Movie Leo doesn’t want you to see
The Raunchy '90s flick they hope you'll never see
O NCE upon a time in Hollywood, two stars on the rise made a movie with their pals — then fiercely fought for decades to keep it from seeing the light of day. The actors were Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, and the flick is “Don’s Plum” — an adlibbed, mid-1990s indie film that has been banned from ever being shown in the United States and Canada. “‘ Don’s Plum’ was a group of friends saying, ‘Let’s all make a movie,’ ” one of its producers, Dale Wheatley, told The Post. “In many ways, [it] was a love letter to our friends.” Although rumors and articles have circulated about “Don’s Plum” over the years, The Post exclusively has obtained court documents, footage of depositions from the actors, images and other materials that tell the full story of the movie DiCaprio and Maguire never want you to see. Shot over six days between July 1995 and March 1996 in grainy, “Clerks”-like black and white, it tells the story of a group of 20-something guys who gather every Saturday night at the Los Angeles diner that the film is named for, each with a new girl. DiCaprio plays rude, standoffish Derek, whose standout lines are: “Do you girls masturbate at all?” and “I’ll f--king throw a bottle at your face, you goddamn whore.” Maguire’s character, Ian, reveals his unusual masturbation habits in one scene, although the clip was cut from the final version of the film at his behest. The characters whom the stars portray are “not necessarily who [DiCaprio and Maguire] are,” said another of the producers, Tawd Beckman. “But, of course, it is so free-flowing and it seems so natural that an audience is gonna look at that, look at DiCaprio, look at Maguire, and say, ‘Oh, that’s who they are.’ ” It’s for that reason that Wheatley, Beckman and others suspect DiCaprio and Maguire don’t want US audiences to ever see their “Don’s Plum’’ characters.
In depositions given as part of a 1998 lawsuit — which resulted in the film being banned in the US — DiCaprio and Maguire said it was because they never meant for the film-school-like project to become a full-length Hollywood feature.
But others involved in “Don’s Plum,’’ including Wheatley, say they have had to live with the fallout of the failed movie: including ruined careers, destroyed friendships, divorce and thoughts of suicide. I N his “Don’s Plum” days, DiCaprio was fresh off an Academy Award nomination for the movie “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” As for Maguire, a few years away from “Spider-Man,’’ he was trying to build himself as a marketable performer in Hollywood, having just made waves in “This Boy’s Life,” which also starred DiCaprio.
The pair had a growing reputation as obnoxious, skirt-chasing party boys — part of the so-called “Pussy Posse,” a moniker bestowed on their male clique by Nancy Jo Sales in her seminal 1998 New York magazine piece, “Leo, Prince of The City.”
“The group’s core members constitute a frat house of young men, some of whom are actually famous, like Leo,” Sales wrote. “And then there are the other guys in Leo’s pack, who make up a kind of former-child-actor brigade.”
Sales mentioned “Don’s Plum,” saying it “may provide an inadvertent glimpse behind the curtain shrouding the secret society of Leo and his friends, mostly because it was made and largely adlibbed by Leo and his friends.”
Just weeks after moving to Los Angeles, wide-eyed Canada transplant Wheatley said he fell in with the “Posse” — including DiCaprio, Maguire, Kevin Connolly and R.D. Robb — after an introduction from Jeremy Sisto of “Clueless” fame.
Wheatley said he was starstruck the moment he laid eyes on DiCaprio — and had his own aspirations of making it big.
“I was obsessed with success,” Wheatley said. “I didn’t come to LA to stare up at the Hollywood sign. I wanted to make something of myself.”
Wheatley ended up collaborating with aspiring filmmakers David Stutman and Beckman on “Don’s Plum.”
DiCaprio involvement was key, he said.
“Having that guy in your corner obviously means that the rest are probably going to follow him,” Wheatley said.
Former child actor Robb, who appeared in 1983’s “A Christmas Story,” was tapped to direct. Later, as Sales would note for New York magazine, he was “‘expelled’ from the [Posse], according to someone still inside it, for attempting to spin the film’s straw into the Leo gold of a commercial release.”
Robb didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The amateurs eventually brought on two experienced producers, John Schindler and Gary Lowe, to help.
As the group filmed in the LA diner, Wheatley said, he was amazed at the “improvs that were coming out.”
On DiCaprio’s last day on set, “We’re outside by the car, and I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude,” Wheatley said. “I just can’t believe what he has done for us. And I’m expressing that . . . and I give him this really big hug. And then he just says, ‘Just make me look good.’ ”
After DiCaprio’s two days of filming on “Don’s Plum,” the actor flew off to work on 1996’s “Marvin’s Room” with Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro.
Wheatley was fired up about having done what he believed was nearly impossible — a feature flick on his first try.
“There was this idea that we’re going to make millions of dollars from this film,’’ Beckman said. “And everybody’s going to be big.” B UT when DiCaprio learned his pals wanted to turn the project into a feature f ilm,
he was “immediately apprehensive,” Wheatley said.
“Leo was like, ‘Guys, I don’t want this to be a feature film. I can’t afford a bad feature film to go out right now. That’s just not going to work for my career,’ ” Wheatley recalled.
According to Wheatley, DiCaprio was convinced the film would be a flop but still agreed to let his pals cut it into shape to see how it would turn out.
Wheatley and others involved believed the movie they cut was a work of art — on par with 1994’s “Clerks” or Harmony Korine’s 1995 cult classic, “Kids.”
And they said DiCaprio’s reaction to a screening of the film in late June 1996 at LA’s MGM Plaza was extremely encouraging.
“Suddenly, he was jumping out of his chair,” Wheatley said. “He’s high-fiving all of our friends.”
Beckman added: “Leo was literally rolling on the floor laughing.”
Next, Wheatley said, he arranged a screening at CAA, DiCaprio’s agency, at the actor’s behest. The agency loved the film so much, they signed Robb “on the spot,” Wheatley said.
Offers began pouring in, including from now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax, Wheatley said.
But Maguire and his agent were less pleased when they saw the feature, according to some of those involved.
The flick was too edgy for Maguire’s image, and “he thought it would ruin his career,” Lowe said.
“I could definitely see Maguire, as I knew him, feeling that Leo had outshined him, and that possibly being part of the motivating factor for wanting to kill this film,” too, Beckman said.
In a rage, Maguire yelled, “I want ‘Don’s Plum’ to burn!” Wheatley claimed.
Maguire told DiCaprio that the others had tried to pit the press against him in order to push through the feature film they wanted, Wheatley and others said.
In a 1996 interview for the now-defunct Detour magazine, DiCaprio said, “I had a friend who I did a short film with recently who slandered me . . . I was trying to do a favor for him. His name is R.D. Robb. It’s scandalous. It was originally a short film, and then he tried to make it into a feature. I worked one night on it . . . And I heard all this stuff about how he was going to pit the press against me if I didn’t go along with him and do the feature. I just did it as a favor, you know?”
Wheatley said he told Maguire, “You are my friend. We love you guys, we made this movie together.”
“But he was there to destroy the movie.” S OON after, potential deals from production companies to option the movie fell apart. At that point, “All of my relationships are completely gone, I’ve got a dead film, I can’t get anywhere . . . I am blacklisted,” Wheatley said.
The other creators, including Stutman, Robb, Wheatley and Jerry Meadors, fought back, filing a $10 million lawsuit in LA Superior Court against DiCaprio and Maguire, accusing them of building a campaign to tank the movie by making “potential buyers, distributors and others afraid to offend DiCaprio.”
DiCaprio and Maguire responded by countersuing, Schindler said.
After a lengthy back-and-forth, the parties eventually settled.
As part of the settlement agreement, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, the plaintiffs had to agree to scrap some lines from the movie, including one in which DiCaprio says, “Gay guys f--k like rabbits” and one in which Maguire says, “You know what, I beat off, and I stick my pinkie up . . . not in, my ass” — before admitting he actually does the latter.
Although the parties agreed not to release the movie in the US and Canada, Danish director Lars von Trier showed it at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival.
“Don’s Plum” was eventually released in multiple European countries and in Japan, although the majority of the profits went to legal fees.
Wheatley says he made just $180 from the movie — and gave up his dreams of making it big in Hollywood. He’s now a freelance video editor.
But he never forgot “Don’s Plum,” which he said helped lead to his divorce and thoughts of suicide.
Wheatley finally decided in 2014 to upload the movie to a Web site called freedonsplum.com. The movie stayed up on the site for 16 months, until about a month before DiCaprio would win his Oscar for “The Revenant” in 2016.
But Wheatley’s plans to get his magnum opus out there were finally foiled again. The Web page now reads, “We have removed your video titled ‘Don’s Plum,’ previously available at Vimeo, in a response to a takedown notice submitted by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA.)”
A rep for DiCaprio said, “The events and comments described in this story are decades-old lies fabricated by Dale Wheatley in an effort to gain publicity and unlawful financial gain.”
Representatives for Maguire didn’t comment.