Goofs for
The Basketball Diaries (1995) More at IMDbPro »

• Boom mic visible: Shadow on the bathroom door when Jim is talking to his mother.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Although this movie is based on an autobiography of a person growing up in the 1960s, it appears that there has been no effort to portray that era in the movie. This is evidenced by the fashions, music, cars and backdrops used, none of which are from that era. The following items would be anachronisms if the movie were in fact set in the 1960s:
  1) only modern-era vehicles seen in outdoor scenes;
  2) numerous skyscrapers that didn't exist in background shots, including the Twin Towers;
  3) modern medical equipment used to treat cancer;
  4) Jim and Bobby are on post porn-littered 42nd Street and reminiscing about the time when the area was filled with adult businesses ... NYC mayor Giuliani had the district cleaned-up in the 1990's;
  5) Bobby refers to one porn movie with the title, The Sperminator, an obvious take from the 1984 blockbuster, The Terminator;
  6) A marquee sign in the background reports "Two US helicopters down over Iraq" in reference to the Gulf War in the early 1990's;
  7) During the basketball game where Jim and Mickey are too high to play, there are championship banners dated 1976 and 1988.;
  8) When the cops enter the ice cream store they are wearing 1990s style police uniforms.
  
  
• Continuity: Supposedly set in winter, yet deciduous trees with green leaves are visible.
  
  

• Continuity: The blood on the shirt of the kid shot in the classroom disappears between shots.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jim's mother throws his trophy out of the window and the camera pans across to see it on the pavement, but you can see the actual one she threw behind Jim.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the "dream" scene, when Jim is shooting his classmates, the one who gets shot in the back has a visible string attached to him which pulls him to the blackboard. When Jim has a vision on the basketball court and gets blown by explosion, the string is visible again. They were dream sequences, but it seems unlikely that he would dream of strings.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When being picked up from the snow by Reggie, Jim bends his left leg even though he is supposed to be unconscious.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jim, Pedro and Mickey steal the car to sell to Mickey's brother, Jim is smoking a cigarette which he takes a drag of then throws out the window. When Pedro nearly crashes the car he is smoking it again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jim is playing basketball and explaining how he plays and Pedro steals from the locker rooms, each time there is a point scored you can clearly hear the crowd cheering but visually the crowd is very calm.
  
  
• Factual errors: The NBA ball signed by the players would not have been around at that time. Spalding didn't start manufacturing the NBA ball until 1982 or 1983.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the ice cream shop scene, when Mickey has the gun up to Pedro's head, Jim yells "What the hell are you doing Mickey" and during that sentence you can see a piece of the crews equipment (possibly a boom mic, hard to tell because of how fast) in the upper right hand corner
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the film, Jim Carroll is being brutally beaten with a cricket paddle on the buttocks by one of his teachers. The amount of strokes he gets are enough to cause severe bruising or at least serious redness of the skin, yet minutes or hours later, when Jim and the boys are mooning a public ferry from a cliff, not one single bruised or red bottom is to be seen in the row of nude boys. This is inconsistent with Carroll's own words in his book.
  
  
• Continuity: After the boys jump into the river, there is a gash on the right side of Jim's forehead, after he takes the drugs out of the medicine cabinet; it is on the left side.
  
  

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