The Worst Best Picture Winner Ever Got A Bizarre TV Show Adaptation

It can certainly be debated which of the films to have won Best Picture at the Academy Awards is the worst. Some feel that it's the bloated and overblown Cecil B. DeMille circus epic "The Greatest Show on Earth" from 1952. Some feel it's the visually impressive but simple adventure film "Around the World in 80 Days" from 1956. And you will certainly find no shortage of complaints about the time the Best Picture trophy was given to 2018's "Green Book," a film about racism in the Deep South in 1962, told by a race-splaining white character and made by white filmmakers. 

But generally speaking, many agree that the very worst Best Picture winner was director Paul Haggis' overwrought racism drama, "Crash." "Crash" was, at the time, called a "hyperlink drama," which was a popular subgenre of mid-2000s films that involved multiple groups of characters that were all tangentially connected in small ways. Other films from the genre were Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2006 film "Babel," Steven Soderbergh's 2000 film "Traffic," or Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana," from 2005. It was a contrived way to tell a story, and was often unsuccessful. Most hyperlink dramas felt like the filmmakers didn't have a good idea for one movie, so they merely set several shorter movies in the same universe, crammed around a central theme of crime, immigration, or, in the case of "Crash," racism. Few liked the film, and it's derided to this day. Even Paul Haggis didn't think it was the best film of 2005. 

But it was a hit, making over $98 million on its $6.5 million budget. Indeed, "Crash" was a big enough hit to warrant a little-seen TV series spinoff in 2008. Does anyone remember the Starz 2008 "Crash" TV series? It lasted two seasons.

The movie "Crash" featured a broad panoply of characters and sported a large and impressive ensemble cast. It could be its star power that brought so many audience members into "Crash"; Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Terrance Howard, Brendan Fraser, Michael Peña, Ludacris, and Jennifer Esposito appear. The image on the poster is of Matt Dillon holding Thandiwe Newton as she cries in agony. In the film, Dillon plays a racist, abusive cop who gropes the Newton character during a "routine stop-and-frisk." Later in the film, Dillon saves Newton's life when she's in a car crash. "Crash" operates very much in the adolescent "it makes ya think" mindset, without really exploring moral ambiguity. 

The TV series carried over none of the film's characters or cast members, instead forming a new sprawling drama, also set in modern Los Angeles. The big "get" for the TV series was Dennis Hopper, who played a record producer named Ben Cendars. He was joined by D.B. Sweeney, Arlene Tur, Ross McCall, Brian Tee, and Tom Sizemore. Eric Roberts joined the show in its second season. "Crash" filmmaker Paul Haggis and Cheadle were present as executive producers, but the series was created and run by Glen Mazzara, who previously produced "The Shield." "Crash" was the very first original scripted show that Starz ever produced. 

Because it was a high-profile production based on a Best Picture-winning movie, Starz poured a lot of resources into "Crash," hiring the biggest actors they could find. They also made sure the series ran for at least two seasons, making 26 episodes in toto. Despite their efforts, though, the "Crash" TV series remained obscure. It didn't help that the scant reviews weren't wholly positive.

The reviews for "Crash" were mixed, with some critics declaring it to be better than Haggis' film and others saying it was just more of the same ham-fisted swill. Ginnia Bellafante, writing for the New York Times, said, "while the title remains the same, the moral agenda no longer presents itself as if in skywriting." The series, like the film, presented several storylines that, at first, didn't seem to intersect. But in telling tales that spanned 13 one-hour episodes, the show could allow the connections to be revealed more organically. Bellafante notes that Hopper plays an inspired character, a former hippie who hates the peace-love-and-understanding of the 1960s and has grown into a hard-eyed, mind-wasted cynic. 

In the Boston Globe, Matthew Gilbert said the "Crash" TV series aimed to be daring, but fell quite short of the mark. He said it was a series in love with its own edginess, and "long before the end of the long premiere [...] you'll tire of the writers' redundant efforts to make big statements about America, Racism, Sexism, Suppression, and Other Psycho-social Phenomena That Reek of Capital Letters." Gilbert also noted an irony in the expansion of "Crash" to TV. The showrunners may have more time to organically link their many subplots, but there still wasn't enough screentime to adequately establish those subplots into something an audience might care about. 

And after those short blips on the pop culture radar, "Crash" passed gently out of the public consciousness. It was an inauspicious launch title for Starz. The network ended up having more success with comedies like "Party Down," their sexed-up version of "Spartacus" in 2010, or the horror series "Ash vs. Evil Dead." Bruce Campbell returned to that show, although he'll only reprise the role again under one condition.