J.T. Leroy

Good performances but not a great film. JT LeRoy had the potential to be a deep look into the life of Laura Albert and how she needed to become the character of JT LeRoy, but overall the film is more easy going fluff.

JT Leroy – A Difficult Watch Damaged persona author Laura Albert, after writing several books supposedly about her suffering at the hands of a seriously abusive mother, published her books under a ‘fake’ male name. When members of the book and movie world began showing serious interest in her publications, she convinced her gender-confused sister-in-law to pose as the phantom author, JT Leroy. She then began promoting interviews under ‘his’ literary ‘persona’. She/he was then set up to appear at press conferences in male attire, wig, and large dark glasses with various production meetings organized to push for funding and promotional setups. It’s a rather grotty scenario, and the further the charade is pushed the more obvious the deception becomes for all involved. Laura Dern works hard as the damaged writer, living out her impossible lie while Kristen Stewart plods along in the underwhelming role of JT Leroy. It’s well photographed by Bobby Bukowski, but the screenplay and direction by Justin Kelly ends up being just another ugly ‘modern’ movie, about ‘modern’ ugly people. This supposed fact-based story (difficult to know where the ‘truth’ lies) also shines a light on how easily conned our modern pop stars, and movie makers are. Again SBS World Movies plays it as an M, but this is MA/R material, time they employed better classifiers to more correctly inform us. Endless F-bombs, booze, and sex scenes (some sleazy) throughout.