The Basketball Diaries: The Classic about Growing Up Hip on New York's Mean Streets

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I don't think of Jim Carroll when I consider those two writers. Because I don't think of Jim Carroll as a writer. If you don't think the B-Side to Lil Uzi Vert XO TOUR Llif3 (1) is Jim Carroll PEOPLE WHO DIED (2). I'll never trust you. Like, I now trust my mother Hundred points symbol (3) bc she knew it in May 2017 and told me while we were floating in a lake. The book’s frank depiction of adolescent drug abuse, sexual content, and criminal activity has made it a point of contention, leading to its banishment from many educational institutions that deem it inappropriate for younger readers. Bryan Goluboff used to follow Carroll around Greenwich Village in the 1980s, when the future screenwriter was a teenager and Carroll was playing music. 4. JIM CARROLL DIDN'T KNOW WHO LEONARDO DICAPRIO WAS ... UNTIL HE REALIZED HE WAS "THE KID FROM GROWING PAINS." On the other hand, supporters argue that the book presents a realistic depiction of the horrors associated with addiction and the destructive path it potentially leads to, thus serving as a stark deterrent.

Six months later, 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 later recites his work before an audience and receives applause.Educational institutions have been at the forefront of banning the book. For instance 1994, the book was removed from middle school libraries in Dade County, Florida. The explicit sexual content and depiction of substance abuse were claimed to be leading adolescents astray. And as I sit here and type this review, I am still contemplating the last sentence of his diary. What does it mean? Was it his last confession? Did he know that his life was only going to get darker and decide that the reader was no longer invited on his journey? It was written in the summer of ’66 after Carrol had lost almost everything. “I just want to be pure…” he says. This article examines the reasons behind The Basketball Diaries ban, a move viewed by some as suppressing uncomfortable truths and by others as necessary to protect our younger generation. I would like to revisit this book at some point, though I'm sure it won't be magical the way this stuff was for a kid. Isn't it funny how uncool drugs start to seem when you get a bit older and actually see them devastate people's lives? I don't know what it is about kids -- or at least some kids, or okay, I'll speak for myself: me as a kid -- that they (we) find this kind of danger and devastation so compelling. I guess it's the obvious teenage thirst for knowledge and rebellion, and maybe also the fact that drugs and disease don't make you ugly until you're an adult. You totally don't believe in Hep C when you're a kid, and maybe you do believe in dying from an overdose, but more, again, for its ability to immortalize you and make your band cool forever, not as a literal thing. Carroll has another classroom-shooting fantasy. He says his fear of atomic warfare has lessened but that he is still paranoid. He talks about his experiences during the National High School All Star Basketball Game, when he is groped by Benny Greenbaum, a homosexual college scout. Carroll explains his passion for writing about New York. Carroll describes what it is like shooting up and says that it is getting hard to concentrate on his writing. Carroll’s drug habit continues to affect his basketball performance. He talks about an older woman with whom he has been having an affair; the rich divorcée pays for his drug habit and in return she makes him engage in abnormal sexual acts. Carroll talks about a junkie friend who is in prison for two years. Carroll and a friend get swindled by a drug dealer. Carroll buys heroin from a new dealer and begins to like the vomiting that comes as a side effect. He finds out that one of his old friends is in prison for a drug-related murder. Carroll gets sent to Riker’s Island Juvenile Reformatory for three months for heroin possession.

After working as a musician, Carroll returned to writing full-time in the mid-1980s and began to appear regularly on the spoken-word circuit. Starting in 1991, Carroll performed readings from his then-in-progress first novel, The Petting Zoo. [12] Our discussion will journey through cultural contexts, societal responses, and the ongoing debate about freedom of expression and safeguarding youth. Couch, Aaron (March 7, 2014). "Scott Kalvert, 'Basketball Diaries' Director, Dies at 49". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved June 20, 2020. However, it also during this time that I have to question the veracity of some of Carrol’s adventures. I’m not going to say they never happened. But, I will be skeptical of how they happened. You see, to me, a diary is only the rebirth of previous memories. Sometimes these memories are shrouded in the fog of time; sometimes these memories have been tinkered with and are no longer a memory of what happened as they are a memory of what has been reconstructed. Regardless, Carrol’s memories of this time evoke a sense of innocence that is about to be corrupted in a manner that can never be uncorrupted. When they first told me it was gonna be Leo, I didn't know who he was," Carroll told The Los Angeles Times. "If they'd said the kid from Growing Pains, I would have known, because when I first saw that kid, I said, 'This kid has a lot of presence.' I said, 'That kid is very pretty. He's gonna do well.'" 5. MARK WAHLBERG HAD TO READ FOR THE PART SIX TIMES BECAUSE DICAPRIO DIDN'T WANT HIM IN IT.As the movie opens, Jim ( Leonardo DiCaprio) is on the basketball team at St. Vitus High School in New York, where a perverted priest salivates while spanking naughty students with a big paddle and the rest of the class watches. This scene owes more to Victorian pornography than to any actual parochial school in 20th century America, but no matter: The message, I guess, is that the teachers are such hypocrites you might as well go out and destroy yourself.