you wrote lines for Schneider on One Day at a Time.

Yep, Diff'rent Strokes, Facts of Life, One Day at a Time; it was so much fun for me. I was a bad writer for many, many years.

What? Those shows are great!

No, the shows are good; I just wasn't a particularly good writer on them.

Of all of those shows, who was your favorite character to write for?

I loved Schneider... loved Schneider.

The great Pat Harrington.

Pat Harrington was amazing. We chummed around; he was great, so much fun. There were so many great actors and great characters in those shows. I loved writing them all.

Was The Love Boat a fun show to write for, considering all of the guest stars?

It was my very first job. And in those days you would hire writers to do one plot. So, literally, my plot is only seven minutes long. And then the story is put together. It was my very first job. I was like 27 years old, and I had one part of one episode.

So with The Next Three Days, it is interesting that you wrote and directed a movie about someone escaping an institution right after you had a pretty public departure from Scientology. Are these two things at all related?

I think one's life always parallels art and art parallels life. My favorite quote from Camus this year is, "A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession." Yeah, of course they do. Other than that, I'm not going to talk about Scientology.

I was just trying to find out if that was in your head while you were filming.

It's interesting to look back at it now, but, no, it wasn't in my head. Really interesting question, by the way. It's the first time that I had thought about it when you just brought it up. I'm actually talking about [my departure] in an upcoming New Yorker profile.

I've never met anyone who doesn't have strong opinions on Crash one way or another. I've never met anyone who said, "Eh, it's OK." People either say that they absolutely love Crash or that they absolutely hate Crash."

I love that.

Why is that?

I think any artist, if I can call myself an artist, any filmmaker wants to create a movie that has strong reactions. The last thing you want is to make a film where people say, "Yeah, it's nice." That would be death to me. I love the fact that people argue over this film. I think some of the criticism is well-founded and some of it is silly. People say, "He only writes stereotypes." OK, here's the thing: I didn't know if Crash was a good movie or not. But I know it was what I wanted to do; my own very twisted social experiment. I wrote it because Americans tend to judge people -- I think we invaded Iraq because the guy looks like a villain. He has pockmarks and a mustache so he was a bad guy. I wanted to sit you in the movie theater and reinforce every stereotype ever thought. Anybody could say "We're in the dark, it's OK. You can say these things and I'm not going to challenge you." As soon as you make people relax, then you start f*cking with them. [Laughs] So, yes, of course: I put in all of these stereotypes and then started twisting them around. So when these people say, "Oh, he just wrote stereotypes," you go, "Hm, yeah, that's exactly what I did. You didn't know I was doing that?"

And I've always wondered: Why did you call it Crash when the David Cronenberg version had just come out less than a decade before?

I always thought they were going to change the title of the movie. They couldn't come up with a better one. It was a working title. They loved it and I realized there had been seven films called Crash, actually. Cronenberg's was the biggest. I always thought we were going to change it. Cronenberg's still angry with me over that. I love David. I'm a huge fan of David Cronenberg, He's a masterful filmmaker. You can't copyright a word or a title, actually.

So could I make a movie and call it Star Wars?

Of course you can. George would sue you. [Laughs] But of course you could.

[Top photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images]

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