Scott Kalvert

One of the 1990s' wave of neophyte movie directors schooled in the art of music videos, Scott Kalvert made the leap to features with violent stories about the seamier side of New York youth. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, Kalvert was already experimenting with making movies in his teens. Cutting his professional teeth in music videos, Kalvert directed numerous clips in the late '80s and 1990s, including DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince's MTV Award-winner "Parents Just Don't Understand" (1988). Anxious to make the transition to movies, but only for the right project, Kalvert turned down several music-related studio features and managed to become the director who finally adapted New York punk poet Jim Carroll's incendiary adolescent memoir The Basketball Diaries (1995) for the big screen. Critically damned for being detached from its original '60s context and devolving into a standard melodrama of drug addiction and recovery, The Basketball Diaries nonetheless garnered rave reviews for Leonardo Di Caprio's spirited, harrowing portrayal of the teenage Jim. The film also earned an unwelcome dose of notoriety amid the late-'90s wave of school shootings for Jim's vivid onscreen fantasy of opening fire in his Catholic high school. Despite making several high-profile deals after The Basketball Diaries, including a brief, aborted stint directing the remake of Gloria (1999) starring Sharon Stone, Kalvert didn't get a second feature to theaters until the shelved Deuces Wild was finally released in 2002. A violent, ill-scripted story of 1950s Brooklyn gang rivalry, Deuces Wild got overwhelmingly negative notices and disappeared quickly.

~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide