and
I didn’t know who Jim Carroll was until his death, way back in 2009. Which sucks I suppose, as his work is now something I have to experience in hindsight, just like with so many other things I’ve grown to enjoy. Music, literature, video games and especially movies, they’re all part of some foundation of experience and culture I had no hand in building. Maybe they combine in some unique way to form my personality, my sense of self. Nature vs. nurture, right? My environment is an equal or greater influence on who I am than my genetics, correct? Do I form a greater attachment to things I seek out, or things that I experience as they occur? I assume there must be some difference, I’m just not sure exactly what.
Metaphysics: My go-to way to start an entry.
Jim Carroll’s most famous work was his autobiograhical novel The Basketball Diaries, released in 1977. Compiled from his childhood writings, Carroll describes in vivid and often poetic detail a life of basketball and a descent into a life of theft, prostitution, and drug addiction. It’s certainly a powerful read, as a 15 year old boy writing about his shooting heroin and selling his body to gay men in the heart of New York City would be, and one that I felt drawn to. Maybe because I find myself drawn to the underbelly that formed the basis for punk music and the post-60s counterculture, or possibly because I saw in that book a much more interesting and worthwhile youth than I considered mine to be. Not to say that I wanted to be a junkie, of course, but when the people you read or listen to all have some sort of drug habit, the social taboo of drugs means less and less to you. Especially in the case of people like Jim Carroll, where his use of drugs was in part why he become as vaunted as he is. But I feel that going on in that direction would go further into metaphysical questions, so let’s just talk about the movie.
The Basketball Diaries focuses on the life of 16 year old Jim Carroll (Leonardo Dicaprio), one of the star players in a Catholic boy’s basketball team. Jim’s days are spent playing ball, writing in his notebook, and getting high with his friends Mickey (Mark Wahlberg), Pedro and Neutron. Such a life of rampant hedonism has a way of catching up with you however, and Jim and his friends find themselves falling away from school, sports and responsibilities and further into the degrading lives of junkies and thieves. We know Jim Carroll makes it out in one piece, we just watch to see how far he falls when he hits rock bottom. And spoilers, it’s pretty damn far.
For a film adaptation, I think The Basketball Diaries does a decent job of capturing the snowballing feeling that was in the book, albeit in an abbreviated manner. It makes sense, although you see a lot more of Carroll and his friends on the streets than you do at home or school, so you don’t really get the feeling that what they’re leaving is really that much better than where they end up (there are pedos on either side of the societal fence it seems), although that might have been the intent from the start. Dicaprio puts in a good performance, though I can’t say I’ve seen a bad Dicaprio film so far, and Mark Wahlberg seems to have barely aged since 1995. The time shift from the 60s to the 90s seems to be nothing more than an excuse to make Terminator references and pad the soundtrack with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, but it doesn’t detract from the movie.
Not as entertaining as the book, but I say still worth a watch.
Oh, and Ernie Hudson is totally in the movie too. So fucking awesome.
Result: Recommended
No comments:
Post a Comment