The Basketball Diaries (film)

The Basketball Diaries is a 1995 American biographical crime drama film directed by Scott Kalvert and based on an autobiographical novel by the same name written by Jim Carroll. It tells the story of Carroll's teenage years as a promising high school basketball player and writer who develops an addiction to heroin. Distributed by New Line Cinema, The Basketball Diaries stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll, along with Bruno Kirby, Lorraine Bracco, Ernie Hudson, Patrick McGaw, James Madio, Michael Imperioli and Mark Wahlberg in supporting roles.

The world premiere of The Basketball Diaries occurred at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 1995. The film was widely released in theaters on April 21, 1995. It received mixed reviews. The film grossed $2.4 million at the box office.

Plot
Teenager Jim Carroll is a drug and sex addicted basketball player who regularly gets into mischief with his friends Pedro, Mickey and Neutron. Jim visits his best friend, Bobby, in the hospital. Bobby is dying of leukemia, and Jim takes him to a strip show. Jim later masturbates on the rooftop of his apartment building. Jim keeps a journal, which he regularly writes in. After playing basketball with their friend Reggie, Jim and his friends jump from a cliff into the Harlem River below. That night, Jim and Neutron visit a house of prostitution; while there, Jim tries cocaine for the first time. Bobby later dies and the friends attend his funeral. Following the funeral, Jim and his friends go to the basketball court and reminisce about Bobby's life. Depressed over Bobby's death, Jim begins to use heroin.

At basketball practice, Jim's coach Swifty sees Jim in the bathroom, gropes him, and offers to pay him for sex. Jim refuses and pushes Swifty headfirst into a wall. Jim imagines shooting his classmates. The next day, before a game, Jim, Pedro, and Mickey take pills from Pedro's hat, hoping they are uppers. Neutron refuses the pills and confronts Jim about his growing drug habit. The pills are downers, and they cause the boys to perform disastrously during the game. A teacher tells Jim and Mickey that they are suspended for a week, and Swifty tells Jim he will never play basketball for his school again. Jim and Mickey quit the team and drop out of school, while Neutron stays.

Jim's mother finds the pills he has been using. They argue, and Jim's mother kicks him out of the house. Pedro tells Jim and Mickey about a man to whom he is meant to deliver a car. After the three boys steal the car, they go to the man to deliver it; however, the illegally parked car is towed away. Later, Jim, Mickey, and Pedro break into a candy shop and open the cash register, only to find coins inside. Mickey also finds a gun, which he takes. Hearing sirens, Jim and Mickey escape, but Pedro is arrested. Jim passes out in the snow high on heroin. Reggie finds Jim and takes him to his apartment, where he forces him to detox.

Back on the street, Jim is desperate for drugs. He resorts to prostituting himself at a public restroom. Later, Jim and Mickey buy heroin from a drug dealer, but discover that the dealer ripped them off. Enraged, Mickey chases the dealer across the city with the stolen gun and corners him on the roof of an apartment building. Demanding his money back, Mickey accidentally pushes the dealer off the roof to his death. Mickey tries to escape, but is beaten up by a gang and then arrested; he is later tried as an adult and convicted. After escaping, Jim goes to his mother's apartment and begs to be let in. She refuses and then calls the police. Jim is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to six months' incarceration at Rikers Island for assault, robbery, resisting arrest, and possession of narcotics. He gets clean while in jail.

Jim approaches a stage door to give a poetry reading. He encounters Pedro, who has been released from reform school. Pedro offers him a bag of drugs, which Jim refuses. Jim recites his work before an audience and receives applause.

Cast

 * Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll
 * Lorraine Bracco as Mrs. Carroll
 * James Madio as Pedro
 * Patrick McGaw as Neutron
 * Mark Wahlberg as Mickey
 * Roy Cooper as Father McNulty
 * Bruno Kirby as Swifty
 * Alexander Chaplin as Bobo
 * Juliette Lewis as Diane Moody
 * Michael Imperioli as Bobby
 * Michael Rapaport as Skinhead
 * Ernie Hudson as Reggie
 * Manny Alfaro as Manny
 * Cynthia Daniel as Winkie
 * Brittany Daniel as Blinkie
 * Jim Carroll as Frankie Pinewater

Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 46% based on 39 reviews and with an average rating of 5.06/10. The websites critical consensus states "In spite of its young leading man's heroic efforts to hold it all together, a muddled message prevents The Basketball Diaries from compelling as a cautionary tale."

Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four. Ebert remarked: "At the end, Jim is seen going in through a 'stage door' and then we hear him telling the story of his descent and recovery. We can't tell if this is supposed to be genuine testimony or a performance. That's the problem with the whole movie."

Lawsuits
The film became controversial in the aftermath of the 1997 Heath High School shooting and the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Critics noted similarities between those shooting attacks and a dream sequence in the film in which the protagonist wears a black trenchcoat and shoots six students in his school classroom. The film has been named in lawsuits brought by the relatives of murder victims. In 1999, activist Jack Thompson filed a $33 million lawsuit claiming that the film's plot (along with two internet pornography sites, several computer game companies, and makers and distributors of the 1994 film Natural Born Killers) caused the Heath High School shooting. The case was dismissed in 2001.

Soundtrack
The Basketball Diaries soundtrack was released in 1995 by PolyGram to accompany the film, featuring songs from Pearl Jam and PJ Harvey. AllMusic rated it three stars out of five.