In 2000, Bloomsbury Publishing released Sarah. The author of the novel was JT LeRoy, a teenager from West Virginia who had prostituted himself at truckstops, lived on the streets while addicted to drugs, and eventually became HIV positive. LeRoy credits his therapist, who urged him to write about his experiences, for the novel’s genesis. Two more books followed (Harold’s End, a novel, and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, a short story collection), as did a slew of A-list celebrity encounters, photo shoots, magazine articles, and two feature film adaptations. The author himself cut an enigmatic figure; too shy to read his work at public appearances, his famous friends were obliged to read on his behalf. When LeRoy was seen, he was typically wearing a blonde wig and sunglasses, and rarely appeared without an entourage comprised of former outreach worker Emily (AKA “Speedie”) and her partner Astor. Eventually, LeRoy began identifying as transgender. In 2006, Stephen Beachy wrote an article in New York Magazine questioning LeRoy’s identity, and shortly after, a woman named Laura Albert revealed that she was the true author of LeRoy’s fiction. She gave phone interviews as “LeRoy” and orchestrated his public appearances. Too old to pass for a teenager herself, Albert had a younger woman named Savannah Knoop appear as LeRoy in public. Albert took on the persona of Speedie in order to accompany Knoop.

Filmmaker Marjorie Sturm documents LeRoy’s bizarre story from emergence to death in her new film The Cult of JT LeRoy. After watching it at this year’s Queer Film Festival in Vancouver, SAD Mag had a host of burning questions Sturm.

SAD Mag: Can you describe the process you went through to make The Cult of JT LeRoy? I’ve read that it was a long journey from initial concept to finished piece.

Marjorie Sturm: Yes, indeed, it has been a long (and strange) journey. I worked on the film for five years over a twelve year span. I began in 2002 with the understanding that “JT LeRoy” was a real person when in fact I was filming Savannah Knoop pretending to be a fictional character. At that time, I worked on the film for close to a year. I re-opened the film in 2006 when it became the clear that “JT LeRoy” was a massive, global, literary/entertainment deception. I gathered up the majority of the interviews that appear in the film at that time. Post-production is where the film took a nose dive; I waited many years to find funding that would allow me to control the direction of the film.

If I had been willing to allow others (men) to ‘co-direct’ my film or ‘merge’ it, I would have been able to get my film done faster. Apparently, this is not a unique situation in the documentary industry. Filmmakers who aren’t established ‘brands’ and have limited access to resources, who have stumbled on to some form of “documentary gold,” (as my early JT footage could be construed) are pushed and cajoled with the sword of Damocles. I can see why people would surrender as it is a terribly frustrating situation to find oneself. However, I thought it would be short-sighted to go forward making a film that didn’t represent the topic in a way that I would have control over. Eventually, I got extremely lucky and found funding and a team of supportive people that helped me create the film.

I imagine that there are many great films sitting on hard drives waiting for a break.

SM: I also understand that you have a background in mental health. Did you recognize Laura Albert as someone suffering from mental illness?  Does that in any way mitigate her responsibility for her actions?

MS: Mitigating responsibility because of mental illness is an extremely tricky situation. First off, there are all types of mental illness, and like many things, there is a continuum. One could argue every pedophile, rapist, con-artist, murderer on some level has mental illness.

JT LeRoy’s therapist, who appears in the film via a trial deposition, agrees that JT/Laura Albert is not psychotic and out of touch with reality. If someone is psychotic (schizophrenic, severely bi-polar), it would be easy to understand why that could mitigate their responsibility. Laura did her damndest to present a case for her mental illness during the trial over a period of eight days, and the jury quickly concluded that they weren’t buying it. However, no one is arguing that Laura is not a disturbed individual. And if people choose to have compassion for her, that is their choice, but it doesn’t mitigate responsibility for her actions. I don’t believe our compassion for a victimizer should ever outweigh the compassion we have for those they victimized, as it fuels them and allows them to abuse again.

SM: As a filmmaker, you don’t insert your thoughts and opinions into the film much. Can you talk about that decision? Were you surprised when JT’s true identity was finally revealed or did you have suspicions earlier?

MS: How much to insert myself into the film was a question that I contemplated quite a bit from the beginning. I knew I needed to be a voice in the film in order to give my early footage some context. As well, there were gaps to fill in the narrative. At first, I used all text but it was just too much reading and was seriously nixed by almost everyone who saw the earlier cuts. With a lot of discussion and help from the editor Josh Melrod, I feel like I struck a balance that I am pleased with. I really didn’t want this documentary to be an overly personal one. I think there is  a time and place for personal documentaries and I love many of them, but this particular topic was much larger than myself. I really wanted to create an active viewing experience that left the viewer thinking and analyzing. Even reading the views that I am expressing here in this interview could potentially distract from the experience of the film.

There was always something weird and cagey about the JT gang, but I absolutely believed that JT was a real person. Even after I read Stephen Beachy’s article in New York Magazine, I thought JT existed and Laura just ghost wrote the books for him because he was uneducated. It wasn’t until I had some back and forth discussion with Beachy, where he made so many lucid points, that I really came around to understanding that the whole thing was an utter fabrication.

SM: In an interview for The Paris Review in 2006, Laura Albert tells a story from when she was 16 and called a child therapist from a Village Voice ad. She recounts pretending to be a 14-year-old boy. When she later revealed the truth, the therapist told her never to call him again. Albert observes: “He responded angrily instead of asking himself, ‘Why did this kid invent this story? What would make a child do such a thing?'” Do you view this as deflection on Albert’s part or is it a valid question that you see your film responding to?

MS: I guess I view it as a bit of both. It is indeed a deflection on Albert’s part, a way of not taking responsibility for her actions and blaming others. The glaring problem with the deflection is that Laura Albert is a full grown woman and not a child. We judge a child’s behavior at a different standard than an adult’s, or at least we should. Laura Albert pretends to, or doesn’t seem to, grasp that.

And yes, in a sense, my film is responding to the question, “What would make a child (a person) do such a thing?”

SM: Posing as male in order to feel safe and be heard emerges as a strong theme throughout the version of Albert’s life presented in that interview. To what extent do you think a sexist society contributed to Albert’s decision to create a male persona?

MS: On one hand, I don’t think there is a woman alive who doesn’t feel, consciously or unconsciously, the implications of living in a highly sexist society.

When I was six and seven years old, I had a repetitive dreams that I was a boy in a wheelchair. Night after night after night. I have a brother who is two years older, and I saw the permission that his gender gave him. I resented it, and felt handicapped. Or at least that’s my armchair dream analysis.

My point is, using sexism and the need for a male persona is a compelling tale, one that is hard to refute, and many women can relate to.

But, JT wasn’t just a male. He was transgender, before people even knew what that term meant. Does a heterosexual woman really need to pose as someone transgender in order to feel “safe and heard in this world”?

What she did, and in a sense it was quite savvy, was a create a much more sensational persona than her own identity provided. Hustler on the run, being pimped out by his mother, strung out on heroin, yadda yadda. Or middle-aged woman from middle-class background with an eating disorder.

SM: One issue the film explores is that of who has the right to represent pain. In some ways the recent Rachel Dolezal story touches on this. In both instances the cultural outrage seems to stem from individuals laying claim to pain that doesn’t belong to them. I felt your film made clear that Albert crossed a line with the fabrication of JT, but how clear is that line? How mindful of this sort of appropriation do writers need to be when writing fiction?

MS: My personal opinion is that writers don’t need to be mindful of this sort of appropriation when writing fiction at all. Not one iota. Fiction is a work of the imagination. I think we can write from the point of view of anything–a duck, a chair, the sky, other races, genders, classes, and so on.

The line is crossed and problems begin when we market our fiction as non-fiction in order to manipulate and gain sympathy. When we start picking up the phone and pretending to be that fictional character in real time. When our marginalized ‘fictional’ character asks for resources of time, money, and gifts.

Laura Albert did countless interviews in the voice of a little boy and the work was marketed as “autobiographical fiction” with a bio to match. She had the cover-my-ass forethought to put only the word ‘fiction’ on the back cover, but everyone thought Savannah Knoop was indeed JT LeRoy, who grew up at trucks stops in West Virginia and was pimped out by his mother. Really, the level of disingenuousness, gall, and relentless spinning is appalling when not laughable.

As far as Dolezal, I was really struck by the fact that not only did she pretend to be black when she was in fact white, but she actively prevented other white academics from speaking about race on the campus where she taught. Um . . . no.

SM: I thought your film did a great job of showing the emotional impact the deception had on those in contact with LeRoy, while also examining to to what degree those individuals might have been complicit. Do you have any sense of Laura Albert or Savannah having any empathy for those they deceived?  

MS: As far as Laura is concerned, I have seen absolutely no empathy towards those she has deceived. In fact, the subtext is more, “How could they all be so stupid and fall for it? Savannah looks like a girl.

Till now, she seems committed to “not apologizing” as if that would be somehow backing down. It’s actually kind of fascinating in a sense, and on a meta-level might lead one to having compassion for her because what a fractured and sad way to live.

Of course, at any given moment, she may change course and decide to mimic empathy/compassion for others, but to the best of my knowledge, I have only seen those emotions reserved for herself.

As for Savannah, my sense is that she is conflicted emotionally about the whole thing. When the deception was first revealed, she gleefully traipsed around with Laura to parties and receptions. The news picked up on “The Hoaxers are Out on the Town” and it seemed like public opinion was working in their favor. People enjoy[ed] seeing mud thrown in the faces of The Establishment. Celebrities. The New York Times, HBO, Cannes, Hollywood. Without the personal, it is kind of a hoot.

Laura and Savannah fell out when Savannah wrote her book about her experience around “being JT.” I think she got a good taste of Laura’s wrath at that point, and perhaps that increased Savannah’s empathy for those they deceived? But I have read her book, and it really was about her experience and I don’t recall empathy for others or much [of a] sense of shame or guilt. It was about “her growth” as JT. Laura uses that one, too. We’re supposed to be elated about their psychological, individualistic “growth.” This type of consciousness is extremely, profoundly American.

 

Found out more about The Cult of JT Leroy at the film’s official website. Stay tuned for next year’s Vancouver Queer Film Festival.