Ronni ChasenThe murder of veteran Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen early Tuesday morning in Beverly Hills played out like a scene in one of the movies she may have promoted over her long career. While apparently on her way home from a post-premiere party for the upcoming Cher movie 'Burlesque,' Chasen had just turned left off famous Sunset Blvd. onto a side street heading toward Wilshire when someone fired five bullets into her chest. The shots shattered the passenger side window of her Mercedes, which then crashed against a residential light pole.

To those of us who worked with her over the years, news of Ronni's death would have come as a shock regardless of the cause. At 64, she was the same persistent bundle of energy that had been working the phones for her clients for decades. If memory serves, I first met her when she was arranging interviews with George Burns for the 1970 hit 'The Sunshine Boys.'

During the next 20 years, while I was moving from the Detroit Free Press to USA Today to the L. A. Times, she kept my phone numbers fresh in her Rolodex and on countless occasions, she managed to talk me into interviews with her clients and -- unusual among publicists -- gave me occasional tips for stories that had nothing to do with her.

When I moved to New York in 1991, as movie critic for Newsday, she continued to call. She knew I was no longer doing many interviews, but she'd make the pitch anyway and then ask me to lead her to someone else there who might be interested. Then, that person would be in her Rolodex.

Ronni ChasenPublicists can be a pain in the neck, and other parts of the anatomy, but Ronni's passion for her work -- and for her clients -- was so great that taking a pitch from her was like being an audience of one for a few moments of theater. Whenever she'd call, I'd hope she had something that I'd want to do and felt badly when it didn't. I had worked as a publicist myself early in my career, and I knew the feeling of rejection. I didn't like it, which is why I went over to the other side. But it never seemed to bother Ronni. She had whatever the right stuff is in the realm of publicity to succeed.

As I pored through the published tributes to Chasen, I was struck by how frequently her friends, clients and others in the media attributed the same qualities to her. Persistent, loyal, kind, witty. I was also struck by the runaway imagination of people commenting on the known facts of her death. Pairing Chasen's work on behalf of clients for 2011 Oscar nominations (she was beginning to campaign for 'Alice in Wonderland' and actor Michael Douglas for 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps') with an event that has the earmarks of a mob hit, they were suggesting that police focus on rival Oscar publicists.

Folks, get a grip. This isn't a movie. Trying to understand any tragedy in movie context is a fool's game. Unless Chasen's death proves to have been the result of something as grotesquely banal as road rage, which police say they are considering, it is certainly a mystery of the first order. But imagining a murder conspiracy coming out of an Oscar campaign is looney.

We can only hope that the mystery is soon solved, and that the person responsible for cutting short the life of Chasen is quickly brought to justice.