There's a memorable, heart-wrenching scene in "The Basketball Diaries" that has teenage drug addict Jim Carroll begging his mother to let him into her apartment. He cries, he pleads, he curses and cajoles - and ultimately tries to break down the door. But as his mother refuses to unlatch the chain, through her tears we see that her face is full of contradictions.
Scott Kalvert's film version of Jim Carroll's autobiographical book is a descent-into-hell tale of a youngster gone terribly wrong. It's the flip side of "Hoop Dreams," as a young man with high school basketball talent gradually falls into a life of substance abuse and crime.Leonardo DiCaprio, who impressed critics as the abused stepson in "This Boy's Life" - and then impressed everyone as Johnny Depp's mentally impaired younger brother in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (ultimately receiving an Oscar nomination) - stars as Carroll, and Lorraine Bracco plays his mother. DiCaprio is an already accomplished actor on the rise, and this is easily Bracco's best performance since "GoodFellas."
"I saw `This Boy's Life' and thought (DiCaprio) was incredible," Kalvert explained. "He spoke absolute truth in his performance, and I thought he was definitely somebody I wanted to work with. He even looks like Jim; there's a pure angelic sense about him.
"He was really the only person I had in mind to play him. We were going to start looking at unknowns, but he was the only person out there that had the chops. And he was very receptive. He could have done pretty much anything he wanted, but he liked the project and the book."
"The Basketball Diaries" will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 27, in an unprecedented manner - it will be screened at the same time on two Park City screens, at 9 and 9:30 p.m. (It will also be shown Saturday, Jan. 28, at 1 p.m.) DiCaprio is making a movie in Paris and cannot attend, but his co-stars, including Bracco and Mark Wahlberg (a.k.a. rap musician Marky Mark), as well as director Kalvert - and Carroll himself - will be on hand.
"Leo is one in a billion," Kalvert said. "When I did the movie and cast him, `(What's Eating) Gilbert Grape' wasn't out yet. Then, a week before we shot, I saw `Gilbert Grape' and I thought it was amazing.
"The kid is like a chameleon. He walks on the set and he's a 19-year-old guy, and all of a sudden the camera rolls and he is his character. Then the camera stops and he's back to being Leonardo.
"He's got this brilliant sensitivity and way of mimicking characters. It's weird. Leo has never done drugs in his life, and we researched the film and saw drug counselors, and he watched junkies and news shows and documentaries, and from watching and studying, he picked up the nuances of the thing. It's a natural gift."
Kalvert said he had read the book 15 years ago - when he himself was a teenager - and always wanted to make it into a movie. "It just took me a long time. I read it when I was about 15 and thought it would be a great movie. It's an unbelievable story, written by a teenager from a teenager's point of view, and it affected me."
Kalvert, a veteran of music videos and television commercials, finally optioned the book two years ago and began shooting a year later. "I went to film school in Boston. It's like I got out of college at the beginning of the MTV era. Actually, I was still in college, doing local bands on video."
Capturing the bleakness of teenage hustlers on the streets of New York was not nearly as tough as shooting the film while the real thing was going on around the corner, said Kalvert. "I grew up in New York, and I've seen it and been there. And I just feel it. It was worse going and shooting in the locations and having real junkies and real crazies there, than actually re-creating it ourselves. I felt it on the set, like during that scene at the door.
"The most important thing I wanted to do was make it feel real. There's a sense of adventure with this character, then all of a sudden the road starts spiraling out, and he starts going down really fast. It's not pretty, but we had to be as real and truthful as possible, and that is the reality of being a junkie. You're put in a lot of situations like that, that are painful. Controlled by the desire, the seeking or whatever, you'll stoop to any situation, do anything you can. And I think if that was done any other way, it wouldn't really be real. There are movies that have glamorized it, which I think, in a way, is irresponsible."
When the scene at the door with DiCaprio and Bracco was being filmed, Kalvert said, you could hear a pin drop. "There wasn't a sound in that building. People were holding back. But, you know, it actually wasn't as bad as the reality that was going on outside. It's all over New York."
As for premiering his film at the Sundance festival, Kalvert is enthusiastic. "It's extremely important. The exciting thing about Sundance is that it's a place where my peers are going to be. Everybody is showing their films and it's kind of cool. It's the first place that people will see it.
"It was always in the back of my mind that we wanted the film done for Sundance. It's definitely an American story, it's about urban life in America, and drug problems in America. And more than that, it's about coming of age. And Sundance is really the premiere place to show a film in this country."