So those late January rumors about Universal honcho Stacey Snider coming to the Paramount lot and replacing Paramount president Gail Berman weren’t total hogwash after all. The L.A. Times‘ Claudia Eller and the Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson have reported over the last couple of days that Snider is looking to take a production chief job with DreamWorks on the Paramount lot, but not replace Berman or anyone else on the Paramount team. Given that the rumors were about 40% true, Nicole LaPorte‘s 2.5.06 Variety story complaining about unchecked net rumors (including the Snider-moving-to-Paramount one) reads a bit more hair-trigger than it did at first glance. There’s a line in Michael Tolkin’s script for Robert Altman‘s The Player (1992) that’s echoing back right now — “All rumors are true…you know that.” Spoken by Sydney Pollack‘s attorney character Dick Mellon to Tim Robbbins‘ Griffin Mill, it implies that the talk out there may not be chapter-and-verse reliable, but there’s almost always something to it. “Talk” usually means that people are unhappy and looking to see something change, and there’s no waving it away. The precise meaning of drumbeats muffled by distance and atmosphere may not have been clear to Native Americans hearing them in the distant past, but the sound alone got their attention every time.