In Tallahassee terms, Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers is an outright indie hit, looking at its third consecutive week in release, which prior editions of this column would reveal is an extraordinarily rare occurrence around these parts. It's going to certainly outlast the now-playing Junebug and the coming-Friday 2046 for a singular reason: Bill Murray.

Bill is what I'm sure studio marketers had joygasms about when they found out they had to build a campaign for the movie. They cared not a bit about Jeffrey Wright's masterfully (as usual) crafted, lived-in portrayal of Murray's best friend. They didn't even care about the presence of Sharon Stone or Jessica Lange.

They didn't even try for the critical praise angle, they went the easy route, and who could blame them?

The Broken Flowers advertising campaign relied less on the actual content of the movie than the "look" recognition of "Bill Murray in Lost in Translation 2: Murray In a Tracksuit. It has obviously paid off in admissions rolling in, but is there marketing morality to be considered.

I had to break the paragraph, I started laughing so much. Marketing morals. I think I just invented something there. Marketing at its core is a deceptive practice, and in the case of Broken Flowers, the more deception, the better.

A week or so ago, I went along with a few friends to see Broken Flowers for the second time. The biggest payoff came not only from a member of the group I was with, but a couple others seated nearby, detailed in the newest edition of...