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Today's LAT looks at two lawsuits swirling around Best Picture nominee Crash, at least one of which, sadly, forces us to consider the unspeakable possibility that Paul Haggis' (Oscar post-party t-shirt: "Do you have any racist in you? No? Would you like some?") heavy-handed race-relations fable might actually win the award. In the first suit, producer Bob Yari is suing the Producers Guild and Academy over the secretive process ("Who doesn't like Yari today? Show of hands...OK, he's not the producer.") that denied him a producer credit on the film; in the second, former partner Cathy Schulman puts the legal screws to Yari over their soured business relationship. Reports the LAT:

In her unusually personal 10-count complaint filed in state Superior Court on Tuesday, "Crash" producer Schulman and producing colleague Tom Nunan said Yari failed to reimburse some Hollywood vendors and screenwriters, thus damaging her professional reputation.


Schulman also claims Yari torpedoed the production and Sundance Film Festival premiere of the upcoming Edward Norton movie "The Illusionist" and "tried to buy himself awards recognition" for "Crash."

"This action arises from the dark underbelly of Hollywood," Schulman and Nunan's complaint begins, "where an outsider, armed with enormous wealth from a career in another field, can insinuate himself into position to take recognition and money away from the people actually responsible for the creation and execution of profitable and award-winning entertainment content."

It certainly seems that the two producers need the courts to settle their feud, but Schulman might be getting carried away by arguing that only people who made their money "the old-fashioned Hollywood way" should be allowed to be weasels. There's plenty of room in the entertainment industry for all kinds of rich people to screw each other.