While it's a pretty typical Altman film for the most part (ensemble cast, interconnected multi-thread story, and characters that walk that fine line between neurotic and straight-up crazy), it's also possibly one of the best nuggets of pop-culture trivia I've ever seen. I mean, the whole thing plays out like a time capsule of bad taste in the early nineties, from the oversized t-shirts and short shorts (on dudes) to the pastel-colored art-deco fish tanks and white-trash kids watching marathons of Captain Planet (by the way, if anybody ever asks me why people of my generation are so fucked-up, I'll just show them this and remind them that this what I had to grew up with). Plus, the cast is like an off-beat character-actor cluster-fuck the likes of which has still never been seen. Altman should have gotten the Oscar just for having the insight to cast Lily Tomlin as Lili Taylor's mom. . . and Tom Waits as her dad. . . and Robert Downey Jr. as her boyfriend. Though the whole time I was watching this movie I just couldn't stop thinking to myself: my god, Crash is a terrible fucking movie.
Of course, I know that Crash is a terrible fucking movie, but given that it won three Oscars (including best picture) and Short Cuts barely eked out the obligatory directing nod for Altman (one of the seven he didn't win), and that these are both ensemble films with byzantine narratives set in LA, I think it's worth doing a side-by side comparison three areas in which the films seem similar. . .
1) Sexually Inappropriate Cop Character
Matt Dillon has always had a knack for playing a slimeball that doesn't know how to keep his dick in his pants. His best performance as this type is probably in There's Something About Mary (where he ironically plays a private dick), though Crash fails to exploit this side of him by trying to make his character halfway sympathetic. He still likes to grope black chicks in front of their husbands, but he'll also pull them out of flaming wreckage to save their life if the situation calls for it. Tim Robbins aggressively adulterous motorcycle cop in Short Cuts, on the other hand, is sleazy to the core. As his political writings will attest, few people can play a self-absorbed douchebag as well as Tim Robbins. His character has no shame. He cheats on his wife and then unsuccessfully tries to cheat on the woman he's cheating on his wife with. He'll pull over a women in clown makeup on her way to a child's birthday party just to hit on her. The only redemption he gets in the end is when he decides that he actually wants to fuck his wife as well.
2) Popular Musicians cum Actors
This category is perhaps a bit unevenly stacked. I mean, it's a bit like asking the kids from Little Giants to play '84 Chicago Bears. Ludacis's street-smart loudmouth character in Crash gets so far trumped by Short Cuts powerhouse trifecta of Tom Waits, Lyle Lovett, and Huey Lewis that I could probably just declare it a TKO without much argument. Granted, Tom Waits basically just plays up his established musical persona the same way Luda does in Crash, but Huey Lewis peeing in a river on a camping trip and realizing that there's a dead body in the water is pretty much the definition of perfect dark comedy.
3) Violent Catharsis
While the car accident at the titular accident at the end of Crash is certainly well shot and acted, it still, like the rest of the film, just feels sort of manipulative. For all the dramatic weight that Paul Haggis thrusts onto Matt Dillon's character in this scene, you'd swear he was the second coming of Christ (if Jesus had a thing for ethnic girls). Paul Haggis wouldn't know understatement if it hit him in his bald, scientologist head. Altman, on the other hand, knows how to make a point without being completely patronizing to his audience, and knows not to linger on any one scene long enough that it feels like melodrama. Sort of like in Do The Right Thing when things get too tense and Samuel L. Jackson's radio DJ character pipes in, "I'm tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane" (or something to that effect), the earthquake scene at the end of Short Cuts serves as a cold reminder to all the self-involved nut-jobs in the movie that they're not alone in the world. Never mind the fact the this film predicted the Northridge quake by at least a year.
I'm only disappointed that in 2006, when Crash was sweeping the Oscars and the Academy was giving him the "give it up old man" lifetime achievement award, Altman didn't get up on stage, bitch-slap Paul Haggis, and take his awards.
