More Crashing

Movie titles needed rewrite, says Haggis
Mar. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
MARTIN KNELMAN
After his double triumph at the Academy Awards last Sunday, you might expect
Paul Haggis to be cocky. Instead, he sounded surprisingly contrite in a
phone interview yesterday.
"David Cronenberg is a terrific filmmaker, and I respect his talent
enormously," Haggis said. "The last thing I'd want to do is upset him."
Earlier this week, Cronenberg told my colleague Peter Howell he was
distressed because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts not only failed to
give any Oscars to Cronenberg's A History of Violence but made matters worse
by giving the Oscar for best picture to a movie that stole the title of his
1996 adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel.
"I can understand his feelings," says Haggis. "If I had half a brain I would
have used a better title."
In France, the Haggis movie was called Collisions, but he wanted the English
title to be more visceral. Haggis confides he also wishes he had come up
with a better title for Million Dollar Baby, which he wrote and co-produced
in collaboration with Clint Eastwood.
"I regret using that crappy title," says Haggis. Nevertheless, it took the
Oscar as best movie of 2004, just as Crash did in 2005, making Haggis the
writer of back-to-back winners.
Many would argue there's no need for Haggis to apologize. If you do an
Internet search for films called Crash, you'll find not just two of them but
about a dozen ‹ including a weird 1977 occult drama in which Jose Ferrer as
a jealous handicapped husband tries to kill Sue Lyon as his
witchcraft-practising wife.
Indeed, Cronenberg's 1996 movie is getting some renewed attention at the
moment thanks to the high profile of the Haggis picture. It is being shown
this month on the premium U.S. cable channel HBO ‹ which rarely airs
10-year-old movies.
This clash of the titles is just one aspect of an anti-Haggis backlash that
has been brewing since the envelopes were opened at Sunday's ceremony.