Читать книгу Leonardo DiCaprio - The Biography - Douglas Wight - Страница 17

When MTV asked River Phoenix what he wanted to do after being nominated for an Oscar for Running on Empty (1988), he pulled out a battered paperback edition of The Basketball Diaries from his pocket and said: ‘I want to play Jim Carroll.’

He wasn’t the only one. In the 15 years that followed the controversial memoir’s publication of 1978, several big names had coveted that role. Matt Dillon, Weird Science star Anthony Michael Hall, Eric Stoltz, Ethan Hawke and Stephen Dorff all joined Phoenix in believing they could be the one to bring Carroll’s story to the big screen. It was the perfect role for any ambitious, talented young star able to play conflicted, charming yet ultimately doomed characters.

Carroll was a New York teenage basketball prodigy and heroin addict. Since publication, the book was optioned many times but either the project or timing was wrong or it didn’t fit with the political climate (in the early- to mid-nineties, heroin was seen as being cool). Suddenly Leonardo found himself in the right place at the right time.

It was director Scott Kalvert who finally got the project off the ground. He toyed with the idea of setting the film in the period of Carroll’s trials but it would cost too much to put everyone in costume and so he decided to make it in the present day. Plus, he figured, Carroll’s descent into drugs was a universal story that transcended the generations.

Despite the title, The Basketball Diaries is only fleetingly about basketball. It covers three years – 13 to 16 – in the life of Carroll, an athlete who at 6ft 1in tall could score 40 points in a game. What set him apart from most other athletes of the day was that he was doing this while hooked on almost every drug known to man. Yet, as the diary progresses, the focus switches from the hoops to the hooked. By the end of the book, all that Carroll has left is an ability to eloquently document his own decline.

Carroll’s tortured yet poetic memoir began life in the sixties when extracts started to appear in The Paris Review and downtown New York literary magazines when he was still a teenager. When he wasn’t doing drugs or playing ball, he was hanging out around Greenwich Village and the St. Mark’s Place poetry scene. He made himself known to Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, but preferred Randall Jarrell to the Beats. In 1980, he branched out into rock, recording Catholic Boy – an album of spare rock’n’roll and streetwise lyrics that included ‘People Who Died’. Carroll was more of a punk than a hippie, however, and for a while, he was the punk movement’s Lou Reed. For all these reasons, his work has always had a cult following.

Kalvert described the book as a Catcher in the Rye but it’s the famous JD Salinger novel laced with William S. Burroughs. However described, this was an ambitious project for Kalvert’s first feature. Until that point he’d made a name for himself directing music videos for Will Smith, Cyndi Lauper and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. It was also the first screenplay to be optioned for the writer Bryan Goluboff. But that’s not the only thing that Kalvert and Goluboff had in common: both were self-confessed Carroll groupies.

‘I used to follow Jim around in the Village when I was 14 years old,’ recalled Goluboff, while Kalvert read the book at 18 and then ‘lent it to everyone I knew.’ Though Kalvert did not share Carroll’s love or talent for basketball, he confesses to dabbling in drugs, which may well have given him an insight into the writer’s psyche. Once he secured the backing for the $4 million project, his next task was to find the right actor to play Carroll.

Leonardo DiCaprio might have been just an average basketball player with only a passing resemblance to Carroll, but in many ways he was ideal for the part. By the time the funding was in place, he was the right age to play the junkie and had already built up a body of work to suggest he could perfectly capture this tortured soul.

Leo had always steered clear of drugs and hated the very idea of narcotics but when the role was put to him, it was the idea of Carroll that appealed. ‘The book was so hardcore,’ he explained, ‘and I loved the detail, how this guy made up his own world. That’s the kind of stuff I’ve been doing a lot. I like young guys who’ve really been in history, who’ve done really different stuff. Just to try to deal with this fellow who lived everything at once, you know, was so cool.’ Regarding any experimentation on his part, Leo, in an interview with freelance writer Rick Martin during the filming of Basketball Diaries, said: ‘Compared to this guy [Carroll], I’m so clean, man, it’s ridiculous. I swear I don’t do any of those drugs. It’s just acting for me. People said, “Why don’t you try it for the movie?” and that’s just so lame, you know? You do drugs like that and it gives you an excuse to do them again.’

When DiCaprio was confirmed in the leading role, Carroll was bemused. He said: ‘When they first told me it was gonna be Leo, I didn’t know who he was. If they’d said the kid from Growing Pains, I would have known because when I first saw that kid, I said, “This kid has a lot of presence.” I said, “That kid is very pretty, he’s gonna do well.”’ Aside from the shock that someone like Carroll was a regular watcher of Growing Pains, he put aside early doubts and warmed to Leo’s casting, counselling DiCaprio on how best to portray himself on film.

Carroll, who has been clean since 1975, told Leo about how he and his junkie friends used to use eyedroppers instead of syringes to take the heroin, how he never got nauseous but would sometimes sneeze for nine hours straight and even how when he was straight, he used to ‘trance out’ so much that they called him ‘Dazey’.

Remarkably, the drug addiction was not the most shocking aspect of Carroll’s diaries. Eventually he prostituted himself to feed his habit and a perverted coach preyed on the team, trying to molest them.

Playing the twisted coach (whose name was changed in the film to avoid a lawsuit) was veteran Bruno Kirby of This is Spinal Tap and City Slickers fame. Freelance writer Rick Marin caught up with Kirby when he was permitted access to the shoot in New York for The Los Angeles Times.

Asked how he felt about playing a paedophile, Kirby said: ‘I don’t really play villains, I play people with problems.’ It might of course be argued that ‘Swifty’ – the character’s name in the film – certainly has a serious problem.

Interviewing Leonardo about the pressures of playing Carroll, Marin asked if he had any qualms about portraying a heroin addict.

‘I’m just gonna do the films that I’m gonna do,’ Leonardo responded. ‘You can’t always think of public perception because if you get caught up in, “Oh, he’s a depressing actor, he just does dark films,” you get locked into one thing. You should just do everything, all types of different things.’

Asked if his research of the Jim Carroll experience has extended to his own experimentation with drugs (a persistent rumour before filming began), Leonardo said ‘no’, his voice rising in astonishment at the question.

Of course the inference surrounding Leonardo was that he’d indulged his curiosity to make his performance more real. And the accusation was poignant: it was a charge levelled at River Phoenix when researching his role in My Own Private Idaho (1991). Like The Basketball Diaries, Private Idaho was a low-budget biopic in which Phoenix played a teen hustler/heroin user. According to legend, this was his introduction to hard drugs.

Leonardo was sensitive to the constant comparisons with Phoenix. Indeed, the similarities were not hard to find. Both men had been raised by unconventional parents who’d taken full advantage of the liberated sixties, both caught the eye with their early roles, both took risks in the parts they took, and both had the boyish good looks to attract a much bigger fan-base than some of their movies might have merited. Additionally, the spectre of the tragic Phoenix loomed large over any young, sensitive actor in Hollywood.

Leonardo said: ‘People keep bringing up River with me. It’s really ridiculous to experiment with drugs for a movie. For a couple of months of work, you’re going to experiment with heroin and get hooked for life? With River, it’s sad, but I don’t know if it was the effects of the business or his life.’

Recalling the moment when he heard of Phoenix’s death, he said: ‘I was in bed when I heard. It didn’t seem real at first. I didn’t really know him, but I wanted to cry – and I still do. There are scripts that come to me, and they say, “two young guys”. In my mind, I see River and me.’

Predictably, the prostitution element of the film caused controversy. Sex and drugs permeate Carroll’s book and Scott Kalvert was keen to portray this aspect as accurately as possible. So much so that Karen Akers, a New York cabaret singer, turned down a cameo when she was told that her scene entailed whips, razor blades and cruelty to cats.

Mindful of censors, Kalvert insisted the worst had been toned down – the last thing anyone wanted in a film starring teen idols was a strong rating. Instead he insisted that, while moviegoers wouldn’t actually see Leonardo stick the needle in his vein, they would be left in no doubt as to its evil effects.

‘Toward the end of the movie, when you see some of the stuff that goes down – the prostitution, stealing from his mother – it’s not pretty. People aren’t gonna say, “Wow, I want to do drugs!” It’s sickening.’

As well as Carroll’s on-hand knowledge, the producers hired a former addict as a ‘drug consultant’ in preparation to further authenticity. In What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Leonardo had already proved he was a genius at mimicry but with the consultant’s assistance, was able to slip effortlessly into junkie mode.

He explained: ‘The voice – you go down an octave; even when you raise your voice, it’s like you got this frog in your throat. It’s not necessarily being tired and it’s not necessarily like being drunk, it’s sort of like your body becomes jelly and all your bones and everything become completely relaxed. You just feel at peace. Supposedly. I don’t know, I’ve never done it. Right?’

Playing Carroll’s friend Mickey was rapper Mark Wahlberg. If Carroll took a while to warm to DiCaprio in the lead role, he needed an age to get used to the idea of the singer known as Marky Mark now being an actor. Indeed he was said to have shuddered when told he was even reading for a part.

On set, however, Wahlberg wasn’t afraid to send up the naysayers about his presence in the movie. Impersonating Carroll perfectly, he quipped to Rick Marin: ‘The interesting thing with Mawky is he’s got such a name and I figure, wow, I can’t have him in this movie! But gettin’ back to the first time I smoked a bag, wow, I muthta been 13 years old. Leo’s great, Leo’s fabulous – he just plays bathketball a little differently.’

Wahlberg, who appeared earlier that year in Penny Marshall’s Renaissance Man (1994), had to read six times for the part of Jim’s toughest buddy in The Basketball Diaries.

‘I felt the character in a lot of ways,’ he explained. ‘I wasn’t strung out on heroin, but I was doing what I had to do – you know what I’m saying? It was more about money for us than getting high.’

On set, the difference between Wahlberg and DiCaprio was clear to onlookers. While Wahlberg, then 24, had the self-awareness of someone who had already experienced the highs and lows of stardom in his career, Leonardo (five years his junior) still carried the air of someone who felt he was invincible.

Marin offered a fascinating insight into Leo’s behaviour on set. He may not have had any concerns about the impact playing a heroin addict would have on his career, but he did fret about it getting out that he liked to smoke cigarettes.

‘Can I have a cigarette?’ DiCaprio asked Wahlberg, before he spotted the reporter was still watching. ‘Oh yeah,’ he then said. ‘I don’t smoke.’

If Leo was worried about projecting the wrong image on set, he seemed less concerned away from filming. During down time on the shoot, he earned himself a reputation as a party boy, burning the midnight oil with late nights at some of New York’s most exclusive celebrity hangouts. Talk of his fling with model Bridget Hall might have cooled, but he was now being linked to Sara Gilbert, his old co-star on Roseanne, and also Juliette Lewis, with whom he had starred with on Gilbert Grape.

Jim Carroll remembers DiCaprio’s discovery of the nightlife. ‘It was Mark Wahlberg who turned him on to the club scene,’ Carroll revealed to the Guardian. ‘The women who had come to The Basketball Diaries set – models, all these girls. He ploughed right through ’em, man.’

Although the movie’s early drug scenes did not apparently faze Leo, a later scene – where he had to deliver a long monologue to an audience – did.

‘I can’t focus on doing really long speeches,’ Leo explained. ‘Looking out to an audience and trying to act at the same time, I sort of got dyslexic. And Lorraine Bracco [who played his mother in the film] was like, “It’s all right, calm down. It’s not that big a deal – do it tomorrow if you can’t do it today.” And it’s a tough thing – you get in a situation where you feel that you have to be perfect all the time and it sucks, it really does. Sometimes you just sit there and go, “Jesus Christ, I don’t know what to do!”’

On release, The Basketball Diaries earned a respectable $2.5 million at the box office. While reviews were generally favourable, some suggested the poetry and heart and soul of the book had become lost in translation. However, Janet Maslin of The New York Times, wrote: ‘What saves the film from self-destructing entirely is Mr. DiCaprio’s terrifying performance during some of these latter episodes. One staggering, isolated scene shows a drugged-out Jim paying a desperate visit to his mother, played by Bracco, whose weepiness here isn’t one bit over the top. The wolf is, quite literally, at her door. Mr. DiCaprio’s demonic Jim pleads, wheedles, screams and tries to force the lock, begging his mother for money as he breaks her heart. That confrontation is worth the whole film.’

And Jim Carroll had nothing but praise for Leo’s performance. ‘I saw the movie for the first time with Lou Reed,’ he said, ‘and he asked me if Leo had lived with me for two years, because he acted so much like me. Lou liked the movie – and he hates everything.’

Carroll had even come round to the idea that Wahlberg was a useful addition after all, remarking that he had done a ‘good job’ in his portrayal of Mickey.

By now there was a real buzz around Leo and he began to be linked to any major role, both fictionalised and those based on real people. Clamour grew that his next project might see him take on James Dean in a biopic of the doomed actor’s life.

‘You can see the comparison,’ says David Loehr, an archivist who ran the James Dean Gallery in the late actor’s hometown of Fairmount, Ind. ‘They’re both powerful young actors who made a big impact early and they both polished their craft for years before they became widely known.’

But he added: ‘I have a whole file filled with people who were “the next James Dean”. None of them were. The ones who were successful were the ones who took some inspiration from Dean and added their own style, whether it was Maxwell Caulfield or Bob Dylan. I think DiCaprio is doing that.’

Michael Ochs, an archivist and writer on popular culture, believed the Rebel Without a Cause star was ‘the logical reference point’ for Leonardo because of his looks. He said: ‘So far he hasn’t done anything that, to me, has anywhere near the intensity of Dean’s work. But he’s got the talent and by choosing roles that aren’t directly reminiscent of Dean, he avoids the comparison trap.’

‘It would be a huge challenge for anyone to play James Dean,’ says Loehr, who sent DiCaprio a Dean biography when he read about the movie discussion and received a note of thanks in return. ‘It might be impossible. That’s why I almost think it would be better to get an unknown to play him. But DiCaprio could be very good if he’s still interested, which at this point he may not be.’

Despite the speculation, which reached fever pitch around the time The Basketball Diaries was released, Leo himself was having none of it.

‘I don’t believe any of it,’ he insisted. ‘I think about acting and the business all the time, that’s the truth – about roles, about whatever people are doing, what to do next. But as far as what people are saying about me, once in a blue moon I really think about it, you know; I really sit down and say, “Hey, is that true?” But it just doesn’t register because I read the stuff about me and it’s not who I am. It’s a cliché, but it’s like they’re writing about this guy that I’ve been made to be.’

He might not have been ready to take on James Dean at that moment in his career but he was to find himself indelibly linked to that other tragic actor, River Phoenix. For his next role, Leonardo would replace Phoenix in what would be one of his most controversial roles yet.

Incidentally, there is an interesting footnote to DiCaprio’s experience with The Basketball Diaries. The film was blamed in a lawsuit for inspiring the 1997 Heath High School shooting, when three students were killed after 14-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on a group while they were praying. Disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson included the movie in a $33 million action two years after the shootings, claiming the plot, along with two Internet pornography sites, several computer game companies, and the makers and distributors of the 1994 film Natural Born Killers, had caused Carneal to open fire. The case was dismissed in 2001.

But the same year the film became embroiled in more moral panic, this time the resulting furore after the Columbine High School massacre. On that occasion two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold dressed in black trench coats and went on the rampage, killing 12 pupils and a teacher before killing themselves. Comparisons were made to a fantasy sequence in The Basketball Diaries depicting Leonardo’s character, wearing a black trench coat, shooting six classmates in his classroom. The movie was specifically named in lawsuits brought about by the relatives of murder victims – they were all, ultimately, unsuccessful.