The Wolf of Wall Street, Catch Me If You Can, The Beach, and Romeo & Juliet are just a handful of the incredible movies in Leonardo DiCaprio’s stellar filmography.
Yet, there’s one flick the Oscar winner made that you’ve probably never heard of, and never will as he has spent well over 20 years trying to keep it from ever making the light of day.
Don’s Plum is widely considered the worst movie of the 47-year-old’s critically-acclaimed Hollywood career.
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The largely improvised black-and-white indie tells the story of a group of 20-somethings who gather every Saturday night at a LA diner and get up to no good.
Starring Kevin Connolly and Tobey Maguire, the film was shot over a few days between 1995 and 1996, a year before DiCaprio was catapulted into global stardom in Titanic.
But interestingly so, the film has been banned from ever being shown in the US and Canada, according to the New York Post.
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According to a trivia on IMDb, the director of the movie RD Robb filed a lawsuit $10 million lawsuit against DiCaprio and Maguire. In depositions given as part of the 1998 suit, the actors alleged they never meant for the film school-like project to become a full-length feature.
They both also claimed that they made the movie as a favour and were paid a mere $500 each per day. They also believed it would only be shown at independent film festivals.
Shortly after DiCaprio made a name for himself, Maguire was cast as superhero Spiderman, which prompted the film’s director RD Robb to organise meetings with distributors in the hope of getting the film out to wider audiences.
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But after the actors blocked the movie release, producer David Stuntman sued them for allegedly launching a 'fraudulent and coercive campaign to prevent the release of the film', because they feared it might 'reveal personal experiences or tendencies'.
It was, however, briefly released online in 2001 in Germany after failing to make it to cinemas, receiving mixed reviews.
Then in 2016, another one of the film’s producers, Dale Wheatley, created website freedonsplum.com and shared a link to stream the full feature on Vimeo, which was subsequently taken down after a 'third-party notification by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire'.
According to the Independent, he wrote at the time: “I can no longer remain silent. I can no longer allow the defamation and lies that you perpetrated against Don’s Plum to scar the great work of the artists who created it.
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“I’m not afraid of you or your lawyers anymore. I have endured enough. I’m going to speak with the freedom that our Constitution affords me. I’m going to stand up for our film and for every one of the people who helped make it.
"I don’t know you anymore, Leo, but I hope that you’ve learned a little bit about film preservation and your responsibility to protect and contribute to the ongoing experiment of filmmaking … you are not bigger than art, Leo.”
As of 2022, the website remains, and Wheatley was last active on the site in February 2021. He claimed that DiCaprio has done everything to "bury this film and me".
Topics: Film and TV, Leonardo DiCaprio
Lisa McLoughlin