'Heroes' and the perils of Twitter

One of the cool things about following celebrities on Twitter -- and there are quite a few of them out there -- is that you get the sense that it's really them talking, dashing off their 140-character thoughts without having to go through a studio-network-agent-publicist complex first.

Shaquille O'Neal posting a picture of himself at the barber shop, Jimmy Fallon asking for questions of tonight's guest or filmmaker David Lynch offering up the day's weather report aren't exactly earth-shattering insights into the souls of these people. Nor do I harbor any illusions of having any real connection with the handful of actors, writers and other famous types I follow.

But it's fun reading their off-the-cuff thoughts about things. And I hope that it doesn't become yet another part of showbiz life that has to be shaped and vetted before it's released.

Why am I worried? Because of what happened to Heroes star Greg Grunberg a few days ago.

On Sunday morning, Grunberg tweeted the following: "Winding down shooting season 3 #Heroes. Tough to say goodbye to crew not knowing if any or all of us will return next year. Hope all." Over the next couple of days that one message set off a flood of "OMG!! Is Heroes cancelled!?!" musings on the web.

(Short answer: No, at least not as far as anyone knows. New NBC Entertainment head Angela Bromstad said at January's press tour that the show is "very secure" for next year, even though it's struggling in the ratings and NBC is lopping off a third of its weeknight schedule for Jay Leno in the fall.)

The posts all mention that Grunberg "later" or "eventually" clarified his first remark with another tweet, that reads, "Don't get me wrong, #Heroes IS coming back next next year, but some crew take other jobs, so it's tough... we have the Best. Crew. Ever." But they make it sound like he was responding to all the supposed controversy he created with his remarks.

Here's the thing: Grunberg's second tweet came all of three minutes after the first one. That doesn't sound so much like backtracking or butt-covering so much as a guy reading what he just wrote, deciding the thought wasn't complete and then completing it. I know things move fast on the Internet, but three minutes on a Sunday morning isn't enough time to create a controversy and then try to respond to it.

The incident doesn't seem to have soured Grunberg on Twitter, although he did comment on a "long day of rain on set and being misquoted" on Monday. I just hope things like this don't make people become excessively guarded in what they say on Twitter, because that would suck a lot of the fun out of it.

(Oh, and by the way: Here's my Twitter feed.)

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