For the record:

Steve Carell: An article about Steve Carell in Sunday’s Calendar section said the comic actor was talking at Patty’s Restaurant. The Toluca Lake coffee shop is Paty’s Restaurant.

Regular-guyness is key to Carell’s considerable charm. Even his reincarnated Maxwell Smart is a regular guy — or at least as much of a regular guy as a secret agent who dangles from an aircraft can be. (Carell did that stunt himself, 50 feet above a soundstage floor.)

Don’t look for the ghost of Don Adams, the original Agent 86 of CONTROL, in the Warner Bros. release: “Get Smart” is no more a photocopy of the iconic ‘60s TV series than “The Office” is of its veddy British predecessor. “I didn’t think there was any way to improve upon what Don Adams did,” says Carell, who’s perched on a banquette, casually dressed in jeans and a gray sweat shirt.

”That characterization is very distinct. I think to do an impersonation wouldn’t have served the movie or done him justice. So my feeling was that I would take the essence of the character he created without the specific voice and mannerisms, the essence being a man who is actually quite proficient at what he does. People tend to remember Maxwell Smart as being a bumbling Inspector Clouseau kind of character, and I’ve never perceived him that way. If anything, he’s counterintuitive. He was a formidable spy. He always got his man in a roundabout way.”

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