· Though pretty straightforward, this video's title, Drunk Bill Murray Almost Fights a Guy, still oversells things a bit: The video's so shaky that it's hard to tell if that's actually Murray, what his level of intoxication might be, or how close to fisticuffs the New Orleans encounter came. Still: Blurry video of a famous guy doing stuff! Probably! That's gotta be worth 41 seconds of your time.
·Brett Ratner's reveals his simple, yet effective, strategy for dealing with paparazzi who want to take pictures of the chicks he's nailing: payoffs.
· We don't care what that e-mail says, we still think that's Zach Gailifianakis in the Comcast "Spider-Man-Obsessed Roommate" commercial.
· Hey, unicorns!

We will admit to being more than a little excited for the the debut of Steven Spielberg's upcoming Fox competition On the Lot, as television sorely needs an American Idol (or, at the very least, a Project Runway) for Hollywood, and we've never quite gotten over Project Greenlight's tragically abbreviated run. (Gulager!) Today's Variety brings some breathtaking news about the series, reporting that Spielberg is stocking the show's firing squad with some big guns for its launch:

The MTV Movie Awards (The Oscars of the 17-22 Demographic™) has wisely contracted director Brett Ratner, the accomplished cinematic parodist whose feature-length works are uproarious, pitch-perfect send-ups of blockbuster-producing genres like the buddy film and the summer superhero flick, to publicize a just-announced contest soliciting user-generated spoofs of their favorite Hollywood fare using a variety of pre-cleared clips and music. To get prospective entrants in the spirit of the competition, Ratner has provided his own satirical short, in which he and longtime, English-challenged collaborator Jackie Chan simulate a pitch meeting for X-Men 4, a flight of comedic fancy rendered surprisingly poignant when one remembers that it was Ratner's hilarious X:Men: The Last Stand installment that brought the beloved franchise to an abrupt end.

In praising the versatility and talent that allows accomplished dramatic directors like Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou to direct epic action pictures like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, Rush Hour 3's Jackie Chan suddenly found himself in the uncomfortable position of needing to quickly come up with a similarly positive appraisal of the skills of the guy who's nominally in control of the set of his current project:

The LAT's Patrick Goldstein profiles cantankerous New Line co-chairman/co-CEO Bob Shaye, an executive utterly unafraid to call an unimpressed reviewer "schmucky," alienate a filmmaker who's made his studio a billion dollars, or to make a controversial choice to have Rainn Wilson's tantalizingly revealed hindquarters digitally obscured so as not to pander to an audience's basest, crack-craving tastes, a principled decision that could cost his upcoming film, The Last Mimzy, untold millions in ticket sales. In talking to the Times, Shaye also demonstrates a willingness to publicly call out a certain hacky director of a hit franchise who might be taking advantage of the fact that his movie is New Line's best chance at making some money this summer:

In rounding up some tales of difficult actors (and Paris Hilton) disrupting their movie sets (Chris Tucker thinks Rush Hour 3 actually has a script! Lindsay Lohan is moody now that she's sobering up! Paris Hilton has no short term memory!), today's Page Six shares this gem about the important extra-propositioning responsibilities of tail-chasing fauxteur Brett Ratner's trusty assistant:

Defamer is committed to making its readers aware of exciting opportunities to gain valuable exposure by working with Hollywood's most talented filmmakers on their highest-profile projects, and so we pass along this Craiglist ad trolling for fresh-faced talent for an upcoming gig:

Sunday's NY Times explored Warner Bros.' outwardly inscrutable decision to hand over the reins of holiday "tear-jerker" We Are Marshall to Charlie's Angels fauxteur McG, whose seizure-inducing directorial gifts and well-documented fear of flying would appear to be fundamentally incompatible with a project requiring a heavy reliance on gimmicks like "story" and "emotion" and which prominently features a phobia-flaring plane crash. In the article, McG (given name: not actually McG) bristles at length over the baseless perception that he's artistically limited to the attention-span-destroying aesthetic established in the Angels movies:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week—so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and contribute to what could possibly turn into a perfect Terms of Endearment star-spotting trifecta:

· What happens when one of the producers of Drawn Together pounds some ipecac before being interviewed by Kennedy? Exactly what you'd expect: prodigious vomiting. Enjoy.
· We're willing to bet being instructed to write Roman Polanski into Rush Hour 3 doesn't even rate in the top ten most frustrating things that Brett Ratner has asked of screenwriter Jeff Nathanson during their collaborations.
· Someone at Mastro's seems to have near-perfect recall of what Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes recently ordered for dinner. Fascinating stuff, yet we find it odd the spy failed to mention the crucial detail that Holmes' ankle was shackled to a five-hundred-pound weight the entire meal.
· The real challenge for the product placement consultants wasn't getting their client's Treo phones a pivotal role in A Good Year, it was convincing Russell Crowe not to bludgeon a mouthy PA with it.
· Comedy Central's Insider blog has a timeline of how they broke the news that Rumsfeld was accepting an honorable shitcanning for last night's Republican bloodletting. All hail basic-cable-based citizen's media!

In today's NY Times story on the ongoing war between the fiscally virtuous, bottom-line-minding studios and the avaricious talent hellbent on destroying their profitability by demanding extravagant handouts for their negligible contributions to their cinematic product (see: Tom Cruise vs. Paramount, everyone vs. Jim Carrey), Brett Ratner, the auteur who's looking for new challenges after having beaten every box office record of his moviemaking idols, shares his chilling vision of where the film business is headed if it doesn't heed the warnings of other industries at a similar crossroads:

Perhaps feeling that he's gleaned all the horndogging wisdom longtime mentor and occasional make-out coach Robert Evans has to offer him, preternaturally hacky Rush Hour fauxteur Brett Ratner has now invited a Hollywood legend whose hot-tub-hosted appetites were even more outsized than those of his beloved teacher to work with him on the latest installment of his signature franchise. Today's Variety reports that fugitive director Roman Polanski has been written into Rush Hour 3, currently shooting in Paris, and will play the part of a policeman who will try to interfere with stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker's efforts to bicker with one another while crashing a variety of comically undersized French automobiles. Var explains how Ratner recruited Polanski for the role:

On the day that Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand, the triumphant culmination of his bombastic, incomprehensible-action aesthetic, finally reaches retail shelves in DVD form, the deferential director who long ago quietly surpassed his idols is finally ready to surrender some of his trademarked humility and stake a claim to his rightful place among the auteurs whose work truly defines the medium:

Hugh Jackman joins William Baldwin and Henry Winkler in the cast of indie film A Plumm Summer, which as far as we can tell from a very brief blurb contains no musical theater component whatsoever—a nice change of pace for the noted song-and-dance man. [Variety]
Busty period-piece staple Scarlett Johansson continues her quest to spend most of her prime earning years trussed up in a corset, signing on for the title role in Mary Queen of Scots. Not that we're complaining about her predilection for elaborate, cleavage-enhancing costumes. [THR]
Peter Jackson teams up with Microsoft to create Wingnut Interactive, which will produce two video game/interactive projects, including a "Halo" spinoff. [Variety]
Barbara Walters' 20/20 interview with Steve Irwin's widow proves just as popular as CSI: NY with the 18-49 demo, who seem to be morbidly fascinated with both real and fictional deaths. [THR]
...and recognizing that death is red-hot right now, ABC is developing three "murder-themed projects," including Bret Ratner's Women's Murder Club, the story of a quartet of sexy serial killer hunters with an inexplicable sexual attraction to hacky directors. [Variety]

Radar has awoken from a nine-month hibernation to relaunch its website today, celebrating the rebirth with the publication of its poll of the "industry's heaviest hitters" that it first started researching back around the time of its 1981 "Ron Howard Washed Up At 27?" issue. The survey doesn't really contain any surprises: Howard is nice, Brett Ratner's a hack, Russell Crowe has a temper problem, and CAA's partners are the agents you'd most like to have devouring babies on your behalf. Among Radar's "winners" is Imagine Entertainment superproducer Brian Grazer, whose signature "Produced By Brian Grazer, From An Idea Brian Grazer Had While Distracted By A Shiny Object During A Meet-And-Greet With Stephen Hawking, And Directed By A Guy Brian Grazer Hand-Selected to Execute Brian Grazer's Uncompromising Vision" movie credit seems to have rankled some of his peers:

There are far too many notable passages in this coming Labor Day weekend's lengthy NY Times story (online now, for some reason) on lavishly upholstered, rapidly calcifying superproducer Robert Evans than we could possibly blockquote in a single post, so chock-full is the article with amusing, self-promotional Evanisms ("I'm a vital force to be reckoned with. I still have great ideas. Call your article 'Evans Reloaded'"; "I've been back at Paramount since 1991. The only ones back then who could have cared about buried bodies are dead and buried themselves"), respectful quotes from Paramount pals Sumner Redstone and Brad Grey expressing their desire to bronze Evans alive and install him atop their iconic water tower, ensuring he's a fixture on the lot forever, and fresh descriptions of his displeasure with Entourage's sneak attack inclusion of a doddering, Evanesque character after he kindly allowed them to shoot at his estate. But even with this aforementioned embarrassment of riches, we find ourselves again overpowered by the intensity of feeling between Evans and protege/twilight life-partner Brett Ratner, who is touchingly reserving the full application of his hacky gifts to the eventual cinematic realization of Evans' still-unpublished (and unsold) second memoir, The Fat Lady Sang:

Variety reports that preternaturally hacky director Brett Ratner may have found a follow-up project to his upcoming Rush Hour 3 sequel shoot, signing on to randomly point a camera at things on the set (props, the craft services table, and, occasionally, actors reciting their lines) of a remake of The Boys From Brazil, the 1978 thriller about a plot to clone Hitler and resurrect the Third Reich. Ratner briefly explains his interest in the project:

A Defamer operative sends us a party report from the Miami Vice premiere, where Brett Ratner held court in the men's room as a hammered Michelle Rodriguez unsuccessfully tried to talk her way inside, and the secret language of Shaq's handshake rituals was finally revealed.

Amidst all the tabloid coverage of her divorce from Nick Lachey and her relationship to her svengali father, it's easy to forget that Jessica Simpson is, first and foremost, an artist: a mediocre, trend-trailing, completely forgettable recording artist. Her new album comes out at the end of August, but visitors to her website are treated to her new single—a catchy, 80s throwback that advocates treating life like one extended vacation, titled "Holiday." Except that she calls it "A Public Affair." (Here they are side by side: We defy you to tell the difference.)

Did we think that marriage number seven was the one that was finally gonna stick for swingin' superproducer/serial matrimonialist Robert Evans? Sure. Are we more than a little sad that Evans couldn't make this one work, even after ten months of trying to hang on to that crazy little merry-go-round we like to call love with all of his strength? You betcha, kid. But dry your eyes, bucko, 'cause Big Bob's not done with females, not by a long shot. He and best buddy Brett Ratner are ready to hit the town with the top down, looking for a couple of the surely dozens of lucky ladies out there with turbulent enough childhoods to find the prospect of heading back to the waterbed with "the guy who keeps talking about X-Men and his horny grandpa" more exciting than psychologically destructive.