The Basketball Diaries
by Scott Kalvert
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DVD details
Actor: James Madio, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco, Marilyn Sokol, Patrick McGawDirector: Scott Kalvert
Brand: Team Marketing
Producer: Chris Blackwell
Producer: Dan Genetti
Producer: John Bard Manulis
Producer: Kathie Hersch
Producer: Liz Heller
Writer: Bryan Goluboff
Writer: Jim Carroll
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Palm Pictures / Umvd
Product features:
- Classic DVD
- Exclusive interviews, highlights, and behind the scenes coverage
- DVD's main menu allow you to jump directly to the action
- Presented in full-screen digital video
DVD Reviews of The Basketball Diaries
DVD Review: Excellent, why else would I be buying it?
Summary: 5 Stars
I watched this movie many years ago. I knew who Jim Carroll was long before I ever heard of The Basketball Diaries. When I saw the movie I did not even realize that Jim had actually written these diaries. Personally I love reading other peoples diaries or watching them on a movie. It makes me feel good to know that other people out there are just like me. Don't get me wrong I have never been hooked on heroin, but I was once in the "major" partying scene for a very long period in my life. I knew several people who were hooked on heroin. I chose at an early age not to do heroin, partly because it scared me and partly because my best friend told me she would kick my a** if I did (she saw what it did to her two sisters). I was a little surprised at the Amazon review. Maybe the guy is really young because everyone I know who has seen this movie knew who Jim Carroll was, even my sister who is 9 years younger than me and all her friends. Considering that she grew up in the 90's I think that says a lot for Jim Carroll. I am buying this movie because I have two sons, ages 9 and 11 and soon enough they will need a little taste of "the real world". We live in a small community and there is not much "reality" when it comes to the world of drugs. They have their annual drug talk and come home and tell my husband he is using drugs when he drinks a beer with a friend. I am the real "druggie" in the household since I actually smoke cigarettes everyday (God forbid!). This is what this town sees and thinks of drugs and that culture. This movie is perfect for showing what actually happens. Yeah, drugs are a lot of fun. I am admitting the cold hard truth. But everyone has to pay the piper, yeah I guess that is kind of a pun. You stay with the peers and the drug culture, the clubs, the bars, the apartments and yes, even the basketball courts and the drugs will bring you down. I find it amazing that there are actual people in this world who still care enough for other people to work hard to get them out of the drug scene. Most people I know have just had to remove themselves from the scene or they would succumb to it once more, even when they absolutely did not want to. The lure, the wild promise of a great time, probably one of the best times you will have had in a really long time is to much to turn down. So while inside your screaming "NO, NO NO!!!!" your eyes are looking right into the eyes of "the friend" offering whatever it is you have done and are about to do again. I really do not want that life for my boys but I can not be a hippocrite either. Thats why this movie is the best. Plus they can identify with Leonardo DiCaprio, both of them watch Titanic at least 3 times a year! I hope this review helps someone. I hope it helps in whatever way you need it to help. DVD Review: I felt dazed, like I just came out of a 4 hour movie I didn't understand
Summary: 4 Stars
Shortly before he died of a drug overdose River Phoenix was asked what he was going to do next. He took a dog eared copy of The Basketball Diaries out of his pocket and said he wanted to play Jim Carroll. The Basketball Diaries project did get made, except with Leonardo DiCaprio instead of Phoenix. At the risk of being typecast River was set to follow that by playing the poet Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse. DiCaprio picked up that role as well. The Basketball Diaries turned out pretty well for Leo, and was also a good break for Mark Wahlberg. There was however one unintended consequence: the students at Columbine copied not only DeCaprio's black trench coat, but also his violent fantasy of shooting up the school.
Copy cat killers are a large problem for film makers. Oliver Stone tried to make a statement about violence and how it was glorified in movies and the news media with Natural Born Killers. Result: Copy cats. Seems like Stone fell right into his own trap (Juliette Lewis is in Basketball Diaries and Natural Born Killers, by the way). Take Taxi Driver as another example of what can go dreadfully wrong.
I don't have any answers but am just pointing out the pitfalls for an artist who tries to address serious social issues with a very powerful and seductive medium. The Basketball Diaries also had to be careful not to glorify heroin. It kind of did in the first part, but then it tried to make up for it in the second part by showing a lot of puking and screaming--which is good as a cautionary tale, but it doesn't necessarily make for the best feel good movie of the summer.
On the other hand, I also feel that the book that Jim Carroll wrote was misrepresented by the movie. Stephen Lang turned down the part of Swifty the basketball coach that went to Bruno Kirby because he felt the book was misrepresented. But that's Hollywood for ya. They made it into much more of a standard cliche plot, a cautionary tale, more like an after school special.
Still, there was a lot to like about this movie, and the Jim Carroll story is quite a compelling one. Though at a young and tender age he was a petty criminal, heroin addict, and prostituted himself to support his drug habit, he managed to turn it around and become a successful poet, author, and rock musician. Carroll was also a high school basketball star, which can't be easy when your double life is a junkie. He also had a cameo in The Basketball Diaries playing, what else? a junkie. So, add acting to his already impressive resume. Also, though they tinkered with the book somewhat, there is plenty of verbage lifted directly from it, and his prose style always lifts the material above the mundane.
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Jim Carroll: And it's good that there is rain. It clears the month of your sorry rainbow expressions, and it clears the streets of the silent armies... so we can dance.
===========================
The basketball scenes are exhilarating, as are all the early scenes before the negative effects of addiction take hold. Besides a great performance by DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg also acquits himself well, as do Michael Imperioli and James Madio. Imperioli plays Bobby, a basketball star buddy of Carroll's who is dying of leukemia. Madio plays Pedro, who although too short to play on the basketball team, is nevertheless kind of the team mascot and a member of the gang.
Music plays a vital role in the film, and the song "People Who Died" is especially effective since Carroll wrote and performed it, and some of the people in the lyrics, like Bobby, for instance are the ones in the movie, and Carroll's own real life. Also great are Patti Smith's "Dancing Backwards," "Riders of the Storm" by The Doors, and the musical high point for me, "Down by the Water" by PJ Harvey. Her album, To Bring You My Love, had just come out in 1995, the year the film was released, and though the song didn't yet exist at the time period the movie was supposed to be in, it nevertheless managed to capture the feeling.
The Basketball Diaries
Living at the Movies (Poets, Penguin)
Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973
The Book of Nods
Catholic Boy
Natural Born Killers - Oliver Stone Collection
To Bring You My Love
Boogie Nights
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Total Eclipse
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Jim Carroll: I felt dazed, like I just came out of a 4 hour movie I didn't understand.
===========================================
DVD Review: So-so drug story.
Summary: 2 Stars
The Basketball Diaries starring Leonardo DiCaprio is a good film about drug abuse but this coming of age drama left me disappointed. DiCaprio is so talented but even his electric performance can't save this dribble. This is a movie you borrow or rent but not buy.DVD Review: Great Look into Delinquent Behavior
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie sums up - in a nice little package - how delinquent behavior can manifest itself into crimes. I use it as a teaching tool in my criminology class and highly recommend it to professors and students alike.DVD Review: REALISTIC
Summary: 4 Stars
THIS FILM WAS SHOWN TO PEOPLE IN EARLY RECOVERY. THEY THOUGHT IT WAS REALISTIC AND GAVE A VERY GOOD SCENARIO OF RESULTS.
Description of The Basketball Diaries
Film adaptation of street tough Jim Carroll's epistle about his kaleidoscopic free fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction. As a member of a seemingly unbeatable high school basketball squad, Jim's life centers around the basketball court and the court becomes a metaphor for the world in his mind. A best friend who is dying of leukemia, a coach ("Swifty") who takes unacceptable liberties with the boys on his team, teenage sexual angst, and an unhealthy appetite for heroin -- all of these begin to encroach on young Jim's dream of becoming a basketball star. Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from his mother's mounting concern for her son. He can't go home and his only escape from the reality of the streets is heroin for which he steals, robs and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie, an older neighborhood friend with whom Jim "picked up a game" now and then, is he able to begin the long journey back to sanity.The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realize that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess we're watching might have been helpful. --Tom Keogh
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