We’ve had a thing for Bill Murray since the first time we saw clips of his pity-me-but-look-at-me skits on SNL right up until his sad lonely guy role in Lost In Translation, when his gray hair and inability to smile deflated our crush ever so slightly. But unlike actress Greta Scacchi, who blabbed to a London paper about the night he innocently asked for her number and was harshly rejected by her and the too-cool group of Eurotrashy friends she rolls with, we’d never resort to the level of cattiness the Italian quasi-star did today:

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

It's almost impossible to conceive of a publicist earning a legend these days for much beyond sexuality crisis management or the degree to which s/he lies to Page Six. All the more reason to miss Warren Cowan, one of Hollywood's original Power Flacks who passed away Wednesday at the age of 87. After founding his seminal firm Rogers & Cowan with his mentor Henry C. Rogers in 1950, Cowan went on to make his name as the press agent for everyone from Frank Sinatra to Elizabeth Taylor to Paul Newman to Audrey Hepburn to Ronald Reagan. He never fully retired, either, selling R&C in 1988 and later launching another influential firm, Warren Cowan and Associates, which further capitalized on his earlier revolutions in Oscar campaigning.

In keeping with the spirit of rebellion and resistance being commemorated this year at Cannes, jury chairman Sean Penn wasn't letting any snooty festival bosses or French government assholes tell him what to do. At this morning's opening press conference, Penn lit up a cigarette in conspicuously direct defiance of a new law prohibiting smoking indoors. Several of his fellow jurors followed suit, including Persepolis co-director Marjane Satrapi, who "asked to much laughter if anyone minded if she smoked 'for medical reasons.' " Ever the activist, Penn went on to praise Cannes for its essential work on behalf of wildlife, citing the festival's recently installed panda habitat as a progressive model of animal rights and ecological sensitivity. [Breitbart, Photo Credit: Getty Images]

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

All the drama affecting David O. Russell's new film Nailed settled down a bit Monday when production resumed on the South Carolina set. But while the producers squared away their money issues with SAG, which shut shooting down last Friday, our own suspicions about precariously-budgeted distributor ThinkFilm got another look from Variety yesterday afternoon:

The curious path of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired took another bizarre turn this week when HBO hosted an actual red-carpet "premiere" for the film in New York — the same city where it had attempted to secretly screen the doc for a week-long Oscar-qualifying run last month. Then, as Vulture noted today, things got even weirder when Polanski's 1977 statutory rape victim, the then-13 Samantha Geimer, showed up as one of the guests:

Defamer would like to take just a moment to salute a true American hero — a local filmmaker whose vision, dedication and utter depravity have resulted in some of the bravest and most honest films of our time. His name is Ira Isaacs; you may know him as the maker of such "shock art" (i.e. fetish porn) masterworks as Laurie's Toilet Show, Gang Bang Horse (Pony Sex Game) and Hollywood Scat Amateurs No. 7, and soon you may also know him as the man sent up the river in what Radar today describes as perhaps "the most extreme obscenity trial in U.S. history."

Click to viewFor all its confectionery imagery, Christina Ricci scene-stealing and the few other things Speed Racer gets right, it still faces a box-office false start that could make Leatherheads look like a hit in comparison. We sketched a few of the hurdles here yesterday (number one being its own studio's resignation to its underachievement), but at this point there's only one that counts: Larry and Andy Wachowski need to climb out of their hole.

Welcome to Ellen Page Dump-and-Run Week, when even today's news that America's ambiguously-persuasioned sweetheart is attached to star in yet another adaptation of Jane Eyre is slightly overshadowed by the two "new" Page releases you may not have known to look for. Like An American Crime? You know this one? No? Page stars as Sylvia Likens, the Indianapolis teen who was beaten, tortured and murdered by her caretaker (played by Catherine Keener) in one of the most notorious homicides in American history. We saw it at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, when someone reportedly passed out at the premiere — probably the producer who realized his high-caliber drama (starring two Oscar nominees!) was headed straight to Showtime oblivion this Saturday at 10 p.m. We feel him, but that's not the half of it.

It was less than six months ago that Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was picketing along with his fellow WGA members, saying of Fox's plans to air Guy episodes that had not yet been completed: "It would just be a colossal dick move if they did that." At the time, MacFarlane had the luxury of knowing his deal with the studio—two years in the making, and reportedly astronomical—had yet to be finalized, putting him "in breach of nothing" during the work stoppage. Well, the dotted-lines have at last been signed, the fences, apparently mended: 20th Century Fox TV will make MacFarlane the highest-paid writer/producer/gay-baby-voicer in television.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

An overzealous movie executive loudly and boldly proclaimed that Academy Award winning Twitterer Diablo Cody would get a tattoo of his name on her arm after just one night with him. The executive said it's a sure thing, kinda like greenlighting a script put together from scraps of paper found in Judd Apatow's recycle bin. The executive said, "She might be an extremely in demand and popular writer, but she's a stripper at heart. And you know what they say about strippers, right? Once a stripper, always a stripper! BOOOSSSSH!" Then the executive proceed to bump elbows with the nearest man.

You know what they say about hemlines and recessions? Well look no further than What Happens In Vegas co-stars Cameron Diaz and Lake Bell for optimism. At last night's premiere of their comedy, the two actresses seemed to be playing a game of Anything You Can Wear I Can Wear Shorter, alongside somber co-star Ashton Kutcher, who seemed to be playing a game of You Were Right, Demi. Without You I'm Boring And Cannot Dress Myself. Between the grieving Diaz and the toothy Bell, see who revealed more gam and why we're happy they did, after the jump.

Project Runway host Heidi Klum took a break from the stress surrounding the show's recent game of musical network chairs and got back to her roots as a model. Klum picked up a shift as a mannequin at the Beverly Center Bloomingdales and found it refreshing to get back to the basics of modeling; making the clothes look good and wearable. However, Klum found it difficult to remain silent when people commented that the mannequin resembled her and often added "but less annoying."

Amid the blizzard of claims flying back and forth between Rob Lowe and the former nanny claiming "false terribles" comes further accusations made against the Allegedly Pervy House of Lowe: A second nanny, Laura Boyce, has filed a cross-complaint against the couple in which she accuses Sheryl Lowe of doing everything short of demanding an au pair ménage à trois:

Thank God that the threat of an Anthony Pellicano mistrial came and went without fruition; not only would we have faced the indignity of another star parade of scowling, snail-trailing movers and shakers filing to the witness stand, but we would have missed out on the performance art of Pellicano's closing argument, relayed second-hand today by tireless Huffington Post correspondent Allison Hope Weiner:

Once great filmmaker Quentin Tarantino filled actors Rob Schneider and Ian Ziering with a false sense of hope at a cocktail party last night. Tarantino talked to the guys for what seemed to be hours about how he had written a couple of parts in his latest script that they'd be perfect for. Yet when Schneider and Ziering attempted to follow up on the project the next day, the number they called had been disconnected. Schneider was not too upset about it, stating that he could just worm his way into another Adam Sandler film. However, Ziering took the news a bit too hard. He stated that he stopped getting his unemployment checks recently, and since he wasn't getting any callbacks regarding the 90210 spin-off, Ziering explained that he may have to pick up a shift at Peets' Coffee in Glendale.