Credits on a collision course

It’s a tale of the forces that bring people together and tear them apart -- a contemporary drama set in Los Angeles, overflowing with trust and betrayal, exhilaration and recrimination, hope and despair.

And that’s just the battle over the “Crash” producer credits, nevermind its plot.

When the Academy Awards are presented Sunday, “Crash” has an outside chance of unseating the favored “Brokeback Mountain” as 2005’s best picture. But if “Crash’s” name is called, only two of its original six producers will be invited onto the Kodak Theatre stage to accept the top Oscar.

Exactly how those two people were selected to represent the race relations drama remains shrouded in secrecy and is the subject of a new court case.

Bob Yari, one of the four expunged producers, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America, the two bodies that determine best picture producer credits, calling their methods “neither honest nor fair.” While it may take months for Yari’s complaint to be resolved, what is known today is that the “Crash” production hardly fits into the customary moviemaking story line, in which the role of a producer is clearly delineated and specific jobs are assigned like studio parking spaces.

Like three other best picture nominees (“Capote,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Good Night, and Good Luck”), “Crash” was made by an amalgam of friends, business partners and financiers, collaborators who served as acting coaches and volunteered their credit cards.

Those four slighted “Crash” producers say the film’s multiple producing credits are not the result of any personal vanity but instead underscore the frantic mechanics of making movies outside the studio system.

“They really need to come up with a clear definition -- that’s what this is all about,” says Don Cheadle, who played a critical role in attracting actors to the “Crash” cast and plays a starring role in the film, of the PGA and academy’s credit determination process. “And people are going to be thrown under the bus until they figure it out.”

When 1980’s “Ordinary People” won the best picture Oscar, Ronald L. Schwary didn’t have to wait behind a queue of fellow producers to make his acceptance speech. As the film’s only producer, Schwary was awarded the top Oscar.

“Back then, talent managers weren’t saying they would take a producing credit, or the stars weren’t saying they wanted their husbands as a producer,” Schwary says. “The producing credit meant that you were in charge.” These days, however, the producing credit can mean next to nothing.

The Academy Award producer glut probably reached its nadir at 1999’s Oscar ceremony, when five “Shakespeare in Love” producers, including Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein, rushed the stage to grab that film’s best picture prize. An embarrassed academy soon capped the number of eligible best picture producers to three and a year ago brought in the PGA to help whittle names.

At last year’s awards, Charles Evans Jr. and Sandy Climan were denied Oscar producer credits for best picture nominee “The Aviator.” In addition to the four excluded “Crash” producers in this year’s ceremony, Colin Wilson was dropped as one of the credited producers of “Munich.” By disclaiming so many producers on so many prominent movies, the PGA believes it is advancing the fight against bogus credits. But there is a long way to go.

After a year of trying, the PGA has not persuaded a single studio to adopt its code of credits, which bars them from doling out producer titles like currency. “That’s still very discouraging to us,” says the PGA’s executive director, Vance Van Petten.

The executive producer credit also continues to flourish, often given to studio executives, talent managers and other peripheral players who may not have been involved in a movie’s making for years, or even decades.

Counting all of its co-executive and associate producers, this weekend’s release “16 Blocks” carries 16 producers -- one, it seems, for every city block Bruce Willis travels in this police thriller.

Van Petten says “Crash” is yet another example of credits gone crazy. When “Crash” was shown in theaters, its credits listed six producers: director and co-writer Paul Haggis, Cathy Schulman, co-writer Bobby Moresco, Mark Harris, Yari and Cheadle.

Under its “truth in credits” initiative, the PGA subsequently determined that only Haggis and Schulman deserved “Crash” producer credits. Even after each producer appealed to the academy, the four still were excised from “Crash’s” Oscar credits.

The PGA insists that it got the “Crash” credits right and that its credit determinations must be conducted in secret to protect the judges against recriminations. Not surprisingly, Yari, Cheadle, Harris and Moresco see the result in a different light. As Harris puts it: “It took a village to make this movie.”

But did the other producers earn their titles, or were they bestowed? The answers are as complicated as “Crash’s” intersecting story lines.

“Crash” was hatched in the middle of the night by Haggis, a television writer from “thirtysomething” and “L.A. Law.” Feverishly writing until dawn, Haggis outlined a story about race and power. He subsequently called Moresco, a longtime creative collaborator, and over the course of several weeks, Haggis and Moresco hammered out the “Crash” screenplay.

“Nobody was interested in making it -- nobody,” Moresco says of the script. “Literally every single studio and every independent film company turned us down.... Everybody said no except Bob Yari, God bless his soul.” Harris, who once managed Haggis and later formed a production company with his former client, submitted the “Crash” screenplay to Yari in early 2002, on condition that Haggis (who had never made a movie) also be allowed to direct it.

Yari, who made his fortune in real estate, says he was immediately smitten by the “Crash” script. As Haggis wrote in a declaration supporting Yari’s petition to the PGA to be listed as a producer, “I can say without a doubt that if [it] had not been for Bob, this film would not have been made.” With Yari, “Crash” had its first producer.

In late 2002, Yari entered into a partnership with Schulman, a veteran of the Samuel Goldwyn Co. and agent Michael Ovitz’s production company. Schulman’s new company under Yari, Bull’s Eye Entertainment, became the production company for the film. In Schulman, “Crash” had its second producer.

Haggis, Harris and Moresco all had come on board as producers too, but whatever real producing chores lay ahead weren’t immediately clear. They had a patron in Yari and a proposed production budget of $10 million but no cast. Without any recognizable actors in tow and with mostly unknown producers involved, the production was unlikely to scrape together enough interest from distributors to cover Yari’s budget.

So Haggis, Harris and Moresco say they went straight to Cheadle, asking that he join “Crash” as a lead actor and producer, and open up his Rolodex.

“A lot of actors had well-founded reservations about the material and about Paul -- not his personality or talent, but, with a first-time filmmaker, there was not a lot of margin for error,” Cheadle says. “But I trusted his vision.” That trust -- and Cheadle’s putting his name on the movie as a producer -- immediately gave “Crash” legitimacy with other actors and their agents. Top performers started signing on, and Cheadle personally recruited some “Crash” cast members, taking Ryan Phillippe out to a Jerry’s Deli lunch to sell him on the movie.

Now the producer tally stood at six, without a frame of film having been shot. “You had to give people producing credits” to keep the project together, Schulman says.

Still, the movie didn’t move forward for more than a year. Any number of actors -- Heath Ledger, John Cusack, even Vin Diesel -- drifted in and out of the “Crash” cast as theoretical start dates came and went, while Yari struggled to arrange financing for the movie. Even when some money came in, it quickly ran out.

Because its subject matter was considered a tough sell to distributors here and abroad, “Crash’s” $10-million budget was slashed to $6.5 million (the movie ultimately would cost an additional $1 million). A German company, Apollo, agreed to finance 40% of the reduced budget, and filming finally commenced in late 2003. Halfway through 36 planned days of shooting, the Apollo money was gone.

Schulman says she then had to charge some $30,000 of production expenses to her personal credit card. “We were doing what we needed to do,” Schulman says. “And the reason we can’t shut down is because of this whole Rubik’s Cube of casting. We had to keep going.” DEJ Productions, an arm of the Blockbuster video chain, came to the rescue with an additional $3.5 million. The movie was rolling again, but its cast was in crisis: Had they all given up big paydays in other movies to act in some direct-to-video release?

“That was terrifying,” Cheadle says. “But I thought even if it did go straight to video, we were going to make the best straight-to-video movie ever made.” Budget constraints meant a sex scene between Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito that typically would have been filmed on a private set on a closed stage had to be filmed in a rented bungalow on location. “We were able to close the bedroom door, at least,” Moresco says.

The cast and crew suffered their share of health crises as well: Haggis had a heart attack in the middle of filming, and Esposito and costar Nona Gaye simultaneously were felled by a virus that forced production to be shut down (Schulman’s back appears in one “Crash” scene in place of the ailing Esposito).

The combined delays meant that Cheadle had to leave for “Hotel Rwanda” before all of his “Crash” scenes were shot (he returned to “Crash” after “Hotel Rwanda” wrapped). New scenes -- and a new character -- had to be hurriedly created when Brendan Fraser departed “Crash” for another acting job.

Yari admits he wasn’t on the set to deal with these and other calamities but that he was always the person ultimately in charge, and he provided the academy a series of persuasive e-mails to back up the claim.

“The producer is the person who assembles the creative talent behind the film and brings it to the screen,” Yari says. “When there is a problem, you have to step in to make the decision between [what’s best] creatively and financially. That’s where responsibility comes in.”

Whatever bad feelings might have been simmering among the “Crash” producers, they boiled over in December when the PGA awarded “Crash’s” producer credits to just Haggis and Schulman.

In January, Yari sued Schulman, accusing her of undermining his attempt to get a “Crash” producer credit and misappropriating his company’s money. On Tuesday, the day Oscar balloting closed, Schulman sued Yari, calling him “a failed motion picture director” and “an impetuous child” who tried to “buy himself awards recognition” for “Crash.” Haggis declined to be interviewed about the producing dispute, but Moresco says that, unlike some filmmakers who can’t be bothered with all the tiny details of movie production, Haggis was involved in every little “Crash” decision.

“There’s not one aspect of ‘Crash’ that got done without Paul,” Moresco says.

Like Moresco, Harris was on the “Crash” set and says he offered his expertise in many areas, including revising the production schedule, and insisted Haggis make “Crash” as a feature film rather than a TV series.

“In this situation, it took every ounce of every person’s ability to get this movie made,” says Harris, who believes all six originally credited producers should have been eligible for the best picture Oscar.

Schulman, who by consensus was fairly named as one of “Crash’s” official two producers, isn’t so sure she’ll go that far.

“I think,” she says, choosing her words carefully, “that everybody made a contribution to the film.”