Crash (2008 TV series)
Encyclopedia
Crash is an American
television drama series set in Los Angeles
, California
. It is the first original series produced by the Starz network. The network ordered a 13 episode season which premiered on October 17, 2008
. The series is based on the 2004 film of the same name
. It was developed for television by Glen Mazzara
. In Canada, Crash can be seen on Super Channel. Starz ordered a second season that premiered in September 2009 before concluding in December 2009. Lead actor Dennis Hopper
died in May, 2010 and the series did not continue.
. The writers of the film, Paul Haggis
and Robert Moresco
, were interested in developing a series based on the property. Lionsgate and Starz collaborated on developing the series for television.
Television writer and producer Glen Mazzara
was brought in as an executive producer for the series. Mazzara has worked extensively as a writer and producer on The Shield
and had developed new projects for the other networks including Life and Standoff
.
serves as the series executive producer and showrunner. The film's writers Paul Haggis
and Robert Moresco
and producer Bob Yari
join Mazzara as executive producers. Thomas Becker, Mark R. Harris, Tom Nunan, and Jorg Westerkamp all worked as producers or production executives on the original film project and are credited as co-executive producers on the series. Movie actor Don Cheadle
, who was a star and producer of the 2004 film, is also on board as a co-executive producer.
Mazzara hired a writing staff that he felt was used to coping with edgier material. Co-executive producer and writer Frank Renzulli
had previously worked on HBO drama The Sopranos
. Co-executive producer and writer Ted Mann
worked on HBO drama Deadwood
. Producer and writer Stacy Rukeyser worked with Mazzara on Standoff. Executive story editor Chris Collins
came from the recently completed HBO drama The Wire
. Executive story editor Randy Huggins had previously worked with Mazzara on The Shield.
The pilot episode was directed by Sanford Bookstaver
.
as record producer
Ben Cendars; Ross McCall
as police officer Kenny Battaglia; Arlene Tur
as actress-turned-police officer partner Bebe Arcel; Clare Carey
as Brentwood mother Christine Emory; D. B. Sweeney
as Peter Emory her real-estate developer husband; Brian Tee
as former gang
member-turned-EMT Eddie Choi; Jocko Sims
as street-smart driver Anthony Adams; Luis Chavez as undocumented Guatemalan
immigrant Cesar Uman; Moran Atias
as Inez; and Nick Tarabay
as a detective Axel Finet, Trilby Glover
as his wife Ann Finet and Tom Sizemore
as Detective Adrian Cooper. In season 2 new cast members Eric Roberts
plays as billionaire Seth Blanchard, Dana Ashbrook
as LA crook Jimmy, Linda Park as Blanchard's wife and children's author Maggie, and Jake McLaughlin a former high school pitching ace now working for his diabetic mom (Tess Harper
) in a hobby store. Battaglia is a security guard and then begins working for Blanchard and some of the cast members from season 1, Tur, Carey, Sweeney, Tee, Chavez, Tarabay and Sizemore do not return for season 2. Jenny Mollen
plays Tess, the new girlfriend to Kenny Battaglia.
; Mike Hughes of the Detroit Free Press
said "Crash debut is masterful, intense"; and "Politically and socially ambitious" said the Los Angeles Times
. However, Variety's Brian Lowry wrote; "There's not a whit of originality to it," and "The show possesses less substance than a brisk Santa Ana wind." According to Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe
, "None of the stories or characters is remotely interesting", but Newsday
wrote, "Gritty, jarring, profane, and smartly produced" (Verne Gay).
on September 15th, 2010.
Television in the United States
Television is one of the major mass media of the United States. Ninety-nine percent of American households have at least one television and the majority of households have more than one...
television drama series set in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. It is the first original series produced by the Starz network. The network ordered a 13 episode season which premiered on October 17, 2008
2008 in television
The following is a list of events affecting American television in 2008. Events listed include television show debuts, finales, cancellations, and new channel launches.-January:-February:-March:-April:-May:-June:-July:-August:...
. The series is based on the 2004 film of the same name
Crash (2004 film)
Crash is a 2004 American drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis. The film is about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles, California. A self-described "passion piece" for Haggis, Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked outside a video...
. It was developed for television by Glen Mazzara
Glen Mazzara
Glen Mazzara is an American television producer and writer.-Biography:Mazzara was born in Manhattan and grew up in Queens, New York. He attended NYU and earned a masters in English...
. In Canada, Crash can be seen on Super Channel. Starz ordered a second season that premiered in September 2009 before concluding in December 2009. Lead actor Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
died in May, 2010 and the series did not continue.
Conception
Starz began looking to develop original television series after the success of series developed by its rivals Showtime and HBO and advertised funding and creative freedom for original programming projects. Crash is the network's first foray into original scripted drama and is based on the Academy Award winning 2004 film of the same nameCrash (2004 film)
Crash is a 2004 American drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis. The film is about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles, California. A self-described "passion piece" for Haggis, Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked outside a video...
. The writers of the film, Paul Haggis
Paul Haggis
Paul Edward Haggis is a Canadian screenwriter, producer, and director. He spent his early career producing and directing various American and Canadian television network series.-Early life and education:...
and Robert Moresco
Robert Moresco
Robert "Bobby" Moresco is a Hollywood screenwriter. His credits include 10th & Wolf and Crash, the latter of which he won an Academy Award for. He also was a producer of Crash and has acted in three films. He wrote scripts for the television series EZ Streets, Millennium and The Black...
, were interested in developing a series based on the property. Lionsgate and Starz collaborated on developing the series for television.
Television writer and producer Glen Mazzara
Glen Mazzara
Glen Mazzara is an American television producer and writer.-Biography:Mazzara was born in Manhattan and grew up in Queens, New York. He attended NYU and earned a masters in English...
was brought in as an executive producer for the series. Mazzara has worked extensively as a writer and producer on The Shield
The Shield
The Shield is an American television drama series starring Michael Chiklis which premiered on March 12, 2002 on FX in the United States and concluded on November 25, 2008 after seven seasons...
and had developed new projects for the other networks including Life and Standoff
Standoff (TV series)
Standoff is an American drama series that premiered on the Fox network on September 5, 2006. Created by Craig Silverstein, the series focused on an FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit whose members negotiated hostage situations and shared relationships. The show was produced by 20th Century Fox Television...
.
Crew
Glen MazzaraGlen Mazzara
Glen Mazzara is an American television producer and writer.-Biography:Mazzara was born in Manhattan and grew up in Queens, New York. He attended NYU and earned a masters in English...
serves as the series executive producer and showrunner. The film's writers Paul Haggis
Paul Haggis
Paul Edward Haggis is a Canadian screenwriter, producer, and director. He spent his early career producing and directing various American and Canadian television network series.-Early life and education:...
and Robert Moresco
Robert Moresco
Robert "Bobby" Moresco is a Hollywood screenwriter. His credits include 10th & Wolf and Crash, the latter of which he won an Academy Award for. He also was a producer of Crash and has acted in three films. He wrote scripts for the television series EZ Streets, Millennium and The Black...
and producer Bob Yari
Bob Yari
Bob Yari is an Iranian-American film producer.He grew up in New York City, and studied cinematography at the University of California, Santa Barbara...
join Mazzara as executive producers. Thomas Becker, Mark R. Harris, Tom Nunan, and Jorg Westerkamp all worked as producers or production executives on the original film project and are credited as co-executive producers on the series. Movie actor Don Cheadle
Don Cheadle
Donald Frank "Don" Cheadle, Jr. is an American film actor and producer. Cheadle rose to prominence in the late 1990s and the early 2000s for his supporting roles in the Steven Soderbergh-directed films Out of Sight, Traffic, and Ocean's Eleven...
, who was a star and producer of the 2004 film, is also on board as a co-executive producer.
Mazzara hired a writing staff that he felt was used to coping with edgier material. Co-executive producer and writer Frank Renzulli
Frank Renzulli
Frank Renzulli is an American film actor, writer and producer.As an Emmy nominated writer and Golden Globe winner, Renzulli has written teleplays for The Sopranos, mainly in the first two seasons, and another Emmy nominated episode in the third season of the highly acclaimed television show...
had previously worked on HBO drama The Sopranos
The Sopranos
The Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...
. Co-executive producer and writer Ted Mann
Ted Mann
Ted Mann was an American businessman, involved in the film industry, and head of Mann Theatres. He famously changed the name of Grauman's Chinese Theater to Mann's Chinese Theater when he purchased the National General Theatre chain that owned it in 1973...
worked on HBO drama Deadwood
Deadwood (TV series)
Deadwood is an American Western drama television series created, produced and largely written by David Milch. The series aired on the premium cable network HBO from March 21, 2004, to August 27, 2006, spanning three 12-episode seasons. The show is set in the 1870s in Deadwood, South Dakota, before...
. Producer and writer Stacy Rukeyser worked with Mazzara on Standoff. Executive story editor Chris Collins
Chris Collins (writer)
Chris Collins is an American television writer and producer. He has worked on the HBO dramas The Sopranos and The Wire. He was an executive story editor for the Starz drama series Crash. He is a producer and writer for the FX series Sons of Anarchy.-Biography:Collins joined the crew of The Wire in...
came from the recently completed HBO drama The Wire
The WIRE
the WIRE is the student-run College radio station at the University of Oklahoma, broadcasting in a freeform format. The WIRE serves the University of Oklahoma and surrounding communities, and is staffed by student DJs. The WIRE broadcasts at 1710 kHz AM in Norman, Oklahoma...
. Executive story editor Randy Huggins had previously worked with Mazzara on The Shield.
The pilot episode was directed by Sanford Bookstaver
Sanford Bookstaver
Sanford Bookstaver is an American film/television director and television producer.-Early life:In 1995, Bookstaver graduated from the USC School of Cinema-Television...
.
Cast
The series starred Dennis HopperDennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
as record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
Ben Cendars; Ross McCall
Ross McCall
Ross McCall is a Scottish actor notable for his role as T-5. Joseph Liebgott in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.-Career:...
as police officer Kenny Battaglia; Arlene Tur
Arlene Tur
Arlene Tur is an American television and film actress and model from Florida, best known for her role as Bebe Arcel in the 2008 television drama series Crash. The daughter of Cuban political refugees to the United States, Tur has had numerous roles in television in addition to a modeling...
as actress-turned-police officer partner Bebe Arcel; Clare Carey
Clare Carey
Clare Carey is a film and television actress.-Background:Carey was born at a Catholic mission in Zimbabwe where her father and mother were serving...
as Brentwood mother Christine Emory; D. B. Sweeney
D. B. Sweeney
Daniel Bernard "D. B." Sweeney is an American actor.-Early life:Sweeney was born on Long Island, New York and raised in Shoreham by an educator father and a municipal government employee mother. He attended Shoreham-Wading River High School and both Tulane and New York University...
as Peter Emory her real-estate developer husband; Brian Tee
Brian Tee
Brian Tee is an American actor.Tee was born in Okinawa, Japan, of Japanese and Korean descent. At the age of two, he moved to Hacienda Heights, California, and was raised there ever since. He attended Glen A. Wilson High School and was ASB president and a star captain of the football team. While...
as former gang
Gang
A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...
member-turned-EMT Eddie Choi; Jocko Sims
Jocko Sims
Jocko Sims is an American actor best known for his role as Anthony Adams on the Starz network series Crash. His portrayal of Anthony Adams, a chauffeur and aspiring hip-hop artist, led to the iTunes release of Head Up, a song that is performed by Sims in the third episode of the series...
as street-smart driver Anthony Adams; Luis Chavez as undocumented Guatemalan
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
immigrant Cesar Uman; Moran Atias
Moran Atias
-Early life and family:Atias was born in Haifa, Israel, to parents of Moroccan Jewish descent. Atias appeared on the youth TV show "Out of Focus" at age 15, although plans of serving in the Israeli Defense Forces were cut short with a diagnosis of meningitis at age 17...
as Inez; and Nick Tarabay
Nick Tarabay
Nick E. Tarabay is an American actor of Lebanese descent.- Early life :Tarabay was born in Tripoli, Lebanon to a large family. His mother and father still reside in Lebanon as does his younger brother and a large extended family of cousins, uncles and aunts. He moved to New York after high school...
as a detective Axel Finet, Trilby Glover
Trilby Glover
Trilby Glover is an Australian actress known for her roles as Shoshanna in The Starter Wife mini-series opposite Debra Messing and Jessica in the feature film Righteous Kill with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.-Career:...
as his wife Ann Finet and Tom Sizemore
Tom Sizemore
Thomas Edward "Tom" Sizemore, Jr. is an American film and television actor and producer. He is known for his roles in films such as Saving Private Ryan, Strange Days, Pearl Harbor, Heat and Black Hawk Down....
as Detective Adrian Cooper. In season 2 new cast members Eric Roberts
Eric Roberts
Eric Anthony Roberts is an American actor. His career began with King of the Gypsies , earning a Golden Globe nomination for best actor debut. He starred as the protagonist in the 1980 dramatisation of Willa Cather's 1905 short story, Paul's Case...
plays as billionaire Seth Blanchard, Dana Ashbrook
Dana Ashbrook
Dana V. Ashbrook is an American actor, perhaps best known for playing Bobby Briggs on the cult TV series Twin Peaks and its 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.-Personal life:...
as LA crook Jimmy, Linda Park as Blanchard's wife and children's author Maggie, and Jake McLaughlin a former high school pitching ace now working for his diabetic mom (Tess Harper
Tess Harper
Tess Harper is an American actress.-Early life:Born Tessie Jean Washam on August 15, 1950 in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. Her parents' names are Ed and Rosemary Washam. She grew up around lots of quilts and quilt makers. On her own time, she liked to sit on the porch-swing and read...
) in a hobby store. Battaglia is a security guard and then begins working for Blanchard and some of the cast members from season 1, Tur, Carey, Sweeney, Tee, Chavez, Tarabay and Sizemore do not return for season 2. Jenny Mollen
Jenny Mollen
Jenny Mollen is an American actress known for her portrayal of Nina Ash on the television series Angel.-Personal life:Mollen was born in Phoenix, Arizona...
plays Tess, the new girlfriend to Kenny Battaglia.
Reception
Reviews of the series have been mixed: "Crash has a noirish appeal, and ambitions to tell a big story" said Ginia Bellafante of the The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
; Mike Hughes of the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
said "Crash debut is masterful, intense"; and "Politically and socially ambitious" said the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. However, Variety's Brian Lowry wrote; "There's not a whit of originality to it," and "The show possesses less substance than a brisk Santa Ana wind." According to Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
, "None of the stories or characters is remotely interesting", but Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
wrote, "Gritty, jarring, profane, and smartly produced" (Verne Gay).
Release
The first series of Crash was released on DVD in the USA on September 15th, 2009. The second series was released through Amazon.comAmazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
on September 15th, 2010.