Got up really early for some reason, worked a couple of hours and then went down to Norm’s on La Cienega for breakfast. A couple of good-natured beefy guys who work for a glass-installing outfit came in, and as they sat down they greeted the waitress — a 40ish black woman — and said, “So, [name]…excited? Good news, eh?”

Norms on La Cienega — Thursday, 6.5, 6:35 am.

They were talking about Obama’s triumph, of course. Now, it’s entirely possible that these guys knew the waitress well enough to have sussed out her political beliefs to some extent so let’s tread carefully. Nonetheless, I took their comment to mean, “Hey, one of your people won the nomination!” I mean, they didn’t look to me like guys who read Salon…okay?
The waitress gave them a quick glance as she said “yeah, I’m excited.” She said it in a somber tone that indicated (to me anyway) that she saw them as a couple of racist lunkheads who left good tips.
And just as this happened, I was reading this 6.3 Richard Cohen column in the N.Y. Daily News. I was right in the middle of reading the first three graphs, I mean. The combination of this and the two chowderheads at Norms (a) gave me the chills and (b) put me in a down-ish mood.
Media elites don’t really understand how deeply racist this country is. Among the lugs, I mean. They really don’t. They need to hang out more at Norms, at truck stops, in working-class neighborhood taverns. If Obama wins, it’s going to be a squeaker.

A riff on Adam Sandler‘s Republican-conservative thinking as manifested in his films, penned by Cinematical’s Eric Kohn. Are his core convictions all that evident in his films? The answer for the most part seems to be “yeah…but not so you’d notice.”

At least one previous Get Smart trailer was a little dryer than this new one, which is obviously heavier on the gags. Meaningless, of course. No matter what message the trailers put out, the box-office fate is fixed and immutable. The vibe and the aroma have been out there for weeks — months, really — and the Gods have made their call.

I’m presuming that McCain voters will come out in droves. I can see them sitting in the dark, their silver hair glowing in the reflected light of the screen and going “Heh-heh! Heh-heh-heh! That’s pretty funny….heh-heh!”
To paraphrase Melville’s Captain Ahab, “All visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The Get Smart trailers task me; they heap me. Yet they are but a mask. ‘Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued movie fans since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.”

As MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann quipped today, when Hillary Clinton spoke today to legislators about her future plans and whether or not she should concede to Barack Obama, a majority said to her, “What are you doing?” Anyway, she’s agreed to finally be gracious, show a little class — the thought! — and concede on Friday.

Asked by Media Bistro’s David S. Hirschman how many print years the L.A. Times has left, the paper’s editor Russ Stanton answers as follows:
“One hundred twenty-six! [laughs] But, you know, somebody, somewhere soon is going to throw in the towel on print. For us, I think that for now, our core base of readers are the baby boomers, and I think that we’ve got at least another 35 year run in print. On the other hand, someone, somewhere is going to grow the revenue from online enough that it can support a newsroom of our size and talent. And when that happens, that’s when you can start, if you so choose, to pull the plug on the paper.
“If you have the revenue to pay for the journalism, you can eliminate the print. I mean, the people are only half of the cost — the stuff that costs so much are the paper and the presses you need to print the darn thing. But I don’t see that happening around here in my lifetime.”
I respectfully disagree. I think that newspapers printed on paper will be exctinct by….oh, 2020? 2025 at the latest? Fifteen years, give or take. Not 25 and certainly not 35.

Hollywood Interrupted‘s Mark Ebner is now the star of truTV’s Rich & Reckless,” which debuts on Friday, 6.6, at 10 pm. It’s being described as a “tabloid-style take on crime that focuses on the kind of rough stuff that got Ebner a reputation for being a bad boy reporter who will go where others fear to tread.” Here’s a clip and an endorsement.

I’m feeling this need for a new DVD of Bill Forsyth‘s Local Hero, the last version of which came out in 1999. This 1982 film is too classic, too amusing, too character-rich, too quietly special, too “other” and too mystical to just be a rote bare-bones DVD. Respect and attention ought to be paid.

Politico‘s Jeffrey Ressner is hearing talk about guys wanting to make a docudrama based on Scott McClellan‘s “What Happened“…whatever. It seems too fragmentary at this stage Even joking about Jonah Hill playing McClellan feels like a stretch.

Defamer‘s Stu Van Airsdale has spoken to Werner Herzog about his Bad Lieutenant film that will star Nicolas Cage and will shoot in New Orleans for budgetary reasons. It is not, Herzog says, a remake of Abel Ferrara‘s original but a continuation in a James Bond franchise sense. He also tells Van Airsdale that he has no clue who Ferrara is. Right.

SVA: “So, yes or no — is Bad Lieutenant a project you’re working on with Nicolas Cage?
Herzog: “Yes, but it’s not a remake. It’s like, for example, you wouldn’t call a new James Bond movie a remake of the previous one — although the name of the bad lieutenant is a different one, and the story is completely different. It’s very interesting because Nicolas Cage really wants to work with me, and just anticipating working with an actor of his caliber is just wonderful.”
SVA: “Why this project, though? You could have worked on anything.”
Herzog: “There’s an interesting screenplay, [and] it’s a very, very dark story. It’s great because it seems to reflect a side of the collective psyche — sometimes there are just good times for film noir. They don’t come out of nowhere. There was some sort of a mysterious context with the understanding of people in that particular time. And it’s going to be in New Orleans, which is a fascinating place.”

I finally looked at this iPhone 2.0 video from two or three months ago. I thought the new phone, due later this month, was supposed to be (a) faster loading in terms of websites, (b) have a sharper, higher pixel-level camera, and (c) offer a longer-lasting battery. The 2.0 allows you to selectively delete mail, which is very welcome, but if it doesn’t have the three features I’ve listed, is it worth shelling $400 if you already have last year’s iPhone? I’m asking.

iPhone firmware 2.0 hands-on from Engadget on Vimeo.

Anne Thompson‘s skinny about Paramount Vantage being folded into big Paramount, posted by yours truly a mere 19 hours after the appearance of the original 5.3 article. Congrats to good guy Gerry Rich, who will be running the marketing.

David O. Russell‘s Nailed, which has had its filming schedule halted at least twice due to money problems on the part of its financier, “will resume filming Wednesday thanks to a late-breaking financing deal” between the notoriously shaky Capitol Films and Comerica Bank,” according to Hollywood Reporter guys Gregg Goldstein and Leslie Simmons.
“Key cast members, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Biel and Catherine Keener, were en route to the South Carolina set Tuesday to begin shooting the next day. But the ultimate future of the film from the economically troubled Capitol remains uncertain.
“Sources say the Comerica financing, secured Monday, will help the film meet its projected $25 million budget and additional costs from a week of missed shooting days and union penalties. But some of the filmmakers aren’t sure if the funds will last through postproduction.”