Author: The JT LeRoy Story
directed by Jeff Feuerzeig
written by Jeff Feuerzeig
2016
Author tells the JT Leroy story entirely from the perspective of Laura Albert, the woman responsible for the hoax. In addition to casting Albert as the sole narrator and allowing her to tell the story as she sees fit (despite, by her own admission, her history of telling self-serving lies, Albert's version of events goes unchallenged), the film also incorporates Albert's recordings of seemingly every phone call she made or received throughout the affair (including her very first call to a youth suicide prevention line), and scenes from a film Albert made in college where she put animated text and voice-over atop her family's home movies.
Author is almost physically painful at times, because of the discomfort you feel watching Albert casually admit to (perhaps even brag about) things where you feel like she should feel some kind of shame or embarrassment. I preferred the approach taken by The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, where at least the interviewer pushes back on her justifications. Riefenstahl isn't sorry in that either, but at least she's put on the defensive, and is practically just ranting by the end.
In brief, the early 2000s, aspiring author Laura Albert was calling various crisis help lines, pretending to be a suicidal teenage boy, (and, I feel the need to emphasize again, recording these calls) supposedly as a way to deal with her own childhood trauma from a safe distance. Albert picks one therapist she likes, and uses the persona she adopted for that call to start writing short stories.
She begins calling various authors using the name 'JT LeRoy' to ask for advice. Eventually one helps her get a publishing contract. She publishes a bestselling novel, a book of short stories, and another novel. The first book is optioned to be made into a movie. All this fiction tells the story of an abused little boy with AIDS whose highest aspiration is to be a desirable adult woman prostitute, and is intended to be read as thinly veiled autobiography.
Along the way, Albert develops both a cult following and a circle of celebrities who are fans of LeRoy. Needing a way to get 'JT LeRoy' to make public appearances, Albert recruits her boyfriend's little sister to play the part in public. This wasn't the first time she'ddone something like this, Albert casually explains - when she was a teen, she dressed her own little sister up as a punk, cut her hair and styled her outfits, and sent her out to participate in the local punk scene with instructions about who to talk to and what to say. I believe Albert when she says that she is an abuse victim; I also think she might be a sociopath.
Eventually the lie collapses, not because the teenage girl pretending to be JT LeRoy (even as Albert still handled all the phone calls) made any kind of public mistake, but solely because Albert was jealous of her own creation. She couldn't stand only being the puppetmaster behind the scenes, she wanted people to see her, pay attention to her, and praise her too. She first told Billy Corrigan, who kept quiet, and then grew increasingly indiscreet until reporters caught on.
Albert's two key complaints at the end are (1) she is furious that people call JT LeRoy a 'hoax,' because you see, she never intended to deceive anyone, the persona was to help herself heal, she wrote the novel by accident, she wasn't trying to get famous, etc. And (2) she's mad that anyone felt deceived or angry, and that she wasn't permitted to slip into the life of fame she built for JT LeRoy. She can't believe that all her celebrity friends turned on her just because everything they thought they knew was a lie! (Except Courtney Love, who gets repaid for her loyalty with Albert sharing an audio recording of Love doing a line of coke and offering to get Albert on an apology / rehabilitation tour starting with Oprah.)
One of the frustrating things about this film is that Albert consistently talks about JT LeRoy in the third person as a separate entity who acts independently of her. Sometimes it's clear when she says 'JT said this' that she means she said it while playing the role. But once the sister-in-law begins portraying LeRoy in public, it's sometimes impossible to tell. Does 'JT did that' mean Albert did it, the sister did it following Albert's instructions, or the sister did it of her own initiative? Albert doesn't say, and no one asks her to clarify.
So, Author is a thorough, nearly 2 hour account of the JT LeRoy farrago, and the filmmakers give Laura Albert enough rope to publicly hang herself, but it also suffers from being such an exercise in self-indulgence.
Originally watched December 2022.
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