The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Joanna Robinson revisit one of the most controversial Best Picture–winning films of all time, Paul Haggis’s ‘Crash,’ starring Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Thandiwe Newton, Sandra Bullock, Terrence Howard, and Michael Peña. Watch this episode on our Ringer Movies YouTube Channel! This episode is sponsored by State Farm®. Create an affordable price just for you with the State Farm Personal Price Plan.® Producer: Craig Horlbeck Video Producers: Jack Sanders and Chia Hao Tat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What movie are we discussing in this episode?
I just had a gun pointed in my face.
Experience the most provocative and powerful movie of the year. We need his man here. He dies. I promise I'm going to find out who did this. Hebert and Rupert give Crash two thumbs way up. You had a conversation with God, huh? What did God say? One of the best films of 2005. What did you do? Crash. Rated R. In theaters everywhere Friday.
All right, Joanna Robinson is here. Van Lathan is here. You guys have sorted out all your Marvel stuff? Yeah. Captain America, Brave New World. It's a text exchange.
Yeah. So just a spicy text exchange.
Yeah. You don't care.
Why do you even ask?
I don't care. I don't care at all. I do care about the biggest Oscars Travis did in the 21st century, Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain. This is a weirdly watchable movie. And I would even say a rewatchable movie. that is also now kind of a comedy.
That's what you said. I want to know what mood you're in when you sit down to rewatch crash.
There's good scenes in this movie, but the totality of it leaves me going. I can't believe this happened.
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Chapter 2: What was the controversy surrounding Crash winning Best Picture?
When it won Best Picture and you can go back and watch it on YouTube, Nicholson's the, he's the presenter and he does it and he reads it and he's like, the winners crash and he goes, whoa. And, You hear the crowd, the crowd, which I don't know if I've ever heard this at the Oscars. They make like a what the fuck noise. They're like, oh, it's like one of those noises.
And that was when this movie, it turned.
I think especially because at that Oscars, Ang Lee had one director. And once he won director, people thought, oh, Shirley Brokeback's going to win Best Picture.
Well, there was a thing. Brokeback was the only movie to win PGA, DGA, and WGA and not win Best Picture Oscar. Yeah. Which, by the way, Anora, we're taping this before the Oscars, but Anora is the next one that's on that.
The conversation became... really divisive after a while because what started to happen was it almost was like the hollywood liberal elites wanted to award one type of film and they chose race over a movie with gay themes because we still weren't there yet we weren't we actually weren't yeah but now it's broke back is such a great movie and it's kind of it's a fantastic insane that it didn't win
There's some back, there was some backlash before the Oscar win. I, and I only know this because I read a really embarrassing Roger Ebert column where he was defending. We're going to hit that later. Yeah. Yeah. Where he's defending the movie against its, its critics.
He loved it. And then I had a second, he went back.
He had another bite of the apple when people were like, actually, it's not very good. And he's like, how dare you? Here's what you're missing about Crash. Here's what you don't understand about Crash. Let me, Roger Ebert, explain it to you. So that was all before, I think, the Oscar win.
But yeah, then it really cemented itself as... I think if it hadn't won the Oscar, I mean, we definitely wouldn't still be talking about Crash. We would be talking about it a little bit, but not the way we talk about it, where it became sort of the most famously egregious... Oscar Best Picture win?
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Chapter 3: How does Crash portray race relations?
And be the hero. And be the hero in that moment. Matt Dillon running up that hill to be the hero. It's a hero shot.
Yeah. Hero music too. There's like no possible way you could justify that scene if you are Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, Ryan Coogler. Like you can't. It's impossible.
Also, to your point, I think all the racism is so obvious and broad that it just ignores the subtle or like microaggression factuality of how we navigate our lives. And so everyone is such like a caricature of a racist that can make you feel good watching you, a white person watching it, are just like, well, I'm no Sandra Bullock, so I'm fine. I'm not racist, you know?
Right. The movie starts off with these, obviously, there's a scene before that, but two guys who we don't know are carjackers, right? One dude is Ludacris's character is ridiculously hyper aware of every racial microaggression that exists. He's also hyper aware of this entire construct of, of American racism. And he's even talking about how big the windows on the bus are.
On the bus are, yeah.
All of that stuff, right? He's what you would consider to be woke. However, he has chosen to be a criminal. A criminal with a code that he doesn't rob Black people. He's got this entire worldview, this entire politic that he's chosen to go out there and be a criminal. The moment they got, because we got guns, I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Let's get into it. This guy, he's talking to me.
He's telling me about, yeah, let's go. We're going to have a wild ride with this one.
First Best Picture film since Rocky in 1976 to only win three Oscars. To show what a shocker this was. By about the 10-year anniversary... The first thing, the end of the decade, that was when the first backlash really happened. By 2015, they're writing about it. And Paul Haggis, the director, he said, was Crash the best film of the year? I don't think so.
Crash, for some reason, affected people, touched people. People still come up to me more than any of my films and say, that film just changed my life. I've heard that dozens and dozens and dozens of times. So did its job there. I mean, I knew it was the social experiment that I wanted. So I think it's a really good social experiment. Is it a great film? I don't know.
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Chapter 4: What are the standout performances in Crash?
He is, for sure. Ludacris is a hell of an actor. Ludacris is... As IMDB, I was looking at it and I was like, man, I like a lot of these movies.
Ludacris is... Genuinely great in this movie.
He really is. I was surprised at how good he was in the movie. I was surprised. He's good in every Fast movie, too.
I mean, he's good in the Fast movies, but he's not trying to do anything in the Fast movies.
I just like him. I think he's good. So, this was inspired by a real-life incident where Haggis' Porsche was carjacked in 91 outside a video store in Wilshire Boulevard.
The movie completely... By the way, just real quick... I didn't know that until I started doing my research on the movie. The movie totally makes sense now.
Totally makes sense now. And he kind of had this idea, filed it away, wrote an outline for it, didn't do anything with it for 10 years.
He wants to make a movie about all the microaggressions and the societal reasons that he was carjacked. He wants to make a movie about that, but he can't quite do it without bringing everybody else into it. And he feels the need to tell everybody's story to where really the story that he wants to tell is about being him, a white guy being carjacked. He wants to know why that happened to him. Yeah.
And then that ends up becoming this entire movie where he has to kind of litigate why that happens to anyone, why everything happens to everybody. But really, that's what he wants to talk about. It's obvious to me.
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Chapter 5: What is the legacy of Crash in contemporary discussions?
Easy work. Easy work.
The Matt Dillon stuff and the fact that he's then the only actor nominated for this movie. Have you seen that clip?
Well, there's a reason for that, though, because Howard, they wanted to push him for Hustle and Flow. And I think Howard would have gotten nominated over Dillon.
And that's what I thought.
That's what I thought when I saw Matt Dillon was the only actor nominated for Crash.
I was surprised Newton didn't get nominated, actually, because I thought she was excellent.
The image of this movie, the image of this movie is her clinging to him after the crash.
Yeah, for sure. They played that up. More with Sage the Worst. In LA, we're trapped behind metal and glass. You got to crash into someone to feel something.
joanna's like joanna might move here this movie's gonna get in her head can i tell you when i first moved to san francisco i i was walking down the street this is like right after this movie came out and this guy and this is gonna sound unreal because i recently said on a different podcast about an inception pickup line that a guy tried on me but i bumped into this guy and he's like let's crash into each other like the movie and i was just like like literally wow that is the thing that has happened to me san francisco's freaky
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Chapter 6: How do the hosts feel about the film's direction and writing?
Yeah. Yeah. DN Waiters Award. Jennifer Esposito is eligible. Probably, yeah. She's great in this movie. Yeah, she is. I always liked her. I never understood why. They just didn't have anything for her to do. I always felt like there was a better career for her.
They just didn't have enough for her to do. Every time she's obviously gorgeous, she's talented. They just didn't have enough for her. She's dope. There was no series for her. There were not live parts for her.
There was a feisty policewoman series that she should have been on CBS for eight years. It's not too late.
It's not too late for Jennifer Esposito.
Could have been like whatever that when they started spinning off CSI, Miami, all those. It could have been like CSI wherever and just she's the lead. Dan Waiters, one more. The guy who runs the Chop Shop.
Lucien.
I didn't want to forget him.
When he says, he's my pick. And when he says... Do I look like I want to be on the Discovery Channel? Right. Loved it. Love that guy. I like that guy. And also, I would say the woman at the locksmiths who will not give up Michael Pena's name, who's just smoking and over it and slashing her chair and wearing all the eyeliner. I really liked her, too.
I was trying to remember the relationship that Jennifer Esposito was in. Eddie Murphy, right? Early? No, she was married to Bradley Cooper. But she dated Eddie Murphy in like the 80s. Oh, did she?
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Chapter 7: What category does this film fall into regarding representation?
Yeah.
Probably unanswerable questions. If this movie had a black director but was the exact same movie, what happens?
And a serious rewrite of the screenplay?
I'm saying it's the exact same movie.
Exact same movie.
Every single moment is the same, but the director's black, whatever. They'd run him out of town. I'm telling you, man.
It would have been... Oh, it doesn't get any Oscars.
They'd run him out of town. It would have been... He or she would have just gotten destroyed from all sides. Any other unanswerables?
How did this movie beat Brokeback Mountain? I guess that's not really the question of the category.
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Chapter 8: Why is the film considered both provocative and problematic?
Yeah. Or, like, it's a different...
experience re-watching Crash I actually I hadn't seen it in a long time like Terrence Howard gets out I thought Michael Peña died in the movie that was my memory of it oh yeah when he didn't die I was like oh I forgot when you watch it the first time Terrence Howard gets out of the car with a gun in the back of his belt you're like something terrible's gonna happen yeah yeah the Peña scene was nerve-wracking I was gonna be really see how Craig liked the movie
no it's just but then you re-watch it knowing the girl's gonna be safe terrence howard's gonna be safe and you're just sort of like well it's just lawrence tate and we don't really care this movie won best picture i'm telling you man i don't know what movie i'd rather watch than or i wouldn't rather watch than this like like the room tommy why so i would watch that well that's just fun i would watch anything over this yeah liz came in halfway through and was like what is going on like every five minutes this is like ridiculously over the top racist interaction
Yeah. Yeah, that's Crash. That was the rewatchables.
There you go.
You can watch us every week on Spotify now on video. Watch us on Ringer Movies. You can see these two in House of R and Midnight Boys. Midnight Boys, yep.
Beep, beep.
Cue, cue. Wait, did you guys say that? I said beep, beep.
That's all I'm going to do now.
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