The (not at all) Bash-Leonardo DiCaprio Thread (1 Viewer)

[Edwin Pereyra]

With all these words of praise from Scorsese himself on DiCaprio, I was wondering about all those tabloid reports about DiCaprio partying until the wee hours of the morning in Italy and showing up late on the set of Gangs Of New York only to be verbally reprimanded in front of all the Italian extras.
And now, Scorsese still wants to work with DeCaprio again on his next film? :rolleyes
~Edwin

 

[Tino]

Key word...TABLOID.
'nuff said.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Key word...TABLOID.

'nuff said.

Hmmm, not according to some. They thought it was the Bible!

~Edwin

 

[Vickie_M]

Hmmm, not according to some. They thought it was the Bible

Only Men in Black, Edwin, only Men in Black.
Btw, this thread is very pleasing to me. I'm not even especially an LDC fan. I like him fine, and think he's a good actor, and I just hate to see him bashed without cause. It's nice to see he has so many supporters.
(Mods, sorry about that "OFFICIAL" - thanks for taking it out)

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Vickie, you must not have been here when the discussions about that certain "incident" or "report" took place about a year or so ago on the set of GONY. When a lot here were saying that these reports were true, I was one of the very few here dismissing it as pure tabloid trash.
Just imagine Scorsese lashing out on DiCaprio in front of some Italian extras for being late again on the set because of some all-night partying, as the unnamed source reported. Yeah, right.
So...

Or was that just a joke?

The more appropriate term would be that I was being sarcastic with those rolleyes.
~Edwin

 

[Lewis Besze]

Oh, I think Di Caprio is talented and promising actor but sibce Grapes I can't say I've seen anything above average from him.
Celebrities always "kiss each others ass",it's part of the business,this is why I hate those questions:How was it to work with so and so?It's the same old cliches all over.While Spielberg can work with anyone,Leo is "hot" right now why would he[SS] pass up on him if he's that popular and can act too.
I do think that Leo and Baz will make a good team again for Alexander The Great!...............

 

[Mike Broadman]

It's a new Scorsese movie. That means it's an event no matter who's in it. I don't care if it stars Liza Minelli and Koko the signing gorilla- my ass is at the theater on opening day.

I think most of the Leo-bashing was not as much about him as an actor, just the hype he gets as a pretty boy. I really don't remember hearing a lot of "Leonardo DiCapprio can't act" kind of stuff.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

As usual, I am in total agreement with Tino, and I also agree 100% with Vickie. Leo is a very talented actor, and despite what many have said in the past, he DOES indeed act and give a performance in Titanic rather than merely play a variation of himself, and he was outstanding in it.
This is how i've always seen the situation, and if i'm generalizing I apologize, it's only my opinion. A lot of the Leo bashing has, in my observations, come mostly from disgruntled Star Wars fans, not all of it of course, but a lot of it. From the get go when Titanic's box office gross started to threaten 'SW's place on the throne, 'SW' fans all over the globe started to resent Titanic for that very reason alone without even seeing the film! I believe they felt in their minds that Titanic wasn't worthy of taking the place of 'SW' as the #1 film in box office history. How does this pertain to Leo? As you can imagine the answer is simple, he's guilty by association. He starred in Titanic so therfore he's hated too along with the film.
That's the cold hard truth as I see it, you may not agree, in fact, I can almost guarentee that most of you won't agree with me on that. I'm led to believe this from all the early threads here when Titanic started to dominate the box office back in early 98. Vickie, you weren't here then, but let me tell you, some of those "SW *vs* Titanic" threads were pretty ugly, in fact I almost got myself thrown off this forum over one of them. :b The reprecussions from those old threads is still being felt even now.
Anyway, he's disliked because of Titanic's success, I firmy believe that. Hopefully these two new films will improve his name for some. On that note however, I HATED The Beach.
And lastly, Titanic is NOT a chick flick! To Titanic buffs like Tino, Jerry Gracia and myself, it's a masterpiece of cinema that holds deep meaning for us. I've always believed that one must know that ship and it's story through and through and felt it in their hearts in order to draw out that films TRUE power. Those who only think it's a 3 hour film about a love story on a sinking ship won't get it fully.

 

[Josh Lowe]

I do not care for Leo but his performance in Gilbert Grape was undeniably great. And I really enjoyed The Quick and the Dead for the same reasons I like other Sam Raimi films. Leo was very entertaining in that film.

And it looks like Gangs and Catch are also going to be good. Can't fault the guy at all for being in Titanic, no matter what you think of the movie.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

An interesting interview from today's USA Today:

Catch him if you can ...
By Andy Seiler, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — This is a tale of two Leos.
Actually, this is a tale of two pairs of Leos.
The first two Leos are the first films in almost three years from movie star and teen idol Leonardo DiCaprio, who cruised to international superstardom on a blockbuster called Titanic, a film that broke all the records and rules at the box office.
The two films are the dark epic Gangs of New York from legendary director Martin Scorsese, which opens everywhere Dec. 20, and the light and breezy Catch Me If You Can from equally legendary director Steven Spielberg, which opens everywhere just five days later.
No movie star in memory has had two such high-profile films open in the span of one week.
And then there are the two other Leos. There's the official Leo, the one who co-stars, filmmakers and friends insist is the real Leo, a serious actor who proved himself in such edgy films as This Boy's Life and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, which earned him an Oscar nomination.
Then there's the tabloid Leo, who lives the high life, dates the world's most beautiful women (most famously and formerly Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen) and is referred to as a "legendary hell-raiser" as he carouses with strippers, showgirls and supermodels.
At last, DiCaprio, 28, is ready to talk about all four Leos — as well as a certain doomed ship that sent his notoriety soaring as it sank to the bottom of the sea.
"Titanic completely transformed my life," says the lifelong Los Angeles resident, sporting a wispy mustache and goatee. "I would suddenly find myself being chased by four or five different paparazzi in places that I had been driving my whole life or walking in my whole life. Any place that I went, somebody would leak stories about me being there. In retrospect, I probably should have just — "
DiCaprio stops cold.
"I was about to say maybe I should have stayed in my house more," he says. "But I had to be a kid in my mid-20s and do whatever I wanted to do and have different experiences in life. I don't regret anything. But it was certainly a learning experience for me. It made me focus more on the decisions that I made as an actor."
But for many Titanic fans, DiCaprio wasn't an actor: He was a crush, a pinup boy for a million teenage girls.
"What a strange rite of passage he has been forced to go through," says Daniel Day-Lewis, DiCaprio's co-star in Gangs of New York. "It's as if he were born with the advent of Titanic and is now somehow forced to bear a burden for the success of that film. But Titanic bears no relation to the great work that he'd done some years before that. He's never given a bad performance that I have seen."
Another Gangs co-star and longtime friend, Cameron Diaz, says she always thought it odd that Leo agreed to do Titanic, because he had always preferred low-budget, edgier fare. Like DiCaprio, Diaz knows the perils of a pretty face.
"People need to put labels on actors to keep them at a level that's comfortable," Diaz says. "People get uncomfortable if they think that somebody who is good-looking has talent, too. It has nothing to do with the person they're judging. But it makes the people who are being judged have to work a little bit harder."
Which, by all accounts, DiCaprio is doing. "In fact, I had to stop him from doing more," says Scorsese, whose troubled Gangs kept DiCaprio busy on location in Italy for longer than even the marathon Titanic. "I would be saying, 'Come on, let's move on to another scene.' "
Scorsese says an oft-repeated Italian report that he had to admonish his star in front of the crew because of his late-night carousing was false. "Nobody believes me, but I swear it's not true."
For all the effort, DiCaprio will probably not startle those who have seen him in similarly sympathetic roles in Titanic and the subsequent The Man in the Iron Mask. In Gangs, he plays a dashing, penniless 19th-century orphan who links up with the gang leader (Day-Lewis) who killed his Irish immigrant father.
The real eye-opener is Catch Me If You Can, in which DiCaprio plays real-life '60s con man Frank Abagnale. He not only portrays seductive street kid Abagnale but also all of the roles Abagnale impersonated, including a pilot, a surgeon and a lawyer.
And he does it convincingly.
"That was in large part thanks to the days that I spent with the real Frank Abagnale," DiCaprio says. "He understood whatever those hidden mechanisms are that convince people to trust you."
Knowing who is conning you and whom you can trust is essential to anyone who becomes suddenly famous, DiCaprio says.
"There are people that come into your life who are better actors than you think, and who can deceive you more than you even realize," DiCaprio says grimly. "Considering the number of people that came into my life (after Titanic), I did a pretty good job of fending off a lot of the weirdos."
The good news, DiCaprio says, is that you become even closer to the people you trusted before the explosion of renown. "It got me closer to the people I already knew." (One of his famous buddies is Tobey Maguire of Spider-Man fame.)
"Leo loves his grandma and his mom a lot," Diaz says, giggling at the corniness of her words. "Leo's the nicest guy ever."
OK, OK. We get it. But what about that wild Las Vegas casino birthday party last month, reportedly featuring scantily clad showgirls and openly smoked pot?
Isn't any of that true?
"There's a grain of truth in everything," DiCaprio says. "Once you're put in the media spotlight, people really exaggerate encounters you have. Often times in situations like that, people have their own agendas, and they want to heighten things to extremes that weren't the reality whatsoever. They want to promote their restaurant, their hotel, their club."
DiCaprio attributes his absence from the screen not to a hedonistic lifestyle, but to travel, to learning about global warming (he narrates an upcoming PBS special on the topic), running his production company and to "being a guy in his mid-20s doing everything else that a normal guy would be doing."
But surely being a sex symbol has its advantages. After all, most of those girls who had Leo posters on their walls are now of age.
"I don't think about stuff like that," DiCaprio says. "The whole phenomenon that happened after Titanic, with me being splashed all over the media, was truly something that I never sought out. Those girls grow up; I grow up. And it would just become boring and repetitive for me, as an actor, to try to perpetuate that."
Instead, DiCaprio uses his Titanic leverage to ensure that he works with only the best directors. He has seen great scripts diminished by second-rate directors, and second-rate scripts elevated by great directors, so he figures that watching the director is the smartest way to go. Still, the script had better be good, too.
"I don't want to do a recycled version of something I've seen a million times before," DiCaprio says. "What I'm not excited about is your typical action film. I often wonder, with all the money and all the resources in Hollywood and all the talent that can be tapped into, why can't there be a writer out there who can actually weave some intelligence into some of these mundane, ridiculous action movies that I see all the time?"
DiCaprio is even less enamored of contemporary comedies. "If I did a comedy, it would have to be something that was reality-based, because I just don't think anything else is funny. Slapstick doesn't really get me going.
"I have to have some feeling and attachment for the characters to even laugh. I played a cameo in one real comedy, Celebrity. I liked it, because I believe the worlds that Woody Allen creates in his movies."
And if all goes according to plan, the hunky heartthrob hell-raiser Leo someday will be forgotten.
"Ten years from now, I want to look back and say that I portrayed a variety of characters in films people still talk about," he says. "What I don't want is for people to say that I never took any chances as an actor. Because I think I do."

 

[Tino]

That was a great read Edwin. Thanks for posting it.

He really sounds like a well grounded smart young man.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Hey, there's the newly married guy! Welcome back, Tino. How was the honeymoon?
~Edwin

 

[Tino]

Thanks Edwin. The Honeymoon in Aruba was great! Almost went to the movies there but my *!wife!* decided shopping would be more fun. Ahh...married life.
So what are the chances of Leo scoring a double nomination for these films?

 

[CaseyLS]

He suffers from the same stuff boy bands do. No matter how good they are at singing, people hate them because they are over played. After Titanic all you heard was leo this, Leo that. A lot of people just got sick of it.

 

[Aaron Whitaker]

Here is my synopsis of Leo. Titanic and Pearl Harbour could have been much better films if they were about the event and not some stupid romance. I'm not saying romance is bad, it just shouldn't have been the main storyline of both these movies. And I think this young love thing was personified by casting a teenage heartthrob ala Leo. I think Leo was great in Gilbert Grape and even in Romeo and Juliet (it was about young love but it was actually done very well I thought).

Their are three movies I'm looking forward to, Gangs, Catch Me, and LOTR. In Catch Me, Leo plays a charming high school kid and I think this is a great role for him because of his teenage following. I'm seeing this movie because Spielberg directed it and Tom Hanks and a lot of other stars are in it. Not having seen it, I think the cast and the director show that this has a lot of potential to be a good movie. In Gangs, you've got Scorsese as director. You can't go wrong their and I hope Leo doesn't come off as some dreamy guy but a rough and tumble New Yorker in the new world. I have faith that Scorsese will do this.

I agree bashing usually has to do with the movie and Titanic could have been much better if the romance was turned down or the two stars weren't so damn cute. Come on, this isn't hollywood , this is history, get it right.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

I think Cameron got it as right as he could since it wasn't his money he was playing with. The core of the story, and the factual details around the fictional characters, was right on. I think the film was a success. I could be wrong, though...

No comment on Pearl Harbor.

Take care,
Chuck

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Congrats Tino on the vows, I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.
Aaron,
those that state what you did are missing the point of the romance element of Titanic entirly. James Cameron's Titanic is the most fact based and accurate film on the tragedy ever produced, the function of the Jack and Rose componant was to ground the film in a relationship that the audience could invest emotion into so that when the tragedy begins we feel it on a more microcosmic level.
Simply telling the story flat out has already been done in A Night to Remember and the result was a more docudrama feel and it worked for that movie. That film was made with the concious effort to cram as much info about TITANIC as possible. It was self aware that it was telling the story of TITANIC.
James Cameron went one better, he shot for realism with his film, not just technically. He wanted us the audience to get our heads into the same space as the passengers on the ship, to actually FORGET for a time that we were onboard the ill fated RMS TITANIC and that she was doomed. During the scenes with Kate and Leo, it was just a ship, could be any ship, but it just so happens that it was TITANIC. At the time, the passengers had no idea they were onboard the soon to be legendary TITANIC, famous for her untimely sinking, they were merely on the TITANIC, that's what he was going for with Jack and Rose.

 

[Brian_J]

My dislike for DiCaprio will extend only as far as that truly wretched The Beach movie. A truly aweful 2-hours of my life I wish I could somehow get back.

As far as his other performances, I have no problem with him as an actor. He does, however, lack that ...what's that word that was so popular a few years back?...gravitas. I don't think I can see him in a part requiring a truly strong (i.e. manly) performance.

Brian