“It Hurts Reggie”

In Scott Kalvert’s The Basketball Diaries, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Caroll, renown poet and former heavy drug abuser. In the film, Kalvert depicts the real-life occurences of Jim Carroll heroin use. Towards the end of the movie, a man Jim used to play basketball with, Reggie, try’s to help Jim get off heroin cold turkey. In this scene, we see how Jim’s body and mind react to the withdrawals of one of the most dangerous drugs. I decided to take a look at this scene purely because of DiCaprio’s portrayal of drug withdrawal. He has huge difficulty formulating his sentences, his mouth is foaming and is in immense pain. It was an incredible performance for a young actor in one of his first leading roles. Also in the scene, DiCaprio crawls to Reggie, still foaming at the mouth. This shows exactly how low Jim is in this point of his life. The crawling shows a boy who is being reverted back to a child because he cannot care for himself. This was also an important scene because of how it is shot. While Jim is not high on heroin, the use of distorted camera lenses shows that this is not the normal state Jim is in. For him being sober is being high because it is no longer the norm, and that is why his body is having such difficulty adjusting. The most powerful part of the scene is Reggie’s response to Jim for why he is helping him, “I always pay what I owe.” This clearly means someone helped him when he was in need so he believes he must do the same for Jim. Because of the great camera technique and Leonardo DiCaprio’s ability to drugged up or mentally ill (qualude scene in The Wolf of Wall Street) make this scene one of the best for the film