Palm Pictures | 1995 | 102 mins. | Rated R
Over the years, several writers had tried to adapt Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries for the big screen. Published in 1978, the novel tells the gripping story of his battle with drug addiction but no writer had been able to find away to make his personal narrative dramatically interesting without embellishing too much of his core story. The film, released in 1995, with a script by Bryan Goluboff (In Treatment), comes across as superficial and pandering—lingering almost lovingly over the horrors as Carroll descends into the life of a drug addict and street hustler in a matter of months.
Despite obvious issues with the story and script, Leonardo DiCaprio makes The Basketball Diaries worth seeing. Just twenty at the time of filming, he had already grabbed critical attention with roles in This Boy’s Life and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?. However, Diaries had been his juiciest part up to that point—giving him a chance to show his range as an artist, and make the final transition from child to adult actor.
As the film opens, Jim is on the basketball team at St. Vitus High School in New York. He and his friends are mischievous to say the least. The student manager of the team steals from the lockers of the opposing team, and the favorite off-court pastime is experimenting with inhalants and pills. The coach (Bruno Kirby), is a closeted homosexual who spends much of his time making passes at Jim. Lorraine Bracco who has proven herself a fine actress, plays Jim’s single mother. Unfortunately, her part is severely underwritten, and she’s around for what seems like the sole purpose of throwing Jin out of the house.
Eventually thrown off the basketball team, Jim’s life becomes one of booze, jumping off cliffs into the Harlem River, and masturbating under the stars. If you want more, we also get glimpses of New York’s underbelly, as Jim falls further from a normal existence—prostitutes, drug dealers and pimps. Somewhat amazingly, no matter how far removed from reality Jim Carroll gets, he continues to write in his diary.
The film was the feature film directorial debut of Scott Kalvert, whose only other credit of note is the 2002 film Deuces Wild. He has a tendency to to amp up the proceedings with loud rock music, excessive sound effects and jittery visuals (perhaps that’s because he cut his teeth on Marky Mark music videos). His work can be effective when he’s attempting to capture the paranoia of Jim’s drug-fueled state, but much of the time it doesn’t really work (as in the dreamy sequence where Jim imagines himself running through a field of flowers).
The Basketball Diaries isn’t a great film as a whole, but Leonardo DiCaprio does a great job here, and shows why he would become one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite co-workers just a few years later. Mucxh of Diaries success rises and falls with DiCaprio’s performance, and he holds up remarkably well.
The Basketball Diaries is presented in an AVC-encoded 1.78:1 widescreen presentation; I can say that the Blu-ray didn’t wow me. Blacks are inconsistent, and the image detail is lacking in both the foreground and background. There is grittiness to the film from a style perspective, but it’s a far from notable high definition presentation.
Neither the PCM stereo track nor the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track really brings anything new to the experience. There are two, maybe three brief instances of speaker panning, and there isn’t any directional effect placement in the channels either. The film has a bit of music that sounds clear, and the dialogue is consistent throughout the feature, but don’t expect an earth-shattering sonic experience.
The Basketball Diaries comes with just two special features. One is about six minutes of an interview and poetry reading from Jim Carroll, recorded in 1981. The interview doesn’t have anything to do with the movie, since it pre-dates it by 14 years, but it does give any Carroll fan the chance to see him first-hand (he also makes a cameo in the film.)
The other extra is 10 minutes of interviews with the cast members and the director, shot at the time of the movie. It’s interesting to see the style, which is just random answers to questions, with black space between one question and another. There is attempt to link them together in any sort of cohesive narrative.
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