Just because this failed to catch my attention for the last eleven months doesn’t mean its not amusing or clever or without a point. “Sgt. Pet Sounds and the Spiders from Aja”…perfect.

A winking homage to suave ’60s gadgetry in mid ’60s James Bond or Matt Helm movies. Co-directed by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. On behalf of Stella Artois.

I didn’t pick up on yesterday’s “gay” controversy, sparked by an amusing (for me at least) Vince Vaughn riff in a trailer for Universal’s The Dilemma. I spent most of yesterday picking up the rental car from the spot where I was told to leave it early Monday morning by Officer Diamond, and then driving back from East Hampton and then returning the rental car to a Dollar agency in New Jersey, etc. But now I’m on it.

As one who took some heat a while back for using the term “gay music” (i.e, “I loathe ethereal, dreamily feminine and generally unpunctuated pop music…gliding along, un-rocked, non-Lou Reed-ish…music that seems dead set against making any kind of thump-crunchin’ sound…that seems to summon the candy-assed spirit and attitude of Michael Cera, and which the almost seems to exists in order to counteract and nullify the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll music”), I totally get what Vaughn’s character means when he says “electric cars are gay.”

Let’s try it again for the slow readers out there. There are two definitions of gay. The first simply means being homosexual, and we all know that for guys this generally doesn’t imply or allude to any of the dreary homophobic faggy concepts of yesterday. The second definition means lacking a certain softball-adept, baseball-hat wearing “guy” quality. Possessed of a certain gelatinous, salad-eating metrosexual attitude. Lacking a sense of timeless Steve McQueen coolness.

Universal has removed Vaughn’s “electric cars are gay” line from the trailer. It was cut, I suspect, because of that gay Rutgers freshman who committed suicide after being outed online, and because everyone is extra-sensitive now about anything that smacks of gayish slurs. There’s no telling if the line will stay in the feature, but I would guess not…right?

The outrage that Anderson Cooper and GLAAD have expressed seems to be like a deliberate misunderstanding of the term “gay” as Vaughn uses it.

In the trailer Vaughn defines gay as “not homosexual but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay.” I’ve had Allan Loeb‘s screenplay on my laptop for nine months, and in the scripted Vaughn’s character (a schlub named Ronnie) goes on to say “not homosexual gay…but soft gay, unmanly gay, quiet and small gay“, and that “if you’re a real man…you don’t want an electronic car.”

It seems as if the differences between the current head-rolling situation at the Hollywood Reporter (i.e., traditional-minded reporter/editors like Elizabeth Guider and Andrew Wallenstein getting whacked by editorial director Janice Min, who will relaunch the trade as a glossy, celebrity-driven dead-tree weekly next month along with a daily online presence) and “the terror” under Maximilien Robespierre are mostly incidental and/or cosmetic.

It must be agony for vulnerable THR employees (i.e., those who aren’t Min-ions) to be waiting and wondering who’s next. Will it be your head? Mine?

That said, why did Guider choose to cite “personal family issues which take her regularly out of state and the desire to finish a book as reasons for her decision,” as reported by TheWrap‘s Brent Lang? She was whacked because she was a lame-duck leftover who didn’t fit into Min’s new plan — end of story.

“It has been an honor and a pleasure to lead The Hollywood Reporter‘s newsroom during such interesting, if challenging, times,” Guider said in a statement. “I wish our new owners and managers great success with their plans to take the brand to new heights and to a broadened readership.”

I’ve respectfully decided not to attend the Doha Tribeca Film Festival (10.26 to 10.30). I had announced my intention to cover in mid-August, but I gradually became convinced that it just wasn’t a fit. And that’s fine. I was extremely grateful for the respectful gesture of having been invited in the first place, and I’ve thanked everyone concerned and offered my best wishes.

Why did I take a pass on a free trip to a prestigious Middle Eastern film festival, which would have included lodging in a lavish first-class hotel with all kinds of gratis perks (screenings, parties, food and drink) plus a first-time exposure to an exotic culture? Because the trip promised two day-long interruptions in Hollywood Elsewhere’s daily output within a seven-day period, and because the intriguing films being shown at Doha Tribeca didn’t seem quite worth all the tribulations.

I was told yesterday that the Qatar Airlines flight to Qatar (adjacent to Saudi Arabia, south of Kuwait) wouldn’t offer wifi, which meant I’d not only endure a grueling nonstop 13-hour imprisonment (the return trip is 14-plus hours) but would be unable to work on the column while doing so, and the idea of HE going dark for two days over a seven-day period just seemed nuts.

Seriously — what first-class airline doesn’t offer wifi these days? That’s a disconnect.

There’s also some doubt as to whether electrical outlets are available for business-class passengers (which is what I would have been), so that would have meant not even being able to write stuff in preparation for HE placement after the battery dies.

On top of which a friend who’s been there told me that Doha is no Abu Dhabi — it’s a very strict cultural environment. And so it’s kinda boring over there. He also said that the bar downstairs charges $15 for a glass of wine, and that visitors can’t buy bottled wine anywhere or even bring a bottle or two with them on the plane. (They confiscate at the airport.) And that the town outside the corporate ghetto that the festival takes place in isn’t all that interesting.

On top of which the Qatar authorities have been been obsessive about getting a scan of my passport before finalizing the trip. I intended to get that taken care of, but it’s a mild pain with the tons of other things I have to get to every day. In the interim I sent along a high-quality color photo of my passport (which is essentially the same thing as a scan — a digital capturing of a paper document), but I was told this wouldn’t do.

So sometime last month I began asking myself why I’m doing this trip in the first place. Two plane trips involving 13 to 14 hours of agonizing fuselage confinement (“the plane flight is a ballbuster…there really is no way around that,” says a friend) without wifi or electric power? All so I can spend five days in a Middle Eastern Las Vegas in which a glass of Pinot Grigio cost $15 dollars, and with no top-headline, high-throttle films being shown?

“I don’t want to irritate Geoff Gilmore or Jane Rosenthal,” I confided to a friend, “but I’m starting to think to myself that if I could politely and diplomatically get out of this, it might not be a bad thing.” Now that I’ve done this and said thanks and extended best wishes, I feel better.

Again, I hope the Doha Tribeca Film Festival is a success this year, and for many years to come. If and when the Qatar Airlines wifi situation opens up down the road I’d be delighted to attend. And thanks again to the good Rubenstein p.r. people who facilitated .

The five kids from Davis Guggenheim‘s Waiting for Superman — Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, Emily and Anthony — with President Obama yesterday in the Oval Office.

AP photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The widely-admired Superman, which has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating, opened last Friday.

It wasn’t easy, but I’ve managed to not see Waiting for Superman for several months running. I missed it at Sundance, Toronto, and at last weekend’s Hamptons Film Festival. All of these misses were obviously my fault. And yet I was never invited to a single Manhattan screening by Paramount or agency reps. Not once.

I’ll correct this situation sometime this week. I’l catch it at a commercial venue or get a screener for Paramount reps.

“Most of Hereafter is not about what the dead mean to the living; it’s about having nice little chats with ghosts, and neither director Clint Eastwood nor screenwriter Peter Morgan has the taste for such flamboyant stuff. The two men have accomplished the questionable feat of domesticating the uncanny, and, in the process, they’ve lost their storytelling skills — the coincidences that bring the main characters together by the end are laughably unconvincing.” — New Yorker critic David Denby on Eastwood’s latest.

New Yorker illustration of Hereafter‘s Matt Damon and Cecile de France (or is it Bryce Dallas Howard?) by “Quickhoney.”

I was pulled over late last night by the East Hampton bulls because my tail lights were out. That was because I hadn’t fully turned the lights on. I’d been to the closing-night party of the Hamptons Film Festival and had a mild buzz-on, I admit, but nothing to concern the authorities. To make sure Officer Diamond had me submit to four tests to determine sobriety levels — holding up one foot for a count of six or seven, walking the white line, eyeballing a moving object and breathalyzer. I passed.

But I hadn’t paid a traffic ticket for “straddling lanes” (straddling lanes!) that I’d been given in midtown Manhattan a few months ago, which had kicked things up to a fine. And so Officer Diamond was obliged to arrest me, cuff me, put me in the back of his vehicle and drive me back to the police headquarters in Wainscott. From 2 am to 3:20 am I sat and waited as he filled out five or six forms (arrest, background, court date, etc.). This was the part I really didn’t care for. Sitting meekly under fleurescent light and minute by debilitating minute, my spirit slowly withered and died.

Then Officer Diamond took all my cash ($80) for bail and then gave me an 11.3 court appearance date, and then took the cuffs off and cut me loose. The police station is located about a mile into the woods, so I had to walk for about 25 minutes through the pitch-black forest (no streetlights of any kind) and then another 1/3 of a mile back to the Enclave Inn. I finally settled down and got some sleep around 4 am, and then got up at 8 am.

Now I have to take a cab (Lindy’s Taxi) out to the spot near the north shore where my car was left, and then drive back to the city.

Yesterday’s Maureen Dowd N.Y. Times column, titled “Lord of the Internet Rings,” begins as follows: “They had me at the mesmerizing first scene, when the repulsive nerd is mocked by a comely, slender young lady he’s trying to woo. Bitter about women, he returns to his dark lair in a crimson fury of revenge.

“It unfolds with mythic sweep, telling the most compelling story of all, the one I cover every day in politics: What happens when the powerless become powerful and the powerful become powerless?

“This is a drama about quarrels over riches, social hierarchy, envy, theft and the consequence of deceit — a world upended where the vassals suddenly become lords and the lords suddenly lose their magic.

“The beauty who rejects the gnome at the start is furious when he turns around and betrays her, humiliating her before the world. And the giant brothers looming over the action justifiably feel they’ve provided the keys to the castle and want their reward. One is more trusting than the other, but both go berserk, feeling they’ve been swindled after entering into a legitimate business compact.

“The antisocial nerd, surrounded by his army of slaving minions, has been holed up making something so revolutionary and magical that it turns him into a force that could conquer the world.

“The towering brothers battle to get what they claim is their fair share of the glittering wealth that flows from the obsessive gnome’s genius designs.

“The gnome, remarkably, invents a way to hurl yourself through space and meet up with somebody at the other end.

“All of these mythic twists and turns in ‘Das Rheingold’ at the Metropolitan Opera in New York were a revelation to me. I’d never seen the Ring cycle. I didn’t even know what it was about. I loved everything about Peter Gelb‘s $16 million production: the shape-shifting, high-tech stage, the mermaid sopranos dangling from wires, the magnetic Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, who plays Wotan, the weak ruler of the gods who tries to renege after bartering his gorgeous sister-in-law for construction of a gorgeous castle.”

And so on.

If it hadn’t been for the East Hampton fuzz I would have posted congratulations & best wishes last night to the Hampton Film Festival jury and audience-choice winners. They included Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech (best narrative), Jill Andresevic‘s Love Etc. (best doc), Lisa Gossels‘ My So-Called Enemy (HIFF’s ‘Conflict and Resolution’ prize), Alice Nellis‘s Mamas & Papas (narrative & best screenplay Jury winner), and Aaron Schock‘s Circo (doc jury winner).

The third “Oscar Poker” is up. Recorded this afternoon — myself in East Hampton, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone in Los Angeles, and Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino from somewhere in the Bumblefuck hinterlands.