In the early 1970's there emerged from the brutal streets of New York the voice for a new generation of youth disillusioned by the lost promises of the 60's. The voice belonged to Jim Carroll, whose unflinching, compelling and corrosive memories of adolescence exploded into the worlds of literature and music.Travelling desperate roads Jim (Leonardo DiCaprio: The Beach) keeps writing, but his spiralling descent into drug addiction causes his journal entries to turn surreal, mirroring a life of mindless crime, depravation and despair. Finally a stint in Riker's Island juvenile reformatory and his written account of a life spinning out of control rescue him from annihilation.