Video Discription |
Credits
Distributed by
New Line Cinema
Production company
Island Pictures
Directed by
Scott Kalvert
Screenplay by Bryan Goluboff
Based on The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll
Produced by
Liz Heller
John Bard Manulis
Cinematography
David Phillips
Edited by
Dana Congdon
Music by
Graeme Revell
Synopsis
Teenager Jim Carroll is a drug-addicted high school basketball player who regularly gets into mischief with his friends Pedro, Mickey and Neutron on the streets of New York City and at school. Outside of basketball, he shows an artistic interest in writing, keeping his work in his journal, expressing his thoughts and creating poetry. Jim's best friend, Bobby, is dying of leukemia; Jim frequently visits him in the hospital. Later, after a trip to a strip show cut short by an annoyed Bobby, Bobby dies, and Jim and his 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 showers when he takes a short break to get high, where he then gropes him, and offers to pay him for sex. Jim refuses and pushes Swifty headfirst into a wall. As Jim's frustrations with school and life grow over time, he 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 habit. The pills are downers, and they cause the boys to perform disastrously during the game. A teacher who notices the boys engaging in drug use tells Jim and Mickey that they are suspended for a week, and Swifty tells Jim that he is now banned from playing basketball for his school again. Jim and Mickey, in response, resign from the team and drop out of school, while Neutron stays. Jim's mother exiles him from the house after exposing his stash of drugs. Jim, Mickey, and Pedro from then on only live for their next score as homeless addicts; one later excursion has them break into a candy shop for money. Mickey finds a gun in the cash register and takes it. Hearing sirens, Jim and Mickey escape, but Pedro, too high and hungover to realize the situation, is left behind and arrested. Jim continues a desperate life of shady dealings and getting high with Mickey, and by the coming winter, passes out in the snow high on heroin. Jim's friend Reggie, who sympathizes with Jim over his predicament having been in a similar situation, finds him, takes him to his apartment, and forces him to detox, but Jim relapses. Back on the street, Jim is desperate for drugs and resorts to prostituting himself at a public restroom. Later, Jim and Mickey buy heroin, but discover that the dealer ripped them off. Enraged, Mickey corners the dealer on the roof of an apartment building. He accidentally pushes him off the roof to his death. Mickey tries to escape, but is beaten by a gang and then arrested; he is later tried as an adult and convicted. After escaping, with nowhere else to go, Jim goes to his mother's apartment and she reports him to the police. Jim is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to six months' incarceration at Rikers Island for assault, robbery, resisting arrest, and possession of narcotics and spends the time in jail getting clean. 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. |