'Crash' lawsuits pile up

Just days before an Academy Awards ceremony in which it could win a best-picture Oscar, "Crash" is triggering a messy pileup at the courthouse.

The film's makers have been sniping for weeks over who deserves the most credit for getting the critically acclaimed movie off the ground. Late Wednesday, its first show business supporter, independent film financier Bob Yari, sued the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America, claiming they unlawfully denied him a producer credit that would allow him to mount the stage to accept the Oscar should "Crash" win.

In a separate but not unrelated lawsuit, one of the film's Academy Award-nominated producers, Cathy Schulman, sued Yari, arguing that her former business partner failed to pay more than $2 million in "Crash" fees and bonuses.

If that wasn't enough, academy officials spent hours investigating whether "In the Deep," an Oscar-nominated song from "Crash," would be ruled ineligible because it first appeared in a 2004 movie called "The Civilization of Maxwell Bright." They decided to let the nomination stand.

Because all of the events occurred after the balloting for Sunday's Oscars closed Tuesday, the film's chances will not be affected by the developments. But they do show how contentious "Crash's" path to the screen — and Oscar prominence — has been.

The gritty film about racism in Los Angeles grossed more than $55 million. It earned six Academy Award nominations, including best picture, a category in which it is considered to have a chance of upsetting the favorite, the cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain."

Although Yari was the first person to agree to make "Crash" and helped arrange its financing, the PGA and the academy deemed him ineligible to be nominated for the best picture trophy.

In Yari's complaint, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on the same day he bought trade newspaper advertisements arguing the same points, his lawyers say that "for reasons he has never been told, by persons who have never been identified, first the Producers Guild of America and then the academy have denied Mr. Yari the ultimate professional acclaim, and the accompanying creative and economic benefits, to which his labors entitle him."

Pursuing an unusual legal theory, Yari essentially is arguing that the two organizations denied him due process. But Yari is not seeking a court order to block the Kodak Theatre ceremony.

"All we want to do is to get the rules changed," said Yari lawyer Patricia Glaser. "It's just fundamentally fair, and we want it fixed."

The academy declined to comment on the lawsuit. PGA Executive Director Vance Van Petten said in a statement: "We have every confidence in the fairness of our procedures and look forward to the court upholding our process."

When "Crash" was released in May, six people were listed in its titles as having produced the film. In an effort to curtail the proliferation of producing credits, which are often handed out on thin justification, the academy joined forces this year with the producers guild to scrutinize credits on the best-picture candidates.

The two groups determined that "Crash" co-writer and director Paul Haggis and Schulman would be the only people eligible for the top honor.

Yari and the other three purged producers have complained that the eligibility determination was inequitablebecause it discounted producing chores that are unique to independent filmmaking.

Yari also was particularly angered that the PGA and the academy made their decisions secretly, without taking live testimony from the film's originally credited producers or subsequently explaining how they reached their decisions. As he argues in his lawsuit, that system dooms any appeal.