FAQ

Crash is based on a screenplay by Canadian screenwriter and director, Paul Haggis, and co-writer Robert Moresco. Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which Haggis was carjacked outside a video store on Wilshire Boulevard in 1991. Crash won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture.

...that plays toward the end of the film as the characters reflect on what has happened: In the Deep by Kathleen "Bird" York. The song can be found on the Crash Original Soundtrack CD. A shorter version can also be found on Bird's CD's The Velvet Hour and Wicked Little High. Check here for more info.

...heard playing in the stolen Lincoln Navigator: Str8upndown by Move.meant.

...that plays during the rescue scene: Flames. However, Flames starts with Farsi (Persian) vocals, heard during the scene where Farhad is searching through the dumpster, and fades into the rescue scene music, which is sung in Welsh. The standalone Welsh song also plays later in the film, and is called Sense of Touch on the CD. Whether Flames should be considered an extended version of "SOT" or "SOT" should be considered an edit of Flames is debatable. If you're looking for just the rescue music, hunt down Sense of Touch!

...in the closing credits: Maybe Tomorrow by Stereophonics plays during the final scene in Chinatown and continues into the credits. The second song is Problems by Move.meant.

...that's used at the beginning of the Crash trailer (also heard at at the Oscars): Adagio For Strings by Samuel Barber. The opening strings from Kronos Quartet's rendition of Adagio leads into the choir-version of the same song performed by the Taliesin Orchestra. Taliesin's version is available on their CD Sacred.

Crash was first shown to a public audience (the standard date criteria used by the IMDb) at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2004. However, Crash was not released in theatres until May, 2005. Academy Award rules stated that in order to be eligible for the 78th Awards, a film must have played for at least seven consecutive days in Los Angeles County, California, between January 1st, 2005, and midnight of December 31st, 2005. Therefore, Crash qualified instead for the Awards held in March, 2006.

From Wikipedia:

Hyperlink cinema is a term coined by author Alissa Quart, who used the term in her review of the film Happy Endings (2005) (2005) for the film journal Film Comment in 2005. Noted film critic Roger Ebert popularized the term when reviewing the film Syriana (2005) (2005). These films are not hypermedia and do not have actual hyperlinks, but are multilinear in a more metaphorical sense.

Quart suggests that director Robert Altman created the structure for the genre and demonstrated its usefulness for combining interlocking stories in his films Nashville (1975) (1975) and Short Cuts (1993) (1993). She also considers the television series 24 (2001) (2001-2010) and Alan Rudolph's film Welcome to L.A. (1976) (1976) as early prototypes. Crash is an example of the genre, as are Le meneur (1992) (1992), (2000), Cité de Dieu (2002) (2002), Nine Lives (2005) (2005), L'envers du sex (1998) (1998), Magnolia (1999) (1999), Timecode (2000) (2000), Amours chiennes (2000) (2000), Bonheur es-tu là? (2001) (2001), 21 grammes (2003) (2003), Cape of Good Hope (2004) (2004), Babel (2006) (2006), Détention secrète (2007) (2007), De l'autre côté (2007) (2007), (2008), Winged Creatures (2008)Fragments (2008), (2013), Les mots (2012) (2012), and several drama TV shows, notably Perdus (2004) (2004-2010), also Heroes (2006) (2006-2010), with short-lived ones like Flashforward (2009) (2009-2008), The Event (2010) (2010-2011), and Touch (2012) (2012-2013).

Heath Ledger was originally slated to play the role that went to Ryan Phillippe (Officer Tom Hansen). He dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.

Paul Haggis' Oscar winning feature got released as a Director's Cut version that features only some minor changes. Some story sequences are slightly longer but no real new content has been added. The DC runs approximately two and a half minutes longer than the theatrical version.