The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

March 19, 2015 1:29 PM

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.

posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto (38 comments total)

Godammit, LeRoy!
posted by I-baLL at 1:38 PM on March 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

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.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:46 PM on March 19, 2015 [20 favorites]

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.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:49 PM on March 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

Any relation to Gerald Bostock?
posted by Twain Device at 1:50 PM on March 19, 2015

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.
posted by Gelatin at 1:57 PM on March 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

1. Create fictional, heroin-addicted alter-ego.

2.

3. PROFIT!
posted by oddman at 2:02 PM on March 19, 2015 [10 favorites]

Step two is obviously "Chill with Third Eye Blind!! ZOMG!"
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:06 PM on March 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

I love that there were Mefites in 2002 suspecting the scam right off the bat.
posted by bleep at 2:13 PM on March 19, 2015 [15 favorites]

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.
posted by wcfields at 2:14 PM on March 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

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.
posted by eyesontheroad at 2:16 PM on March 19, 2015 [14 favorites]

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.
posted by imnotasquirrel at 2:18 PM on March 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Lines From Go Ask Alice That, In Hindsight, Should Have Tipped Me Off That This Was Not A True Story
posted by hopeless romantique at 2:19 PM on March 19, 2015 [19 favorites]

It's a prank, bro!
posted by BungaDunga at 2:36 PM on March 19, 2015

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.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:38 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

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.
posted by philip-random at 2:52 PM on March 19, 2015

'Performance Art': It's Like Fraud, But Nobody Can Yell At You For It
posted by Itaxpica at 2:58 PM on March 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

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.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:06 PM on March 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

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.
posted by imnotasquirrel at 3:12 PM on March 19, 2015 [10 favorites]

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.)
posted by dogwalker at 3:16 PM on March 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

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).
posted by betweenthebars at 3:16 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

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.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:17 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sigh. I nominate this sore of tiresome fakery for Last Week Tonight's 'How is this Still a Thing?' feature.
posted by trip and a half at 3:20 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

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.
posted by double block and bleed at 3:25 PM on March 19, 2015

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!"
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:29 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

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.
posted by psoas at 3:39 PM on March 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

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.
posted by billiebee at 3:53 PM on March 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

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.
posted by jayder at 5:11 PM on March 19, 2015

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?
posted by Mothlight at 5:49 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

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!
posted by lalochezia at 5:59 PM on March 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

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.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:31 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

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.
posted by dogwalker at 7:53 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

> Go Ask Alice

Madame, what makes your beard so lustrous?
posted by ostranenie at 8:02 PM on March 19, 2015

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.
posted by armacy at 8:39 PM on March 19, 2015

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.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:43 PM on March 19, 2015

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.
posted by thelonius at 8:16 AM on March 20, 2015

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.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:08 AM on March 20, 2015

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.
posted by newrambler at 12:46 PM on March 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

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.
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 12:58 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]