Interview with Paul Haggis at the San Francisco Chronicle. Here Haggis talks about working with Russell:

“He wanted to have more exploration of the interior process of making the decision to break his wife out,” says Haggis. “He asked if he could expand on what I’d written, when he’s talking to his students. I said, ‘Of course!’ He did and it was wonderful. Of course, he wrote something that was six or seven minutes long and we wound up using 30 seconds of it – but he really explores the professor character from the inside.
“For instance, after the spinout of the car (in which the wife, played by Elizabeth Banks, almost falls out into traffic) and they’re sitting by the side of the road. As they were getting back in, he said, ‘Paul, watch this.’ So I have the two-shot of them in the car; he looks at her and leans over and locks the door. It was just one of those little moments that he understood from being inside the character that also gave us humor and relief.”

Editor’s note: I was present at the pre-FX screening for TN3D in Los Angeles. The audience burst into applause during the above mentioned scene and the touch Russell wrote got a big laugh. ~  Tamara