Don's Plum

What was one of the films Leonardo DiCaprio did two years before Titanic? The Quick and the Dead? Yes. The Basketball Diaries. Yes. How about Don's Plum? You mean you've never heard of it? Well it also had Tobey Maguire in it. That guy little guy who plays E on Entourage was in it too, you know, Kevin Connolly. Do you like the band Rilo Kiley? Their singer Jenny Lewis was in it too, acting next to Leo. Filmed in 1995 by aspiring filmmaker and friend of Dicaprio and Maguire, J.D. Robb, Don's Plum is a 'young in America', black and white indie film only released in Europe. When the director tried to have it released in America the film was suppressed by DiCaprio and Maguire on the grounds that it was merely supposed to be shown at small festivals, and more importantly, contained characters so unflattering, (DiCaprio especially) that the two were afraid it would hurt the public's image of them. Some viewers have reflected that the film may simply be an exaggerated version of DiCaprio's own posse with which he used to scour L.A. for girls with the film's actors, his real life best friends. Controversy aside, Don's Plum, which I watched over Youtube, is basically Clerks with famous actors and contains some of the rawest, realest, apparently often improvised youth banter I've ever heard on film. The film is short, about 80 minutes, and after a few artsy early scenes, the action moves to an L.A. dive named Don's Plum where it will stay for its duration. At this diner, a group of friends including the aforementioned actors sit and converse, in Kevin Smith fashion, about the most blunt sexual topics they can think up. Did I mention they are also a bunch of narcissistic entitled brats? The standout performance is a troubled, unhinged Leo who explodes at a hippie hitch hiker that Connolly's character has brought to the table after she criticizes him for laughing at a fat black woman in the restaurant. Don's Plum is, I believe, a near-masterpiece, actually. The director intersperses the enclosed action of the table with asides where the characters mug and talk to a mirror in the restaurant's bathroom. These scenes are often revealing of a facet of a character's identity that is not present at the table, or suppressed, and contrast the way the characters put up with the sexist, hateful banter that flies around the table like bullets. Ideas of interpellation are thus explored within the actual film as characters wonder to themselves how they will appear in their perceived roles which includes bisexuality. The only character who never does an aside is DiCaprio's. Because of this he seems the most confident. Does Don's Plum offer any redemption? Well yes, it comes at the end and I won't spoil it for you but it displays a duality that, like all good works of art, makes the viewer sympathetic for a character he probably despised. While the brash content of Don's Plum will be a definite turn-off to some viewers, I believe it is worth seeing in that I think it is a better acted, and more socially pertinent film than Clerks, that is unafraid to look directly at issues most similar films only touch lightly.