July 12, 2008 4:10 AM

Here's how to make people pay attention to your ho-hum cable channel:

Give them quality programming.

FX did it with The Shield. TNT did it with The Closer.

Now Starz has a series inspired by 2005's Oscar-winning best picture Crash.

Yeah, like that's a weekly show.

Yes, Starz is ad-free premium cable, so yes, the R-rated movie's TV spinoff has its (liberal) share of violence, sex and drugs. (They promise!) But the Oct. 17 arrival also looks to offer a keen dose of insight in exploring precisely how far a cross-section of citizens will go in taking their shot at the American dream.

In other words, Crash the series -- thus far unseen by critics, except for a quick clip reel here that amounted to a movie trailer -- isn't a continuation or a recapitulation of director Paul Haggis' highly charged feature, about the happenstance intersection of disparate Los Angelenos venting their frustrations with their own lives through acting out against others largely based on simplistic cultural assumptions.

"I didn't feel the need to go back to that movie," said Crash TV showrunner Mazzara, who movingly talked about his TV take not in specifics but in emotional terms: "It really comes out of the emotion that I felt when I watched that film. . . . I'm writing it, I would say, from the inside out."

Moresco said, "Glen has his own big idea that he's exploring about the city of Los Angeles and the people who arrive there from elsewhere." His tapestry includes an impulsive white male cop and his sexy female Hispanic partner, a frustrated well-to-do white mom and her going-bust developer husband, a Korean immigrant paramedic leaving behind gang life, and even a Guatemalan kid making his way north toward the promise of America.

Hopper plays a once-successful record producer of wild unpredictability, aging and desperate to prove he remains contemporary. "He seems to have a tremendous empathy and understanding of things," the actor said, "and at the same time, he has no limitations how he addresses other people or other races or other genders. He's totally a loose cannon." "He doesn't have an edit button," added show producer (and movie actor-producer) Don Cheadle. Mazzara calls him "close to death. He's worried that he's going to be irrelevant, and he hires a young African-American driver, and he sees this kid as his redemption." Of course Hopper also declared at press tour that his very first scene in the show puts him in the back of the limo having a spirited conversation with his penis. "It's as free as television will ever be," Hopper said.

Who knows? Maybe a guy talking to his own private parts gets viewers to watch. And then they discover more depth than they bargained for. It's hard to imagine otherwise, considering the show's pedigree -- and the ambition to extend not the film's plot lines but its character-based examination of racial and social fault lines that trip us up no matter how smartly we try to avoid them. As Cheadle put it, "There were a lot of hanging chads, so to speak, from the film" that were worth following through on.

"One of my favorite moments in the film," said Mazzara (who was busy at the time on The Shield and had nothing to do with the feature), "is where Sandra Bullock is upset that the dishwasher is full. It's an incredibly simple, mundane and yet impactful moment." Of course it's not about the dishwasher at all. He wanted to evoke "those very realistic and yet soul-searching moments, sort of heartbreaking in a sense. I wanted to tell that."

People in real life seldom say exactly what they mean or approach distressing issues directly. Life is random, and roundabout, which Crash the movie captured in a gut-check way that left it haunting many viewers for days afterward.

"Things aren't black and white, things aren't that clearly delineated, where you can say this person is this and this person is that," said Cheadle (who may or may not appear in the series at some point). Most people contain "a duality," as he termed it, that "can surprise you and show you that they also have another side to them."

That's pretty much what Starz is trying to do, too. Its filmcentric parent company has been a leader in TV digital movie channels (like Encore and its genre spinoffs for westerns, mysteries and more), plus digital cable video-on-demand, internet-delivered content (Vongo) and other services where you can come and find a movie of a type you want, when you want. But that's a random business of its own, luring a viewer for a title or two here and there. Starz CEO Bill Myers told critics, "We've always wanted to try to get some real compelling content that would bring that customer back week in and week out."

Crash takes its stab for 13 episodes starting in October.

[In Starz photo: Crash costars Brian Tee, Arlene Tur, Nick E. Tarabay.]