When I meet people and they find out what I do for a living, they usually ask me how many movies I see in a week, they ask my favorite movie, or they ask what I think of their favorite movie. Sometimes they'll even comment on something I wrote recently: "It was good — what was it? That thing you wrote. What was it? Nice job!" But every so often over the past 12 years, somebody comes up and tells me this: "I like the obituary you wrote for Brittany Murphy." That gets my attention. In my opinion — and I realize my opinion about me shouldn't count for much — that was the best thing I wrote in 2009. Murphy was a young actress who first became widely known for co-starring in 1995's "Clueless" alongside Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd. She had roles in "Freeway" (1996) and "Girl, Interrupted" (1999), then peaked in the first years of the millennium, co-starring opposite Eminem in "8 Mile" (2002) and with then-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher in the rom-com "Just Married" (2003). Her last major film was the 2006 thriller "The Dead Girl," though she continued working for her remaining three years. Her death was announced on a Sunday before Christmas — Dec. 20, 2009 — and for the rest of the day I just walked around downcast. I wasn't particularly a fan. I hadn't seen her onscreen in two years and probably hadn't thought of her in that time. But she had made a warm impression onscreen, so that when she died it felt like something radiant and distinct had left the world; that someone nice, fragile and lovely had just gotten the world's worst break, to be dead at just 32 years old. The impression of niceness she displayed is confirmed by a new two-part documentary that premiered Thursday, Oct. 14, on HBO Max, "What Happened, Brittany Murphy?" It's a cliche that people should not speak ill of the dead, and yet in common practice, the dead are trashed more than anybody, because everybody knows the dead can't retaliate. But over the course of two hours, no one has anything bad to say about Murphy, except in one area: her choice of a husband. Murphy's husband, Simon Monjack, emerges as the villain of the documentary.