Paul Haggis failed his way to film success

updated 5:33 p.m. ET Sept. 10, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Paul Haggis jokes that after more than two decades of failing his way to success in television, he finally reached his true destination: the big screen.

There has been little resembling failure for him there.

The first two films Haggis wrote, “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” won back-to-back best-picture Academy Awards. He earned a best-director nomination for “Crash,” his first time as a filmmaker, and that ensemble drama became the upset winner for 2005’s top Oscar over the heavily favored “Brokeback Mountain.”

Haggis earned a third-straight writing Oscar nomination for last year’s “Letters From Iwo Jima” — his third collaboration with director Clint Eastwood following “Million Dollar Baby” and “Flags of Our Fathers.”

It took longer than he liked, but at 54, Haggis has become one of Hollywood’s hottest new directors.

Haggis’ “In the Valley of Elah,” a murder mystery set among U.S. soldiers recently home from Iraq, has powerful performances from Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon. And Haggis’ sharp, provocative dialogue could put him back in Oscar contention for the fourth year in a row.

‘I just failed for 30 years’
While building TV credits on such series as “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “thirtysomething,” “The Tracey Ullman Show” and the acclaimed, short-lived crime drama “EZ Streets,” Haggis wrote furiously but futilely as he tried to move into theatrical films.

“I just failed for 30 years. It’s no great secret. It wasn’t, ‘You know what? I’m going to wait until my late 40s to break into films,”’ Haggis told The Associated Press. “I was writing spec scripts, I was pitching stories, but I was doing it all wrong. I was trying to do stories I thought people would want to make into movies. I was writing suspense thrillers, trying to do things I thought I could sell.

“Finally, I got so fed up and got so frustrated, I thought, I’m just going to write things I feel passionately about. I know they won’t ever sell. I know they won’t ever get made.”

So he wrote “Crash” with collaborator Bobby Moresco, which earned them both Oscars for original screenplay, and he wrote “Million Dollar Baby,” which brought Haggis a nomination for adapted screenplay.

“Crash,” a culture-clash tale with a huge cast of characters colliding over a tumultuous day and a half in Los Angeles, emerged from the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival to become a surprise hit the next year.

“Million Dollar Baby,” the gloomy saga of a female boxer and a gruff trainer forced to make an agonizing decision over assisted suicide, earned Eastwood his second best-directing Oscar along with acting awards for Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. It went on to become a $100 million hit.

Not bad for a couple of scripts Haggis figured would never see the light of the projection booth.

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“I had them under my arm for four and a half years trying to get them made but knowing in my heart these were not commercial films,” Haggis said. “And if they did get made, they would get made for a buck and a half, and no one would see them.”

Similarly, Haggis struggled to line up financing for “In the Valley of Elah,” which stars Jones and Sarandon as parents of an American soldier slain near his military base. Theron plays a local police detective who helps Jones’ character look into the case.

Even as they filmed, the writer in Haggis could not let the story rest, Theron said.

“I don’t think there was one day that I showed up for work where there wasn’t new pages in my trailer,” Theron said. “He’s obsessive about it. He writes every single night, and he’ll go through every possible angle, which is great, to know you have somebody trying to see it from every angle.”

“His ear for dialogue is pretty good and also quite original,” Jones said of Haggis. “He’s not afraid to write a real long speech, and he’s not afraid to take a short speech and cut it in half. Those are both good qualities.”

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