Our Rating: [usr 4.0]
By the time you read this, “Author: the JT Leroy Story” may be gone, but if you want a portrait of our cultural schizophrenia, literary division, I urge you to see it in whatever venue is available.
Author: the JT Leroy Story
Directed by Jeff Feuerzeig – 2016
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
It’s the story of a literary hoax, unleashed by one Laura Alpert, in reality a Brooklyn-born writer who used the pseudonym JT Leroy. Not only does she falsify her childhood in what she writes, inventing tales of being pimped out to truckers by her mother, but, once the author was pestered to give readings and public appearances, she sent out her sister-in-law as “JT Leroy.”
Albert, narrating the film as the survivor of the scam she orchestrated, defends her actions by saying she was writing fiction, but it was clearly fiction meant to be once-removed from real life, and sending out her sister-in-law as in a waif-like getup of floppy hat and sunglasses, is a further blurring of the line between a lie and the truth.
It is impossible to list the levels of deception the film encompasses, but what is most amazing are the celebrities who see a raw truth in the faked tales propagated by “JT Leroy,” among the cultural dupes are Bono, Tom Waits, and Winona Ryder.
> Playing at Laemmle’s Monica Film Center.
Garrett Rowlan has been writing all of his life. In addition to being a writer, Garrett is a big supporter of social justice issues. His first novel will be published next year.
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