Serious.

I’ve already posted three posters with different versions of this same picture from David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but in this new version, Rooney Mara’s booblets are EVEN CLEARER, so I figure I better post it since I can’t imagine anything more riveting than that. I had to post the full, uncensored version after the jump below, because, as Entertainment Weekly notes, this thing is “extremely NSFW.”  And boy, nothing drives home the sheer absurdity of things we consider taboo like the fact that one, partially-uncovered nipple can be considered “extremely unsafe” to view at work.  RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, IT’S AN AREOLA THE SIZE OF THE CHRYSLER BUILDING!

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The other day when I told you that the gun used by the only suspect in the murder of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen in his suicide didn’t match the murder weapon, I wasn’t talking out of my ass. I was quoting the AP.  Well yesterday afternoon the police held a press conference, and now they say it WAS the same gun, and that the suspect killed Chasen in a “robbery gone bad,” performed on a bicycle.

Speculation that Chasen was targeted by a professional hit was shot down Wednesday by investigators who said much of what has been reported by the media since her killing three weeks was untrue.
Harold Martin Smith, 43, was apparently riding his bicycle when he shot Chasen several times as she was on her way home from a Hollywood movie premiere party, police said.
Smith later committed suicide with the same gun that was used in the Chasen killing, Beverly Hills Police Chief David Snowden said Wednesday. Smith shot himself in the head last week as police approached him for questioning as “a person of interest” while he was at his Hollywood apartment building.
A preliminary ballistics test showed that Smith’s gun was used in the slaying of Chasen, 64, said Beverly Hills Detective Sgt. Mike Publicker.
“With Mr. Smith’s background [!!!], we believe most likely it was a robbery gone bad,” Publicker said. “We believe it was a random act.”
Publicker said it appeared no connection existed between Chasen and Smith prior to slaying.
“The detectives were able to do numerous interviews and through the information obtained in the interviews, it appears that he did act alone,” Publicker said. “We believe his mode of transportation was by bicycle.”
“We don’t believe it was a professional hit, and this is an open and ongoing investigation,” Snowden said.[CNN]

Ooh, that’s impressive, the way they totally shot down everyone’s speculation with… GRRR, MORE SPECULATION!  Basically, we know that the gun was the same (even though a “law enforcement official” said they were different two days ago), and that this guy liked to go places on a bicycle.  Ergo, “because of his background”, it was clearly a robbery gone bad.  Well sure, I know I always bring my bike along when I rob people.  Man, wouldn’t it be convenient for the Socal police if the only suspect in everything committed suicide?  “I dunno, the dead guy probably did it, just look at his yearbook quote.  Now who wants pizza?”

(Serious Cat was among the first on the scene.  Photo credit: Kevork Djansezian)

Two weeks ago, famed Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen, 64, was shot to death in Beverly Hills late at night while driving her Mercedes home from the Burlesque premiere.  Chasen was found inside her crashed car at the corner of Whittier and Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills with five bullet wounds.  The story was baffling because the autoerotic asphyxiation ninjas who go around killing Hollywood’s elite usually don’t work this way.  Last night, police say a man sought as a “person of interest” in the case committed suicide as police tried to search his apartment.  Perhaps he was guilty, or maybe he just had some awesome porn.

The man — who was not immediately identified — pulled out a gun and shot himself as members of the Beverly Hills Police Department approached him in the small lobby of a transient apartment building just before 6 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The Los Angeles Times also quoted a neighbor who identified the man as being named “Harold.” The neighbor, Brandon Harrison, said that the man had said he had served in state prisons twice, and that he had stated that he expected to receive $10,000 for a job he did.

After the suicide, officers swarmed in front of the Harvey Apartments, in the 5600 block of Santa Monica Boulevard, putting up barriers to hold back a growing throng of reporters and onlookers.

The scene was a world away from the corner in Beverly Hills where Ms. Chasen was found slumped behind the wheel of her black Mercedes-Benz, the victim of multiple gunshots: A transient month-to-month hotel in a run-down section of Los Angeles, on the east side of Hollywood, officials said, where small studios rent for $625 a month. The suicide took place just outside the manager’s office in the small lobby right off Santa Monica Boulevard, residents there said. [NY Times]

Okay, settle down, spaz, you’re not writing a Ray Chandler novel.  “Bucky Chandler squinted his eyes as the light of his Lucky glowed in the flophouse squalor — he’d never seen such a maggot-ridden pus bucket in all his life.  Not in ‘Nam, not in his 15 years on the force, not even during his days as an exhibition wrestler for a male strip club.  $625 a month?  He’d seen veal with better apartments.  An animal, that’s what this was.”

Last I heard about Gabriela Cedillo, the 24-year-old Transformers 3 extra who was left in critical condition after a cable sliced through her skull in a set accident last month, Paramount had agreed to pay for her medical bills.  It was the right thing to do, but unfortunately Cedillo didn’t hear about it because she was and presumably is still in a coma.  “They periodically remove the ventilator and she can sometimes breathe on her own,” said a family spokesman at the time.

Not surprisingly, paying her medical bills probably isn’t going to cut it.

The family says in a lawsuit that Cedillo is permanently brain-damaged.
The suit was filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court and blames negligence by the makers of the movie.
“Gabriela suffered a severe open head trauma,” said her lawyer, Todd A. Smith.
Cedillo was among 80 extras and was driving her own car in the westbound lanes of a vacated part of Cline Avenue for the stunt, according to the lawsuit.
While she and the others were driving, stunt vehicles were being towed by flatbed trucks in the opposite lanes at 50 mph, the suit states.
The stunt called for two of the towed vehicles to rise in the air and then flip “by use of a pulling cable with the idea being to cause violent rolls of the cars involved,” her lawyers said.
On the day of the accident, a cable and bracket attached to the bottom of a stunt car closest to Cedilla and the other extras snapped, the lawyers said.
The vehicle became “airborne into the oncoming lanes, striking Ms. Cedillo’s hood, windshield and eventually her head,” the lawyers said.
Among other issues, the lawsuit alleges that movie officials were negligent through faulty welding and the design of the bracket and allowed extras to be too close to the stunt.  [BostonHerald]

Still no word on the amount the family is suing for, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s a lot.  Hopefully she doesn’t blow it all on fancy sheets and gem-encrusted feeding tubes.  My, this is an uplifting story, isn’t it?  Director Michael Bay was not named in the suit, but it appears he has nonetheless begun to cut down on luxury items out of respect, like collars for his shirts.

[picture via]

Late last night, I received a second-hand eye witness report that an extra had been killed in an accident on the set of Transformers 3.  I couldn’t verify it, so I didn’t run it, because I’m sure we all remember what can happen when you accidentally report that a living person is dead.  The good news is that the extra is alive, though the fact that a person who saw the accident thought she wasn’t doesn’t bode well.  …And I’m realizing now that the Massive Headwound Harry Photoshop may have been in poor taste. TMZ‘s account:

Officials say the accident happened during a driving scene … when an object went through the windshield of a car, hitting the driver.
An extra on the set described the accident to WLS-TV … saying, “The vehicle was being towed by another vehicle … the cable between the two vehicles broke. It whipped around and sliced through the woman’s car and sliced through her skull, apparently. ”
The victim was airlifted to a local hospital. We’re told she’s currently in critical condition.

Yikes.  At least Michael Bay has some good karma built up from the puppy thing.  More from CBS Chicago:

During the stunt, an object struck a 2006 Toyota and went through the windshield and hit the driver, according to the release. 24-year-old Chicago woman Gabriela Cedillo was an extra in the movie and the owner of the Toyota, but was not a member of the stunt personnel, State Police said. After being struck, the Toyota hit the inner median concrete barrier and continued for almost a mile before coming to a stop, according to the release. The vehicle had extensive damage to the driver’s side.
Off-duty Indiana State Police troopers were at the location working with Alliance Security and notified State Police immediately, according to the release. Fire and emergency medical service personnel were also on scene at the time of the crash and Hammond, Ind., fire personnel also responded.

Ugh, I hate reporting depressing, serious news.  If I wanted to do that I would’ve put on pants, and not gotten fired from all those other jobs.  Usually on Michael Bay movies, the head-injury stories are less literal.