Day: June 15, 2008

Strangely, oddly, curiously, I didn’t hate Get Smart. I wouldn’t have felt very good if I’d paid to see it, but it’s mildly amusing (emphasis on the “m” word) here and there. I was expecting it to be awful and it’s not. It is, however, a little dreary to sit through. Okay, more than a little. But despite the depressing atmosphere of surrender to corporate attitude and authorship in every corner of it, Steve Carell‘s Maxwell Smart is half-appealing. He half-creates his own guy and half-channels Don Adams.

I know what it’s like to feel horribly burned by a bad big-studio film, and Get Smart did not do this to me. I wasn’t in the least bit engaged or turned on and I didn’t laugh out loud once — but I didn’t despise it.

I vaguely hated myself for sitting there and watching it this afternoon, but I have to be honest and report that the audience laughed a lot and clapped at the end. Nobody near me as I was walking out was putting it down. They knew it was basically a nothing movie, but they didn’t seem to mind. Whatever…we’re on vacation! I’ll tap out a bit morethis evening, but I have to get to a Cinevegas movie that’s starting 35 minutes from now.

A better-than-decent Father’s Day speech by Barack Obama in Chicago today, one that particularly chastises black dads who are “missing from too many lives and too many homes…acting like boys instead of men…and the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”

A note from the great Werner Herzog: “As you probably know, I will begin principal photography of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans in three weeks time, with only a very short period of pre-production. But I am doing fine, and this does not make me nervous. By the way: it is not a remake (as reported almost everywhere) — it is a completely different story in the same sense as the last James Bond is not a remake of the previous one.
“On another note: just before the hurricane I was scouting locations in Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam for The Piano Tuner, and as soon as I arrived in Bangkok I found myself arrested and handcuffed to a chair because of unpaid bills and taxes by the producers of Rescue Dawn. It required much explaining to explain that I was not the producer.”
The Rescue Dawn producer that the Bangkok authorities were looking to get their hands on is almost certainly the notorious Steve Marlton. I’m told that his history, some aspects of which have run afoul of the law, is public record in Oregon.

I’ll never stay in a Las Vegas suite of this size or splendor ever again. I was given this high-roller pad because the wifi in the other rooms wasn’t working and they wanted to be nice to guests of Cinevegas, and I just don’t get here that often or care that much. I hate to sound like a shmuck tourist from Emporia , Kansas, but this place is amazing. Two big high-def flat screens, a little bar with a free refrigerator, a whirlpool bath, a poker table, breathtaking views of the Paris and Bellagio, an iPod music player. Give me a break.

I’m on the 35th floor of the Planet Hollywood hotel & casino, and I have to be honest and say the wireless doesn’t work. (I’m using my AT& T Air Card.) I’m here to do three or four days’ worth of Cinevegas and I’ll soon be off to the races. A Get Smart screening will begin in an hour or so. The machine-gun poster [see below] is the first thing I saw after arriving at McCarran.

From room #3567 at Planet Hollywood — Sunday, 6.15.08, 11:25 am