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Basketball diaries
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The Basketball Diaries



Jim Carrol was in de New Yorkse punk-scene een bekende figuur. Hij zat in bandjes en trad op als performing poet.
The Basketball diaries uit 1995 is gebaseerd op diens gelijknamige boek. Het vertelt het waar gebeurde verhaal van een groep jongens die op een katholieke school zitten en fanatiek aan basketball doen. Vol overgave storten ze zich in de wereld van de pillen en drank. Met als gevolg dat zijn moeder Jim het huis uitgegooit. Jim Carrol wordt gespeeld door Leonardo DiCaprio.

Basketball Diaries (in english)


The picture is based on the real-life diary of Carroll, a New York poet who grew up in the '60s and published his diaries in 1978, to much acclaim. The result is an episodic assortment of misdeeds and bad choices. Carroll, a 16-year-old basketball player, begins as an incorrigible troublemaker. Our first image of him has Carroll defiantly enduring a series of painful paddlings by the teacher, evidently an everyday routine. We later see him running around the streets with friends, shouting in people's ears, knocking over carts and leaping off cliffs into water, all traditional emblems of teenage abandon
The mischief soon gives way to misery as Carroll and friends become entrapped by the seductive forces of heroin. The second half of The Basketball Diaries details the familiar course of the addict: the loss of everything meaningful--his sports goals, family, friendship. Anyone who's ever known a heroin addict knows there's not much you can do to help; if you try to give one a place to stay, you'll probably end up getting ripped off
The most effective scene in The Basketball Diaries is a simple one in which DeCaprio comes home to ask his mother (Lorraine Bracco), who has kicked him out, for money. Strung-out, he begs for money while reaching his arm as far into the chain-locked door as possible. "Will you hold my hand?" he asks manipulatively, and she cries, "Yes, I'll hold your hand," sadly seizing the opportunity to touch her lost child while summoning up all her willpower not to give in to his desperate pleading. It's heartbreaking. Do we ever find out if Carroll restored his relationship with his mother? No. In a film about coming to terms with the effects of one's own addiction, such an oversight is inexcusable.

You can find more about this movie on Mr. Showbiz!


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Last modified on Wednesday 25 February 1998