Delayed Reaction: Author: The JT Leroy Story

The Pitch: How the hell did JT Leroy trick so many people?

The story of JT Leroy is a crazy one. I had never heard of him before this documentary premiered. The little I heard about this documentary from its festival premiere intrigued the hell out of me. JT Leroy isn't a hoax, a fraud, or a swindle. It's only mostly all of those things and that's what makes him so interesting. The work is real. The stories are fiction. There's nothing wrong with using a pseudonym. Laura Albert and Savannah Knoop did let a lot of people think the wrong thing for a long time though. It's not lying, nor is it telling the whole truth.

Many of my favorite documentaries are simple: tell a good story and get out of the way. That's very much what Author does. Jeff Feuerzeig gets Laura Albert talking, then finds clips and pictures to show when needed. Whenever I start to think Albert is exaggerating her story - bam - there's a clip from a movie with JT listed as a producer or here's a clip of a public reading where "he" is hiding behind a chair to prove it. Ironically, if someone wrote the JT Leroy story as an original screenplay, I would question its plausibility. When everything falls apart, there's more of a sense of "what took them so long" than surprise that it was uncovered.

While the story and how it's edited together is great, I'll go ahead and say that Laura Albert did annoy me a lot. Whenever she started talking about the JT or Speedie characters taking over, I had to roll my eyes. She attempts to absolve herself too often with that excuse. Again though, the camera stays neutral when she does this.

This is a doozy of a story that I'm shocked I knew nothing about. The less you know going in, the better.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend