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Paul Haggis Roaming In the Valley of Elah
By Fred Topel | Image property of Warner Independent Pictures.
In the Valley of Elah
Paul Haggis Talks In the Valley of Elah
“I optioned the magazine article, that was end of 2003, and it was a time when the war was incredibly popular here,” Haggis reminded us. “Everyone was driving around with flags on their car if you remember not too long ago. When I talked to my agents about doing this, they just said, 'Oh, no, no. you're never going to set this up. We're never going to sell it. We're never going to get it made. Just forget about it.' I thought about that for a month and said, 'No, no, I have to do it.' Now, see, if you make a film and then two and a half, three years later, suddenly the country's changed and you look like you just happened to hit it. I actually like being contrarian. I would have preferred to come out three years ago when everyone was disagreeing with me.”
Luckily, Haggis had some powerful friends to help the film through studio channels. Clint Eastwood, for whom Haggis wrote Million Dollar Baby, threw his weigth around. “I couldn't get the thing made. I took it to my movie agent and they said no one's going to finance it. So I took it around, took it to a couple studios. Six months later, people are going, ‘Yeah, really want to work with you Paul!’ And nothing was happening. So I called up Clint and sent him the article. I thought he was going to call me back and go, ‘You Commie son of a bitch’ and never talk to me again. But you never guess where Clint's ever going to come down on any issues. That's the one thing you know. As soon as you think you know Clint Eastwood, you don't know Clint Eastwood. So he called me back and said, ‘Wow, that is tough material.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but it's the truth of what's happening.’ He said, ‘I'll help you make it.’ So he called over to Alan Horn at Warner Brothers and said, ‘The kid’ I'm the kid ‘The kid has something I'd like you to see yourself.’ That's what got it made.”
For all the reservations about addressing the subject, Haggis believes it is not a film about the divisive issues. “Hopefully it asks a lot of questions about our responsibility in sending young men and women to war, especially a war that's so complex, where there's no right answer, where they're forced with impossible decisions every day. So I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society. What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We're just shoving them under the carpet.”
Haggis does not even accuse the government of any shady doings. “This isn't really a movie about deception and coverup per se. There's no real cover up by the government in this. There may have been in the real story, I don't know. It's just really the story about what our brave men and women have to do, and the possibility of getting tasks where there is no right answer, there is no wrong answer, there's no way to get through the day without having truly big moral dilemmas that seem unsolvable.”
In the Valley of Elah opens to theaters on September 14th.
For clips, trailers and more movie info, go to the In the Valley of Elah
Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Warner Independent Pictures.
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