Best Director

Paul Haggis: Everett Collection

Paul Haggis

Directing Crash was always going to be a painful ordeal for Paul Haggis, what with a skimpy $7.5 million budget, a tight 34-day shooting schedule, and his own feature film inexperience. Granted, he was an Emmy-winning TV producer who had logged many hours directing for the small screen. But a rookie auteur making an ambitiously sprawling Big Statement film about fear and loathing in melting-pot America, with scores of characters and dozens of subplots, faces a different kind of pressure. Surely he knew lots of famous people to seek out for advice? ''I'm a TV guy! I didn't know any feature people,'' says the Million Dollar Baby screenwriter, who began working on Crash before meeting Clint Eastwood. Was he scared? ''Terrified.''

So the last thing the man needed was a heart attack in the middle of production. Yet the 52-year-old Haggis refused to let a bad ticker deter him. Hours after heart surgery, Haggis was reviewing work that had been shot without him — including Crash's climactic image of a crowded L.A. intersection — and fretting about the scene's extras. When he finally returned to work, Haggis reassured his nervous cast, crew, and financiers by saying, ''I'm okay. Just don't do anything to upset me.''

Looking back now, Haggis giggles. ''I could have died, but no big deal,'' he says. ''And considering how it all turned out, it was the best kind of heart attack I could have.'' Passion, luck, talent, a lot of help — all these things explain how a middle-aged Hollywood vet cops a directing nomination on his first try (he earned a nod for writing Million Dollar Baby). And one more: ''I only do things when I know I have a good chance at failing. If I'm not utterly gripped by a profound fear of embarrassment, then I'm not happy.'' Here's hoping the follow-up is killer. Figuratively speaking, of course.