Background to the Netflix film “Buba”
The true story of how Leonardo DiCaprio once lost a breakdance tournament in NRW
Leonardo DiCaprio once lost a breakdance tournament in Germany as a boy. The film “Buba” now reminds his fans of this
© Valerie Macon / AFP
In the Netflix film “Buba,” the main character boasts about winning a breakdance tournament against future Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio. The dance competition really existed. Only the winner was not named Buba.
“You can google it,” says Buba (Bjarne Mädel) in the Netflix film of the same name. It’s about the fact that he wants to have won a breakdance competition against the later Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio. To take part in this competition, Buba secretly sneaks away while his parents and brother Dante drive away.
Tragically, the parents die in an accident the same day and Dante falls into a coma. He wakes up from it again later, but is still not the same as before. From that moment on, Buba, whose real name is Jakob Otto, believes that bad things always happen to his brother when he himself is having fun and feeling lucky. That’s why he keeps a pain diary from now on: He eats rotten apples or has his ribs broken later so that his brother is fine and he can be happy himself.
So the breakdance competition is the central starting point for the story. And there actually was. Leo was there too. The real winner from back then isn’t called Buba, but Achim Schilling, like “Gala.de” and the “German wave” to report.
“Buba”: The film picks up on Leo’s breakdance defeat
On the occasion of Leonardo DiCaprio’s victory as best actor at the Oscars 2016, the old, black and white newspaper report was dug out of the archive again. Summer 1984 in the small town of Oer-Erkenschwick near Recklinghausen in North Rhine-Westphalia: Leo looks mischievous and wears a cropped shirt with the inscription USA. The caption says: “Achim Schilling got the first prize, a Walkman and a small trophy. (…) Leonardo DiCaprio can take a breakdance record across the pond to his hometown of Los Angeles for the medal.”
The blog “Concentrate mixer” quoted from an interview with the winner that appeared in the “Dorstener Zeitung” but is no longer available online. In it, Achim Schilling remembers a little boy: “In 1984 the ‘Stimberg Zeitung’ organized a breakdance tournament in the city park called and because some friends and I did it, we went there. 300 spectators were there – and visitors from the USA. The boy from Los Angeles, whom we all called Leo, must have been nine years old at the time. We were all quite excited as Leo had already won a few tournaments in the US and he was very ambitious.”
As the “German wave” reported, Leo performed under the breakdance name “The Noodle”. Leonardo DiCaprio was raised by his mother Irmelin, he often spent the summer holidays with his grandmother Helene in Oer-Erkenschwick. Even after his breakthrough, he kept visiting his grandma in Germany until she died in 2008.
Sources: “German wave“, “Gala.de“, “Concentrate mixer“