Original screenplay

In a night that turned out better than expected for "Crash," the often bitter ensemble drama about racism set in a tense Los Angeles, the film's writers took the best original screenplay award.

Paul Haggis, a former TV writer who adapted the screenplay to Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby," quoted German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who said that art was not a mirror to hold up to society but a hammer with which to shape it.

And the Canadian-born Haggis saluted "people who take big risks in their daily lives when there aren't cameras rolling."

Though the film and its script were controversial, and several major papers, including the Los Angeles Times, ran disapproving reviews, the screenplay's victory Sunday night was no surprise. Even before the award, Haggis' career had caught fire, and he's working on a project with Steven Spielberg and recently adapted "Flags of Our Fathers," a film about Iwo Jima, for Eastwood.