When most Oscar revellers left Hollywood's Kodak Theater on Sunday night to begin partying, they loaded into sleek, stretch limos whose drivers had been waiting hours for their champagne-sipping celebrity clientele.
Paul Haggis, the London, Ont., native whose gritty race drama Crash scooped up three Academy Awards that night, walked with his family and some close friends toward four tiny Prius cars that had been discreetly parked nearby to whisk his entourage off to the Vanity Fair bash.
"We didn't have a big stretch," chuckles Mr. Haggis, 52, reached by phone at 6:30 yesterday morning after pulling an all-nighter. "We took chauffeur-driven hybrid vehicles -- four of us per car. I have to admit it was hard to arrange everyone arriving at the same time at all the different parties."
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Mr. Haggis, long known as a champion of the environment and the guy who thanked "all those people who stand up for peace and justice and against intolerance" after receiving his first Academy Award, would feel compelled to shun a gas guzzler for Toyota's fuel-efficient Prius hybrid.
"I was -- and still am -- completely stunned that Crash won best picture," he goes on.
"I haven't seen the tape [of Sunday night's awards show yet], but I know I looked flabbergasted. I couldn't speak. It's pretty remarkable."
After the Governor's Ball, Mr. Haggis said he, his wife Debbie Rennard, his 80-year-old dad Ted, his three daughters (the couple's seven-year-old son had to stay home) and some close chums painted the town red.
They stopped in first at the Vanity Fair party at Morton's, always an Oscar-night hot ticket, where best actress Reese Witherspoon, best actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and Three 6 Mafia, the hip-hop trio that took best song, mingled with the Hollywood A-list.
Then Mr. Haggis's group moved on to the Chateau Marmont for a Crash-sponsored fete, finally wrapping up at the house of pal Paul Thomas Anderson, who was hosting most of the cast and crew from Capote. "My favourite film this year," Mr. Haggis adds.
"I have no idea why Crash won, but I'm glad it did. This is a year when there were such terrific films, all fabulous films. I wouldn't have been upset if any of the films had won. And I think all the filmmakers feel that way. There was great camaraderie," adds the director, who has described his own edgy film as "a movie about fear and intolerance, with no central characters and nine plot lines."
Never before, Mr. Haggis admits, has he been given this level of star treatment. "We all sashayed in together, and I was carrying two Oscars. We were treated pretty well," notes the graduate of London's Fanshawe College.
Not only did Mr. Haggis never expect his film to be financed, but once he finally managed to get $7-million (all figures U.S.) lined up to make Crash, he had a heart attack midway through filming. He returned to the set after two weeks, refusing to let another director take over. A savvy marketing campaign by Lions Gate Entertainment, combined with word-of-mouth, has helped the picture, starring Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock and Don Cheadle, gross more than $83-million worldwide.
Yesterday, Mr. Haggis said the cast of Crash were "thrilled" with the three Oscars. "It was hard catching up with everybody, but those I saw were obviously beside themselves. It really is due to Cheadle, who came in and helped me get such a great cast."
To remind voters about the movie, Lions Gate took the unprecedented step of mailing DVDs to every one of the Screen Actors Guild's roughly 120,000 members, because union members account for more than 20 per cent of Academy voters. The distributor also reportedly spent nearly $4-million on its Oscar campaign for the film.
When Mr. Haggis walked off the Kodak Theater stage Sunday night with the best-picture award alongside producer Cathy Schulman, the Canadian patted presenter Jack Nicholson on the shoulder and said, "That was a good one, Jack."
Later, Mr. Haggis admitted "getting it [the best-picture Oscar] from Jack Nicholson was pretty darn cool, I'll tell you that. It was an amazing feeling. I mean, I'm just going to say all of the clichés everyone says. It was sensational."
The independent film also won best editing and best original screenplay. Mr. Haggis, who co-wrote the script with Bobby Moresco, was inspired to make Crash after he and his wife were carjacked in the early 1990s.
Last year, Mr. Haggis had his first brush with Oscar glory when his screenplay for Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby was nominated -- but lost out to Sideways.
The Oscar nod alone, however, was enough for studios to come knocking. Since then, Mr. Haggis has been frantically churning out scripts for films such as Death and Dishonour (which he will direct and co-produce with Mr. Eastwood), as well as another screenplay for Mr. Eastwood called Flags of our Fathers, the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima. He is also working on Honeymoon with Harry, a dark comedy set to star Vince Vaughn.
In effect, the hat trick of Oscars means Mr. Haggis has Hollywood carte blanche for any project he chooses to direct -- the same way Rob Marshall did after winning the best-picture Oscar for his feature-film directorial debut Chicago (followed by this year's entry, Memoirs of A Geisha) or Sam Mendes with American Beauty. (Mr. Mendes went on to direct Road to Perdition and Jarhead).
Asked yesterday what he thinks the Oscar wins will do for his career, Mr. Haggis just shrugged. "I guess I'll find out tomorrow, because today I'm going to sleep."
