An actor, writer, producer and director, Bobby Moresco is best known for co-writing and producing 2005 Best Picture winner Crash and winning a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for the film. Moresco will be at the grand opening of Baker University Center tomorrow for a Q&A with students. The Post's Natalie Cammarata spoke with Moresco about his recent fame and his plans for tomorrow.
The Post: I see your discussion title for tomorrow's Q&A is The Lessons of Crash.
Moresco: Paul (Haggis, director and co-writer of Crash) and I didn't write Crash to teach anybody any lessons ' we wrote Crash to explore the issues that we all deal with in the areas of our lives. Certainly the world deals with the issue of racism on a daily basis. Paul and I provided, hopefully, questions as opposed to lessons. I don't know what the lessons are. One person will take away one idea from Crash, another will take another idea away. That's the process; that's what we hope to have happen, and then discussion happens, and from that hopefully something better comes from it.
The Post: What inspired you to write Crash?
Moresco: I wasn't the first one to get the inspiration. Haggis had a real-life incident where he was car-jacked about 10, 12 years ago. It stuck with him and he started playing around with some ideas, he drew up pages with characters G? I thought it was terrific, I thought it was a real reason for writing a movie. From there, he began to hone in on a specific idea, which was how strangers affect other strangers in a city like Los Angeles, and I began to hone in on a different idea, which was fear. Fear drives people to places they may not think they're capable of. Those two ideas melded into the movie Crash.
The Post: You won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Crash, along with director Paul Haggis. Can you explain that feeling?
Moresco: (Laughs) It's so funny ' how do you explain a feeling like that? The best word I can say is complex. On the one hand, I am tremendously grateful that people are validating the work we have done over the years. On the other hand, you try to push away anything other than gratefulness because you know that in the long run it's just a game you're playing. No one movie is that much better than the other well-made movies that year and for you to get the prize and not them, it's kind of silly. So you try to keep that perspective in your mind. You can't look at Good Night, and Good Luck. andBrokeback Mountain and some of the other movies that year and say that they couldn't have got it just as easily. You just can't do that. Once you start thinking that you're a little bit better than other artists at different things then you're in trouble. So you try to balance it while you're really excited and happy that you got it. It's complicated.
The Post: Million Dollar Baby won four Oscars and Crash won three. Did you ever think that you would be working on such successful productions?
Moresco: No. Absolutely not. I always thought I'd be going back to bartending.
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Natalie Cammarata
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Actor, writer, producer and director Bobby Moresco, who co-wrote and produced the 2005 Academy Award Best Picture winner [I]Crash[/I] will be at the grand opening of Baker University Center tomorrow for a Q&A with students.
