8th July - Official DiCaprio Fan Mail Box Opens
8th July - World Premiere Trailer of 'The Beach'
8th July - MGM can't recall Diaries
8th July - Dicaprio guards insult photographers
6th July - Leo to Play Bi in Hughes Biopic?

8th July, 1999
OFFICIAL DICAPRIO FAN MAIL BOX OPEN
An official fan mail address for Leonardo DiCaprio has been established to help better serve his fans. Previous addresses no longer apply.

This is the only fan mail address for Leonardo DiCaprio:

Leonardo DiCaprio
P.O. Box 27008
Los Angeles, CA 90027

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8th July, 1999
World Premiere Trailer of 'The Beach'
Interested in checking out a World Premiere trailer of 'The Beach'?? If yes, point your browser to: http://www.leonardodicaprio.com/intro.html and check it out.

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8th July, 1999
MGM Can't Recall Diaries
The day after the Littleton, Colo., high school shootings, an MGM Home Entertainment rep told the Wall Street Journal that it would seek to recall all videotapes of The Basketball Diaries. The Leonardo DiCaprio flick was singled out for a scene in which DiCaprio's character, wearing a dark trench coat, guns down students and teachers.

The intention was noble, but the Lion was forced to eat crow yesterday when it was learned that PolyGram Videos, and not MGM, owns the distribution rights to the video, The Hollywood Reporter says.

Although MGM assumed ownership of PolyGram's pre-1996 catalog in January of this year, it gave PolyGram six months to sell its remaining copies of Diaries.

A PolyGram spokeswoman says that the company has an open return policy, and that retailers can return any video — including Diaries — without exception.

MGM's haste to recall the video also drew criticism from industry sources, the Reporter says, who cited the First Amendment right to free speech and related creative integrity issues.

Courtesy of Mr Showbiz

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8th July, 1999
Dicaprio guards insult photographers
Police questioned Leonardo DiCaprio's bodyguards after photographers in Taiwan complained they shoved and insulted them. No charges were filed after the bodyguards admitted inappropriate behavior at Tapei airport and apologized. Pictures showed DiCaprio smiling behind sunglasses, a pulled down baseball cap and plastic shopping bag partially hiding his face. Courtesy of Mr Showbiz

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6th July, 1999
Leo to Play Bi in Hughes Biopic?
Thousands of females (teen and adult, for adulation knows no ageism) either live vicariously through Leonardo DiCaprio's leading ladies, or seethe with envy over the lucky recipients of Leo's onscreen kisses. So what would their reaction be if Leo shared some hot embraces with, gulp, a man?

It could happen.

Last week word broke that DiCaprio had shown renewed interest in taking on the starring role in a biopic about Hollywood tycoon Howard Hughes to be directed by pal Michael Mann (Heat, The Last of the Mohicans). If a project comes together, it seems likely it would include at least some depiction of the eccentric Hughes' reputedly ambivalent sexual nature.

Known at times as "the world's greatest womanizer," Hughes is believed to have been romantically involved, at least in passing, with dozens of Hollywood's leading ladies, from Katharine Hepburn to Marilyn Monroe. But it's also been widely speculated that the famed aviator and movie producer had affairs with such prominent leading men as Cary Grant and Errol Flynn.

When DiCaprio and Mann initially discussed a Hughes biopic earlier this year, it was reported that the screenplay would be based on the critically praised biography Howard Hughes: The Untold Story, by Pat Broeske and Peter Harry Brown. Now the New York Post says the source could be Charles Higham's Howard Hughes: The Secret Life.

"I very extensively documented the fact that Howard Hughes had an affair with Cary Grant," Higham tells the Post. "I also found evidence that Hughes was arrested and charged with molesting a young man in Santa Monica, but spent a million dollars getting the charges dropped and his record cleared."

What does the noted celebrity biographer think of the potential casting of DiCaprio? "Hughes was childlike in many ways, pampered and spoiled, and he was very self-centered and self-absorbed. There is something in DiCaprio's personality which is very singular and concentrated, and I think [he'd] do well at conveying a self-obsessed, self-concerned personality."

Okaaay. Talk about your backhanded compliments.

It's worth noting that DiCaprio has acted out a male-male affair before — in the 1995 period film Total Eclipse he played French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who briefly engaged in a tempestuous tryst with married countryman and fellow poet Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis) in 1871. Stills of a nekkid Leo were later cribbed from that film and briefly disseminated in print before legal action stopped their distribution.

Courtesy of Mr Showbiz

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