‘Crash’ wins best picture Oscar

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, March 5, 2006

LOS ANGELES – The ensemble drama “Crash” pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Academy Awards history, winning best picture Sunday over the cowboy romance “Brokeback Mountain,” which had been the front-runner.

“Crash” rode a late surge of praise that lifted it past “Brokeback Mountain,” a film that had won most other key Hollywood honors.

“Crash,” featuring a huge cast in crisscrossing story lines, is a portrait of simmering racial and cultural tension among blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians and Iranians over a chaotic 36-hour period in Los Angeles. Its budget was only $6.5 million.

“Crash” includes supporting-actor nominee Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Thandie Newton, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Jennifer Esposito and Ryan Phillippe.

Lead-acting prizes went to Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in “Capote” and Reese Witherspoon as country singer June Carter in “Walk the Line,” while corporate thrillers earned supporting-performer Oscars for George Clooney in “Syriana” and Rachel Weisz in “The Constant Gardener.”

“Brokeback Mountain” filmmaker Ang Lee won the best-director prize for the tale of two old sheepherding pals who carry on a love affair they conceal from their families for years.

Lee, whose martial-arts epic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” won the foreign-language Oscar five years ago, became the first Asian filmmaker to win Hollywood’s main filmmaking honor.

“I wish I knew how to quit you,” Lee told the audience crowd, reiterating the film’s most-quoted line.

Witherspoon won a close race over Felicity Huffman in a gender-bending performance as a transsexual in “Transamerica.”

“Oh, my goodness I never thought I’d be here in my whole life growing up in Tennessee,” said Witherspoon, who like co-star Joaquin Phoenix as Carter’s soul mate, country legend Johnny Cash, handled her own singing in “Walk the Line.”

Hoffman’s performance nimbly straddles the magnetic qualities of raconteur Truman Capote and the effete, off-putting egoism of the gay author.

“Wow, I’m in a category with some great, great, great actors, fantastic actors, and I’m overwhelmed. Really overwhelmed,” said Hoffman, who asked the Oscar audience to congratulate his mother for bringing up four children alone.

“We’re at the party, Mom,” Hoffman said. “Be proud Mom, because I’m proud of you.”

Clooney’s win capped a remarkable year, during which he made Oscar history by becoming the first person nominated for acting in one movie and directing another.

Along with performing in “Syriana,” Clooney directed the Edward R. Murrow tale “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which earned him directing and writing nominations and was among the best-picture contenders.

In “Syriana,” Clooney effaced his glamour-boy looks behind the bearded, heavyset facade of a CIA patriot who grows jaded over U.S. oil policy in the Middle East.

“All right, so I’m not winning director,” the first-time winner joked, adding that an Oscar always would be synonymous with his name from then on, including in his obituary. “Oscar winner George Clooney, sexiest man alive 1997, ‘Batman,’ died today in a freak accident.”

In “The Constant Gardener,” adapted from John le Carre’s novel, Weisz played a humanitarian-aid worker whose fearless efforts against questionable pharmaceutical practices makes her a target for government and corporate interests in Africa.

Weisz thanked co-star Ralph Fiennes and director Fernando Meirelles, “and of course, John le Carre, who wrote this unflinching, angry story. And he really paid tribute to the people who are willing to risk their own lives to fight injustice. They’re greater men and women than I.”

“Brokeback Mountain,” which led contenders with eight nominations, lost in three acting categories (Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams and Jake Gyllenhaal) but picked up the Oscar for adapted screenplay by Larry McMurtry (“Lonesome Dove”) and Diana Ossana and for Gustavo Santaolalla’s musical score as well as for Lee as director.

Oscar host Jon Stewart used best-picture nominee “Capote” to set up a “Brokeback Mountain” wisecrack, saying the film “showed America not all gay people are virile cowboys. Some are actually effete New York intellectuals. It’s true.”

The Oscar for original screenplay went to the ensemble drama “Crash,” written by the film’s director, Paul Haggis, and Bobby Moresco.

The raucous hip-hop tune “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from “Hustle &Flow,” whose expletive-laden lyrics had to be toned down for performance at the Oscars, won the prize for best song. The song was written by the rap group Three 6 Mafia, aka Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard.

Featuring dancers dressed as hookers and pimps gyrating on stage, the song’s performance stood in sharp contrast to the other nominated tunes and the general stateliness of the Oscars.

“You know what? I think it just got a little easier out here for a pimp,” Stewart joked.