Very Cool!!!

Am I Missing Something?

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

In spite of everything that has been said about this movie Don's Plum is not terrible. It is probably one of the most notorious unreleased movies ever made simply because of Leo and Tobey Maguire trying to block it and to be quite honest, I have no idea why and this is after watching it from start to finish in it's entirety.The plot, many friends try to get dates where they go to this hangout place at a diner, they talk about sex, drugs and all other kinds of stuff. There really isn't all that much else to say about the plot mainly because this movie is minimalist, the only other thing of note is that it sometimes cuts to a character's internal thoughts which is them talking in a bathroom mirror with scratchy audio.Okay, I'll say all the things I found wrong with this movie. Some stuff is really speratic and right the hell out of nowhere. One of the character's close to final notes is an internal thought described above where she was molested as a kid... That's not the kind of stuff to just bring up and throw away. It also makes out in the opening that Amber Benson is the lead when she's not. After trashing a car a half hour in we never see her again. Tobey Maguire has some really awkward line deliveries (although, why he sees this as more embarrassing than the dancing in Spiderman 3?... I have no clue) And at the end I feel as though in spite of the character insight nothing really was accomplished, like this is how these kids spend every Saturday night. That could work if it was a short movie but it's not.Okay now to address the elephant in the room. There are many stories to suggest why this movie was never released and to be quite honest I can debunk so many of them. It was claimed Leo had a nude scene and claimed he was bisexual in this movie. Is Scott Bloom really the spitting image of Leo that you can't tell the difference? It was also claimed that it would ruin Maguire and Leo's image at the time, well today Leo has an Oscar and played FAR more unpleasant characters than some misogynistic prick that spends the entire movie putting people down (so I wouldn't think if released today it would harm his image) and with Maguire, he's usually a peacekeeper in those situations, as I may have said he's a little awkward - sure but I think that's deliberate. So I honestly don't know why they don't release it now because problems aside it can be pretty interesting to watch even without the crap in this paragraph.Okay, the good things. Well the acting from all involved is pretty good and while I know it was mostly improvised I feel as though it did come across pretty damn good. I get the story is trying to be this deconstruction of the characters and their relationships with one another and while as I said that was rushed that idea is pretty intriguing. While it's also in black and white the cinematography at times can be really good.So if you want me to be honest, had this been released properly I probably wouldn't have watched it but I'm glad I did mainly because of the stuff I've said above. To be quite honest if you're looking for reasons why this is the most personally despised film of Leo and Maguire's respective careers I personally think it's a head-scratcher. It's just a minimalist drama that seemed to be doing what Clerks did but instead got a lot of flak from either the media's coverage of the lawsuit or word of mouth from those events. If you can find a copy, if ANYTHING of what I've described above is your thing, while the characters aren't really likable I'd suggest watching it.

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.

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).

Yesterday I saw this piece in a small cinema in the basements of berlin. Great Expectations! LeoTitanico in a film he seems to be ashamed of now. But it´s only about a few guy and girls, hanging out, joking and crying, flirting and hurting. I felt touched and amused like watching nick Cassavetes Jr. doing a remake of one of his grandpa´s "everybody gets drunk except the d.p."-kind of "Pre-Dogma"-movies. You can see in Leo´s acting, that he´s not very concerned about "real" acting... He plays an arrogant but hurt young guy, blaming everyone for the mood he´s in and seems to be interested in nothing but f**king. I felt so old, nearly everyone in the plum is about 20! And I´m 26. So afterwards in the subway-station I read the press-notes and I couldn´t believe my eyes: "If you are over 25 you might not like this film" they say. I hate and love you guys for that!