On an ordinary night an unusually diverse group -- by Pittsburgh as well as bar patron standards -- hunkers down around a table at The Claddagh Irish Pub after having just seen the movie "Crash" at the SouthSide Works Cinema next door.

	Lorey Sebastian Michael Pena plays a locksmith caught in the vortex in "Crash." Click photo for larger image. On the Net "Crash" Web site

The foursome -- a set of women friends, one black, one white, and a set of male friends, one black, one white -- is silent for a time. Everyone is still catching his or her breath, still mentally digesting what he or she has just witnessed.

"Excellent!" says Millicent Smith, 52, of Downtown.

Initially, "Wow!" is all a still-stunned Todd Lesesne can say in a sort of slow whisper.

"Crash," set in the multicultural landscape that is modern-day Los Angeles, is the story of diverse people "moving at the speed of life" and colliding with each other in painful and profound ways during one 36-hour period. It's a raw look at race, class and ethnicity, the snide and the prejudiced, and the fear and loathing people often have for anyone considered other.

"The characters are portrayed as righteous people doing the right thing and then all of a sudden the script flips," says Lesesne, 28, of Mount Oliver. "You can't judge a book by its cover. You really can't look at someone and size them up."

"Crash" is designed to "make you see your own bias," says Shawn Fuga, 27, of Ingram. He and Lesesne have been friends for close to 15 years.

The film, directed and co-written by Paul Haggis, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "Million Dollar Baby," is both thought-provoking and mind-numbing, discomforting and uplifting. "Crash" is an enlightening journey into self for those brave enough to gaze into the mirror reflecting the contradictions, hypocrisies and beautiful and ugly truths of modern life.

Lorey Sebastian Larenz Tate, left, and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges portray carjackers in "Crash." Click photo for larger image.

In one scene, when Jean (Sandra Bullock) sees two young black men, Anthony and Peter (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and Larenz Tate), walking toward her and her husband, Rick (Brendan Fraser), she pulls her wrap a little tighter around her shoulders, her purse a little closer to her body and slips her arm through her husband's. One of the young black men, who seconds earlier had been complaining to his friend about poor service they'd just received in a restaurant, sees her.

Anthony: "Wait, wait, wait! See what that woman just did?"

Peter: "... Maybe she's cold."

Anthony: "She got cold as soon as she saw us. ... Man, look around you. You couldn't find a whiter, safer or better-lit part of this city right now, but yet this white woman sees two black guys who look like UCLA students strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear? I mean look at us, dog, are we dressed like gang-bangers? Huh? No! Do we look threatening? No! In fact, if anybody should be scared around here it's us. We're the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the trigger-happy L.A.P.D. So you tell me, why aren't we scared?"

Peter: " 'Cause we got guns?"

Anthony: "You could be right."

The two then pull out their weapons and carjack Jean and Rick's SUV.

"We have these immediate judgments about people and then react to them according to that immediate judgment," says Smith, a legal secretary.

The need for tolerance is a theme that struck Nicole Druga, a paralegal from Dormont.

"Nobody knows what somebody else is going through," says Druga, 29, who has been friends with Smith for three years. "Always be nice to everybody because you don't know."

Besides that being the right thing to do, Druga says, it's practical. Several characters in the film learn the importance of the golden rule and that everyone isn't the enemy or at least not all the time.

Myriad characters -- from the black carjackers to the Persian shop owner to the white district attorney and his pampered, angry wife, to the Mexican locksmith, to the white rookie cop and his hardened, racist partner to the Buppy TV director and his pampered, snobby wife to the Korean businessman and his auto accident-prone wife, to the black police detective and his Puerto Rican/Salvadoran female partner/lover -- there's a point of entry for every viewer, a way to walk in someone else's shoes or perhaps enjoy the discomforting familiarity of their own.

No racial or ethnic group escapes unscathed, un-slurred or un-mocked. Epithets are hurled in all directions -- early, freely and often. Stereotypes abound, but take surprising twists, countering expectation. Few characters are all bad or all good. "Crash" drills home that theme again and again, showing the baser natures of virtuous types and the better natures of villainous ones and how everyone falls prey to the preconceived ideas they have about others.

"It had a pretty much in-your-face approach," says Arlene Longstreth, 60, of Penn Hills, who saw the film separate from the foursome on another night with her friend of 27 years, Ruth Boykin. "I still think it was more about fear than racism, though racism was part of it."

"It just showed how ludicrous racism is," said Boykin, 51, a reading specialist and a Duquesne University instructor from Wilkinsburg. "Racism is so limiting. People who have limited experiences are more susceptible to [believing] stereotypes."

A quiet form of racism

Lesesne, a court clerk, says although Pittsburgh is much smaller and much less diverse than Los Angeles, it has its tolerance problems, too.

"Prejudice and racism still do exist in many different forms. It's not just race anymore. It's class. It's gender," he says. "We want to work in a diverse place, but go back to our predominantly black or white neighborhoods at night."

Lesesne and Smith, Pittsburgh-area natives, say most of their friends are white in large part because they both moved from predominantly black to predominantly white or more mixed race communities during their formative years and just made friends with the people who were around them.

"I'm an odd black person," says Boykin, who grew up in Johnstown and always interacted with people of other races.

She grew up in a working class family and her father worked in the steel mill.

"I had white friends stay overnight. My brother played hockey," she said. "I ate pierogies, and it was normal to interact with other races."

However, that's something that's still considered unusual in Pittsburgh, they all say.

Whenever they're out with other-race friends, they elicit quizzical looks from others who seem to wonder what they're doing together. Not unlike some looks others in the restaurant give the foursome this night and Boykin and Longstreth three nights later.

They all agree the movie is realistic, but exaggerated in some respects.

"There are people like me who would never say half the things that come out of those [characters'] mouths," says Fuga, a trade specialist with Mellon Financial. "How you're brought up definitely affects how you think."

Druga agreed, saying she doesn't socialize with people who use racial or ethnic slurs like the characters in the movie and she wasn't raised to behave in that manner.

But Lesesne quickly points out that everyone isn't like them.

"Pittsburghers learn how to keep it quiet," he says. "They may not say it, but they certainly think it."

Smith, Boykin and Lesesne, who all are black, said the movie reminded them of some of the racism they've encountered in their lives.

Lesesne remembers being out with friends and co-workers around Christmas one year and how they were in their cars and heading to a private club until his friend learned blacks weren't permitted there.

"I thought she was joking at first," Lesesne said. "I stopped and took a breath. I could see how much it pained her to tell me this."

The group ended up not going to the club, but what was just as alarming to Lesesne was that he knew members of that club. He looked at them differently after the incident.

Need for discussions

Longstreth, a retired Wilkinsburg elementary school teacher who now is a docent at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a volunteer at the Western Pennsylvania Wildlife Center, believes "Crash" is worth seeing.

"This is a drama that deals with something I don't think people are real comfortable facing," she says.

Boykin and Longstreth believe that the people who probably need to see a movie like "Crash" won't.

"We're all human. We do all have prejudices," Boykin says. "The Average Joe wants to talk about it, but there's no place."

Boykin and Longstreth think that "Crash" could serve as a good jumping off point for such discussions, and they think church groups, civic groups, people of influence and others committed to combating prejudice and fostering understanding should see the movie, then talk about it afterward.

Smith could see the movie being used as part of a college course. Fuga could see it being used in some diversity training program.

"The [movie's] intent is important," Boykin says.

And it's theme is clear.

"We've got to stop looking at people as separate from ourselves, whether they're the CEO or the janitor and we have to treat people equally," Smith says. "The decisions I make touch you and you and you and you. If we all realize that and do our best, that elevates the world."