Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Basketball Diaries"

You repost all of my old threads J. Hmmmm. When we deal with you I have a feeling we will find even more proof of your stalking than I though on your computer/phone.

You sound like an absolute psycho, R1.

I have no fucking idea what you're talking about, nor do I care.

You fucking troll.

And the response I was expecting from him was provided. Thanks for giving me more info 😊

Read the book. It's so much better and fascinating snapshot of the Sexual Revolution in NYC. The movie is just a long 90s anti-drug PSA. Straightwashed too. Leo's working class Irish Harlem accent was pretty weak.

This movie felt like a really long PSA. He becomes a really stereotypical addict overnight. The toilet stall prostitution was absurd.

Also I don't buy Jim Carroll ever got sober. In his video poetry readings, he's still very twitchy and stuttering. Maybe longterm nerve damage from drug abuse and drinking? He was good friends with Patti Smith too.

He's hot in it and everything but the movie is pretty terrible. They took this lurid story, and turned it into an after school special.

This is the best scene.

Also I think Jim had HIV. He got so skinny prior to his death. Years of fucking men for drugs and cash. And I'm sure he did in the 80s too.

That was definitely hot, R7.

This role came right after Leo's performance in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and it solidified his rise in Hollywood.

R5 That's because the movie was set in a short period of time. The memoir is set over like 4 years from when Jim was 12 to 16. So his addiction built up over time and he gradually went into hustling and ditching basketball practice. Also the movie was set in the 90s. The book was approximately 1967 to 1971. The movie plays a lot into "Just Say No" anti-drugs, as well as gay panic and HIV hysteria. The book was more coming-of-age with self-deprecating humor and a rather nonjudgmental attitude towards sex and drugs. Jim was aligned with left-wing activists and poets and artists. The movie didn't capture the spirit of the book at all.

My mistake. The book is 1963 to 1966. So he's 13 to 16. He wrote a later memoir that's set in the late 60s I think called Forced Entries.

Thanks for the insight into the original story, R10.

I'll watch the movie with what you wrote, in mind.

It bums me out that they took that direction with the movie, but I'm still looking forward to watching it.

Catch Me If You Can is my favorite young Leo performance.

He was charming in The Quick and the Dead. And stunning in Total Eclipse.

R12, I hate to put a damper on something you're looking forward to. It's good to see it just to fill in the blind spot, but it's just not a good movie. As I said above, it's really an afterschool special with cursing and some gay content. Again, Leo is hot, and good in the part, but the movie just feels very small, very slight. The final shot is an eye roller for the ages, especially if you know the real story of Jim Carroll.

I suggest after watching it, you seek the book out and give it a read. You'll jerk off to it. I did.

Womp, womp R15.

But thanks. I think I will buy the book.

He did his best work before he was thirty.

The movie is a mess, but DiCaprio was very good in it. So was Mark Wahlburg--I think this was one of his first high profile acting roles, and everyone still thought of him as Marky Mark. And Juliette Lewis was frighteningly good as a dope-addicted prostitute in a tiny role

R17 My God, I felt actual romantic love for him the first time I saw Romeo + Juliet. He was the essence of beauty. It was definitely a Death in Venice moment for me, even though I was 23 at the time.

Interestingly, I saw him in person shortly after that when I was working at Virgin Megastore. In person, it just wasn't the same, somehow.

Leo has given better performances in the 2000’s and 2010’s. He was most attractive in The Departed.

It’s ironic everyone hates Leo for dating 21 year olds (many of them suspected of being PR relationships) and is simultaneously mad they can’t fuck 21 year old Leo who looked like jailbait.

Ugh. All these "new" movies on TCM lately. I fear that TCM is slowly but surely turning into AMC. Waiting for the inevitable zombie soap opera original programming series.

The story line in the film was too rudimentary. They should have kept in the story in the 1960s, it would have been more relevant and poignant, but a period piece would have been much more expensive to produce. The acting was very good though. The director Scott Kalvert died from suicide at age 49.

No shit, R23???

Damn.

I too was in love with 21 year old Leo. He was so beautiful.

Leo looked better in the early 2000s because he actually went through puberty gaining body hair and face stubble. My the time of the Great Gatsby, he got really unattractive.

R24 beyond the beauty of his face, when he was interviewed, there was this intelligence in his eyes, and confidence. Also, he was willing to play a wild gay poet in Total Eclipse in 1996. Fuck, I adored the man back then.

Leonardo DiCaprio is River Phoenix without the drugs.

There, I said it.

One thing I liked about the movie was the music, especially the song that played right before/during the jerk-off scene on the rooftop. It had a kind of hypnotic quality, and took me back to a time and place in my life I hadn't even known I'd missed .... if that makes sense ... it just gave me that bitter-sweet feeling, an intense longing for the early 90s and the city I grew up in (no, not NYC) ...

By the way, Leo was only 19 when Basketball Diaries was shot (spring of 1994). When I re-watched the movie circa 6 years ago (first having seen it as a young teen), I was surprised how "pubescent" his voice still sounded. By the time he filmed Total Eclipse (early 1995), his voice had matured a lot.

I'm happy they didn't make Leo do a French accent for Total Eclipse (which would have been pointless anyway in an English language film). Accents have never been his strong suit. He always has that surfer dude drawl.

It's on in two hours!

Photogenic and charming with sexual charisma, sure. But I'm not sure he was ever beautiful. He looked kinda dorky and gangly with pimply skin in candid photos. He just photographed well and had acting talent and extreme confidence which transformed him.

Whatever, R31.

In 2022, Leo DiCaprio is Hollywood Royalty.

And you're wrong.

He was absolutely gorgeous when he was younger.

Beauty.

R32 He's okay. A bit too feminine-looking there for me.

Leo got even better looking as he matured.

Young Leo had one of those faces that can be breathtaking or unremarkabe depending on lighting, angle, and facial expression.

Older Leo is no slouch, either.

He looks like James Dean.

Leo is very exotic looking, for a white boy.

He looked his best in Marvin's Room, a couple of months shy of his 21st birthday, with what I presume to be his natural hair color and a light tan.

He looked good in photographs. Visually pleasing and striking but not beautiful to me. A lot of Hollywood actors and models are chosen to look "striking" or "distinctive" not conventionally beautiful. Soap operas and clothing catalogs have far conventionally very attractive people.

R37 He looks like a man there, actually very handsome. So definitely more fuckable.

R38 No, he's not. He looks like a lot of white boys of Eastern European descent.

OP and R1 you both need serious help

I can't believe that beautiful twink turned into this beautiful MAN.

A more natural photograph where he's not in a studio with a high-profile photographer and not posing in certain angles. Good-looking and easy on the eyes yes but not this Greek god, he's made out to be.

Less of a magnificat beauty and more of a cute 90s Bel Ami porn star.

This photo really gets me going.

He looks very masculine here.

And of course, handsome.

One of my favorite photos of him (Alastair Thain, 1996) with what I'd call his "signature expression".

He was only truly hot in the 2000s as he looked like a grown man.

Yes, please!

He was hot in The Beach too. It's like once he hit his mid-20s, he became an adult.

R25 I thought he looked good in Gatsby and Wolf of Wall Street. He definitely let himself go after those movies tho.

Leo and Amy were adorable in Catch Me If You Can.

R48 2006 was a good year for Leo.

Via Wikipedia:

“In 2005, DiCaprio's face was severely injured when model Aretha Wilson hit him over the head with a broken bottle at a Hollywood party. As a result, he required 17 stitches to his face and neck.”

[quote] “In 2005, DiCaprio's face was severely injured when model Aretha Wilson hit him over the head with a broken bottle at a Hollywood party. As a result, he required 17 stitches to his face and neck.”

I never realized that Hollywood was such a violent place.

I just read on the Jeremy Northam thread that Michael Sheen punched him, because Northam was yelling at Kate Beckinsdale.

Then of course, there's Will Smith.

Do people just go around assaulting each other in that town?

I think it's drugs and alcohol as well as mental illness. Why do you assume Hollywood actors aren't as stupid and violent as regular drunk or high people at your local bar or trap house?. The rich especially like to play by their own rules despite having the same problems as everyone else. Ironic how they love to judge and lecture the working class on ethics...

It's been a few years since I last watched the movie, but I remember enjoying the first half-hour or so where you see those boys goofing around and being silly reckless teens, but also Jim visiting his sick friend in the hospital and eventually going to his funeral. Basically, the whole movie up to the point where they start doing heroin. I can't really put my finger on it, but there was something about the setting, the colors, the music, but also the dialogue that spoke to me and almost made me with I got to hang out with Jim and his friends.

The second half was just ... well, dreary and depressing.

I

It's starting in five minutes!

R31 when I saw him at the Virgin MEgastore, that's pretty much what he looked like. I was kinda shocked it was him.

But up on that screen- boy oh boy. I remember seeing Titanic opening night at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. When they flashed on his beautiful eyes, in the flashback to Rose being drawn by Jack before we meet him, there was an audible gasp from the audience. I'll never forget that.

Ok, OP. Give us your review.

Come on, OP. I'm dying to know what you thought.

[quote]He looks like a lot of white boys of Eastern European descent.

Isn't he Italian and German?

R61 He's a quarter Russian too and he does look like a lot like many people of German and Eastern European descent I know.

My biggest issue with the film is that Leo clearly can't play basketball. At all.

As an ex high school basketball player, it's laughable to think he was ever a standout. I know I'm nitpicking, but it took me out of the film.

Mark Wahlberg was great in this. Same with Fear. Mainly due to playing himself. If they made the movie in the 80s, I think it'd either be Matt Dillon, Anthony Michael Hall or James Spader in the running for Jim. And all are East Coasters.

Mark Wahlberg in FEAR was hot as fuck!

Did Marky Mark really get to finger Reese's stinky pussy?

Filthy!

R58 James Dean was said to be same. People who knew him in real life said he was short, nerdy, gangly and awkward. Some descriptions has it sound like he was the spectrum of sorts with his nervous tics and stutters. But he was extremely photogenic with charisma. And went from being just ordinarily goodlooking to a sex god on the big screen. There's actors who are better looking on screen or better looking in person.

R67 yeah DiCaprio looked much younger in person at that point. He looked very irish. He was pale. He was wearing basketball shorts and a plain white tee shirt, and he had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the arm. He was very nice.

I can't believe OP didn't come back and tell us what he thought of the film.

I can't believe some hysterical cunt just got the "PR relationships" thread closed by posting 25 nonsense comments in a row. Was it because a few people (including myself) dared to criticize Leo's acting skills?

R70 people are so nuts. He's good in lots of stuff. I think he works hard. But, he's no early DeNiro or Brando, or Anthony Hopkins. He's a movie star, and for a movie star he's perfectly fine. That anyone would freak out over someone saying he isn't that good is so dumb.

R71 You guys love holding Brando in high esteem, but he’s the one that truly peaked in his 20’s and phoned it in when he got older.

Brando's early hotness and philanthropy is a big reason for the idol worship. He really didn't improve what John Garfield and Montgomery Clift perfected. I think James Dean while an immature ad exaggerated actor had potential to outdo Brando as he was trying his hardest to improve and experiment. Brando let his early success get to his head and just mumbled onward.

R73 Check out Dean’s television work. This is a more lowkey performance from him.

R70 Why is that thread being closed such a problem for you? So you guys can make more comments about how ugly, fat, and overrated Leo is? I got it the first 500 replies. Plus you assholes insulted me for even starting the thread.

R75, it is not really a "problem" for me, it just seems like an extreme overreaction.

I never insulted you for starting the thread. Not sure if I commented on his looks, but I have to admit that I get annoyed when people go on about his "amazing" acting skills. You know why it annoys/triggers me so much? Because I think he USED to be a great actor, and could still be, but for some reason chose to adopt an acting style that I perceive as hammy, forced and one-note.

It makes me sad, and it angers me when people applaud him for what I perceive as bad acting and a waste of his potential.

I think I also get triggered by Leo's "new" (= post Titanic) acting style because I feel like it's mostly him trying desperately to 1. be perceived as "masculine", and 2. dowplay his attractiveness by pulling ugly grimaces.

As I've mentioned before, it started with The Beach - his first film that was shot after the release of Titanic. He wanted to be taken seriously as an actor, shake off that "pretty boy" image, probably also quench the gay rumors - I get it; I really do. But I think he was and still is trying WAY too hard. Also, it's been almost 25 YEARS. He's pushing 50. He's won an Oscar. Nobody thinks of him as a pretty boy/eye candy type of actor anymore, and I doubt many people care about his sexuality. He needs to get over it/himself.

[quote]In his video poetry readings, he's still very twitchy and stuttering.

Yeah people like that are duggies

R77 Catch Me If You Can is better than any performance he gave in the 90’s and relied largely on his charisma and good looks. Same with The Great Gatsby. Neither of these performances were rooted in hyper masculinity. Again it seems like you guys are just mad he doesn’t look like jailbait anymore.