A 5.12 N.Y. Times story by David Segal reports that Scott Thorson, former boy-toy lover of Liberace who’s played by Matt Damon in Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra (HBO, 5.26), is currently doing time in Washoe County Jail near Reno after buying $1300 worth of merchandise with someone else’s credit card and driver’s license. “It’s hard to connect this worn and anxious man in a blue prison shirt to the beefcake grinning in photographs in the late 1970s,” Segal writes. “Time, an on-and-off meth addiction, several stints in prison and what he describes as Stage 3 colon cancer have taken their toll.”

A BBC documentary called The Great Gatsby: Midnight In Manhattan came out on DVD last Tuesday (5.7). It includes interviews with William Styron, George Plimpton and Hunter S. Thompson. (Tip of the hat to Speakeasy’s Barbara Chai of The Wall Street Journal.)

This morning I finally got around to reading Kelly Marcel‘s script of Saving Mr. Banks, the story of the contentious script collaboration between Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) during the development of Disney’s Mary Poppins film, which came out to great success and acclaim in 1964.

Tom Hanks as Walt Disney as Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers in John Lee Hancock and Kelly Marcel’s Saving Mr. Banks (Disney, 12.20).

For some bizarre reason a U.S. version of this Fruitvale Station trailer denies embed code access so I went with a French-subtitled version. This fits with Ryan Coogler‘s film, which the Weinstein Co. is releasing on 7.16, about to screen in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.

Today I spent the late afternoon and evening in Friedrichshain, the hip neighborhood in Eastern Berlin (just east of Kreuzberg) that is obviously the cool place to be. It’s like the Bedford area of Brooklyn about 10 or 12 years ago. Full of life and couples and pizazz. Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection, dragging themselves through the negro streets and looking for an angry fix. Everyone on the streets is under 40, graffiti and big shady trees and scooters and bicycles. Dozens of outdoor cafes and not a tourist in sight.

I had an issue today with the wonderful people at Superfit, a health club in Berlin Charlottenberg (Wilmersdorferstrasse 54). I wanted to just hit the treadmill and use some of the machinery, but I didn’t think to bring sweats or shorts with me to Europe. So I tried to skirt the fashion norm by paying my 10 euro-per-day fee and using the facilities with my Nike workout shoes and jeans. Yes, I know, of course — jeans don’t pass muster in a workout club. It’s not cool and I get that. They’re totally right. But I was looking for a little leniency.

Call me a cheapskate but I just couldn’t see shelling out 20 or 25 euros for a pair of bathing suit trunks or gray sweatpants so I could pay 10 euros to do two miles on a treadmill for one time. I was being a pain and a bit obstinate, okay, but was it really that crazy to ask for a little slack? As a one-time deal?

The following are responses to Michael Fleming‘s 5.10 Deadline story about the Weinstein Co.’s decision to move up the release date of Lee Daniels‘ The Butler from October 18th to August 16th. “That slot has done well for films that include The Help, Julie and Julia and Eat Pray Love,” Fleming writes, “and TWC will hope to follow suit.”

“Through its use of characters, garbage falling from the sky all the time, and black people constantly playing the trumpet on a fire escape, The Great Gatsby is truly a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald about how you shouldn’t just buy a castle near your ex-girlfriend in the 1920s and then wait for her to fall back in love with you, because eventually you might get murdered by a poor person.” — from Jezebel review of The Great Gatsby by a 16 year-old kid with a very long name who may or may not have read the book and/or may have only seen the film…I can’t tell. (Thanks to Chris Willman for heads-up.)

Zhou Qi, a professor at Jiangsu’s Southeast University and the architect of the Peoples Daily building on eastern Beijing, is obviously looking to attract attention and build a rep as a nervy professional who thinks outside the box. “Our way of expression is kind of extreme,” Zhou has reportedly told the Modern Express newspaper, “different from the culture of moderation that Chinese people are accustomed to.” Obviously a provocateur, but also a bit of an asshole?

The gist of yesterday afternoon’s World War Z piece by Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is that the super-costly Brad Pitt-Marc Forster zombie film (a) is, according to Fleming, no John Carter and no Battleship, (b) in the opinion of Fleming, who was recently shown the film in NYC, it’s “a rocking, smart, pulse-pounding big-scale pandemic with raging zombies, tension and the kind of hero[ic] star turn Pitt hasn’t done in a long time,” and (c) it’s been unfairly tarnished for re-shooting its last act when doing nothing to improve the film would have resulted in a more positive (or at least more neutral) advance buzz.

Phase 1 was the lousy Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings. Phase 1.5 was the positive pushback (measured, ardent) from guys like David Edelstein, Rick Groen, Lou Lumenick, Roth Cornet. Phase 2 is the current box-office celebration — $18.5 million on Friday, a projected $50-plus million by Sunday night. And Phase 3 is the verdict of Hollywood Elsewhere readers. Include impressions on how the room felt, whether it seemed to be connecting, etc.