Berlin Gets First Look at Banned Leo Film

February 12 -- BERLIN — The Berlin Film Festival seemed an appropriate site to "liberate" Don's Plum, the better-than-you'd-expect, low-budget, black-and-white indie drama Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire made before becoming famous.

At its world premiere last weekend in the festival's Panorama section, co-writer and director R.D. Robb talked obliquely about the end of his friendship with DiCaprio but did not address the court ruling that bans Don's Plum from being shown in the United States or Canada.

"Yeah, it's a divorce," Robb managed to say between phrases of lawyer-speak like "We want to put this misunderstanding behind us." Constrained by a gag order not to discuss the settlement, a cheerful Robb got a kick out of his inquisition-style handling at the press conference.

Asked how two actors could hold a movie hostage, Robb could only gesture to his co-writer and producer, David Matthew Stutman, and say, "David and I have both been through so much and now we're here to celebrate the film."

The film is being distributed around the world thanks to Zentropa Films, which stepped in and paid Plum's postproduction costs. Because of DiCaprio's name, it has been sold in every Asian territory and all of Europe. Still, Peter Aalbaek Jensen, director Lars Von Trier's partner in Zentropa Films, compared the Hollywood hotshots at International Creative Management who tried to "kill these two guys" to East Germany's reviled secret police force, "The Stasi." (Actually, ICM was not a participant, it was Creative Artists Agency that represented DiCaprio.)

A Film or an Audition Piece?The film was shot four years ago over three days of largely improvised filmmaking, then supplemented six months later with scripted material. It's set in a Los Angeles diner called Don's Plum as a group of friends, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Amber Benson, fight and flirt while talking about masturbation and bisexuality.

DiCaprio had acted as an unofficial producer but felt betrayed when Robb decided to show the film once Titanic made DiCaprio a superstar.