Don's Plum

Rather dull film overall. It was a stretch to turn this short shot in 1996 into a feature length film, but still interesting to see some of Hollywood's hot young stars improvising in low budget cinema before they were the mega stars that they are today (notably leo pre titanic and toby pre spiderman).

This film was shot in the mid 90's, and after Titanic became a hit, the makers of the film wanted to release it, but it was suppressed by Leonardo DiCaprio and (to a lesser degree) Tobey Maguire. One would think it's an embarrassing, awful film considering Leo sued the makers and tried to stop it being released. Well, guess what? It's not a great film by any means, but it's not really that embarrassing and it's your typical 90's Gen X talk fest. Basically, a bunch of Gen Xers sit around at a diner, have cigarettes, coffee, food, and talk about "edgy" topics like sex. This was the kind of stuff that was being made in that decade. Basically indie talk fests. This is typical of those films for better or worse. Those type of films often started out well but got more tiresome as they progressed and they were never as "smart" as they thought they were. This one is like that, too, but does that mean it shouldn't be seen? Of course not. It's a decently made indie movie, shot on low contrast 16mm black and white, like Kevin Smith's Clerks, which came out a year before this film was made. Why DiCaprio hated it is beyond me. It's not THAT bad, Leo.

If you're feeling nostalgic about the 90's, check it out and this will take you back to that time.

I've never seen the movie, but I did get to know David Stutman (the Producer) and I can personally see why he sued Leo DiCaprio and all of his agents for basically stopping the movie from distribution and thereby stopping a lot of people from getting paid.

Stutman and some of the others in the producer/writer/actor group were very close friends - there was a lot of smoking pot, drinking, and sexual conduct (not limited to heterosexuality, and involving two big name actors, if you catch my drift). The movie, while seen as a very endearing art-house-style flick by the actors, suddenly became dangerous when Dicaprio was in pre-production for Titanic and Toby was being slated for Cider House rules. With Titanic being released that year and Cider House a year or so later, Don's Plum basically amounted to an early heavily contrasted look at the two actors that the public should never take. Leo's agent's filed an injunction that Stutman had illegally created a movie that Hollywood lawyers had not been present to administer signing of.

Long story short, Stutman made a movie that was distributed 5 years later to the back of the VHS/DVD bin, when it might have been a hit if it was sold or even screened simultaneously with Titanic. I believe that the studio settled with him and forced him to put it off 5 years. I still remember Stutman well, with his tiny house in the middle of Venice Beach, with two big dalmations and a slew of precious Disney cels.

When I rented this film, I was not aware that it was hard to get. I thought it hadn't released in the cinema in Belgium because it was too dark and had simple ended up in a dim corner of the rental place. I didn't have too high expectations. Afterwards I checked for user comments here and felt people were being a bit too harsh. It is true that impact is a little bit lost sometimes because it's hard to relate with the characters. It's hard to admit for anyone that they've asked out a 'friend' sometimes just for accompaniment and self-gratification like the characters seem to do in this film. But I'm a 100 % sure that everyone has done it at least once in their life. This film is hard to watch cause it takes this very aspect of relationships and puts in under a magnifying glass. I even had to interrupt watching it, cause the brutality was making me nervous. I think the film is good in the way that it had it's desired effect. It's not your cup of tea if you want to watch something entertaining, something fun with your friends. Acting is very interesting. Because it mainly plays in the same room and the film is in black and white attention is focused on the words, and even more on the gestures and facial expressions of the characters. It's worth watching if you want to watch something that's not main stream. I hope I've helped constructing the right expectations for this film.

This movie isn't the most incredible thing in the world, but it's really entertaining to witness just how insane Leonardo DiCaprio and Toby Maguire are. I am a HUGE Jenny Lewis fan, so I was super excited to watch her, and she has a fairly large role (one that includes making out with Leo).

If you want to watch it just for Amber Benson, I'm sorry to say she only appears for about 3 minutes, so don't bother.

Check it out if you have a thing for black and white movies about people dealing with their "issues", or if you care to see Leonardo act like an idiot in fake hillbilly teeth.