the basketball diaries

Director: scott kalvert

Actor: leonardo dicaprio,lorraine bracco,marilyn sokol,james madio

Data Published: Fri Apr 21 1995

Genres: Biography,Crime,Drama,Sport

Key Words: addiction,childhood friend,student athlete,basketball,friend

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112461/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Basketball_Diaries_(film)

Description: The Basketball Diaries is a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco, and Marilyn Sokol. A teenager finds his dreams of becoming a basketball star threatened after he free falls into the harrowing world of drug addiction.

Plot: The film is an adaptation of poet and memoirist Jim Carroll's juvenile diaries chronicling his kaleidoscopic free-fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction. The role of Jim is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. As a member of a seemingly unbeatable high school basketball squad, Jim's life centers on his friends and the basketball court; the court becomes a metaphor for the world in his mind. Bobby (Michael Imperioli), a best friend who is dying of leukemia; a coach ("Swifty", played by Bruno Kirby) who makes sexual advances to Jim; and an appetite for cocaine and heroin begin to encroach on young Jim's dream of becoming a basketball star. After Bobby succumbs to his illness, Jim tries heroin for the first time and quickly becomes hooked. After Jim is suspended from school due to playing a basketball game while under the influence of drugs, he drops out. Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from Jim's mother's mounting concern for her son. It is revealed that Jim’s mother threw him out of their apartment earlier for cursing her out over his drug usage. As a result, Jim cannot go back home due to his drug use. The only escape that Jim has from the reality of the streets is heroin, for which he steals, robs, and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie (Ernie Hudson), an older neighborhood friend with whom Jim "picked up a game" now and then, he is able to begin the long journey back to sanity. Ultimately, Jim's mother has him arrested when he shows up at her home stoned and high and demands money. The journey ends with Jim's incarceration in Riker's Island for four crimes: assault, robbery, resistance of arrest, and possession of narcotics. After Jim spends months in prison and ceases his drug use, he gets released, changes his life, and performs poetry drawn from his diaries.