Comments on: The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:29:54 -0800

A heroin-addicted teen prostitute from West Virginia, 15-year-old JT LeRoy was hailed as the next great American literary star in the late 1990s. Mentored by acclaimed writers and nurtured by a protective throng of celebrities, JT's story was as inspirational as his untaught genius was astonishing. But JT wasn't real; he was an invention of Laura Albert, a woman in her 30's who wrote the books, carried on phone conversations in JT's voice and hired her boyfriend's half-sister to appear in public as JT. After filming JT in the peak of his fame, documentarian Marjorie Sturm continued unraveling the story after Albert's hoax was revealed in 2005. Her film, The Cult of JT LeRoy, is now playing in theaters but Albert, who calls JT's persona performance art, has threatened to sue.

2015: KQED interviews Marjorie Sturm 2010: Laura Albert tells a first-person story at The Moth, "My Avatar And Me" 2008: Savannah Knoop, who Albert paid to pose as JT, publishes Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy 2007: The civil trial over movie rights signed in JT's name Jury finds JT LeRoy was Fraud 2006: The NYTimes verifies Beachy's findings The Unmasking of JT LeRoy 2005: New York Magazine's Stephen Beachy first breaks the story Who Is The Real JT LeRoy? Also: MetaFilter discusses JT LeRoy in 2002, 2005 and 2006.

By: I-baLL

I-baLL — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:38:07 -0800

Godammit, LeRoy!

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:46:06 -0800

But The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, if you're not careful Love and Consequences will break you into A Million Little Pieces, especially if you're Famous All Over Town.

By: feckless fecal fear mongering

feckless fecal fear mongering — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:49:22 -0800

The only way I would ever buy these deceptions as 'performance art' is if the alleged artist provided something notarized and dating to before the fraud started saying "I am Foo and I am doing Bar as a Baz performance art piece." And probably not even then.

By: Twain Device

Twain Device — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:50:26 -0800

Any relation to Gerald Bostock?

By: Gelatin

Gelatin — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:57:30 -0800

I'm struck by some surface similarities to the late Jim Carroll's story -- talented writer, heroin addict, sometime hustler -- but while Carroll exaggerated some of the anecdotes he used in his celebrated published diaries, he did write them and the poetry for which he gained renown. If memory serves me correctly, the anonymous, drug-addicted purported author of Go Ask Alice was also revealed to be someone's fictional creation.

By: oddman

oddman — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:02:45 -0800

1. Create fictional, heroin-addicted alter-ego. 2. 3. PROFIT!

By: (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:06:14 -0800

Step two is obviously "Chill with Third Eye Blind!! ZOMG!"

By: bleep

bleep — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:13:20 -0800

I love that there were Mefites in 2002 suspecting the scam right off the bat.

By: wcfields

wcfields — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:14:26 -0800

Gelatin: "the anonymous, drug-addicted purported author of Go Ask Alice was also revealed to be someone's fictional creation." That piece of trash? Maybe because I read it in 2000 as an 17 year old, but I could smell it from a mile away that it was some phoney moral panic diatribe written by a narc to scare parents of teenagers.

By: eyesontheroad

eyesontheroad — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:16:30 -0800

In the early 2000s, some people I was very close with got a little entangled with this person. It was extremely sad to see them come to know that their lovely emotional generosity, patience, and support had been gobbled up by a deceptive marketing machine. It's a bummer when constructions like "performance art" and "authorship" and "identity" are used to obfuscate the fact that real lies are being told, and real people are being hurt.

By: imnotasquirrel

imnotasquirrel — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:18:59 -0800

I really want to know how Winona Ryder figures into this story. Back during the height of LeRoy mania, she claimed that she knew him back when he was still just a street urchin and told some story about taking him to see the opera. Obviously she just made that up, but I'm wondering if she was deluded enough to believe her own shit or if she knew very well that it was all baloney. And if it was the latter, did she then know the truth about LeRoy? Because if she knew all along that it was a lie, then she must have been suspicious when LeRoy went along with it. Anyway, back when the hoax was first uncovered, I recall a number of people coming to Albert's defense by saying that there was nothing wrong with using a pseudonym and that the work stood on its own, which I always thought was disingenuous.

By: hopeless romantique

hopeless romantique — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:19:22 -0800

Lines From Go Ask Alice That, In Hindsight, Should Have Tipped Me Off That This Was Not A True Story

By: BungaDunga

BungaDunga — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:36:03 -0800

It's a prank, bro!

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:38:37 -0800

Has some interesting parallels with the Andrew Blake story, especially with how Blake created an alternate online persona/sockpuppet that had sexual abuse as part of their backstory.

By: philip-random

philip-random — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:52:42 -0800

Go Ask Alice was fundamental toward getting me to try LSD, so thanks for that. As for the JT Leroy thing, I must say I was pleasantly surprised (in a darkly horrifying way) by the movie adaptation. Somewhat of a mess, but it kept me watching and caring. So fiction or otherwise -- I figure it worked.

By: Itaxpica

Itaxpica — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:58:44 -0800

'Performance Art': It's Like Fraud, But Nobody Can Yell At You For It

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:06:36 -0800

Go Ask Alice was fundamental toward getting me to try LSD, so thanks for that. That's the thing about moral panic literature about good wholesome kids gone bad: It makes young readers go, "Well, if even a dork like [Anonymous] is shooting speed and worshipping Satan, I guess everybody is, so here I go!" Maybe they take precautions to avoid the scary parts of the story, like anyone who saw that movie where Helen Hunt jumps out the window might choose to stay on the ground floor while doing their PCP.

By: imnotasquirrel

imnotasquirrel — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:12:43 -0800

Go Ask Alice was fundamental toward getting me to try LSD, so thanks for that. I know how you feel. Saved by the Bell's "Jessie's Song" introduced me to caffeine pills.

By: dogwalker

dogwalker — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:16:15 -0800

The new doc is worth watching, I caught it last weekend. It plays the first twenty minutes or so like JT is a real person and then unravels it, which is kinda interesting. The absence of current interviews with the Albert and her therapist are notable though. I never really had that much of a problem with the idea that JT was fictional, but after seeing some footage of the actual author at a recent book signing, it seems like way more of a scammy situation. Like she's contradicting her own stories. At one point, around the lawsuit time, she claimed it didn't matter that JT didn't exist. Then she claims that JT the character was part of her own personality. Now she's trying to write it off as some sort of a feminist/punk thing she did to get around current gatekeepers of the publishing world. I kinda hope Albert does sue the filmmakers over this, because that's the only way to get some of the truths out. But also not really, because the filmmaker seems like a nice person and I don't want her to have to deal with a lawsuit. It's sad, because I like the books and short stories that JT is the author of. But the person who created JT is a bit of a monster. (Which if JT had been real, the creative forces behind him as a person were pretty monstrous. Apt, maybe.)

By: betweenthebars

betweenthebars — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:16:52 -0800

I was so convinced that JT LeRoy was Dennis Cooper trolling hipster literary types. Laura Albert is getting it wrong by calling it performance art. She should apologise, then write a book about an author who learns valuable and uplifting lessons about life after being exposed as a fraud (you won't believe what happened next).

By: grumpybear69

grumpybear69 — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:17:46 -0800

One of my great regrets in life is losing the sample of "The HeartvIs Deceitful Above All Things" perfume that I got at the premiere. It had... such a scent.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:20:11 -0800

Sigh. I nominate this sore of tiresome fakery for Last Week Tonight's 'How is this Still a Thing?' feature.

By: double block and bleed

double block and bleed — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:25:22 -0800

Sys Rq: "...that movie where Helen Hunt jumps out the window might choose to stay on the ground floor while doing their PCP." It was called Desperate Lives. It was a horrible after-school special. Reefer Madness of the 80s. I remember that scene, though I didn't know that the girl was played by Helen Hunt.

By: (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:29:22 -0800

Why didn't Debbie Swenson use the performance artist shtick? "It's like, it's not like, I guess I mean what I'm saying is, my point is that society is the real childhood cancer!"

By: psoas

psoas — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:39:04 -0800

I am perhaps in the tiny minority here, but for one positive outcome: the LeRoy stories inspired Garbage's Shirley Manson to write Cherry Lips, a song I'm rather fond of.

By: billiebee

billiebee — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:53:12 -0800

When I worked for a children's helpline, I came across an article about how to handle the fact that sometimes kids lie. The gist was "even when they lie they are communicating something to you. Try and ignore being righteously indignant about being deceived and listen to what they're trying to tell you." The article about Albert losing the fraud case says she had a traumatic childhood that included sexual abuse and that she often took on a male alter when talking to her therapist. I get that people cared about someone who turned out to be fictional. But the story still centres around a talented writer and self-promoter who was damaged in their youth. Maybe the "performance art" thing is stretching it, maybe it's what she actually believes. But I came away partly admiring her ability to pull it off for so long, and partly sad that she needed to.

By: jayder

jayder — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 17:11:39 -0800

I never read the JT Leroy books, but even before the big reveal the situation seemed very "off" and I was unsurprised that it was a hoax. but man, it's kind of amazing -- when good, legit writers have plenty of trouble getting published and recognized -- that not only did she write the books and get them published, she also manufactured the persona, hired an actor, and concocted this whole real world apparatus to make a non-existent person seem real. I actually think it's really cool and impressive.

By: Mothlight

Mothlight — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 17:49:28 -0800

the LeRoy stories inspired Garbage's Shirley Manson to write Cherry Lips That's a great song. playing in theaters Where is this playing? The only current engagement mentioned in the link from the OP is in San Francisco, closing tonight. Has anyone seen it elsewhere?

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 17:59:43 -0800

look words mean things..... If I were Sturm and was sued, I would say...... The film is 'performance art'! Your lawyers bills for unsuccessfully suing us are part of a non-site specific 'art installation'. Me calling you a mendacious fraudulent sack of shit is really a sculpture piece!

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 18:31:42 -0800

I am astonished that anybody had ever thought that JT Leroy was real. It read like a book from within the universe of Nathan Barley.

By: dogwalker

dogwalker — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 19:53:46 -0800

I am astonished that anybody had ever thought that JT Leroy was real. It read like a book from within the universe of Nathan Barley. To be fair, Albert called up multiple people as JT and had long term relationships with them via phone and email before even showing them any JT stories, let alone having any writing published.

By: ostranenie

ostranenie — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 20:02:26 -0800

> Go Ask Alice Madame, what makes your beard so lustrous?

By: armacy

armacy — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 20:39:28 -0800

I would love to see this documentary. The Heart is Deceitful felt so heavy, depressing compared to the JT Leroy articles I would see (in NY Press? Index? Don't remember). But I was transfixed throughout.

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 20:43:08 -0800

To be fair, Albert called up multiple people as JT and had long term relationships with them via phone and email before even showing them any JT stories, let alone having any writing published. Sure sure, and I can't speak for that aspect. But the book itself is not very convincing.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 08:16:23 -0800

I saw Jim Carroll read. His poetry was OK but what was better were the stories he'd interrupt his reading to tell. Billy Idol quoting Nietzsche at him when he gave Idol shit for letting his girlfriend take a pot bust for him("What doesn't kill her makes her stronger, man"), getting a NYC cab stolen out from under his nose by Salvador Dali, etc.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:08:21 -0800

If it's performance art, then the writer/director of the piece going to jail for "fraudulent claims" (the lawsuit) would make a terrific final act.

By: newrambler

newrambler — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:46:01 -0800

The other day I saw this great Tom Waits quotation on Facebook--"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering"--and of course since I'm a librarian, I wanted to know if he actually said it. Turns out he did, in the course of interviewing JT Leroy for Vanity Fair.

By: rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto

rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:58:27 -0800

Mothlight, it's playing in SF right now (where I saw it) and premiered in NYC. It's slowly making the indie film festival rounds so if you live in/near a larger city it will probably come this year -- in retrospect, "in theaters" was the wrong phrase to use, sorry! The "News" section of the film website says the next stop will be Toronto.