AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY. (2016) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JEFF FEUERZEIG. MUSIC BY WALTER WERZOWA. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY RICHARD HENKELS.
STARRING LAURA ALBERT, BRUCE BENDERSON, DENNIS COOPER, PANIO GIANOPOULOS, WINONA RYDER AND IRA SILVERBERG AS THEMSELVES.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I've watched or read a lot of author biopics/biographies in my time, but this one- how do I put this?- stands out somewhat. To be blunt, it was possibly the most bizarre, outrageous and yet strangely compelling author story I'd ever come across.
I'd missed seeing it when it came out in the cinema over the summer this year (2016), so I was thrilled to get a chance to review it for its home release debut. Whatever you think of it, it's the author movie not only of the year but, let's face it, probably of the millenium. You'll most likely never hear a story like this again, so let's take a peep at what exactly this superb documentary film is trying to tell us.
Okay, where to start? My mind is still blown from watching the film. Okay, let's focus. A few years ago, a friend of mine handed me a book and told me to read it. I did, and thought that THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS (2001) was a good but really harrowing read.
It was supposedly written by a young American male called JT (or Jeremiah 'Terminator') LeRoy, whose tragic back-story included child prostitution, drug addiction, homelessness, all kinds of physical and sexual abuse and even the dreaded HIV.
He was brought up (or dragged up, if you prefer) by his single mother, a truck-stop prostitute or 'lot lizard' whose succession of boyfriends all used her little son for their own nefarious purposes. It's a story to make your blood run cold, frankly.
JT LeRoy famously brought out two books which were absolutely huge at the time they were published. The one I read myself, THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS (2001), is a series of ten linked short stories narrated by the boy 'Jeremiah' and telling the story of his miserable life on the road with his prostitute mother.
Mom apparently was a real headwrecker who alternately showed the boy both love and abusive behaviour, while little Jeremiah just craved her love and even wanted to be like her. The scenes of abuse Jeremiah received at the hands of his mother's boyfriends and also his ultra-religious, child-beating grandparents are hard to read. I admit freely that I nearly didn't make it all the way to the end, though of course I'm glad now that I did.
SARAH (2000) is narrated by an unnamed boy who details his grim existence as the son of Sarah, a 'lot lizard' who works the truck-stops in West Virginia. Like the mother in THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS, she by turns rejects him and shows him affection. It's a sad, sad story. I'm getting depressed just thinking about it, haha.
Anyway, the thing about these two iconic books is that they were presented to the reading public as the autobiographical experiences of this shy, troubled young man, JT LeRoy, who only ever appeared in public heavily disguised in a wig and visor sunglasses.
Celebrities flocked- and I do mean flocked- to his side, all anxious to take the reclusive author under their wing. Bono from rock group U2 (of course...!) was one of the first in the queue, armed with the apparently legendary 'Bono Talk' about the industry and the fickle, heartless Bitch-Goddess that is Showbusiness. Well, I wouldn't know about that now, Ted...!
Courtney Love, BLONDIE's Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Shirley Manson, the front woman from the band GARBAGE, Billy Corgan from THE SMASHING PUMPKINS and Asia Argento, daughter of horror maestro Dario Argento, are all clearly shown in the documentary sucking up big-time to JT, the then shit-hot 'It' boy of the literary world. Heh-heh-heh. Celebrities, honestly! I'm actually embarrassed for them. The state of them.
Anyway, then comes the bombshell. Rumours begin to circulate that JT is not only not whom he claims to be, but that he never wrote those two books at all and therefore couldn't even lay claim to having had those terrible experiences that meant that people were all feeling sorry for him.
News about 'the biggest literary hoax of the century' began to hit the news-stands. The two people closest to the so-called 'JT LeRoy' knew the answers that an outraged media and literary public were seeking but, the thing was, were they talking...?
This is such a fascinating story. My friend who'd given me that book to read a few years back watched the documentary with me and she's still fuming over the reveal of the author's true identity. She'd never heard anything about it before and she was stunned, to say the least.
For her, it was probably a bit like finding out that, say, JK Rowling hadn't written the Harry Potter books or that her childhood heroine Jacqueline Wilson hadn't really penned those lovely novels about the trials and tribulations of being the daughters of divorced parents, haha.
I'll let you
guys in on a little secret. I actually much prefer the real author
to the impersonator (who really bloody annoyed me) and that's
a fact...!
Anyway, the documentary is out on home release now courtesy of DOGWOOF, the UK's leading documentary film distributor and sales agent. To make it super-easy for you film fans, I'm including a link for you at the end of this review so that ye don't even have to go looking for it, just follow the link and hey presto! This superb film with all its shocks and twists can be yours.
I think the film will be of interest to non-writers as much as writers. It's a gut-wrenching human interest story of gender confusion, real child sexual and physical abuse and overwhelming feelings of being unloved and unwanted (feelings that many people can identify with) that, frankly, I think everybody should try to see.
Author: The JT LeRoy story is available to own on DVD and Digital HD. Order your copy from http://dogwoof.com/author
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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