‘Crash’ Was Written To ‘Bust Liberals’

Paul Haggis had a clear motive in mind when he wrote his Oscar-winning drama “Crash.”

“I wanted to write that movie and bust liberals. It’s too easy to bust folks we consider to be racist,” he told HuffPost Live on Wednesday.

During a conversation about his new film “Third Person,” Haggis said “Crash” was an exploration of people who fixate on political correctness but are often blind to their own prejudices.

“It’s those people who think, ‘We have it all figured out,’ [and] who think, ‘We’re good people, we’re good liberals’ — those are the people you can’t trust, because there’s a level of denial,” he said.

And Haggis counts himself among that group. When host Ricky Camilleri asked which “Crash” characters were based on his own racial fears, Haggis answer was “all of them.”

The writer and director also recalled a review of the film in 2004 that perfectly illustrated the problem he was tackling in his script.

“When ‘Crash’ came out, I got a bad review in The Hollywood Reporter or some place, and they said, ‘Oh please, if this movie had come out 10 years ago, it would be significant, it would be talking about issues that matter at the time, but we’ve solved these problems basically.’ That week, there was a race riot at Santa Monica High School,” he said.

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