Cinema Experts

"The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, "That was a nice movie." But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk ... I think we're all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience."
Haggis is the son of Ted and the late Mary Haggis, onetime owners of London Ontario's former Gallery Theatre at 36 York Street where the younger Haggis cut his teeth in theater production, directing, and playwriting in the early 1970s. He attended St George's Public School, HB Beal Secondary School, and Fanshawe College in London before leaving for Los Angeles in 1975 to follow his dream of writing television and movie scripts. According to his father Ted, it was 'three years two months and 10 days' before his son sold his first TV script (father Ted had been sending his son Paul $100 a week during these lean years during which Paul landed odd jobs including moving furniture).
As a television writer/producer, he created or co-created the series Walker, Texas Ranger, Due South, Family Law, and the celebrated, if quickly cancelled EZ Streets. In 1989, he received two Emmy awards for his work on the show thirtysomething-one as a writer, and another as a producer. He returned to television in the spring of 2007, after NBC picked up a 13-episode order for his crime drama, The Black Donnellys. The show was canceled by NBC on May 14, 2007. HDNet will air the remaining six episodes and Haggis is in talks with the network to pick up season two.
In addition to directing multiple episodes of the above-mentioned television shows, Haggis has directed several feature films and written several successful screenplays. Red Hot, his directorial debut, had a limited video release in 1993.
Around the turn of the century he came into his own as both a writer and director in films. As a film writer, he received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for 2004's Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood, which won four Oscars, including Best Picture.
His second directorial effort performed equally as well. Crash, which he co-wrote, directed and co-produced debuted in September 2004 at the Toronto Film Festival. Lions Gate Films purchased the distribution rights for $3 million and released it internationally in May of 2005 to mostly positive reviews, with Ebert & Roeper giving it "two thumbs way up" and Roger Ebert naming it the best film of the year.
The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay categories. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the film itself received the Academy Award for Best Picture. Overall, he has won two Academy Awards and been nominated for four. He lost the directing prize to Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain, but he became the only man in history to have penned two consecutive Best Picture Oscar-winners.
Haggis' fourth film as a feature film director, which he also wrote, is entitled Honeymoon with Harry and is scheduled for release in 2008 although production has yet to commence.
Haggis also adapted, for director Eastwood, James Bradley's book Flags of Our Fathers, about the Battle of Iwo Jima. The film was released on October 20, 2006.
Haggis was hired in August 2005 to revise the screenplay for the James Bond film, Casino Royale, which was also released late in 2006. The original screenplay had been written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, based on the novel by Ian Fleming. Haggis has confirmed that he will return to polishing the script for the follow up, under the working title of Bond 22. He was asked to direct but declined.
He received a fifth Academy Award nomination for his role in writing Letters from Iwo Jima, alongside Japanese writer Iris Yamashita.