Crash

Graham: It's the sense of touch. Any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people. People bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.

Anthony: Look around! You couldn't find a whiter, safer or better lit part of this city. But 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! Are we dressed like gang-bangers? Huh? No. Do we look threatening? No. 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 triggerhappy LAPD. So you tell me, why aren't we scared?
Peter: Because we have guns?
Anthony: You could be right.

Daniel: She had these little stubby wings, like she could've glued them on, you know, like I'm gonna believe she's a fairy. So she said, "I'll prove it." So she reaches into her backpack and she pulls out this invisible cloak and she ties it around my neck. And she tells me that it's impenetrable. You know what impenetrable means? It means nothing can go through it. No bullets, nothing. She told me that if I wore it, nothing would hurt me. So I did. And my whole life, I never got shot, stabbed, nothing. I mean, how weird is that?

Anthony: Listen to it man. Nigga this, Nigga that. You think white go around callin' each other "honky" all day, man? "Hey, honky, how's business?" "Going great, cracker, we're diversifying!"

My Sister's Keeper

Anna: [narrating] When I was a kid, my mother told me that I was a little piece of blue sky that came into this would because she and Dad loved me so much. It was only later that I realized that it wasn't exactly true. Most babies are coincidences.I mean, up in space you got all these souls flying around looking for bodies to live in. Then, down here on Earth, two people have sex or whatever, and bam, coincidence. Sure, you hear all these stories about how everyone plans these perfect families, but the truth is that most babies are products of some drunken evenings and lack of birth control. They're accidents. Only people who have trouble making babies actually plan for them. I, on the other hand, am not a coincidence. I was engineered. Born for a particular reason. A scientist hooked up my mother's egg and my father's sperm to make a specific combination of genes. He did it to save my sister's life. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. I'd probably still be up in heaven or wherever waiting to be attached to a body down here on Earth. But coincidence or not, I'm here.

Anna: [narrating] That's my sister, Kate. She's dying.

Anna: [narrating] That's Mom and Aunt Kelly making dinner. Since my sister got sick, things have changed. Aunt Kelly only works part-time and Mom quit her job as a lawyer. Her life now revolves around keeping Kate alive. Cooking and cleaning. Everything steamed, organic and germ-free. I guess you could say that we're a little dysfunctional. But everyone loves each other, and we do the best we can.

Anna: Hey, baby, what's your sign?
Kate: Cancer.
Anna: You're a Cancer?
Kate: No, I'm a Leo, but I have cancer.

Brian: [narrating] Having a child who is sick is a full-time occupation. Sure, we still enjoy the usual day-to-day happinesses of family life. Big house, great kids, beautiful wife. But beneath the exterior, there are cracks, resentments, alliances that threaten the very foundation of our lives, as at any moment our whole world could come tumbling down.

Campbell: [narrating] When Anna Fitzgerald first stepped into my office, I thought she was selling Girl Scout cookies.

Anna: I want to sue my parents for the rights to my own body. My sister has leukemia. They're trying to force me to give her my body parts.

Anna: I wouldn't even be alive if Kate wasn't sick. I'm a designer baby. I was made in a dish to be spare parts for Kate.

Campbell: [narrating] The kid wasn't lying. The doctors started taking things from her the moment she was born. Cord blood as an infant, white-cell transfusions, bone marrow, lymphocytes, injections to add more stem cells, and then they took them too. But it was never enough.

Sara: [narrating] It's hard to imagine now but there was a time before all this happened when the kids were just kids, and everyone was happy.

Jesse: [narrating] Nobody's saying anything but seeing everybody together lets me know that this is serious. Our family is kind of disconnected. Dad's relatives are wealthy and distant, and Mom's side drives her crazy. So besides Aunt Kelly, we never really get to see anybody except on holidays or disasters.

Jesse: [narrating] That was it. Grown in a dish, they would have an in vitro child. A perfect chromosomal match who would be Kate's genetic savior.

Anna: Okay. Forget about the fact that the operation is dangerous, or that it would hurt, or that I might not want to have something cut out of me. But if I only have one kidney, then what happens to me? What if I need it? And am I really never allowed to play sports or be a cheerleader or get pregnant?
Aunt Kelly: Can't drink.
Anna: What if I just want to live a long time?
Brian: Sweetheart, you're going to live a long time.
Anna: Yeah? Then tell me this: What if the transplant doesn't work? What then?
Sara: She's your sister.
Anna: I know that! But I'm not like you, Mom! I see the other kids, I see what they do. They go to parties, and they get to go to the beach.
Brian: i don't understand why you didn't say something earlier.
Anna: When? When should I talk to you about it? You're never home. You leave me here with her.
Sara: Excuse me? You have never had to do anything you don't want to do, and you know that!
Anna: I always wound up doing everything, didn't I?
Sara: You spoiled shit!
Jesse: Stop yelling!
Brian: Everyone quit. We said she gets the table, she gets the table. Go ahead.
Anna: Remember how the doctor said if I did the operation I would have to be careful for the rest of my life? But I don't want to be careful. Who wants to live like that?
Sara: Anna, listen...
Anna: I'm important too, Mom. I'm important too.

Brian: [narrating] I looked at my daughter and wondered how it got from there to here. From the moment we decided to genetically conceive I suppose this was the eventual outcome. It was our fault. We went against nature and this was our comeuppance. But have we really pushed her too hard? Have we forced her into helping her sister? All those little encouragements and rewards, were they real? Or did we just want what we wanted? She was so little when all this started. When did she start wanting to make her own decisions? I guess the answer is now.

Kate: [narrating] This is it. I know I'm going to die now. I suppose I've always known that. I just never knew when. And I'm okay with it. Really. I don't mind my disease killing me. But it's killing my family too. While everyone was so worried about my blood counts, they barely even noticed that Jesse was dyslexic.

Kate: [narrating] I'm sorry, Jesse. I'm sorry I took all the attention when you were the one who needed it the most. Dad, I know I took your first love from you. I only hope that one day, you get her back. Mom, you gave up everything for me. Your work, your marriage, you entire life just to fight my battles for me every single day. I'm sorry you couldn't win. And to my baby sis, who was always so very little, I'm sorry I let them hurt you. I'm sorry I didn't take care of you. It was supposed to be the other way around.

Campbell: [narrating] Judge De Salvo had a very public nervous breakdown after her twelve-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. She had taken a six-month leave of absence to deal with her grief, and this was the first time I'd seen her back in court.

Judge De Salvo: There's no shame in dying.

Sara: [narrating] The radiation, which ultimately put Kate into remission, worked its magic by wearing her down. Taylor Ambrose, a drug of an entirely different sort, worked his magic by building her up.

Kate: Do you think about dying?
Taylor: Not really.
Kate: You're not scared?
Taylor: No. If I didn't have cancer, I never would have found you. So yeah, I'm glad I'm sick.
Kate: Me too.
Taylor: You okay?
Kate: Yeah.

Jesse: [narrating] When I got home, I wondered how much trouble I'd be in.

Aunt Kelly: I know it's important for you to feel like you never gave up. I mean, who are you if you're not this crazy bitch mother fighting for her kid's life, right? But there's, like, a whole world out there. You don't see any of it, nothing. Sooner or later, you... You gotta stop. You gotta let go.

Anna: [narrating] That doctors talked for what seemed like forever. The said that Kate was a miracle. She should have never made it past 5 years old. They talked about the psychological benefits of donation, and how losing my kidney would affect the quality of my life. They all said that nothing was their fault, and it was a very complex problem. When put to the test, most everyone thought I should give Kate my kidney. But they also said that I was too young to understand the situation fully. And none of them could say at what age I would be able to understand. All in all, they were like me, pretty confused.

Sara: If we were looking at it only from Anna's situation, sure, it is brutal. I mean, who wants to be stuck and poked and prodded by needles? And you can look at me and you can say how awful I am for doing that to my child. You know what? It is awful. But it's not as awful as putting your child in the ground.
Campbell: So, you stand up for your family.
Sara: It's my job.
Campbell: And you stand up for Kate.
Sara: I do.
Campbell: But the real question is: Who stands up for Anna?

Jesse: Kate wants to die! She's making Anna do all this because she knows she's not going to survive another operation.
Sara: That's a lie, Jesse.
Jesse: No, it's not. Kate's dying and everyone knows it. You just love her so much that you don't want to let her go. But it's time, Mom. Kate's ready.

Anna: [narrating] Right then, I understood the real reason why Campbell Alexander took my case. It wasn't for the notoriety. He was an epileptic. He knew what it was like to not have control over his own body.

Kate: My whole life is a pain. This is the end, sissy. It's just gets scarier from here on out. Mom's going to chop me and cut me, till I'm a vegetable. Two cells in a Petri dish that she shocks with an electric cord.
Anna: You'll be all right.
Kate: It's over. Time to go. I need you to do me a favor, sissy.
Anna: What favor?
Kate: You can release me.

Pervis: Subconscious mind is a really powerful thing.

Anna: [narrating] My sister died that night. I wish I could say that she made some miracle recovery but she didn't. She just stopped breathing. And I wish I could tell you there was some good that came out of it, that through Kate's death we could all go on living. Or even that her life had some special meaning, like they named a park after her, or a street, or that the Supreme Court changed a law because of her. But none of that happened. She's just gone, a little piece of blue sky now. And we all have to move on. A few days later, I got a surprise visitor.

Anna: [narrating] Life is different now. A lot has changed in the last few years. Mom went back to work, rebuilt her practice, and is now making a very nice living. Dad took an early pension, and now spends time counseling troubled inner-city youths. And Jesse's doing best of all. After Kate died, he turned his life around. He went back to school, and got himself a scholarship to a fancy art academy in New York. But even though we've grown up and moved away, every year, on Kate's birthday, we all take a vacation together, and it's always to the same place. I'll never understand why Kate had to die and we all got to live. There's no reason for it, I guess. Death's just death, nobody understands it. Once upon a time, I thought I was put on Earth to save my sister. And in the end, I couldn't do it. I realize now that wasn't the point. The point was, I had a sister. She was fantastic. One day, I'm sure I'll see her again. But until then, our relationship continues.