Haggis contacted his friend Robert Moresco, who had been a writer on Haggis’s series EZ Streets. He told Moresco, “I don’t think anybody’s going to make this, but it’s a great story.” The two men began working in Haggis’s home office, next to the laundry room. They wrote a first draft in two weeks. Haggis decided to call it Crash.
The title refers to a fender bender that sets off a chain of events, revealing the contradictory elements of the characters and the city they inhabit. In the dizzying seconds after the collision an LAPD detective suddenly realizes what’s missing in his life. “It’s the sense of touch,” he says in the movie’s opening lines. “In LA no one touches you.… We’re always behind metal and glass. Think we miss that touch so much, we crash into each other just to feel something.”
Haggis insists on turning his heroes into villains and vice versa, such as the racist white cop who molests a tony, upper-class black woman in one scene, then saves her life in another. Haggis felt that by exploring such complexities he was teasing out the dark and light threads of his own personality.
For the next year and a half, he struggled to get the movie green-lit. He was still a first-time movie director, and that posed an obstacle. Moreover, the script called for an ensemble cast with no single starring role—always an obstacle in Hollywood. Haggis finally interested a producer, Bob Yari, who agreed to make the movie for $10 million if Haggis could assemble a star-studded cast.
Don Cheadle was the first to sign on, both as an actor and a producer, and his name added credibility to the project. Matt Dillon and Tony Danza came aboard. Heath Ledger and John Cusack agreed to work for scale, as everyone did. Still, the project dragged on. Finally, Haggis was told the movie was a go. He then sent the script to John Travolta and Kelly Preston, who he thought would be perfect as the district attorney and his wife.
“That’s great, because now we really need them,” one of the producers, Cathy Schulman, told him the next day. Heath Ledger had dropped out and Cusack was not far behind. Once again, the movie would need more big-name stars to get the financing. Haggis immediately sent a note to Preston, telling her he was withdrawing his offer. As a matter of pride, he felt it was wrong to use his friends in such a way—especially other Scientologists. Preston was miffed, since he had failed to explain his decision.
Priscilla Presley, John Travolta, and Kelly Preston at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre’s thirty-seventh-anniversary gala, Hollywood, August 2006
But without two more signature names the movie was back in limbo. Haggis was about to lose Cheadle as well, because he was scheduled to make Hotel Rwanda. Yari finally told Haggis to shut the production down.
The following Monday, when Schulman came into the production office, she found Haggis there, alone.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m prepping the movie.”
Yari agreed to keep the office open for one more week, and then another, as each Monday Schulman would find Haggis at work preparing for a movie that now had no budget at all. Gradually, other people began working with him, for no pay.
“If you get Sandy Bullock, you got a green light,” Schulman told him.
Haggis got Sandra Bullock for the role of the district attorney’s wife, a brittle, racist socialite, a role far from the plucky gamines she had played in the past. In the movie, she’s the one who gets carjacked at gunpoint. But the producers wanted one more name: Brendan Fraser. Haggis thought he was much too young for the part, as did Fraser, but he agreed to do it. The movie was finally green-lit, just four weeks before the shooting started. Only now, the ten million dollars had shrunk to six and a half.
For Haggis, everything was riding on this film. He mortgaged his house three times; he also used it as a set, in order to save on his location budget. He canceled many of the exterior scenes and borrowed the set of the television show Monk to film interiors. He was eating carelessly and smoking constantly. He lost weight. He desperately needed more time.
When he finished shooting a scene in Chinatown, Cathy Schulman caught up with him to ask about the next day’s shoot. “You look like you’re clutching your chest,” she observed.
Haggis admitted that he was having some pains.
“Sharp pains?” Schulman urged him to see a doctor. He didn’t want to hear that. He went home.
He woke the next morning in agony. He called his doctor, who told him it was probably stress, but agreed to see him just to set his mind at ease. By now, Paul was short of breath, so Deborah drove him to the doctor’s office. The doctor did a few tests and said yes, it was stress and muscle fatigue. “But we’ll do an electrocardiogram just in case.”
A few moments later the doctor returned. His face was snow white. “Don’t stand up!” he said in a professionally measured voice. “You’ve had a heart attack!”
That night in the hospital, Haggis suffered another cardiac failure. He received three stents in the arteries to his heart in an emergency operation. He was able to watch the entire procedure on the monitor. It was really like an out-of-body experience, watching his own fragile heart being repaired. The movie he was making didn’t seem so important anymore.
That changed as soon as the operation was over.
Schulman arrived with some more bad news. “I talked to your doctor,” she told Haggis. “He’s not going to allow you to go back to work for another four or five months. I’ve got to hire another director.”
“Fine,” Haggis responded. He said he’d talk it over with his doctor.
The doctor confirmed the decision. “Paul, it’s not just your heart attack,” he told him. “You’ve had an operation. It’ll put too much stress on your heart.”
“I totally understand,” Haggis replied. “Let me ask you how much stress you think I would be experiencing if I were just sitting at home while another director is finishing my fucking film!”
Production was shut down for a week and a half until Haggis returned, with a nurse at his side who checked his vital signs every quarter hour. Sandra Bullock brought him green tea and refused to let him drink coffee. Every time Haggis tried to stand up, she told him to sit down. She had a kind of implacable maternal authority. He finished the film in his chair with a cup of tea in his hands.
Clint Eastwood had been asked to read Million Dollar Baby for the role of Frankie Dunn, the boxing coach. He loved the script, but said he would only do the role if he could direct as well. Although Haggis hated to surrender the opportunity to direct, he knew it would be a bigger picture if Eastwood were behind it. Hilary Swank was cast as Maggie Fitzgerald, a part that would bring her an Academy Award. Morgan Freeman also would win in a supporting role, and Eastwood for directing—all that in addition to winning the Oscar for Best Picture. Haggis would be nominated for Best Screenplay. But that was still on the horizon.
While he was still editing Crash, Haggis began writing another movie for Eastwood, Flags of Our Fathers. They went to visit the producer of that project, Steven Spielberg, on the set of War of the Worlds, which he was shooting with Tom Cruise. Spielberg had called Haggis to talk over an idea for another script.
Haggis had met Cruise on a couple of occasions, once at a fund-raiser and again at the Celebrity Centre. As the most popular and sought-after leading man in Hollywood, Cruise was given perks that few other stars could match. He had asked Tommy Davis, now his full-time Scientology handler, to set up a tent on the set of War of the Worlds in order to distribute church materials to the crew and provide Scientology assists. The precedent alarmed many in Hollywood, and Spielberg was widely criticized for letting it happen.
“It’s really remarkable to me,” Spielberg observed, as he and Haggis walked to his trailer. “I’ve met all these Scientologists, and they seem like the nicest people.”
“Yeah, we keep all the evil ones in the closet,” Haggis replied.3
A couple of days later, Tommy Davis called Haggis at home and told him someone from senior management needed to see him urgently. H
aggis had no idea what was going on. He assumed that the church was going to pressure him to take some more auditing or another course, as had happened so often in the past. Davis met him at the Celebrity Centre and escorted him to a room where Greg Wilhere was waiting. Wilhere, a handsome former college football player, was a senior executive in the church assigned to be Cruise’s personal auditor. (He accompanied the star even to the shooting of Days of Thunder, where a character in the movie was named after him.) Wilhere was livid because Haggis had upset Tom Cruise by subverting years of work on Cruise’s part to recruit Spielberg into the church.
“It was a joke,” Haggis protested. He said he had no idea how that could have undermined Cruise’s efforts to draw the most powerful man in Hollywood into Scientology. Wilhere said that Steven was having a problem with one of his seven children, and Tom was working to “steer him in the right direction.” All that was ruined, Wilhere said, because Spielberg now believed there were evil Scientologists who were locked in a closet.
Haggis felt like he was trapped in a farce. It all seemed wildly ridiculous, but he was the only one who thought so. Still, he’d be crazy to antagonize Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg. He offered to explain to Spielberg that he had been kidding, there were no evil Scientologists, and if there were, they wouldn’t be kept in a closet. He couldn’t believe that Spielberg would actually think he had been serious.
Wilhere was unappeased. He said Cruise was apoplectic. He directed Haggis to write the star a letter of apology—this minute. Haggis dutifully wrote out a note on the paper handed to him, but Wilhere said it wasn’t sufficient. Haggis wrote a more contrite note. Wilhere said he would pass it along. But Haggis never got a response from Cruise.4
Haggis came away from that meeting with a new appreciation of the significance of Tom Cruise to Scientology. He had heard that Cruise had often been enlisted to try to recruit famous people. They included James Packer, the richest man in Australia; David Beckham, the British soccer star, and his wife, Victoria, the former Spice Girl; and Cruise’s good friends, the actors Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, who later funded a school that used Hubbard educational techniques. But there was no one else like Spielberg. Had Cruise been successful in his efforts, it would have been a transformative moment in the history of the church, especially in its relation to Hollywood. It would have given reality to the mythology of Scientology’s influence in the entertainment industry. Who could guess how many recruits would flood into the church because of Spielberg’s imprimatur? Or how much money would pour into Scientology’s coffers by moguls and agents and aspiring movie stars seeking to gain favor? The ambition behind such a play on the part of the church was breathtaking. And Haggis had stepped into the middle of it with an innocent jest.
Cruise turned his attention to the other Scientologists in the industry. Many had gone quiet following the scandals in the church or had never openly admitted their affiliation with the church. Cruise called a meeting of other Scientology celebrities and urged them to become more outspoken about their religion. The popular singer Beck, who had grown up in the church, subsequently began speaking openly about his faith. Erika Christensen, a rising young actress who was also a second-generation Scientologist, called Cruise her spiritual mentor.
Inspired by a new sense of activism, a group of Scientology actors turned against Milton Katselas, the gray eminence of the Beverly Hills Playhouse. No one had been more instrumental in forging the bond between Scientology and Hollywood. Katselas had been a longtime friend of Hubbard’s and still kept a photograph of him on his desk. The two men were similar in many ways, but especially in their transformative effect on those who studied under them. Humorous, compassionate, and charismatic, but also vain and demanding, Katselas was not above bullying his students to make a point; however, many of them felt that he had taken them to a higher level of artistry than they had ever thought they could achieve. When Katselas addressed an acting student, it wasn’t just about technique; his lessons were full of savvy observations about life and behavior.
One of those students, Allen Barton, was a classical pianist as well as a promising actor. When Katselas heard him play, he found him a teacher and paid for his piano lessons. Barton eventually arranged a recital on a Sunday evening. Katselas showed up at the theater at eight that morning, just as the piano was being delivered. He noticed that the stage was scratched, there were piled-up boxes spilling out of the wings, and a large spiral staircase—a prop from an old production—was left on the stage, because it was simply too big to move. Barton explained that he was going to cover up as much as possible with black drapes. Katselas called his office and within an hour ten people arrived. He sent Barton off to relax and prepare himself for the performance. When Barton returned that afternoon, the staircase was gone, the boxes had disappeared, the stage had been sanded and painted, and four trees surrounded the piano. Even the pots the trees were planted in had been painted to match the backdrop. The overall effect was stunning. “Have a good show,” Katselas said, and walked away. Overwhelmed, Barton ran after him. “How can I ever thank you?” he asked. As he drove off, Katselas said, “Learn to expect it of yourself.”
Such stories became a part of the Katselas legend. He was an OT V and a very public Scientologist, but he had stopped moving up the Bridge, in part because he refused to travel to Flag, where the upper-level courses were offered. Moreover, he had gotten into Ethics trouble because of his behavior with some of his female students. Jenna Elfman was a leader of the revolt against Katselas. She had been one of his prize students, winning a Golden Globe Award in 1999 for her free-spirited performance in the sitcom Dharma & Greg. Allen Barton, who had become a teacher at the Playhouse, wrote Elfman a letter in June 2004, begging her to relent. He called the movement against Katselas “Scientological McCarthyism,” harking back to the blacklisting of Hollywood celebrities in the 1950s because of their supposed Communist sympathies. “As Scientologists, are we now a group that blacklists, that casts aside friendships and alliances on the basis of how fast someone is moving up the Bridge?” he wrote. “If we as a group are going to take on the billions of wogs out in the world, how can we disconnect from each other?” Elfman never responded.
After Cruise rallied the Scientology celebrities, a group of students demanded that Katselas make the Playhouse a “WISE” business. The acronym stands for World Institute of Scientology Enterprises. Katselas refused, even though he lost a hundred students in a mass Scientology walkout. Many of them went to another school, the Acting Center, which was founded in 2006, based in part on Scientology techniques. Katselas died of heart failure in 2008, and the Beverly Hills Playhouse is no longer connected with the church. The long line of protégés that Katselas left behind cemented the association between the church and the Hollywood acting community, but in the end he was ostracized by the very people whose careers he had nurtured.
Tom Cruise was now considered the unofficial Ethics Officer of Hollywood. He was the embodiment of Hubbard’s vision of a church with temples dedicated to celebrity rather than God. Cruise’s intensity and commitment, along with his spectacular ambition, matched Miscavige’s own. It was as if Miscavige had rubbed a magic lantern and Cruise had appeared, a genie who could open any door. He was one of the few people that Miscavige saw as a peer. Miscavige even wondered if there was some way to appoint Cruise the church’s Inspector General for Ethics—Rathbun’s job. “He’d say that Tom Cruise was the only person in Scientology, other than himself, that he would trust to run the church,” one former Sea Org member recalled. Rathbun observed: “Miscavige convinced Cruise that he and Tom were two of only a handful of truly ‘big beings’ on the planet. He instructed Cruise that LRH was relying upon them to unite with the few others of their ilk on earth to make it onto ‘Target Two’—some unspecified galactic locale where they would meet up with Hubbard in the afterlife.”
HAGGIS HAD ALSO BEEN folded into the celebrity recruitment apparatus. He had put his money and his reputation in
the hands of the church. He, too, was serving Scientology. But he rarely spoke about his affiliation to his employees or associates. Even his close friends were surprised to learn that he was in the church. “He didn’t have that sort of straight-on, unambiguous, unambivalent view that so many Scientologists project into the world,” Marshall Herskovitz observed.
For years, Herskovitz and several of Haggis’s closest non-Scientology friends participated in an irregular Friday get-together called Boys’ Night. They met at an Italian restaurant on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. The actor Josh Brolin usually attended, along with director Oliver Stone, producer Stephen Nathan, and a peace activist and former priest named Blase Bonpane, among others. One night an attractive New York Times reporter came to write about the event, and the men decided that she made them all a lot more appealing than they were on other occasions. After that, they voted to invite one woman to join them whenever they met. Usually, it’s a beautiful actress. Julie Delpy and Charlize Theron have both been accorded this honor. Madeleine Stowe recalled it as the funniest evening she had ever had, although she had the sense to bring her husband along. She remembered Haggis sitting back, wisecracking, smoking a cigarette, watching it all happen.
Although Brolin, Nathan, and Stone are three of Haggis’s closest male friends, they never talked to him about Scientology. And yet each of the three had an experience in the church, which the others weren’t aware of. Steve Nathan had been hooked up to an E-Meter in the late 1960s by some British Scientologists who were looking for recruits, but he hadn’t been impressed. Oliver Stone didn’t even know Haggis was in Scientology. But for that matter, few knew that Stone had also spent a month in the church. He was a young man just back from Vietnam, full of trouble and questions. He signed up at the church’s New York center in the old Hotel Martinique. “It was like going to college and reading Dale Carnegie, something you do to find yourself.” The difference was that in Scientology there were nice parties and beautiful girls. Scientology didn’t answer his questions; but on the other hand, he noted, “I got laid.”
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