Last week, Woody Harrelson gave the online tabloid site TMZ some video fodder by assaulting one of its photographers as Harrelson, who had his daughter with him, was accosted at La Guardia Airport. As CNN described the incident as it was caught on video, " The first video shows the photographer following Harrelson and his daughter down an escalator and out of the terminal. It ends with Harrelson apparently reaching for the lens. The second video begins with the photographer accusing Harrelson of breaking his camera. After Harrelson returns the camera to him, a scuffle appears to ensue. 'Woody, this is assault. Woody, this is assault,' the photographer is heard saying. 'Woody, chill out. Would you please chill out?' " Apparently, Harrelson heard all that as "Arghhh!!" In a statement released by his publicist Friday, Harrelson explained that "I wrapped a movie called Zombieland, in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie." You know what's the great thing about Woody Harrelson? Ninety-nine out of a hundred people say something like this, you'd at least be able to make an unformed guess as to whether or not they're kidding.

Giving Harrelson the benefit of the doubt, he's not the only person involved here who seems to be a little confused. In the video, the photographer can be seen following Harrelson and his daughter "for another four minutes" into the parking lot, only to tell whoever is on the other end of his cell phone, "I'm being chased by Woody Harrelson while I'm talking to you." Harrelson is already being sued for a run-in with another TMZ employee back in 2006. That was the year he made A Scanner Darkly, so whatever the hell he thought he was defending himself against on that occasion, it must have had the additional horror of appearing to have been rotoscoped. As for Zombieland, a publicist for that movie has described its zombies as being more along the lines of those in 28 Days Later than those of the George Romero variety. In other words, Woody thought the photographer was one of those fast zombie motherfuckers, which makes his panic all the more understandable.