Hotel for big shots:In the new movie,...

Hotel for big shots:

In the new movie, “Nick of Time,” Johnny Depp plays a gentlemanly accountant ordered by some bad guys to assassinate the female governor of California at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown L.A.

Let’s see. The last time we saw the Bonaventure in a film--”In the Line of Fire”--John Malkovich played a gunman who invaded one of the banquet rooms to assassinate the president of the United States.

In Hollywood, apparently, even hotels can become typecast.

WELL, THANKS, BUT ABOUT THE ROOM DAMAGE. . . Incidentally, don’t get the idea that “In the Line of Fire” showed off the Bonaventure in a totally negative light. Malkovich, on his way to the shooting, takes a ride in one of the hotel’s cylindrical glass elevators and comments, “Nice view.”

WOULD THE GOVERNMENT DETERMINE YOUR HAIRSTYLE AND CLOTHING COLORS? We’ve been dribbling out details of the Pat Robertson novel, “The End of the Age,” because we didn’t want to make this column into a fire-and-brimstone sermon. The “Christian thriller,” as you may recall, concerns a meteor that plops into the ocean off the coast of hedonistic L.A. in the year 2000, leaving Southern California under 5,000 feet of water.

The only survivors are a family who happen to be on Mt. Wilson. The husband is a Channel 11 engineer who was looking over a faulty transmitter. He and the family are flown to New Mexico, where he helps reshape the new world that emerges.

That’s the really scary part--a society rebuilt by the employee of a local television station. Imagine having to keep your family’s Nielsen ratings from dropping.

CD OR HMO VERSION? Local religious stores are now carrying “Fruits of His Spirit Come Together,” a 12-song recording by employees of St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood.

MORE PROOF THAT SELF-SERVE ISLAND IS NO PARADISE: Ben Elder and Kurt Sawitskas each spotted a Glendale gas station sign apologizing for “inconvenients.” Maybe the management is referring to those panhandlers who ask if they can clean your windshield for a few bucks.

miscelLAny:

Hey, did you hear that the highest-paid public employee in California resigned? We’re referring, of course, to UCLA football coach Terry Donahue. A few years ago, it was revealed that Donahue’s salary package--then in excess of $350,000--far outdistanced that of UCLA Chancellor Charles Young ($175,000), not to mention Gov. Pete Wilson ($120,000). Perhaps the budgetary problems for higher education in California won’t be quite as critical now.