Leonardo DiCaprio Is Dead Day!

People were calling him the next Brando, but maybe Jimmy Dean was the better comparison. In interviews it sounded as if he was all through with the party lifestyle too. CNN is reporting the crash wasn't even his fault, just a trick curve on one of those Southern California canyon roads. It's sad to think of all he might have done with the years to come.

But more than that, I can't help but think about the guy in the car with him, Donald Baughan. According to what I saw on MSNBC, Baughan was an old friend of DiCaprio's, unconnected to the entertainment industry. He was close to getting his master's in I think Russian Literature from Northwestern. He was visiting his girlfriend in LA and made a point of ringing up Leo before he went back to school. On Yahoo News I read that DiCaprio was uncomfortable about meeting up with him because they always had a kind of rivalry between each other. Grades, Girls, whatever. As famous as DiCaprio was, he still remembered the buddy he always tried to top in high school and how he measured up. And the Washington Post says Baughan felt the same trepidation about reuniting, but he made the call because he knew that rivalry was born of mutual respect. And both of them near thirty now, he thought they might be mature enough to channel that respect into real friendship instead of just competition. I don't know how the evening was working out just before they burst through the guardrail, but Fox News does. They said that Baughan was telling a story about the underhanded way he'd dumped his high school sweetheart when he left for college and that DiCaprio was laughing, but not so hard that it necessarily caused the accident.

I guess I'll be glued to the TV as they continue to sift through the wreck.

Happy Leonardo DiCaprio Is Dead Day!