Actually, the director and screenwriter Paul Haggis should have been the star guest at the “Allora Fest” in the southern Italian municipality of Ostuni this week. The Oscar winner wanted to report on his life and work there in several so-called master classes. The 69-year-old is now in custody. According to several Italian media reports, he is accused of serious sexual assault. He is said to have abused a young non-Italian woman for two days. Then he is said to have taken her to the airport in Brindisi on Sunday and left her alone. The police and airport staff are said to have become aware of the woman. She was taken to the hospital and lodged a complaint.
This is not the first allegation of this kind against haggis. PR consultant Haleigh Breest accuses him of brutally raping her after a film premiere in 2013. A few years later, she sued him. After that, three other women came forward in 2018 accusing him of sexual assault, one of them rape. Haggis denies all allegations. The process is still ongoing it has become loud Variety delayed due to the corona pandemic, among other things.
Two Oscars in a row
Paul Haggis has long been considered a screenplay prodigy in Hollywood. Born in Canada, he initially worked a lot for television, wrote individual sitcom episodes (“Who’s the Boss?”) and is one of the co-creators of the series “Walker, Texas Ranger”. It was only after the turn of the millennium that he established himself as a permanent fixture in the cinema, but with a bang. Haggis did what no other writer had done before, winning the Best Screenplay Oscar two years in a row, first for Million Dollar Baby, which was directed by Clint Eastwood, and then for LA Crash, which he directed.
After that, for many years, he was considered the man you get when scripts aren’t really banging on. He co-wrote two James Bond films (“Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace”) and continued to work with Clint Eastwood. His most recent director roles include the HBO series Show Me A Hero.
Haggis received a lot of attention when he left Scientology in 2009 after decades of membership and publicly criticized the religious movement harshly, among other things in an article in new Yorker. He had achieved the highest status within the church of “Operating Thetan VII” and, according to his own statements, had donated several hundred thousand dollars to Scientology. Haggis, who has been married twice and has one child from the first marriage and three children from the second, fell out with Scientology because of its discriminatory attitude towards homosexuals. Two of Haggis’ daughters are lesbians.
Haggis’ longtime attorney Priya Chaudhry wanted her Variety according to not yet comment in detail on the incident in Italy. However, she said in a statement that she was certain the allegations would be dropped. Those responsible for the Allora Fest in Ostuni also made a statement. They were dismayed and shocked and would cancel “any director’s participation in the event”.