Fighting the good fight

IN 2003, Paul Haggis could not even put a sign outside his house in liberal Santa Monica protesting the Iraq conflict without it being defaced or stolen. George Bush's approval rating was at around 80 per cent, and every other car sported a flag or a 'We Support the Troops' bumper sticker.

"We all know that really means support the war," sneers the man who made history by penning two successive Oscar winners for best picture, Million Dollar Baby and Crash. "Meanwhile, our President was telling us we were unpatriotic if we questioned anything. As artists, though, we don't like to hear those things – we like to think for ourselves – and as citizens the same."

Convinced that he was not being told the truth about the war by the American media – "They've been in lock-step with the government from the beginning" – Haggis trawled the internet for more information. The first thing he stumbled across was a video, shot by a soldier and cut to rock music, that included alarming photographs of young GIs "posing with a burned-out corpse" and "picking up an arm". Haggis was shocked. "You're going, 'Oh my God, what's happening?' These are kids that have since told me they did stuff like this, and when they came home they looked at these self-same photographs and said, 'Who is that?' They didn't recognise themselves. It was really disturbing."

Haggis knew he wanted to write something about the war, but not what or how. His way-in came when he was given a copy of reporter Mark Boal's Playboy article, Death and Dishonour, about Vietnam veteran Lanny Davis's pursuit of the truth surrounding the murder of his son, Richard, after returning from Iraq in 2003. Haggis had recently wrapped Crash, and there was already a buzz about it around town, but no one wanted to touch his Iraq idea. After months of rejection, he turned to his friend, Clint Eastwood, for help. "He could have called me up and said, 'You Commie bastard. What are you getting me into now?' but he didn't. He said, 'Wow, difficult material. Hard story.' I said, 'Yeah, but it's the truth.' He said, 'I think we should tell it.'"

Eastwood took Boal's story to Warner Brothers, who optioned the life rights and hired Haggis to write the screenplay. "This was not easy for him," says Haggis. "No studio wanted to do it. He put his reputation on the line for me. He's a great friend. A hell of a guy."

Eastwood stopped short of starring in the film, however. "He said, 'I came out of retirement to do Million Dollar Baby and I don't think I can do better. Do you, Paul?' How do I argue with that?" says Haggis, laughing.

Haggis worked with Boal on turning his article into a fictionalised version called In the Valley of Elah, after the place where David fought Goliath. Lanny became Hank Deerfield, a patriotic ex military man played by Tommy Lee Jones, whose certainties about the war and American moral superiority are slowly eroded as he discovers more about the mental and emotional effects of the conflict, and about the behaviour of some soldiers in the field.

While the film is inherently anti-war, Haggis says he consciously avoided using it to score political points. "I have my opinions but I had to keep them out and tar myself as guilty as anyone else right now," he says. "So the Left, the Right, we're all in this together. These men and women, what they're experiencing is our common problem. Let's not be divided over whether it was a just war or a corrupt war. This is what we have to deal with. Let's face these facts."

Hank does precisely that, eventually. And it is also what a lot of Americans are doing. But although a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll published last year revealed that 68 per cent of Americans were against the war, Haggis says their leaders are still stuck at the beginning of Hank's journey. "They just won't listen to anybody. It could be 99.9 per cent against the war and they wouldn't listen. They're ideologues and, like my character, they know right from wrong, they don't need to see the truth. Their pride, their arrogance, blinds them.

"Unlike my character, they don't have an epiphany. They don't take the journey. They don't have to empathise with the men and women on the ground, they filter it through what they already know."

Given the turnaround in public opinion, I wonder if the film hasn't come too late and isn't now telling people something they already know. In the United States, In the Valley of Elah was generally well reviewed; however, like other recent Iraq-related films, such as Robert Redford's (admittedly stodgy) Lions for Lambs and Gavin Hood's Rendition, it failed to make an impact at the box-office. Haggis acknowledges Elah's underperformance, though he rejects the implication that it might be behind the curve.

"I can only speak about my film," he says, "but this is a film about personal responsibility. As Americans, we're much more comfortable with pointing our finger and blaming others than we are with taking personal responsibility for anything. So I think we feel happy with pointing a finger at Bush right now." But Democrats are as much to blame for the decision to go to war as Republicans, he says, because they went along with it. "And those of us who protested about the war didn't protest loudly enough, did we? We didn't do enough. If I was out at seven demonstrations, well maybe I should have been out at a hell of a lot more."

Whatever the good intentions behind the film, its blend of fact and fiction has – inevitably, perhaps – received flak from some of the people involved in the real story, including Lanny Davis himself. He criticised a scene in which the character based on Richard is kicked out of a strip club on the night of his murder, something he believes never happened, and reportedly dismissed the suggestion that his son owned a hash pipe. Haggis did talk to Lanny and his wife, Remy, but not until after he had finished his screenplay. "I didn't want to be coloured by falling in love with them. And when I did meet them, I did love them. They came to the set a lot, and they came to the premiere, and we're very close," he insists.

If there are differences between Davis's parents and the film-makers, they stem essentially from a difference in perspective. "I wanted to fictionalise the story in order to ask some questions that were universal," Haggis explains. "Obviously it's a great tragedy what happened, but while they were focused on exactly who killed their son, for me it was 'why did this occur?'" The Davises, he adds, also arrived at a different conclusion as to what happened. "They believe that Richard was killed because he'd witnessed something in Iraq and he was going to tell the truth about it. They have evidence that they believe supports that. I don't know enough to tell them what actually happened. I do know enough to talk about what's happening to our men and women."

Meanwhile, Haggis has another battle to fight. When we meet in London, he is striking alongside Writers Guild of America members who want a bigger cut when their work is sold on DVD or downloaded or streamed online.

Happily for 007 fans, Haggis turned in his screenplay for Bond 22, the follow-up to Casino Royale, just as the strike was looming. "We were supposed to start shooting in December, so the script was actually in quite good shape," he says, dismissing reports that he had to rush his final draft. " There were things left undone just because of the amount of time, and you don't want that to be the case, but it was in pretty good shape." Because of the strike, the production will have to go ahead without Haggis on hand to adapt the screenplay to new locations if required. "I'd love to be there with them," he sighs, "but I'm on the picket line."

• In the Valley of Elah is released on 25 January.