Confusing Position

It was noted here last week that Warner Bros. was upset with Coca-Cola for mistakenly announcing that a new 30-second commercial features Batman and his nemesis, the Catwoman.

Coca-Cola quickly corrected its description to mysterious, explaining that Warner does not want to “position” Catwoman as a nemesis in promoting the upcoming sequel “Batman Returns.”

More mysterious to us is the positioning of Catwoman in this Warner ad for the film. (We were under the impression that actress Michelle Pfeiffer portrays her, with actor Danny DeVito as the Penguin.)

Turns out the ad is no accident. A Warner Bros. spokeswoman says DeVito’s contract calls for him to get second billing no matter what, even when Catwoman is positioned under his name.

Job Security

Survival is tough in Hollywood, but few players have the opportunity to do it in their own chamber.

International Creative Management, one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies, is planning to move early next year into the Beverly Hills building that was to have been a glitzy new headquarters for the now-defunct Columbia Savings & Loan.

The elaborate building has long been a sore spot with federal savings and loan regulators. Among the allegations pending against former Columbia Chief Executive Thomas Spiegel is that he squandered the thrift’s money on elaborate security measures, including designing for his protection bulletproof “survival chamber” bathrooms in the building.

The $42-million building at 8942 Wilshire Blvd., which was sold in February to an affiliate of Casden Co. for less than $3 million, was one of the biggest white elephants the government inherited in the savings and loan debacle. The total loss that taxpayers absorb on the building is nearly $40 million, or about as much as it costs to finance a big-budget film these days.

Barbarians at the Office

The excessively high office vacancy rate in downtown Los Angeles eased, at least for a couple of weeks.

Producers of the Home Box Office film of the best-selling book “Barbarians at the Gate” took advantage of the glut of office space to create sets for Manhattan and Winston-Salem, N.C. The film, about the $25-billion takeover of RJR Nabisco, is scheduled to air next spring.

The former Federal Reserve Bank office on Olympic Boulevard subs in the film for RJR’s North Carolina offices. A near-empty building at 612 S. Flower St., formerly occupied by Sanwa Bank, serves as RJR’s New York offices as well as offices of American Express.

But the crew had to move across town to the Wang building off the 405 Freeway near Westchester to create the setting for RJR’s Atlanta offices. “The view out the window from the Wang building oddly enough looks a lot like Atlanta,” explains Executive Producer Tom Hammel.

We assume he means when one is looking away from the ocean.