In this post I’d like to discuss the scene in The Basketball Diaries where Jim Carrol (Leonardo DiCaprio) visits his mother after he falls victim to heroine. DiCaprio does a fantastic job illustrating how a heroine addict experiencing withdrawals would carry themselves. Typically a heroine addict that is experiencing withdrawal wouldn’t be able to stand for very long, have watery eyes and a runny nose, and not be very coherent. These are all illustrated in Leonardo’s performance. His character is a young adult, but during this scene he is acting like a child. He asks his mom for money, asks her to hold his hand, tries to sweet talk her initially but soon tries to make her feel terrible when he realizes she wont give him what he wants (just as a child throws a tantrum when they want something and their parent says “no!”).
His mother almost takes the bait too, but keeps her thoughts collected. She locks the chain on the door so she can talk with Jim, but not let him in. She does take his hand too in an effort to comfort him. You can even tell in the actresses performance that she wants to help her son but understands it’s the wrong thing to do. So, instead, she helps him in another way… She decides to call the cops on him. In the end this worked out great for Jim because he was sent to prison, forced to quit heroine and eventually became clean. Then in the end of the film we see that he was narrating the story of his life to a group of people to help raise awareness of heroine addiction and its negative side effects.
If his mother didn’t refuse to give his son money and didn’t call the cops on him, the whole film would have had no resolution which is why this scene is so important. What’s also very cool is that fact that this film was based on a true story which further helps people realize how real heroine is and how dangerous it can be.
The Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsuEQP9i3iw
An interesting article (pulled facts from it): http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/it-happened-to-me-i-got-off-heroin-with-suboxone
Adolescence in 1990s Films 
April 21st, 2014 at 4:24 pm
I agreed that this scene was extremely important in the movie. The mother’s acting was fantastic, and she did an excellent job portraying someone who has to do the right thing even though it might hurt someone she loved. This scene was one of the hardest to watch, because no mother wants to send their own son to jail. But it was a turning point in the movie that really showed that Jim needed to change his ways or he would have ended up dead. It was also interesting to see how you pointed out that Jim acted like a child in the movie when he was (practically begging) for money for heroine. I didn’t really see it as that way before, but now that you’ve pointed that out, I see now that he really was acting like a child, both in his asking his mom for money and him throwing a fit when she would not give it to him. This scene was full of emotion and a very interesting one to analyze.
April 23rd, 2014 at 4:28 pm
I’m glad you decided to do a close reading on this scene because it fully portrays how great of an actor DiCaprio is, as well as it being one of the major turning point, if not the main turning point, in Jim’s life. The scene was so unsettling that I felt I needed to call someone to help Jim. Also, I think its great that you see Jim being reverted back to being a child because for the whole movie he was willingly on his own.