“’Basketball Diaries’ was a moral parable that wasn’t really violent. Comparing it to Columbine is nuts.”
Not nuts at all, really. It’s not that it was violent, it’s that it prefigured by years images—a classroom, cowering students, trenchcoat, shotgun—that are now correlated with Columbine. Or, at least, were correlated with it; I’m not sure if that tragedy has legs enough for it to still be so eerie.
That’s like comparing ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ with the JFK assassination.