![]() It’s easier to live that kind of drama than it is with responsibility for what you’ve done. That’s exactly what’s happened to Liam’s character, who’s just going through all these relationships and dramas. They’d take me to things I didn’t really want to look at. This time I let them take me to places and they would often take me to blind alleys or off a cliff or a bridge of no return, just wander off into the desert and get lost, but occasionally they would take me to things I just didn’t understand. And that’s what I almost always do, play God. We should force our characters to do what we want then to do. As I was writing - it took me 5 years to write it - I allowed the characters to lead me along, and it was the totally wrong thing to do. It’s very legitimate … How much is he trying to rewrite his own life? How much is he trying to explain his life to his characters or to explore his life, but then how much is he trying to avoid by doing all that? And that, in fact, is what I explored in this. Is a legitimate take on the film to assume all the other characters in the movie besides Michael may be only characters inhabiting his book? I write about what haunts me, and playing God, both as a writer and especially as a person, is something that haunts me. I like to write from the point of view of characters that I completely disagree with because it challenges me and gets me to look at my own justifications, rationalizations, bullshit. There seems to be a God aspect to this kind of writing. And, of course and thank God, I never had gone through a tragedy like he goes through or other characters go through, but I can imagine myself there, because often, it’s children that pay the price for our selfishness. If I’d done something less, and so that’s what I really did, so it’s easy to say look at the Liam Neeson character and think it’s me, and he does explore a lot of things that I was exploring, especially about how damn selfish we are to be writers and how other people often pay the price for that selfishness. Mostly failed, and I ask questions about those things and then put them into stories in which people will not recognize themselves, mostly, because I wanted to explore different aspects of how I’d failed or how I could possibly have succeeded if I’d done something better. I start obviously with relationships I’ve had, things that failed, things that have worked. How much of you is in the Liam Neeson character? Talk about your writing process and if it’s anything like Neeson’s character, Michael, who draws on his personal relationships as material for his book. Below the slideshow are edited highlights from the roundtable with the affable and brilliant director. (Chabanol and Atias also attended the press event.). Haggis, who moved to New York from Los Angeles five years ago, promoted his new film recently at the midtown Manhattan office of Sony Pictures. She may or may not be trying to fleece him for money she claims she needs to pay off the kidnappers of her young daughter. The final story features Adrien Brody as a shady businessman in Rome who meets up with the beautiful and mysterious Monika (Moran Atias), a Roma woman with whom he becomes entranced. (Maria Bello plays Julia’s lawyer and turns up also in the final story.) Loan Chabanol plays Rick’s girlfriend, a bewildered witness to the harm her boyfriend and his ex-wife are wrecking on their son. The other threads feature Mila Kunis, who plays Julia, a former actress fallen on hard times, who now works as a hotel maid, and James Franco as Rick, her successful artist ex-husband they are locked in a bitter battle over her visitation rights to their son. “Third Person” tells three stories that focus on love, passion and betrayal unrelated couples whose actions affect estranged spouses, lovers and children who suffer the fall out. The story of a tortured writer and his wacky lover is only one of three vignettes that intercut but only intersect at the very end of the movie, reminiscent of “Crash,” the film for which Haggis won the Academy Award in 2004. It’s a reminder that before Neeson did the “Taken” films, he starred in “Schindler’s List.” One of the pleasures of the romantic drama is the opportunity to see Neeson dig into a role that doesn’t require him to pummel or shoot anyone. ![]() Meanwhile he checks in and consults via phone with his estranged wife (Kim Basinger) for emotional support. In Paul Haggis’s new film “Third Person,” Liam Neeson plays Michael, a prize-winning writer who holes up in a luxury hotel in SoHo and later Paris where he hopes his sexual trysts and mind games with his much younger, journalist girlfriend, Anna (Olivia Wilde), will rev up his creative juices enough so he can finish his stalled novel. Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde in “Third Person”
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