https://torrentgalaxy.to/profile/ [eerie music]
- [Voiceover] Where were you when she turned tricks?
And who would be taking care of you while she was out?
- [JT] Well, there's a lot of women who work
in truck stops and very often
their kids are just there.
You know, we'd hang out in somebody's car,
one of the people's cars, you know,
or somebody had a hotel.
Or in the diner, you know, you'll see a lot of kids
just hanging out in back rooms in diners.
- [Voiceover] JT LeRoy is a 21 year old writer
with two books of fiction based on his experiences
as the son of a truck stop prostitute.
LeRoy's books can be described as transgressive fiction,
filled with the kind of emotional and physical violence
and sexual extremes that he's been exposed to.
In fact, some of the content of our interview
may not be appropriate for children.
- [Voiceover] In the spring of 2002,
with JT LeRoy's notoriety rising,
a friend invited me to begin
a documentary about him.
I'd been working with the mentally ill homeless
in San Francisco's tenderloin district
and doing poetry workshops at that time.
He said that this Burroughsesque poet
would be right up my alley.
[police car siren]
- St. Mary's McAuley is the adolescent psych unit
that saved JT.
They did some outreach back when he was 15.
He ended up there, and he's been in therapy
with Terry Owens ever since.
He's dedicated his books to Terry Owens,
his psychiatrist.
- [Voiceover] I spoke with Dr. Terrance Owens
on the phone, but due to patient confidentiality,
he was unable to be interviewed,
and he referred me to another director at the site.
- Kid were really struggling and having
just a really tough time keeping themselves safe.
If they can't contain themselves on their own,
if they can't be safe, like if they came in here
and kept cutting or trying to strangle themselves,
then they might end up in restraints
which is what's on the bed.
We get kids referred to us from emergency rooms,
schools, doctors, and they'll come to us
because something's happened.
They've tried to commit suicide
or they're so depressed that they're thinking
about suicide.
Then the other big category of kids we have
are psychotic kids who are hearing voices,
and having hallucinations.
- [Voiceover] His mother was 14 when he was born.
He spent the first few years of his life
with foster parents.
They tried to adopt him, but his mother sued
to get him back when she was 18 and won.
When LeRoy was 15, his therapist at a hospital
adolescent psychiatric unit, Dr. Terry Owens,
encouraged him to write.
So, you started writing stories
because your therapist asked you to write stories
about your life.
- [JT] He kept asking me to write
'cause he wanted me to write,
and I didn't wanna write.
And he was just asking me to write for
probably about a year before I started.
Drugs interfered with my ability to write.
So I stopped doin' drugs because I wanted to write,
and it just started takin' over,
and I would go off from seein' him,
and go get high, and just do drugs
and just self-destruct
and do very self-destructive behaviors,
and often end up in the hospital
from doing something that hurt me.
- [Voiceover] Dr. Owens, how often would
you talk with Jeremy?
- For the first two years, seven days a week.
- [Voiceover] You talked to him every day?
- Yeah.
- [Voiceover] What would you discuss with Jeremy
on those calls?
I mean, obviously there's a lot of calls
so it's a very general question. [laughs]
- [laughs] A lot, a lot of calls.
That's very hard to say.
I can say that my primary reason
for speaking with him that frequently
was that a very common theme
was his suicidality
and the fragmentation of his thinking.
- [Voiceover] How did you first get published?
- [JT] My work got passed from writer to writer,
and before I knew it, I had a book deal
and an agent before I even had a place to live.
I never once sent out anything.
I never asked anyone to send it to their agent
or to, I didn't even know how all that worked.
- One day, the phone rang in the office,
and my assistant said there's a 15 year old girl
on the phone identifying herself as the Terminator.
I thought this is too good.
So I picked up and indeed, there was someone
called Terminator who apparently was a boy.
- I got a phone call from this person.
You know, he was just saying how much
he worshipped my work and all this crap,
and then, you know, that he wrote and stuff.
And you know, just a very long conversation,
just a very peculiar and interesting kid.
- I said, "How old are you?"
And she, I thought it was a girl,
said, "I'm 15" and I thought,
"Oh my God, maybe I could get arrested
"for talking to this person about a book
"that deals with transvestite prostitutes and junkies."
- The next thing I know, Jeremy called me
- [Joel] on the phone. - He ended up
just calling me all the time,
almost every day, you know.
- That started a long
and deep series of phone calls.
- The person on the other end of the line
made a request.
It's a request I usually dread,
"Can I show you my writing?"
And I said, "Well, sure, sometime I suppose so."
And he said, "Well, I have it right now.
"I can fax it to you.
"Do you have a fax number?"
So, I gave my fax number,
and with dread waited for the text
to roll out of the fax machine.
And when I did, I read it, and I thought,
"My God, this kid is incredible.
"I can't believe he's 15 years old."
It was a story about balloons and heroin.
- He was a 16 year old boy.
I thought it was astonishing.
- Joel presented him almost like a frightened deer,
a frightened, feral animal who would bolt
at the slightest sign of pressure
or intrusion or somebody trying to get too close.
He was an extraordinary found object
in the literary fields, so to speak.
Coming from, it seemed,
places that no one else was coming from.
- [Voiceover] Although LeRoy is forthcoming
about his life, he doesn't like to show his face
to the press.
He's photographed with masks or disguises,
and does most of his interviews by phone.
So, why do you still feel it's important
to keep your identity hidden?
- [JT] You know, I'm writing about pretty personal
stuff and to be out on the street
and have people come up to me and say,
"I know what you really are."
And be in that position where they could hurt me.
Sometimes I like to go out as a girl,
sometimes I like to go out as a boy.
And I really don't want that to be an issue
for anybody else except myself.
- Everyone was always saying he writes like an angel.
That was it, this idea that it was
this ethereal vibration coming out
of this wounded creature.
There was such a feeling with JT that you were
helping prevent some further pain,
or helping prevent some further unhappiness
or misery or really doing a good thing.
It was,
it was a kind of pleasurable altruism.
- Our conversations became more and more
intimate on the level of friendship
until finally, I felt a responsibility
to kind of look after him.
- I got a series of urgent phone calls from Jeremy,
and spent the better part of that Thanksgiving Day
not playing with my kids, but on the phone
in a long crisis conversation with Jeremy
that must have gone on for five or six hours.
- JT might tell me that he was going out
to seek violent sex, and I wouldn't be able
to sleep that night because I would worry
that something terrible was going to happen to him.
- He would freak out, go into, obscene to me,
altered states, speaking in different voices,
different characters.
Really bizarre shit.
- If you look at the outsider in fiction
and the person who's kind of representing the margins.
For me, that lineage is very much a Jean Genet,
William Burroughs, Dennis Cooper lineage.
These writers have really kind of kept us thinking
about a certain kind of darkness,
and a certain kind of pain, and I think the work
of JT LeRoy definitely seemed like the next step.
- Can you guys hear back there?
- [audience responds positively]
- We're very, very happy that JT LeRoy is able
to come to Sky Bookstore to make
his first public appearance.
He's a little overwhelmed at this time
so we'll try to make the evening go
as smooth as possible.
Here's is JT LeRoy's intro.
I get asked a lot how come I ain't readin'?
Well, the God's honest truth is,
I never learned how.
Thank you, JT LeRoy
[applause]
- I wake up screamin'.
- The crow's red wings flash over my eyes
as he pulls my legs apart.
His hot breath against my neck.
Claws push down my face into the pillow,
and it's worse than I ever imagined.
It's a drill blade twistin' and hollowin' me out
between my legs.
And he cries her name again and again
in my ear until it bleeds.
[cheering and applause]
- When I first started reading,
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,
and the most profound feeling that I had was
how much I wanted to be able to heal
this young person through nurturing.
How much I wanted to be his mother,
and to be able to put back into him
what was taken away.
But when I finished the book,
I was the one who was reborn.
I was the one who had been healed
by the courage and the resilience
of JT LeRoy's beautiful spirit.
- I think I'm like a lot of people in that
I read the books and I was just blown away.
I read the first one, Sarah.
It had been out for about a year, I think,
but I kept seeing other people saying,
"It's amazing."
Stars on their websites saying,
"Read this book."
So I finally picked it up, and I couldn't put it down.
- I was fascinated on so many levels
because one, I had a son that was the same age.
Two, I'd worked with sexually abused kids
and adult men, and I thought,
"Just his story of survival just seemed fascinating."
- In the back, he had his email in there.
Saying, this is who he is, this is his email,
he likes to get email.
And, I'm not the type of person to really fawn
over people with their fame,
so I felt kind of reticent about emailing him,
but, I figured it was in the book so I did it.
- There was this kid part of me that was like,
"Oh my God, this famous author's writing back to me."
You know, and he wrote consistently to me,
maybe once or twice a day initially.
- Two years on, we've had sort of an ongoing
email relationship.
And eventually phone calls, and I joined his list.
He has a list online.
Went from like 69 people to 500 or 600 people
online now that basically just are a community,
and they're his community.
It's an amazing group, and it's safe.
It's a safe place.
- Most of the people on that group
were young people, maybe late teenagers,
20s, a lot of obvious street kids,
a lot of kids who'd been sexually or physically abused,
a lot of kids that were artists of different kinds,
and they worshiped him,
they literally worshiped him.
[applause]
- I came in here tonight
and saw everyone here,
I thought, "Oh, I'm gonna cry."
Look, we're here because this a writer
who from deepest privacy,
somehow as if no one was listening,
sings the accurate, actual, awful,
beautiful, glories of this life.
- You're a bad boy, and that's why they gave you away.
They loved you so goddamn much.
Well, then why did they get rid of you?
Answer me that.
[applause]
- [Voiceover] What drew you to JT?
- I was drawn to his work.
And also, I liked his sexual identity,
and the mystery around him.
Even having met him, I'm not sure if I met him.
- I invited him over to my house,
and this is suddenly sort of verboten,
and that's when I was first
introduced to his deep, deep shyness,
and I, so I began to realize that this is just
gonna take on a whole different way
of operating with somebody.
How old are you now?
- 22
- When's your birthday?
- Halloween.
- What's that make you?
- Scorpio.
- Oh, fuck me, really.
- [laughs]
- [laughs] Scorpio's just very secretive.
- Yeah.
- Devious.
- Yeah.
- You're becoming sort of iconographic
because, I mean, let's face it JT,
you're kickin' some wicked style.
You've got Andy Warhol punked.
You know, I mean, he had his thing, but
aesthetically you've destroyed him.
- [laughs]
- I mean, you know this, right?
- No.
- You look fucking cool. [laughs]
- [JT] Thanks. - You look cool.
All right, so.
- [Voiceover] When I first met JT
at a photo shoot in Los Angeles,
I was given instructions on how to deal with him.
Do not touch him.
Don't even look him in the eye
or speak to him directly.
Which made me wonder how
I was going to make a film about him.
In person, I found him quiet,
but not unwilling to talk.
- So let's lend off of that.
Yeah, just keep spinning.
And I know that sounds awkward but try and
[drowned out by street noises]
You know, I mean if you move too far...
No, move but you'll just go,
the light'll change on you.
So just keep that sort of play.
That looks great.
- Just go the way, all the way out.
- I forgot this shirt
- Wait, are we doing one more thing out here or something?
- No, I forgot a shirt, and I left it,
and it's not there!
A shirt.
- Yeah, Steve went and got it.
- [Voiceover] Coming from San Francisco,
I wasn't surprised that JT was dressed feminine,
and was apparently taking hormones
for a sex change operation.
But I felt sad for him,
and speculated with others how years
of extreme child abuse had possibly
stunted his growth.
- I think you're right.
- What is about the hotel that it looks nice
but then it's like,
- there's something weird. - [JT] Because it looks
like an old, 20s hotel but it's actually
like there's cracks, and--
- Yeah, yeah,
- You know.
I don't know Ellie at all.
- It's all new to me.
Yeah, absolutely.
- Do you like to be alone?
- Yeah, a lot.
- You spend a lot of time alone?
- All my time.
- But you live with some people?
- Yeah, but they're perfectly nice to me.
I, what I really want, like, they leave me alone,
but it's a small place, and,
I hope I can make enough money
that we can buy a house.
[camera shutter clicking]
Colette, that's nice.
Emily, that's lovely.
- [Voiceover] JT met up with a couple
who had taken him in from the streets
when he was homeless in the Tenderloin.
A British outreach worker named Emily
who also went by Speedy and her partner, Astor,
who I was told had briefly been lovers with JT.
- [Voiceover] Where's JT from originally?
- From, from like from the Appalachia.
Like he lived all over the place.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, yeah, and then how long
have you guys, when did you guys meet up, did you
meet up in San Francisco? - [Astor] Yeah.
- [Voiceover] Okay, so it's like
a San Francisco love affair. - Yeah.
- [Voiceover] All of it, you know.
- Let's get playful.
- She's not playful.
Life's too hard to be playful.
- [Voiceover] JT considered them family,
and moved in with them and their young son, Thor.
- JT's like a big brother, sometimes a Mum,
sometimes a Dad.
More like a big brother or big sister.
I think it's very important for JT to have
that structure.
When we were having Thor, it was like,
these are, we really, colaced, coleced, [questioning]
came together as a family,
and the boundaries were there.
You can't do the same behaviors.
These are the rules.
- For me it's kind of like an older brother
or an older sister 'cause it's like
she's right there.
[punk music]
- [Voiceover] They formed a pop band
they called Thistle with Astor on guitar,
Speedy on vocals, and lyrics by JT.
[pop, upbeat music]
- [Voiceover] Eventually the band began
to take the stage at JT's literary events
along with an ever-growing list of celebrity readers.
- This is Meteor from The Heart of the Sequel of All Things.
You should read it if you haven't.
- Brown patches of skin that mottled
the pure whiteness of his face.
- It was a cigar like band around
our individual cakes of soap--
- She married me and run off
when I run out of money.
- this is my second reading of JT's stuff
in the last--
- This is the first reading I've ever done.
So, let's go.
- [Voiceover] Dr. Owens, did you at this time,
did you understand Jeremy to be homeless?
- Yes.
- [Voiceover] And where did you understand him
to be sleeping?
- Golden Gate Park, dumpsters,
literally on the sidewalk at times.
- [Voiceover] And, did you understand him
to be prostituting himself?
- Yes.
- [Voiceover] Okay, did he tell you
that he was HIV positive at any point?
- Yes.
[party and crowd noises]
- This monster of ambition was unleashed
before our very eyes.
None of us knew where it was coming from.
None of us could understand it in the context
of the vulnerable, stuttering, hyperventilating,
you know, talking in different schizophrenic voices kid
that we had first known.
- He would say things like, you know,
"I'm going to be coming to New York
"and, you know, with Gus Van Sant,"
and this and that and all these different celebrities
and, "You should come and hangout with me."
It was clear that this is how he does that.
He pulls you into the circle.
And if I hadn't been writing this piece,
maybe I would have gone along with it.
- It was all about networking.
It was all about making connections.
It was all about self-promotion.
And, most writers who've made a name
for themselves have done that to some degree.
Not to the, not quite as obviously as JT,
I don't think.
Not quite as, the ambition is usually not
quite so naked.
- You felt incredibly special.
You felt like you were the only person
who understood JT in a fundamental way.
Or the only person to whom JT opened up,
or revealed a certain side.
And then,
and then you would watch him
do it with someone else.
- If this person just calls up,
and they, they're completely like
the kind of characters in your book that,
you know what I mean, you're interested
in that kind of person.
You have like a caretaker side like I do,
and this person lays one thing after another like,
"I'm gonna kill myself.
"I have AIDS, I'm dying."
You know, it builds this intense relationship
with the person.
- I saw JT sort of exploiting those relationships,
but at the same time, I think
that is how publishing works, through relationships.
And those people are gatekeepers on some level.
- The list of the star studded, excellent,
intellectual, and exciting people
that will be reading to you tonight.
It's gonna be Tatum O'Neal, Shirley Manson,
Matthew Modine, Jerry Harrison, Lou Reed, Mary Carr,
Nancy fucking Sinatra, okay.
- We became phone friends and email friends,
we finally met for the first time
just a little while ago, and I'm so pleased
to actually meet you.
I love you, really.
This is so great to be here.
- You know, Warholian is a very big word,
but I would suggest that what it became
was the kind of media circus
that was like the one that was run in the factory.
- I reach out for a beer.
Uh, thanks.
How old are you?
He crosses his legs.
18, I say.
He laughs, try again.
[applause]
- JT, get your ass down here.
♪ Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. ♪
- [Voiceover] By 2004, JT's first two novels
had been published in 20 languages.
Film rights to two books had been sold,
and articles by or about JT LeRoy
regularly appeared in major publications
around the world.
And eventually, he began to read his own work publicly.
[applause]
- I'm gonna, I'm gonna read [muttering]
- I can't hear you.
- You can't hear me.
It's loud in here.
- Take it easy.
- If it was [speaks in a whisper, mumbling]
- JT LeRoy was a very, very sweet character at one time.
It went away as JT LeRoy started doing
the whole fashion and fame thing.
I mean, he wasn't sweet any more.
He became very, very,
just totally into being famous
and fuck everybody, kind of.
He never used to be like that,
but then he became, you know, like,
"Fuck everybody.
"I wanna be famous, I wanna be rich."
And it was just like, wow, he didn't used to be like that.
[applause and cheering]
- Show me, show me you love me.
Show me you fucking love me.
Show me you love me.
Do you love me, JT?
JT, JT, you swore your undying love to me,
and I'm not sure...
Beautiful I love it.
Closer, closer, closer.
Closer, so I can feel it.
So, you're cuddling so close
that it is as if you are cuddling me.
All for one and one for all, right.
♪ Shiny liquid on her lips
♪ And the ecstasy that comes
♪ With her image grows
♪ From the power that the money gives
♪ And she's got a celebrity lifestyle
♪ And she's just floating in space
♪ And she's got a celebrity lifestyle. ♪
- [Voiceover] It's a coup de grace.
♪ A celebrity lifestyle and
♪ All her children want a suck and a taste of
♪ Oh, the celebrity lifestyle
♪ Yeah, the celebrity life thing
♪ She's just a drug addiction
♪ And a self-reflecting image of a narcotized mind. ♪
- Yeah, I don't want any doggie style.
I don't want any of that shit going on in this picture.
Okay, no doggy style, Susan.
Not for the Sunday Times.
- We're from the New York Times,
and we're doing a photo shoot on a salon of sorts.
- Yeah, it's a salon of creative people.
And everybody is from the San Francisco area,
and they're here this weekend in Napa.
And, the unusual thing is we have a pop musician,
and we have a writer who's JT LeRoy,
and an Italian movie star slash director,
Asia Argento and they're all very different.
And they all have very strong personalities.
- Hey, Becky.
I'm gonna wear my jacket.
Yeah, yeah but that's...
- That's the Holy Grail of jackets.
- I do seven different kinds of martial arts.
I'm a black belt.
- [Voiceover] You're a director, aren't you?
- Yeah, I've directed some Hong Kong movies,
fighting movies.
- Oh, wow, awesome.
That's awesome.
- I think I'm gonna do a Kung Fu version
of the Heart Is Deceitful in Hong Kong,
transposition, yeah.
- [laughs] You smell like rubber.
- [Asia] I don't wanna talk personal stuff about JT.
- [Voiceover] Why?
- 'Cause I just think it's very precious,
JT's friendship, and I don't wanna talk about it.
- And a toast to Buddha.
- All right everyone, look at the camera.
- This is like a cafe.
- I gotta picture of you.
- [Voiceover] Dr. Owens, did you have
any reason to believe that Jeremy was not
who he said he was.
- No.
- [Voiceover] Did Jeremy ever suggest to you
that he was not who he said he was?
- [laughs] Tricky question in a way
in that there were various personas that
would come forward.
But fundamentally, no, he would always
come back and refer to himself as Jeremy.
- Well.
- I'm pretty.
- I'm gonna tell you, you were meant to be a girl.
- [Voiceover] Asia Argento's film adaptation
of the Heart Is Deceitful premiered at the 2004
Cannes Film Festival.
But long before that I had received
an angry call from JT informing me
that I was no longer welcome to film him.
A member of my crew from the Napa shoot
had bumped into him in the Mission District
and had said, "Hi, JT."
He told me that this had been a violation
of his privacy, something that other celebrities
had told him that he had a right to.
- The investigation began March of 2005.
I didn't believe that he was who he claimed
he said he was whether that just meant
that he was a few years older and he hadn't quite
lived the life that he claimed to.
But, I was hearing stories of him standing up writers
that he was supposed to meet,
waiting for him on park benches
and so on and so forth, and I was like
anybody who doesn't want to be seen
isn't who they're saying that they are.
So this is Frank Norris Alley which is where
JT would have supposedly hung out.
I started getting a lot of information
from Brian Para who's also a Southern writer
who had a background as a sex worker.
And he went on a book tour around the country,
and he kept meeting different writers,
different gay writers who were in contact with JT LeRoy.
- They all told me a different, contradictory
piece of information.
But they didn't have all the other pieces of information.
Because, you know, they were leaving the movie,
and no one had really told them they could think
it was good or bad, do you know what I mean?
So, they weren't questioning it.
And, I just thought, "Gosh, wouldn't it be interesting
"if all this stuff was collated and put together."
Because it doesn't make sense.
- From the beginning, I thought that JT LeRoy was a liar.
He lied all the time.
I knew it, but I thought I knew
when the lies were happening.
- JT told me he was gonna get a sex change.
He told me he was gonna be in the hospital for the next week
so not to contact him.
And, I said, "Okay, I won't, best of luck."
And I even thought, should we send flowers?
I mean, is this like a real, you know
if it's really going then we should probably
be nice and acknowledge it.
- A person that I had talked to was like,
"You don't wanna have a sexual obsession
"with being killed."
And, you know, he was like covered
with Kaposi Sarcosa
and was cutting himself all over the place,
and had terribly damaged, abused genitals,
and all these things that suddenly were gone.
He didn't have AIDS any more.
It was like everything was...
And that was, and I was just like, okay,
but again I kept thinking, "Okay, this guy's
"just trying to get more famous
"so that he's removing all the edgy stuff."
- And then, I just never heard another thing about it.
And then two months later I heard,
"Oh, I'm taking hormone pills."
And I thought, "What was, what happened
to the hospital visit?"
And, like, "Oh you know, I passed."
- I heard about all this not touching people.
And that's just a common sense thing that you're in a
field where that's part of your job is to touch people,
it's a bit physical by nature,
and it would be shocking to me
that anyone survived years of that
and has trouble being touched
and seeing people in public
without a wig and a costume.
It just didn't ring true.
- So, this bar, Vertigo Bar, this used to be Reflections
which was hustler bar.
It was sort of the main hustler bar.
The TG bar, Divas, is over there.
It used to be a block down on the corner.
Of course, JT has talked about how
he didn't hang out with the transgenders
'cause he always hated drag queens and transgenders
even though he was a femmy, little,
cross-dressing boy.
He hung out with the skin heads
who would beat up fags and transgenders
when he was hanging around on Hope St.
Even though there weren't any skin heads
hanging out in San Francisco in the 90s
when JT was here.
That was an 80s thing.
- But, Steven, there's pictures of it.
- [laughs] Right.
- You talk to all these people in San Francisco
who are freaks and queers and outsiders,
and who have lived various kinds
of, you know, whatever lives,
and none of us have ever met this person.
And they supposedly live here.
- My mother raped me.
- My mother fucked me.
- My mother taught me how to turn tricks.
- As a child. - [Performer] As a girl.
- That's our stuff. - [Performer] It was
in West Virginia. - [Performer] I was homeless.
- On the streets
- of San Francisco.
- It was kind of circulating for a year or two.
Does JT LeRoy exist?
Who is JT LeRoy?
And so, I thought, well what can I do
with all this amazing material?
And I thought, "Well, okay, I'm gonna make
an absurdist play."
It's called Will the Real JT LeRoy Please Stand Up.
And, the premise is who is JT LeRoy, anyway?
Who is he?
- JT wanted to know if I would help him
go through his emails, and I thought,
"Sure, this will be fun, I'll be glad to do it."
Shortly after that,
in my email I probably got,
I'm guessing it was like a seven page document
on exactly how to write as JT LeRoy.
And this was not a document somebody had
just come up with overnight.
And I sat there and realized,
there have probably been several people
answering his emails for him.
And, of course, I thought immediately,
"Oh my God, we've discussed such personal things."
And at that point, I was a bit offended,
but I was absolutely fascinated
on what was going on behind the scenes
and who this person was.
- The Larkin Street Youth Center is around the corner here.
I went to talk to them to see if anybody there
would talk to me about JT,
but they, of course, couldn't reveal any information
about any client they'd ever had.
- [Voiceover] How did it feel when you were
going about doing this investigation?
- I mean, I quickly came across so much information
about how monstrous
JT had been and how manipulative
and how sort of celebrity worshiping,
that I really felt no guilt
about sort of exposing this fraud in some sense.
- [Voiceover] Steven Beachy's article
appeared in New York Magazine in October, 2005.
In it, he claimed that JT LeRoy was a fabrication
of Laura Albert, a 39 year old
former phone sex operator and aspiring rock musician
from a Brooklyn middle class family,
and her partner Geoffrey Knoop,
who I and others had known as JT's roommates,
Speedy and Astor.
The article was greeted with skepticism
from JT's legions of fans and supporters.
Meanwhile, JT continued to maintain his existence.
- The weirdest I felt was after my first conversation
with JT at which I told JT,
"Well, I think that I'm talking to Laura,
"and I think that's really interesting."
She came across as so crazy and manipulative
and seductive and threatening and nice
all at the same time.
- There we go.
This is the look.
This is the alternative rock look.
- She was telling me how she had done her research,
and I was a jealous writer, and I was resentful.
I was just this sort of loser and bad investigator
who was clumsy and bumbling.
- Fuck you!
- JT sort of rounded up a whole group
of celebrities and supporters to sort of attack me.
But, I knew that eventually I would be vindicated.
That what I reported was the truth.
- The New York Times claims that San Francisco
literary sensation, JT LeRoy, is a hoax.
The paper claims the 25 year old writer
of the bestselling novels like Sarah,
is not a man but actually two women.
- [Voiceover] A few months after the Beachy article,
the New York Times published an article
identifying Savannah Knoop,
Geoffrey Knoop's half sister, as the public face
of JT LeRoy and further implicated Laura Albert
as the writer of JT LeRoy's books
and the creator of the plot,
having worked the phones and email
in the voice of a damaged, Southern boy
for over 10 years.
- I wrote a last email to JT, and what I said is,
I said, "The JT that I knew, that I knew,
"and have known, would have come up to me now,
"or would come forth to me now,
"and clear up this nightmare because I feel
"like I'm caught in a terrible nightmare.
"If there is no JT, and this was Laura doing this
"all this time, it's one of the most sadistic manipulations
"of myself that I've ever experienced.
"So, please, JT, stop the nightmare,
"come forth and give me an explanation.
"If I don't hear from you, I'll assume there is none."
And the email was never answered.
- [Voiceover] The New York Times published
a second article a month after the first one.
In it, Geoffrey Knoop, having recently separated
from Laura Albert, came forward to apologize
for his role in what he described
as an all-consuming web of deceit.
- [Voiceover] Do you miss the light
kind of shooting through?
- [Voiceover] No, I think this is fine.
- I mean you did get rid of the dust, right?
It got rid of the dust.
I basically was like, I'm fucking done.
I don't care what the consequences are.
And again, I'm not the one who broke the story.
All I did was go on record and say,
"Yes, she wrote it."
Like so that somebody like Gus Van Sant,
who we worked with, who I respect a lot
wouldn't be saying, "Well, no,
"I'm still talking to JT."
As the story was breaking, I called up Gus,
and I was like, "Gus, no."
He had to hear it from somebody like me.
It's Laura.
I'm really sorry, man.
There is no JT.
- For people on the outside, it's a great story.
For the rest of us, it was a challenge
to get through all of this because it really,
it destroys faith
that you build over time
with people you work with.
- Now, I think I'll shave my moustache.
No, note I'm really a man.
- People were absolutely devastated.
Kids who'd started writing,
kids who'd started doing music,
kids who had gotten off drugs.
I mean, their Messiah, their hope had been dashed.
- This is a statement that 28 kids put together
at Mitch's drop in at the EVRC.
We the LGBTIHQQ youth of San Francisco
who are variously homeless, sex workers,
abuse survivors, former foster kids,
IV drug users, and people living with HIV AIDS,
are appalled by the exploitation of our real world struggles
by JT LeRoy and company for the purpose
of personal profit and celebrity.
We expect an apology,
not simply for defrauding the public
into giving money to someone who they believed
to be young, struggling, and seriously ill,
but for repeatedly defaming our community
both in articles and interviews.
- [Voiceover] Whenever it was that you
first became convinced, even if not 100% certain,
that JT LeRoy didn't in fact exist, were you surprised?
- Whenever that was.
Oh yes, yes.
- [Voiceover] Did you feel betrayed?
- Did I feel betrayed?
No, that's not the word I'd use.
- [Voiceover] What word would you use?
- I don't know.
Much more complex than simply betrayed.
It, God it's hard, confused certainly.
- [Voiceover] While Laura Albert and Savannah Knoop
remained silent in the media,
Laura took on representation to sell a proposed memoir.
Meanwhile, the Weinstein Company optioned
the three articles about JT LeRoy
that had been published in the New York Times
with the hopes to make a movie.
And after failing to reach a settlement,
Antidote Films, the production company
that had optioned the book, Sarah,
began legal proceedings against Laura,
charging her with fraud.
- [Voiceover] Let me ask you, why didn't you question
whether or not this was a real person.
- You know, the extent and the dramatics
and the flair of the subject matter was big.
And when, for example, someone tells you
on the phone that they aren't gonna be able
to talk for a couple of weeks
because they're going into the hospital
to have their ass operated on
because they did so much ass fucking
at the truck stop that they really had
a lifetime of damage that has to be repaired,
that's not something you can really question.
- For me, it's all about, if it was not important
who JT LeRoy was why didn't Laura Albert
put her name on it?
By definition, she felt it was paramount importance
not only to put his name on it,
but to continue the charade for,
what was it, 10 years.
I find it very unfortunate that I have invested
over a $100,00 on a false premise, a false assumption.
- You know when you meet somebody
and you go, "Oh man, I don't like this person at all.
"Now maybe they'll change my mind
"in an hour or two or three
"and turn out to be really cool and great
"and interesting and whatever.
"Or harmless."
But I remember thinking, and I remember
this vividly thinking, "This one's up to no good."
That's all I can remember.
And I remember that feeling vividly.
- I'm like a pretty fearless person,
never had anyone with two words
make my bones shake with fear.
And I don't even know fear of what,
I really don't know. [laughs]
It was like what are you gonna do to me?
You can't beat me up, I mean, you know.
- It was a strange experience meeting her.
I was at a bar for a friend's premiere party,
and I happened to have my camera with me
which I brought because I was doing a blog at the time.
So I just walked up to her with my camera
and started filming.
- How's it going?
- Pretty good.
Have you met JT LeRoy?
- I haven't.
- Caveh Zahedi who had the film called I'm a Sex Addict
and it's playing in a big way.
- Yeah, you want me to?
- She was kind of a bit of a bully.
You know, if you don't my thing, I'm gonna scare you.
You know, intimidator.
It was her control drama.
So, but I also kind of liked her.
She was kind of charming and fun, too.
A weird mix.
- It definitely felt like this person is evil
in some sense.
I mean, the changeability,
the shapeshifting quality
sort of feeds into our ideas of Satan.
There's the brilliant moments in The Exorcist
where the devil, through Linda Blair,
is sort of going after this closeted, gay priest,
and sort of uncovering his secrets
and hitting him where it hurts.
- The demon is a liar.
He would like to confuse us.
But he will also mix lies
with the truth to attack us.
- [Priest] Spirit-- - Shove it up your ass you--
- Laura was very psychologically astute in the same way.
She really had this incredible talent
for getting people, even on the telephone,
and knowing sort of where to hit them
and what it was in their own psychologies
that she could use.
- He would start talking about birthdays.
And how he never had a birthday cake.
And he'd never had a birthday party in his life.
Never hardly even got presents,
and talked about usually his birthdays
revolved with abuse.
And being the single father that I was,
I decided for Christmas,
I would send him
a birthday present for every year of his life.
- I started going back on all the kinds
of interactions we had, and I started realizing
that 80% of them had no practical benefit
for this person.
They weren't getting him published.
They're weren't getting him publicity.
They're weren't getting any money from me.
They were merely building a more and more
solid relationship between me and this person.
And some of them looked at now as fake things,
they can only be interpreted as very sadistic
and very manipulative.
- Five minutes before Christmas dinner,
and he calls me on my cell phone.
Again, I was shocked if this was JT.
He goes, "I just wanna tell you,
I opened those boxes," and he goes,
"I can't stop crying."
He said, "No one ever cared about that much for me.
"No one's ever given me that attention.
"No one's ever given me that love."
He goes, "I love you more than anyone."
- There was one time that JT and I talked
for several hours on the phone deep into the night
until maybe two or three in the morning.
And it was a very tender talk and a very intimate talk.
And I expressed very strong feelings of affection.
In my mind, they were just expressions of affection,
and they were pleasing JT.
In my mind, they had no sexual component.
- He was talking to me and he goes,
"You know, I promised you that before
"I ended it all, I would call you.
"And that's what I want to do today.
"I've had it, it's too hard, no one's here."
And I'm like, inside I'm just like,
crisis intervention panicking, thinking,
"I am 3,000 miles away from you, whatever,
"and you're trying to kill yourself.
"No one's there.
"Oh my God, what do I do?"
- The next day, JT called and seemed very, very disturbed
and said, "I've been discussing our conversation
"with my therapist, and he says you were
"coming on to me, and I don't want
"any pedophilic behavior between us."
'Cause at that time he was only supposed
to be 15 or 16.
I was absolutely anguished, I said,
"No, that's not what I meant about it,
"you mustn't feel that way."
- Because I just wish you were just here
to beat me because that's what I really deserve.
I really want you to tell me how much
you want to beat me, and what you would do to me
'cause I'm so bad.
And I'm standing there thinking,
"He wants phone sex."
- He told me to turn on the television
because his grandfather's voice was coming
through the television telling me that unless
I gave up homosexual ways, I was going to go to hell.
And because he cared about me,
I'd better listen to his grandfather now.
- I believed that in order for him to trust me,
that he wanted to be sexual with him.
And then he could trust me.
So, I stood there and told him
what he wanted to hear.
We talked a little longer.
We hung up the phone.
I was just sick to my stomach.
- Evil isn't stable.
Evil will say whatever it needs to say
to get whatever it wants.
It's always playing games.
It's always using your own desires,
it's always getting into your own head
and psychologizing you.
- This person made me feel like
if I didn't talk to them, they were gonna kill themselves
or they were gonna like...
I mean, really, that's what was being played,
how I was being played.
It was like I was his entire world.
Everything ma--
I was everything to him.
I was his mother, his father, he was in love with me,
I was, you know, this is what I was getting
constantly, constantly, constantly.
- I wondered about what was Laura thinking
during the, I mean, were those sincere emotional meltdowns
that I was having to feel
or were they
just kind of improv?
- [Voiceover] Have you ever talked to Ms. Albert
about the perception that what she did
was a deception?
- No.
- [Voiceover] Have you ever given her any opinion
on whether you thought that what she was doing
was a deception?
- No.
- [Voiceover] Have you ever told her that
you thought, you agree that she was,
to at least to some extent, putting on a hoax?
- No.
- [Voiceover] Do you think she was putting on a hoax?
- No.
- [Voiceover] Has Laura ever told you, Ms. Albert,
ever told you that she was putting on a hoax?
- No.
- [Voiceover] Why do you think she wasn't putting
on a hoax?
- I think it's a superficial understanding
of her psychopathology.
I think it really misunderstands it.
- [Voiceover] In what way?
- She's a lot sicker individual than I think
is obvious in a superficial contact with her.
- [Voiceover] My name is Laura.
I was born with a fever November first, 1965.
My mother was in the Brooklyn Hospital
for three days, and she almost died.
It was election day, and because of me,
my mother didn't get to vote.
It was also the Day of the Dead.
I'd go to the bathroom and do shows by myself
in front of the mirrors, but I wanted an audience.
I didn't want to be alone with it.
And at school, I would let loose the characters.
I would do monologues.
I would do different scenarios, different accents,
mimicry, which is the same way you learn to write.
First you copywriter, then the material mutates
and it becomes your own.
- [Voiceover] What initially attracted you to Laura?
- You know, when I met her, she was doing,
like working a spiritual program,
and really we would thank the animal
for giving us life before we'd eat the turkey,
or whatever [laughs].
Say a little New Age prayer or whatever. [laughs]
So, and there was a lot of talk
about rigorous honesty
and trying to make amends.
There were a number of events that happened
with Laura that were deceitful.
She kind of like stopped living the rigorous,
honest life.
She would call up, say Safeway, and be like,
"Hello, I was in there on tour and, uhm-- "
This was way back in the early days, way before JT.
"And you know, I left a bag of groceries there,
"and I wonder if you found them?"
"Oh no, well let me check."
And then he'd come back, "No,
"we couldn't find the groceries,
"but you sound very sweet Ma'am,
"we trust you.
"Come on in and just pick out the things you had before."
[laughs] We did that like 20 times
over the course of a few years.
The next thing I know, she's doing phone sex.
Like any naive boyfriend, I'm like jealous,
and pissed off, and I'm like,
"What the fuck is she doing?"
It really just didn't click that it was a money thing only.
'Cause she was really good at it.
'Cause we'd been struggling to make it
in music, or she was reviewing erotic sites,
reviewing restaurants.
We tried all kinds of things.
And so like, the writing at first just seemed
like another thing that she was trying.
Neither of us really expected it to go anywhere.
'Cause we'd been trying for 11 years
to make something artistic go somewhere.
- [Voiceover] At trial, Laura's defense contended
that Antidote Films had optioned a novel,
and that is what they got.
JT LeRoy was merely a pseudonym.
- I got off the phone after speaking
with one of her representatives,
and I couldn't, I was incredibly agitated.
And I couldn't figure out why,
and I realized why.
It was because they kept saying,
"Well, JT feels this way and JT feels this way."
And I kept thinking, "Wait a sec, you cannot say that
"'cause JT doesn't exist.
"JT has no feelings whatsoever."
JT is a fiction, and that actually was the first time
when I really got a sense that this is sort of now,
this is just getting too twisted.
- [Voiceover] Laura's defense also asserted
that the books were metaphorically true,
an artistic coping mechanism
based on her own experiences as an abuse survivor.
- [Voiceover] Have you made any diagnosis
with respect to why Ms. Albert has, in the past,
utilized multiple personas in her dealings with others?
- It's my understanding that she has
a fairly traumatic history, very difficult childhood
and early adolescence.
- [Voiceover] And what do you understand
that history, that difficult history to be?
- Physically abusive relationship
at the hands of her mother,
emotionally abusive relationship at the hands
of her mother and father,
psychiatric hospitalization, residential treatment,
displacement from the home, so, those things.
- Laura was clearly familiar with basic narratives
of multiple personality.
She pretended to have multiple personalities
on the telephone with Dennis Cooper
and with some other people.
It was understood by several of the early contacts
that JT had some form of, by that point
it was probably Dissociative Identity Disorder.
- For a while I got phone calls where he would talk
in five or six, seven different character, voices.
There was a phase when this was going on.
You know, I'd hear the girl, the boy, the this, the that.
- Now I look back, and now I know I was talking
to a woman named Laura Albert doing the accent.
I know that she had to hang up and then talk to her son
to tell him to go to school,
and then pick up the phone again
and talk as JT, and hang up,
and then talk as Emily, somebody.
It's just fascinating to me.
She has to be one of the craziest motherfuckers ever.
Do you know what I mean?
Right up there with some of the real classic weirdos.
- You're juggling all sorts of lies,
and all sorts of relationships.
And Laura Albert is a Type A hardworking personality.
On the phone, emailing, traveling, all that,
just when did she rest?
So, of course you're gonna be nuts.
Sleep deprivation I'm sure does
a lot of things psychologically.
But that's as far as I would go in saying that,
you know, lending that romance of insanity.
- [Voiceover] Have you made any diagnosis
with respect to Ms. Albert about multiple personalities?
- It's hard to say.
Do I think it is a aspect of her psychology?
Yes, I do.
- [Voiceover] And, in what ways do you think it's
an aspect of her psychology?
- It long lies, I've been saying that I think
there is a lot about direct interpersonal contact
with others that threatens her a great deal,
and that she shields herself from those contacts
in a variety of ways, including the use of personas.
- [Voiceover] Including the use of hiring people
to appear as those personas?
- Potentially, yes.
- [Voiceover] Do you believe that she's conscious
of the fact that she's hiring people to appear
as her when she's doing it?
- Yeah, I don't think shes' psychotic
and out of touch with that entirely.
- [Voiceover] The popular kids liked me
because I made them laugh.
I made up funny stories, and I was the best
at prank phone calls.
In the sixth and seventh grade,
girls started having serious crushes on boys,
and we started calling them on the phone.
There was this one guy that everyone really liked,
but no one could speak to him on the phone
because they'd giggle too much.
So one day, with the other girls listening,
I called him using a Swedish accent,
and he fell for it.
I kept calling him.
The other girls didn't know this.
I made up a whole character, Katrin.
I went to the library to research Sweden,
and I studied Swedish to make sure
my accent was right.
Katrin was living with Laura, with me.
But her parents were very strict,
and she wasn't allowed to leave the house
so no one ever saw her.
I found I had this skill over the phone,
this idea of, wow, I have this personality,
but I'm not allowed to expose it
because my physical appearance doesn't match it.
The boy fell in love with Katrin,
and I fell in love with him.
Our phone relationship went on for months,
it got really elaborate.
And then, one day, I met him as Katrin's friend,
Laura, and we started to hang out together.
I cut out a picture of a pretty girl
from an old yearbook to show him.
His friends found out about her,
and they would talk to her on the phone too.
It was very real and it had taken me over.
I didn't know how to stop it,
but I realized it had to end.
So, I discovered this kind of cancer
that could develop pretty fast,
and I gave that to Katrin.
And one day when the boy called the house,
I told him that Katrin had died.
The next morning, the boy's mother
showed up at our door.
The boy's family was upset and they wanted
to know what had happened,
and my mother was like,
"What the fuck are you talkin' about?"
I remember hearing them talkin' in the other room,
and feelin' heartbroken.
I hadn't meant for any of this to happen.
- In a lot of ways now, when I hear her
talking about her own abuse or being crazy,
I think, "She's good, this is her next scam."
Now she's using everything she used
to develop JT LeRoy and saying,
"This is me, poor me, I was abused, I'm crazy."
Well, you could have been abused,
you may be crazy, but it doesn't make it okay
for you to be predatory and take advantage of others.
- Her Mom taught her how to be a grifter.
I mean, it was acceptable.
- Her mother is something of a con woman,
and has been for years and years.
They know how to game the situation
in order to make it work for them.
And whatever lie needs to be told,
well, it's almost like they would look at someone
like you and me, and go, "Well, duh,
"I needed to get this, so I needed to do that.
"So what's wrong with that?
"That's called survival."
- [Voiceover] Tell me about Underdogs, Inc.
- Although Laura's sister had cashed some
of the early checks, which I found out,
later checks were cashed by Underdogs, Inc.
And I discovered that Laura's mother
was the president of that corporation.
- [Voiceover] Mr. Bogatin, isn't it true
that one of the reasons Underdog was created
was to avoid revealing the fact
that JT LeRoy was a pseudonym?
- Correct.
- They unabashedly created fraudulent documents
to give to the court.
I mean they're like risking going to prison.
It's a serious, serious act.
- [Voiceover] Did you ever understand
whether Ms. Albert would be angry or upset
if you had disclosed that JT LeRoy was in fact a woman?
- Very upset.
That was one of the preconditions
of my engagement and involvement.
Not to reveal that.
- We have a number of documents,
six, seven, eight, and we're gonna sign them
to make them appear that they were signed
years before.
So, I just think that they will do absolutely anything
to get ahead.
- I pleaded with her Mom for the last year or so,
"This is out of control, Caroline.
"It's really not good for Trevor,
"it's really not good for me."
And, she just didn't give a shit.
She didn't care.
- [Voiceover] Because?
- 'Cause really, they're all about money.
- People would talk in emails about all the gifts
they were sending him from literally all over the world.
- He never really came out and said,
"I want this, will you get it for me?"
He would come out and say,
"My computer broke" or
"I need an office, I can't be in this.
"I live in this house with six people,
"and I can't write, and I can't concentrate.
"I need an office."
Didn't, never said, "Will you get it for me?"
But, of course, your response is,
as a person with a small amount of extra money,
is to say, "God, you're a writer and I'm not.
"You're talented and I'm not so I'll pay for your office."
- You wouldn't always get an answer
if you sent him something.
And I remember once saying,
"Did you get this box, did you get this box?"
And him making the comment, he goes,
"Oh, you would not believe how much stuff we get here.
"We just have piles and piles of boxes."
He goes, "If I don't get back to you,
"it's only because we haven't had time
to go through all the boxes."
- I got a phone call saying,
"My computer's acting funny.
"It's breaking down every two seconds,
"and the computer guy came and said
that it can't be fixed."
I thought about it and was like, again,
"Genius kid, writing novels, it seems like a pity
that the one tool that this kid needs is a computer."
- Again, I excuse him 'cause I thought,
"Here is this street kid who has never had
"anything before, and has no social graces,
"and doesn't know what to do when he gets it."
And it's like, gimme, gimme, gimme.
So, again I was making excuses for him.
- It's all based in the human element.
That's why it's so easy to join the cult.
And we're all members of the cult,
we were all members of the cult.
I mean, that's just a fact.
People are going to be, I'm sure have
tried to take the high road and say,
"Well, actually you know,"
and give you all kinds of interesting logical reasons
as to what happened, didn't happen,
and the truth is, I was a member.
I was a card carrying member, and I was fooled,
and I guess I wanted to be fooled.
- I realize that part of the reason I hadn't seen
through the ruse could not be blamed
on this Laura person.
I like to refer to her as this Laura person
because I have absolutely no connection
to her whatsoever.
I thought it could be blamed on me,
this vulnerability could be blamed on me
because it came out of a certain neediness
to have a young man that I could protect,
that I could care about, that I could nurture.
You know, whether it's the desire to have a child
or to have a lover, obviously that need in me
was so strong that it put me into a kind of denial
where I was able to swallow the most blatant kinds
of fraud.
- It wasn't just JT, Laura Albert, hoodwinking
all these innocent people.
That these innocent people were contributing
to that fiction, and helping sustain that fiction,
creating it.
[applause and cheering]
- They asked me to read because JT was shy,
and wasn't gonna read.
Beforehand, we were supposed to talk about JT.
We were asked to say something about JT.
Before I start reading, just like to say
a little bit about how I got to know JT.
We were propelling the myth, I guess.
We actually haven't met in person yet,
but I feel like I know a lot about JT
and I think when people read his work,
they feel like they really know him
because his work is so...
[laughs] Well, you've all read it I'm sure, right?
It is so deep and it is so frightening,
and it's so real.
I think it's hard for women to get recognition
in our society in a lot of ways.
For me, I didn't really think about how JT came to be,
but the fact that JT was actually Laura
didn't bug me, it didn't bother me.
- They all like to focus on Laura Albert,
it's like she's this evil monster.
She's like out to get all of us to believe her charade.
And, instead of actually talking about
the industry behind Laura Albert.
And so, Laura Albert was playing by the rules.
Laura Albert mastered those roles,
and she was flawless at them,
and she got where they take you.
- She knew that we were at the red hot center
of some fiction scene she wanted to be in on.
I think she thought of some of us as gatekeepers,
and I guess, she thought we wouldn't allow in
a 30 something year old woman.
- JT LeRoy's first book is compared to Burroughs.
You know, boom, he's huge.
And it's again because he's palatable
because he's working the system
because he's got big friends and that's awesome
but as a woman, I don't know if he had the same friends
even as a woman if he would get that far.
- This is far beyond a question of whether
she was male or female.
I mean, this was a first novel written
by a 16 year old, you know, uneducated kid.
So, yes, of course that seems like a phenomena.
And we know that people love youth,
and we know that people love abuse
and misery and all that.
- Laura Albert, to my mind, was just a one woman,
and I guess you could call this feminist,
she's a one woman super ad agency
and branding agency on her own.
You know, she must, whether it's intuitive or learned
as in a scholarly way, she pulled off
what many ad agencies would have loved
to pull off and are pulling off.
- Hello, I've had the amazing fortune and blessing
to meet JT having to be a part
of the film, The Heart Is Deceitful.
And here's that cliche, never meet your heroes,
but in this case,
he's one of those people that
you wanna live more truthfully
after spending time with.
[applause]
- The Warholian aspect of all of this
I think imposed itself later because
the circus like nature of this
and the grasping at celebrity
and the manipulation of celebrities
turned into something that was larger
than they were, that was about fame writ large,
that was about a certain kind of manipulation
of not only people but fashion companies.
I mean, they were scamming clothing and trips,
living the high life, using the invention
of this celebrity writer.
- As far as the celebrities, it was really easy.
Once you had two or three,
it was like a domino effect.
Here's Billy Carden came over to our house
a couple, few years ago.
it was definitely surreal to have him in our kitchen.
Michael Stipe and Eddie Vetter.
Debby Harry, that's from a cocktail party
that we had.
This is the party in our hotel room.
- [Voiceover] That's cool.
- Here's Savannah with Shirley Manson.
- I feel like I need to sing this to you.
♪ JT gets so fucked up in some karaoke bar
♪ After two drinks, he's a loser
♪ After three drinks, he's a star. ♪
I told you up short.
[applause and cheering]
- [Voiceover] Do you think everyone was scared of her,
is that why they would be quiet?
Didn't anyone just wanna pull the plug
at different points kind of?
- I mean, I think you know, I also, unfortunately,
well, I mean I was really, Laura was my closest friend
and my partner in life and everything and creativity.
I, you know, would scold my Mom
for not keeping the secret well enough.
I would, I mean I was in Laura's cult basically
or I was her partner.
I mean, I thought we were partners.
- [Voiceover] Mr. Bogatin, do you recall
that one of the reasons Ms. Albert
was interested in keeping her true identity confidential
is because she had hopes of selling
her individual story rights?
- Oh yes.
- [Voiceover] She even had Exhibit one ten,
and this relates to negotiations
between Underdogs and Gus Van Sant,
is that correct?
- Uh, yes.
- [Voiceover] And also I think,
about separate negotiations with HBO?
- Yes.
- [Voiceover] And you say half way through your email
the most pressing concern is in what name
to put the financial entitlements?
Do you recall what you're referring to there?
- To whom the money was going to be paid.
- People who care about me were like,
"Well, it sucks that you're getting screwed."
Even before we split up, like a couple years be--
"It sucks that they're screwing you
by not having you on the corporation
and not being legally married" and on and on.
"And the credit cards aren't in your name really,
"and that they have all the power
"and hold the purse strings.
"But, at least when the lawsuits come in some day,
"you'll be fine," you know.
- [Voiceover] On June 20, 2007, Laura took the stand
in what the press dubbed the postmodern trial
of the century.
She stated that JT had been her respirator,
her channel for air.
Testifying in her own defense, she claimed,
"If you take away my JT, my Jeremy, my other, I die."
I wasn't allowed to bring my camera
inside the courtroom.
This is the one shot I took of Laura
the day she took the stand.
[eerie music]
In the end, the jury only needed a few hours
to reach their decision.
- I feel great, I just, I feel so relieved,
ultimately to be kind of moving on.
You know, essentially the trial
completely vindicated and validated the position
which we put forward.
Laura Albert and her cohorts purposely set out
to commit a fraud.
The court very clearly ruled in our favor as did the jury.
- [Voiceover] Dr. Owens, to be very clear,
you're the therapist for Laura Albert now?
- Yes
- [Voiceover] And does she pay you?
- Yes, reduced fee.
- [Voiceover] Have you given any thought
to the fact that Ms. Albert is manipulating you today?
- Sure, I've given it thought.
- [Voiceover] And? - I don't think
that's what she's doing.
- [Voiceover] Why do you think, strike that, why not?
Why do you think she's not manipulating you?
- Why do I think she's not manipulating me?
[laughs] 'Cause I have a much deeper understanding
I think of her personality and psychology
than that would indicate.
I think that would be, again,
a very superficial understanding
of what's true about her.
I think she's again, a very disturbed individual
that wouldn't have really even the capacity
to be as consciously manipulative as that suggests.
- I felt like I was losing myself.
And I know Savannah went through that too.
I mean she tried to quit after the six week
European tour 'cause you spend six weeks
pretending to be somebody else,
it's, it makes you feel, you start to lose yourself.
- [Voiceover] So, you had like an involving reaction.
- Yeah, no I'm ready to deal with it, however.
- [Voiceover] However, yeah. - Yeah.
In terms of Savannah, my thinking about that,
it wasn't her story and she should live her own life
is what I thought.
And not be playing a role
much of the time.
- I can barely read The Heart.
It's painful.
- [Voiceover] But you've written it.
- Yeah, I wrote it.
All those stories came out of it
because I had to write it in,
like it was really painful to edit them
or go back and look through it
because it just brings up
so much emotional stuff.
- She has some acting talent is what,
is what emerged from all of this.
- I like attention but I really fear it.
- And I also felt that she was,
she was gathering material.
How many kids her age, in their early 20s,
get to see all the sham and deceit
and gaudy stuff
that's going on in the world of celebrities?
She got to see it.
And she got to see it as a total observer
which is a kind of valuable position.
- I don't know, I don't know who I am really.
- Put your hands together ladies and gentlemen
for Savannah Knoop.
[applause]
- Thanks for coming.
I'm just gonna read a few parts,
and then I'll open it up for Q & A.
There was a quiet clicking.
She said something and everyone laughed wryly.
I present JT.
They clapped.
Laura gestured to me to say something.
She looked pleased.
I mustered a low, "Hi."
And someone coughed.
What were they waiting for?
In some ways it felt like almost addictive.
I'd get these like longings when I wasn't doing it.
And I would miss the experience,
and feel like my life is so boring without it.
- Savannah, did she feel guilty?
No, she was very clear-headed about the whole thing.
And very pragmatic.
It was just something that,
it was happening, and it was in some ways interesting.
You know, she got to see Europe,
she got to see much of Asia.
- Thank you very much.
- For Geoffrey, it was a way to try
and get a little bit more recognition as a musician.
He was unhappy about a lot of it
right from the beginning.
But, he went along with it because, you know,
she was, she was his mate.
And he did love her, apparently, quite a lot.
- I feel guilty doing these interviews.
There's a part of me that's cringing
because I'm betraying Laura.
And that's very cultish.
I don't owe Laura anything,
and I don't wish bad things upon her,
and I'm not out to destroy her.
But at the same time, I'm not gonna keep
her secrets any more.
Laura: I don't want to write fucking children's books.
I don't wanna start over again as a nobody,
a fat 30 something Mom.
Fuck that!
Jack: You're gonna lose everything
when this comes out some day, Laura.
You need to have a plan.
Geoff: that's me, He's right.
People are going to figure out
that you're the writer at some point.
All those hooks are going away.
But they're still there a little bit and I feel them,
and she still tries to use them,
and we have a kid together, you know,
and I have to deal with her.
You ask me, did she feel guilt
or how did she justify it or how did she rationalize
pretending to be, you know, deceiving people,
pretending to be somebody she wasn't, using people?
And, you know, unfortunately, the only way
that I feel she could do all that was,
and not feel bad about it the way I did,
was that she doesn't have much of a conscience.
[bookstore patrons talking]
- What do you do?
- [drowned out by background noise]
- There was the idea that
no rules, you can do whatever the fuck you want.
You don't have to listen to their rules.
They say door's shut, you find a way around.
We did that every day.
We found another way.
And people were turning tricks,
they were changing their gender,
they did what they needed to do.
And I did that by any means necessary
but that's holding to your truth
and to me it was with holding compassion.
It was, it was how do you tell your truth
and allow people to see a world
that they were turning their back on.
You know, I was a ward of the state.
I was in a group home.
Right?
And for me, it was like how do I make people care?
How?
I will find a way to transcend that.
- She's had a lot of other stories
as this story plays out as to the reasons why
she should be as loved and as revered
and as taken care of, and why she's been persecuted,
and why she's been punk rock,
and why she's been the victim.
And, I think she's tried to hit these targets
hoping that one of them is gonna stick,
and now, we will all say,
"Oh, I get it!"
She should be as venerated,
she should be as loved.
We should be glad we saved this person's life.
- It's hard because the articulation
in the mainstream media, very similar
to what it was about punk when
they first encountered it.
They did not know what this was.
What animal is this?
Well, it's bad, it's evil.
We don't understand it so let's label it
as something to be frightened of.
And when I was first revealed as JT LeRoy,
the articulation was one of like,
"Holy fuck, what is this?
"It's a demon seed."
And I knew how to handle that
'cause I came out of the punk scene.
I'm used to that.
You just shut the fuck up
and bide your time, and keep doing what you're doing.
And now, you know it's changed.
Now, it's like, oh wow.
- [Voiceover] Some people think
that you might not really exist, in other words,
that JT LeRoy might be a pen name or a hoax
or some kind of extended performance piece.
I've even considered that possibility myself.
I mean do you run into this a lot?
That people think that this is just some kind of hoax?
- [JT] Yeah, and I definitely enjoy it.
It's something that I can't say I discourage.
- [Voiceover] Is there something unique here,
or is Laura just in that tradition
of the completely screwed up artist?
- Laura might be a completely screwed up artist
but she,
she used an idea
about suffering.
She used an idea about pain.
Look, bottom line is, we all lost
a lot of people to AIDS, a lot.
A lot of our friends, a lot of our loved ones,
a lot of writers, a lot of artists.
So, by the time she came around saying,
"I'm a 15 year old with HIV,"
she got to a lot of people who
had a lot of empathy.
Who really thought this, this,
the voice of the young person suffering
would be important to hear
and get out into the world.
She hit a lot of us below the belt.
- Where it becomes to me like a manipulation
that is somewhat sort of tragic and overwhelming
is sort of the way in which Laura Albert
was able to position this JT LeRoy character
as sort of like the damaged queer in all of us.
And to be able to say, like,
"I was homeless and on the streets
"and addicted to heroin, and now,
"I'm in Vanity Fair."
Hello, work!
- This idea's being propagated that everyone
sort of has a right to a voice
and that it's having that artistic voice
that is going to sort of free us and,
and change our lives and,
that that's become sort of the most important thing.
And it's very difficult for kids
from certain backgrounds to ever feel
like they have a right to a voice.
- That is like the lie of the American Dream,
you know, that if you are just talented enough,
and work hard enough, and do work
that's just truly great and truly pushing boundaries
then you will get there.
And that's bullshit.
Most people live on the fringes,
die on the fringes if they're lucky.
If they even get to make their work at all.
- [Voiceover] What do you think of the writing now?
Have you reread it?
What do you think of it?
- That's an interesting question.
The question was what do I think of the writing now?
Uhm.
- It is not by any means important, in quotes, work.
It was work that was published because
it was supposed to be the authentic voice
of someone who suffered.
- She is an incredible storyteller.
And she should be proud of this.
But I don't think she's much of a writer.
The early books had a great deal of help
from spectacular writers,
people who wanted to help craft this work.
- I always thought those books had problems.
I mean, I always thought there was corny cliches
and sentimentality and stuff in them but, you know
if they're written by a 15 year old kid, I mean,
it's a remarkable thing.
- At the end of the day, I think the work needs to stand,
and I don't think the work has stood.
- For me, what stands is what's on the paper.
And, I'm sorry, you know like all these critics
and stuff going, "Oh yeah, the work doesn't stand up."
Well, I'm tellin' ya, that work does stand up.
That is very strong work by whoever wrote it.
- Imagine if she had applied all the skills
of imagination and character portrayal
that she applied to the fraud to her writing,
her books would have been 10 times as good
as they already are now.
And, not only did she throw away her creativity
in this, what I would call, criminal activity,
but she also made certain that no one
would ever take her seriously again.
[bookstore patrons talking]
- She is the apogee of what any of us as writers
or people interacting in a marketplace could become.
- I sort of think of Laura as my evil twin.
Not only my evil twin but sort of the evil twin
of all writers or potential writers in that she,
she embodies all of this, all of our secret ambition,
and all, all of the sort of nasty, manipulative things
that writers do all the time to become successful
but that none of us want to admit that we do.
- She realized that she could be fully selfish and thrive.
And she could be fully self-focused, self-centered,
exploit people for gain, and,
I mean, you can do that.
It works, it does work.
I mean, you still have to deal with yourself,
and if, if your ethics are such that
that's not a problem, well then, you know.
And I don't think her ethics were a problem
Why would her ethics be a problem?
She wasn't real.
[footsteps]
[bells]
[eerie music]