The Basketball Diaries »

Jim Carroll's classic about growing up hip on New York's mean streets is now a feature film from Island World Productions and distributed by New Line Cinemas. The Basketball Diaries will open . . .
. . . starring Oscar nominee Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll. Directed by Scott Kalvert and also starring Lorraine Bracco, Bruno Kirby, Mark Wahlberg (aka Marky Mark), James Maddio, and Michael Imperioli, this electrifying film-and our tie-in edition-is certain to captivate audiences across the country.
The Basketball Diaries chronicles Jim Carroll's alternatively hilarious and horrifying urban coming-of-age from twelve to fifteen. The excerpts published in The Paris Review in the 1970s created a sensation-a response that continues to this day. Here is Carroll prowling the streets of New York-playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for something pure. Since the period covered in this book, Carroll has become a poet and rock performer of renown, but The Basketball Diaries continues to be the distillation of the Carroll charms-wised-up wit, free-wheeling rebellion, and intense vision.