Very loosely based on the memoir of the same name, The Basketball Diaries transposes the late '60s adolescence of writer/artist Jim Carroll to some unspecified time period at least 15 years later, further confusing the timeframe with three decades of rock music, some by Carroll himself. Jim (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his Catholic school chums are on the hottest basketball team in New York, but their friend Bobby (Michael Imperioli) languishes in the hospital with leukemia. In-between typically boyish adventures, Jim scribbles in his notebook and experiments with sex and drugs. His group of friends begins to disintegrate after coach Swifty (Bruno Kirby) not only makes a pass at Jim, but also catches him and his pals using drugs on the court and kicks them off the team. Out of school and on the streets, Jim turns tricks, betrays friends, robs stores, and deals drugs to feed his heroin addiction. Not even the efforts of former addict Reggie (Ernie Hudson) can cure Jim.
"Eighty percent of us now live in an urban setting, and I think that the solution to our environmental problems is not to say 'we've got break down cities and get everybody back to the land' – that would be disastrous – but we have to make cities our major habitat…we have to make them more in balance, I think, with the rest of the things that keep us alive." Cities are where most Canadians live. And, as we head into the future, how we adapt to the needs of expanding cities will have a huge impact on their livability. Food, land use, housing, energy, waste – how we tackle these issues will determine whether our cities evolve, or whether they decline. In a new instalment of Suzuki Diaries, David and his daughter, Sarika, set out to discover whether some of Canada's biggest cities are ready for the challenges of the future.