So how do we talk about Brittany Murphy now?

In the final years of her too-short life (which ended with cardiac arrest late Sunday) Murphy was all saucer eyes and nervous energy, a toothy grin on the arm of one shady movie industry boyfriend after another. After multiple called-off engagements, she settled on Simon Monjack, the screenwriter husband and accused con man now raising eyebrows for trying to block her autopsy. Celebrity publications charted her weight fluctuations, speculated about eating disorders and drug use, and documented red carpet disasters and plastic surgery slip-ups.

There was a time, though, when Brittany Murphy's headlines were all about her promise—and until the bitter end, she fought to get back into the lead actress fold that had once seemed a given. After conquering regional acting circuits, Murphy and her mother threw themselves at the feet of Burbank's pilot season free-for-all, and the little girl from Edison, New Jersey scored one role after another, from the short-lived Drexel's Class to Blossom to Melrose Place and her breakout role in Clueless, where Murphy proved herself a talented comedian. The nervous energy was charming; the saucer eyes sweetly endearing.

But it took four years for her to deliver a successful cinematic follow up with small roles in darkly comedic Drop Dead Gorgeous and critical darling Girl, Interrupted, where Murphy demonstrated dramatic range playing an eating disordered incest victim.

One part of that character became prophetic: Shortly after Girl, Interrupted Brittany underwent a transformation from roly-poly brunette to a whippet-thin leading lady with the requisite blonde hair, heart-throb boyfriend (Just Married co-star Ashton Kutcher), and rumors about drug use and eating disorders. She steamrolled through a series of moderately successful (if generally forgettable) comedies, including Uptown Girls, in which Roger Ebert pinpointed Murphy's "divine ineptitude" (in the manner of "Lucille Ball") as the otherwise light movie's strongest suit.

It was a fine career, but it didn't sit right, and Murphy again changed tracks with roles in 8 Mile and Sin City—and a Maxim-approved "troublemaker" makeover—but her agent suddenly dropped her at what should have been a career turning point. Murphy was described as "hot and cold" and "difficult." She became a voicing staple (with leading vocal roles in Fox's King of the Hill and penguin movie Happy Feet) even as she fought for screen time in acting roles she eventually lost due to "creative differences" and being "problematic on set."

So how are Brittany's sometime detractors memorializing her now?

The Guardian's obit opens with potential unrealized:

It has become something of a Hollywood formality that any young woman actor fresh on the scene is pencilled in to play Janis Joplin sooner or later. Brittany Murphy, who has died aged 32 from cardiac arrest, was one of many performers over the years who were attached to some Joplin biopic or another.

In this case, it was Piece of My Heart, for which Murphy auditioned successfully in 1999, but which was never made.

E's Joal Ryan remembers a "rare," "erratic" career defined by what it was not: easy.

She was different. ... Different can mean "extremely difficult," as in the Murphy of a 2008 New York Post item. (According to the paper, Murphy required a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich-diagonally cut, no crusts-on the hour, every hour on the set of the just-released, if barely, thriller Across the Hall.)

Or it can mean "erratic" (per a 2004 MSNBC report on Murphy's behavior at a press junket for Uptown Girls), and "barely there" (per The Wrap on Murphy's behavior during the recently completed shoot for another thriller, Something Wicked.) ...

Or it can mean unique. As in uniquely talented.

CNN takes the euphemistic route:

Brittany Murphy, the bubbly, free-spirited actress who appeared in such films as Clueless and 8 Mile, died Sunday, apparently of natural causes...

The Atlantic's Alyssa Rosenberg remembers Clueless as a bittersweet high point:

The girls of my generation may have grown beyond their fleeting desire for knee-highs, and overalls are nowhere to be found in my wardrobe. But in a sense, Murphy never grew beyond her performance as Tai. To watch her in Clueless is to see her at her most joyful and at her funniest. ... Onscreen or off, she never quite surpassed the role that launched her career: the endearing and genuine newcomer...

But Brittany's most memorable postmortems will likely be of the tabloid variety: grisly details from the scene of her death, "sources" who come forward to say they saw it coming, speculation about "self-destruction," "enablers," and the price of fame. And so Brittany Murphy, it seems, will die as she lived: ambivalently, a public figure that no one ever quite figured out how to pin down.

The short answer is probably not, but she sure will try. We speculated that her busty cover of GQ and her SNL gig were a play for career-after-Mad Men because creator Matthew Weiner wasn't bringing her back. (And given the show's relatively low salary, she'd wouldn't mind moving on.) She had an uphill struggle because many people (including plenty of our regular commenters and even her ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher) believe that because she plays an icy, passive character on the show that she can't act. While her cleavage did wonders for her public image, she did herself no favors with her lame stab at sketch comedy over the weekend.

Now that everyone thinks she can't act, her chances at movie star fame ruined, and Betty Draper's proximity to the central plot on the wane (if her character isn't cut entirely), what is Ms. Jones to do? Here are her options:

Indie Film: If she gets a plum role in an Oscar-bait indie and knocks the role out of the park, she could redeem herself and establish some much-needed street cred. Just look at what Precious is doing for Mo'Nique (of all people) right now.

Procedural: They must be casting for NCIS: Twin Cities or some shit like that. Actors in these jobs just need to be able to look good and deliver their lines, which we know that she can do. It's not going to win her any awards, but it will be a steady acting job and a big fat paycheck for years to come.

Girlfriend Roles: Join the Judd Apatow crew or play the remarkably attractive love interest for some schlub like Adam Sandler. If the movie hits big no one will confuse you with a Stella Adler devotee, but you'll be able to get some more jobs out of it.

Obscurity: She doesn't have to be an actress. Maybe she would be better suited as a lunch lady who mumbles to herself, "I used to be someone!" We always did see her in hair nets.

Sex Tape: This will get her tons of attention, but in terms of work, the best she can hope for is a reality project (see Hilton, Paris and Kardashian, Kim). Still it would be lots of fun to watch!

[Image via Getty]

The most obvious of those realities is that Dame Elizabeth Taylor, now 77, isn't going to be with us forever, and that is a sad thought indeed.

Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart...It's very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better...Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I'll let you know when it's all over. Love you, Elizabeth

Taylor rose to fame in an age when stars images were handled by the iron hand of the studio system's publicity machine. Now she is sending out statements of her hospitalization in 160 character bursts. While we applaud Taylor for keeping up with technology enough to twitter (or at least savvy enough to hire someone to do it for her), that the old guard has fallen under its sway means that we are going to be stuck with oversharing celebrities assaulting us with their private thoughts and personal details until the end of time.

If Dame E is in on the game, it means that Ashton, Demi, and the rest of the entertainers with over active thumbs and a healthy sense of narcissism aren't going to be the end of the craze, but that new stars who we haven't even imagined yet will be even worse. In 50 years, we'll be following AnnaLynne McCord via real-time streaming 3-D webcam feed as she is rushed to the hospital for her fourth surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome. You can't stop the march of progress, but today we're shedding a tear for when celebrities knew the best thing for their image was often to keep a bit of distance.

Kutcher pointedly notes his lack of compensation in the attached clip from Monday's Tonight Show. He even mentions equity; is Kutcher hinting he'd like some pre-IPO shares in the hot microblogging startup? He's certainly put in sweat equity, and not just by uploading pictures of his scantily-clad wife: Kutcher has posted some 3,000 tweets to his 3 million followers. Oprah Winfrey, in contrast, has written just 56 tweets, to 2 million followers.

The show's creator is Amy Ephron, novelist/screenwriter/sister of Nora, and is being produced by Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment Partners, in conjunction with Twitter co-founders Evan Willams and Biz Stone, of course.

The producers call their proposed series the first to bring the immediacy of Twitter to the TV screen.

''Twitter is transforming the way people communicate, especially celebrities and their fans,'' said Reveille managing director Howard T. Owens, who expects the new project to ''unlock Twitter's potential on TV.''

No further details were made available on the show's format or when it might hit the air.

Based on the vague details about the show to emerge so far, this already stale slice of American television crapcake sort of sounds like it's intended to be an Amazing Race meets Celebrity Apprentice meets, dare we say it, Gawker Stalker, style reality show. Let's just imagine for a moment MC Hammer tweeting about sitting in a booth at a Denny's in Knoxville, Tennessee with Ashton Kutcher, which would then spur Twitter users/show competitors to race to get there before both of them can polish off their Grand Slam Breakfast plates and win a $1000. Wow, that's television gold baby!

We'd like to offer congrats to Williams and Stone, who, in a desperately misguided effort to monetize their product, just managed to brutally slay their darling in spectacular fashion. The end is nigh fellas. You guys should put in a call to Henry Winkler's people so you can place him on a surf board off the coast of South Africa in the pilot episode, just to get it over and done with.

Web Service Twitter Proposes TV Competition Series [New York Times]

She's already set up an account. Ashton Kutcher, a big Twitter user, is scheduled to appear on the show Friday to talk about Twitter. Ex-dating columnist Julia Allison is trying to recruit other Twitterers for the show. And videoblogger Robert Scoble has posted that Oprah is going to be doing her first tweet.

With so many Internet celebrities on board, how can it not be happening?

He posted it yesterday, saying 'shh don't tell wifey', but seeing as she is also Twitter-obsessed and whatnot, she was hip to his moves. And she doesn't care because she's 60 years old and looks fabulous and her ruffle-topped 19-year-old husband is taking pictures of her can and it's springtime so everything's fabulous anyway.

[via GrrlPlanet]

And so we fall back on a goofy B-story, in which Ashton makes it his life's purpose to bring back a fashion affectation that has already made about five ironic comebacks in the past decade. And because behind every great, paisley-kerchief-wearing man stands the woman who bought that man the accessory for his birthday, we also get tireless Kutcher devotee Demi's cheerleading from the Twitter bleachers.

We don't know—if anyone could bring back the ascot, it's Ashton. Did you see what he did for trucker hats? Please excuse us as we return now to his stream to monitor what else he plans on bringing back. The last thing we'd want is to show up to Les Deux to find everyone dressed to the nines in wallet chains and clogs and realize we'd missed the tweeted memo.

• aplusk [Twitter]
• mrskutcher [Twitter via Malis in Wonderland]

Sensing that the narrative required a redemptive climax—perhaps set to a soul-stirring Peter Gabriel classic—Kutcher took a clue from the Cusackian playbook, and held aloft a sign for the besmirched construction workers next door as "In Your Eyes" blasted through his deck speakers. (It's unfortunately illegible, but we like to imagine it reads, "IM SORRY I CALLED YOU OWL FECES.") Then he and Demi throw them Vitamin Waters, the camera cutting off seconds after a Power-C Dragonfruit bonks one on the head and sends him tumbling three floors to a gruesome death. Oh well. It's the thought that counts.

• Previously: Ashton Kutcher Tweets Olive Branch In Escalating Neighbor Stand-Off

Watch now as Ashton has a cooler-head moment, only to be interrupted by a phone call from Demi, who's simultaneously tweeting her phoning of Ashton while he Twitters his treaty. That veil of celebrity mystique? They wipe their asses with it. Then they Twitter that.

• Ashton [Qik]

Loud construction on a new home next door—for "screenwriter Bruce Goldsmith," TMZ reports, who we could not locate on IMDb—drove both of them to their laptops to Twitter out their frustrations this morning. And like that, the good-vibrations of sweet Demi observations like "has anyone seen the incredible fingernail moon we have tonight?" were replaced with angry battletweets of the "neighbor doing consruction with 6 guys pounding hammers against steel at 7am is no way to wake up!"-variety.

Which, mind you, verged on polite compared to Ashton's thoughts on the matter:

this SOB owl feces cougar placenta jack bone dick! about 3 hours ago from web

Jack ass 7am building a god damn fort next to my house f'in up my view and noise polluting the entire f'in nieghborhood with pounding steal about 3 hours ago from web

holy moly I'm gonna lose it! about 3 hours ago from web

this ass clown has another thing coming! about 3 hours ago from web

I'm gonna kill my neighbor! about 3 hours ago from web

To underscore the severity of the cub-rousing racket next door, the endlessly tech-savvy Ashton then took to his Qik mobile-video-broadcasting account to give us a balcony view of his "fucking jackass neighbor...This is where my dickweed neighbor is building a house at 7 a.m., pounding on steel and welding right next to my frickin house." Unfortunately for Kutcher, however, Qik's stringently democratic commenting policies couldn't censor the reaction of unsympathetic user YouAreAMoron.

• mrskutcher [Twitter]
• aplusk [Twitter]
• Ashton [Qik]

Nikon pitchman Kutcher plays Nikki, who is basically the worst sort of Hollywood douchebag imaginable: the Les Deux-bag. Outfitted in skinny suspenders and a leering grin, he's a gigolo/user, wooing women simply so he can have a place to stay (and a beautiful pad ton seduce his next conquest when the current flame goes out of town). Early on, he uses his charms to install himself in Anne Heche's palatial Beachwood Canyon home, but eventually he falls for a Fred 62 waitress (!) (also, played by newcomer Margarita Levieva) who's his wily match.

The gist of Spread is that Nikki isn't as wise as he thinks he is—especially when he's finally struck by love. Unfortunately, neither is the movie. Filled with Kutcher's froggy, meaningless narration ("You're three times as likely to get laid if there's a bed in the room"—no shit, Sherlock), it's a real drag, livened up only occasionally by scenes in which Kutcher and Heche athletically reenact the Kama Sutra. Nikki is supposed to be a mystery who needy women project onto, but the movie squanders our interest by explaining every tic, line, and pickup in voiceover. There's a reason why Warren Beatty said hardly anything in Shampoo—his very placidity made him an irresistible enigma.

We suppose director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) intended Spread to be sort of love letter to Los Angeles (or perhaps a truncated, late-night text), but its location shooting and glamorous tracking shots can't make up for its lack of verisimilitude. No native would ever call Fred 62 "a coffee shop," and there's no reason the young, peripatetic Levieva would have a landline phone and answering machine except so that Kutcher could overhear an important call. There's only one moment the film gets right, and it rings truer than any of the seduction and blossoming love on-screen. After their first hookup, Kutcher nudges Levieva at the crack of dawn. "I gotta move your car," he says. "It's street cleaning."

· Sony made the second big buy of the festival, announcing its pickup of the revisionist blaxploitation flick Black Dynamite the morning after its well-received Midnight premiere. The studio was coy about its affection and eventual plans for the film, though word around festival HQ today cites long-lost Arsenio Hall's "Mickey Rourke moment." Or... not.

· En route to Park City on behalf of her new film Motherhood, Uma Thurman demonstrated her trademark yoga-and-smokes method of festival prep. There goes a true veteran.

· Seriously: What do Justin Kirk, Adam Scott and all these other Sundance snobs have against Hotel For Dogs? It's at least as good as the Ashton Kutcher gigolo flick currently terrorizing audiences.

· Speaking of which, Demi Moore promises she's just fine with her husband's nude, Anne Heche-humping exploits in Spread. Then Heche showed up pregnant in Park City. Developing... [via MyHogtown]

· The day his adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men premieres at Sundance, John Krasinski tells the LAT he owes everything he has to the late author. Steve Carell will not be pleased.

· Ashton Kutcher, who is presenting a game show from Sundance in addition to his high-stakes premiere Spread, caused a huge fucking Kutcherrific shriek-scene upon his arrival yesterday on Main Street: "He looked every inch of the former fashion model he is," noted shell-shocked eyewitness David Carr, "with operatic headgear and a fur-lined coat that looked like it required its own security detail."

· Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, Anna Wintour stiffed the premiere audience for RJ Cutler's all-access Vogue documentary The September Issue. Probably because her fur coat did require a security detail, and Lord knows how hard the recession is hitting Conde Nast.

· At her Variety haunt, Anne Thompson compiled a quick and dirty list of the hot available titles she's gleaned from word around town. The Pierce Brosnan/Susan Sarandon weepie The Greatest and the NYC millenial cult doc We Live in Public are up; the opening-night adequacy Mary and Max is slipping.

· And way down in Jeff Wells's book is the quirky coming-of-age film Lymelife: "This was 'I'm not going to sit through a leafy suburban movie with Keiran Culkin playing Alec Baldwin's son.' This was 'I'm not going to watch the weathered-looking, saggy-faced Timothy Hutton — it takes decades of partying to get a face like his — play an emotionally repressed weirdo for the next 90 plus minutes.'" He walked out after 10.

· And in the spirit of yesterday's iTunes-downloadable short film offerings, now you can watch 1/70th of the Michael Cera/Charlene Yi romance Paper Heart online. Happy viewing.

This year's vintage features another barrel of celebrities with equally little margin for error, some less endangered than others. For your handy trajectory-watching reference, we've narrowed their ranks to 10 of the most interesting:

1. Ashton Kutcher: The festival itself describes Kutcher's gigolo farce Spread as "such a perfectly tuned, contemporary depiction of the trials and tribulations of sleeping your way to wealth and success that, guilty pleasure or not, it's irresistible." Either the responsible programmer's tongue is so far in his cheek it'll leave a bruise, or we must forge on with the faith that Kutcher is up to credibly depicting those fraught "trials and tribulations." He's a producer on this as well, upping the skeevy self-casting factor proportionately with the stakes that accompany putting this on the Sundance market. THREAT LEVEL: Severe

2. Rachel Dratch: As co-writer and co-star of the Midnight section highlight Spring Breakdown, Dratch is nominally on the hook for delivering a sort of inverted Sex and the City: Three terminally unsophisticated women (played by Dratch, Amy Poehler and Parker Posey) entrusted to chaperone a teenager to spring break wind up cavorting with the savage youth. Laffs, empowerment and, hopefully for Dratch, a cult following ensue, exhuming this film from the shallow grave where it has languished for months and on to video shelves where it's likely to make its next stop. THREAT LEVEL: Elevated

3. Pierce Brosnan: A man for whom being the most tone-deaf cast member in history's biggest musical is his primary film accomplishment of the last five years, Brosnan needs his grieving-dad weepie The Greatest to find legs during its Saturday premiere — and not those of critics and buyers fleeing the Racquet Club in terror. Like Kutcher and about a million other actors to travel here with movies over the years, he's got a producer credit, which means he needs a sale, which means to needs to be on his game. For once. Whatever that might be. THREAT LEVEL: Dire

4. John Krasinski: He'll be on hand presenting his writing-directing debut Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, an adaptation of the novel by David Foster Wallace. It's a double-jeopardy scenario risking both his own artistic humiliation and the ultimate torpedoing of his recently deceased source. That said, he's John Krasinski — how bad can it really be? Wait, don't answer that. THREAT LEVEL: Moderate

5. Jim Carrey: One month removed from a lukewarm success with Yes Man, Carrey isn't traveling to Sundance to reinvent himself as an indie influence-peddler. But he still has to convince distributors and a game if cynical-by-default press corps that I Love You Phillip Morris is anchored in anything other than the Carrey-on-McGregor romance gimmick. As mentioned here yesterday, this has as much potential to be this year's What Just Happened as it does to be its Little Miss Sunshine; don't look for it to be much in between. THREAT LEVEL: Critical

6 - 10. Billy Bob Thornton's co-stars: The man whose one-time castmates have occasional trouble staying alive arrives with two wildly disparate films — the LA excess potboiler The Informers and the crap-salesman dramedy Manure — featuring two wildly disparate ensembles including Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Kyle MacLachlan, Winona Ryder, Tea Leoni and others. Everyone make sure you have your affairs in order before coming to Park City. THREAT LEVEL: Imminent

· Naomi Watts is close to a deal to star in My Name is Jody Williams, a biopic of the brash teacher-turned-activist who launched a controversial, Clinton-needling campaign to eradicate land mines. [THR]
· Rosie O'Donnell will star in and executive produce the Lifetime original movie America, an adaptation of E.R. Frank's touching book about a troubled, 232-year old superpower fighting its way through the foster-care system in New York. [Variety]

Boomp3.com

High school football coach and digital camera pitchperson Ashton Kutcher called for a time out during the big break to ask his defense line for some feedback on his latest ad campaign. Kutcher was concerned that he was coming off like a slight tool in the latest ads. However, the defense line thought that they should focus on the game since they were only down by a field goal. Kutcher said that he had the game winning play all drawn, but would only give it up after getting some feedback. The That 70s Show star told the guys to be completely honest and brutal with him. The defensive captain speaking for the whole team said, “I don’t know. It’s mildly annoying, but it could be worse. Now, can we get that game winning play?” Kutcher patted the defensive captain on the back and told him to sit the rest of the game out.

[Photo Credit: X17]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

While Mr. Kutcher said he fared well, he proved, at least in an interview with a reporter, that he was capable of being stumped. Asked, for purposes of fact checking, to spell the name of Ms. Moore’s youngest daughter with Bruce Willis, Mr. Kutcher confessed he was suddenly drawing a blank.

For the record, it is T-a-l-l-u-l-a-h.

Silly reporter: Kutcher is a former teen male model! Asking such a creature to spell is like asking him to do math or stop poisoning his friends with Hepatitis A. It can't be done, and it shouldn't; let the pretty man scrawl his birthday cards to "Demmy," "Roomer," and "Broos" in peace!

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Know Dad’s Turf Builder, You’ll Win $250,000 [NY Times]