Among the many surprising delights of Author: The JT LeRoy Story is that Jeff Feuerzeig doesn’t put the title character at the center of the film. Instead, JT LeRoy is a story, and the film delivers us the author of that story, Laura Albert. Feuerzeig has produced a fascinating, complex, suspenseful and insightful documentary here that goes beyond the what-happened of the JT LeRoy story to consider its challenging implications.
People use the word “hoax” to describe Albert’s creation of JT as the author for her work. When she invents a fictional biography for him and recruits her sister-in-law to play JT in public, it’s easy to see how people might feel that way. But Feuerzeig undercuts this conclusion very early in the film as Albert describes for the camera the first time she created JT. She had been feeling down, so despite her age, she called a teen suicide hotline and JT came into being as the voice for her to talk to a phone counselor there. Part of the excitement of the film is that Albert has preserved a cassette recording of that initial and countless other phone conversations, so we can hear the creation of JT at the moment he comes into being. And Albert also tells us how this creation felt, how she was able to say things she hadn’t been able to express and how she feared she’d lose him the way many of her other boy characters had gone away. From this compelling opening, we see right away that Albert has created JT in order to help her understand and navigate the world, the very definition of what art does. JT is her work of art, a voice that enables Albert to create.
Feuerzeig had access to a veritable treasure trove of documentary artifacts for the film, and he uses them ably. Albert had recordings of all her conversations with agents, councilors, authors, celebrities and friends, a compulsion that might be related to her effort to establish her own identity and is certainly analogous to her mother’s compulsion to document her daughter. Albert’s mother had taken many photos and home movies of her daughter, artifacts that Feuerzeig also had access to for this film. The director makes skillful use of all these materials, and as Albert’s story of JT’s rise and fall proceeds, Feuerzeig draws on the recordings to flesh out the events and the old film clips to develop Albert’s back story.
From what we learn about Albert’s background while we’re watching JT become more and more famous, we come to understand that Albert has had an unusually difficult childhood of sexual abuse, abandonment, bullying, drug use and neglect. As we learn more of this background, it becomes clear that, while Albert simply made up some elements of JT’s story (she’d never been to a truck stop, for example), she’s also drawn on elements of her harsh life to create not only JT but also his writing. The voice of JT enables Albert to access her terrible experiences and communicate them.
We even discover roots for Albert’s getting her sister-in-law to play the role of JT in public. As a child, for example, Albert had used her Barbie dolls to enact her various fantasies, as we hear from Albert and see in some photos. An even bigger exteriorization of her inner life was her dressing her sister in punk style and sending her out to experience the scene and report back to her. Despite her love of punk, Albert couldn’t bring herself to go out, so she dressed, coiffed and counseled her sister on what to do, and then she waited at home for her sister’s return with descriptions of the punk experience. It’s a short step from this behavior to creating JT and sending him out to literary gatherings.
Author: The JT LeRoy Story also documents the celebrity scene that adopted JT and made his unmasking such a scandal. While some celebrities were outraged when they discovered the real person behind JT, others seemed to recognize the psychology at work in Albert, and they remained supportive of her throughout the exposés and press onslaught that followed. The first time we see Albert owning up to having created JT is with Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, and we’re pleasantly surprised when Corgan openly accepts it and remains friends with everyone in her circle. Later, as revelations about JT mount, Albert is writing for David Milch on Deadwood, and Milch, too, supports her and seems to understand the importance of JT to her writing. As the story breaks, her therapist, director Gus van Sant, and Tom Waits all call to offer further understanding and support, and if you’ve never had a warm spot for Courtney Love, her recorded response to Albert’s situation will create one. An unexpected warmth and humanity in celebrity circles is one of the nice surprises Feuerzeig delivers here
This film firmly engages us 0n a technical level, too. Feuerzeig tells Albert’s story with so much tension that it’s hard for an audience to look away. From the earliest moments of Albert creating JT in order to talk to a therapist on the phone -- and then visiting the therapist in person as a “friend” of JT’s -- we’re left in uncomfortable disbelief at her actions. The creation of JT’s public figure amps up the tension even further as JT/Savannah Knoop attend readings of JT’s work, engage celebrities, go to Cannes and participate in a film adaptation. Through all of these, the audience is expecting that the deception will be uncovered at any moment, but even the several days that JT spends with Asia Argento in Italy leaves the secret intact. And as Albert creates a network of identities for the people in her circle, the multiple layers of false characters adds to the tension that the film only relaxes when it turns to Albert’s past.
Feuerzeig also uses visual techniques to keep us focused on the screen. Much of the film is an interview with Albert, and the director has enlivened that visual with a backdrop of two enlarged, written pages, a visual that not only engages but adds signification. He also breaks up the interview with animated interpretations of what’s being said, and he breaks to cassette recordings of conversations and old home movies of Albert. One of the more interesting of interruptions is when Albert says that her husband, Geoffrey Knoop, liked to talk music with Billy Corgan and Feuerzeig superimposes the two spindles of a cassette recording over the heads of the two men in a photo precisely while they’re discussing music on the tape.
Author: The JT LeRoy Story is chock-a-block full of compelling elements. There is celebrity, psychological compulsion, deception, tension and engaging cinematic techniques. And the story challenges us to consider the strong links between creativity, art and identity itself. And truth and morality. This is a lot to pack into one documentary, but Feuerzeig succeeds in doing so, and in making it interesting. And in perhaps a happy ending to the story, Albert is still writing, but she no longer needs JT or any other identity to do so. She can claim her story as her own.
