Magnolia Pictures
Two things to disclose. I’m not really a fan of documentaries; I find they don’t often work for me. And I had no idea before I saw this who JT Leroy was — apparently I’m not quite old enough. But I was willing to try this movie, but I didn’t really care for it. I think some people will still like it though.
Author: The JT Leroy Story comes from director Jeff Feuerzeig and focuses on Laura Albert and her odd life and the hoax of JT Leroy. There is someone else involved in the hoax, Savannah Knoop, who is not interviewed in this movie. So let’s just say it’s biased.
The movie tells the story from the perspective of Laura Albert, who is the primary narrator and voice. She describes her confusing and abusive background growing and her struggles with weight, as the movie trudges forward to what is the twist of her story. She began calling help lines and therapists under the guise or alter-ego of Jeremiah Terminator (or JT), a male persona that helped her contextualize and grasp her pain.
After being encouraged to write about her story, Albert as JT started writing memoirs of “his” life under the pseudonym JT Leroy. Through a series of not entirely explained circumstances, JT Leroy became a cult hit for the “cool” artists in the 90’s. JT’s story was a story of a sexually abused gay man who was HIV positive and profane yet somehow also naive. But when it came to appearing in public, there was a problem, as Albert didn’t want to come clean about her ruse.
So instead she concocted a hoax with the help of others. There was Savannah Knoop who acted as the face of JT Leroy while Laura pretended to be JT’s friend “Speedie” and Savannah’s boyfriend Geoff who was involved in a series of complicated relationships that I didn’t really understand. The movie attempts to explain this unusual popularity and why the hoax caught on, but I don’t really think this was managed.
The movie starts very slow and assumes you know all the principal characters, which I didn’t. Perhaps if I rewatched it it would make more sense, but that’s judging with a different sort of bias. Laura Albert is an interesting presence, but she had a sort of artifice in her interviews, from her fake British accent to her extremely high confidence level about her own talent.
I would’ve liked to see interviews with people who aren’t pleased with the hoax, but that was quite minimal. In some ways, the movie is more like an extended “hey, the hoax wasn’t so bad,” or perhaps to put it another way, a non-apology apology. Like “Sorry you were offended.”
The actual construction of the movie is fine, integrating older clips effectively with interviews and narration. The problem is that I don’t think the movie managed to paint Laura Albert that sympathetically or explain why people were so caught up in the hoax. After reading a bit more up on it, I have a bit more of an understanding about it. I think it’s an interesting story.
But maybe trying to explain why people were fooled is a fool’s errand, especially if you don’t get much perspective overall. It’s not a bad movie, just flawed.
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