Watch Jeff Feuerzeig's AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY -- and you may feel the need to bathe

Boy, that "truth" thing! Ain't it a bitch? Here comes yet another new documentary in which, for all I know, literally everything we're dished out here is the "truth." However, since everything about the original situation is also a lie, which, as lies are wont to do, begins spinning off more and more lies in order to keep the original in place, what we're soon engaging with is something so grandly nefarious that one might call it "the whopper of 'em all." Still, what the hell: If Jayson Blair can get his very own movie, why not JT Leroy?

Jeff Feuerzeig, who wrote and directed AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY, begins his film with a quote from Federico Fellini about creativity and truth -- A created thing is never invented and it is never true: It is always and ever itself -- that is clearly designed (by Feuerzeig, not by the late Signore Fellini) as an excuse for all that follows. Though it does not in the least manage the necessary excusing, it does prove but the first of many things about this fascinating-but-sleazy documentary that waves a red flag.

In truth, I would not know how to go about making an honest documentary about a situation like this, and perhaps Mr. Feuerzeig, realizing that he faced the same dilemma, chose what looks, more and more as the movie unfolds, like the easiest route. He simply hands the documentary over to its "protagonist," a woman named Laura Albert (above) who devised the whole JT Leroy scam and then brought it to pulsating, media-savvy life -- in the process, turning it into one of the most infamous, crazy, we've-conned-you-good! literary hoaxes in the history of, well, literature.

The above description sounds tasty enough to suck you in, no? Then why does this documentary begin to reek so foully, so quickly? TrustMovies thinks it's because Ms Albert never once in the entire proceedings shoulders any real responsibility for wrong-doing. She tells her tale as though it were just the most enjoyable, amusing and necessary thing to do. Now, if you feel, as Albert clearly does, that making up a story but labeling it as a true memoir, then creating the character who supposedly wrote the thing -- different age and different sex from the actual author -- in order to gain some of that wonderful stuff called fame is simply A-OK, then you'll probably embrace the documentary as all-fun-and-games.

Along the way, Albert, together with her Leroy creation (a gay, abused, teenage, would-be transgendered street urchin/hustler just longing for a world into which s/he can fit) cons everyone from supposed literature connoisseurs to celebrities in just about every field from music to movies to books to you-name-it. And, of course, the media just goes wild over a story (drugs. sex, prostitution, abuse) and a storyteller (under-age sex, queer and tearful) like this. In terms of lies and pretense, only the Donald could Trump it -- and, as we know, the media sure has given him plenty of undue attention.

What Albert really craved was success and celebrity above all, and from what we see here, she still does. And so the doc certainly shows us clearly and precisely how our culture of celebrity spawns more of the same, while feeding off itself in the process.

From filmmaker Gus van Sant -- who would of course gravitate toward someone of Leroy's ilk and is conned to a fare-thee-well (that's he above, right, with Albert and actor Michael Pitt) -- to television writer David Milch to actress turned director Asia Argento (below, right), the gullible just keep falling fast and hard. Ms Argento evens stars in and directs a so-so movie based on the LeRoy's "masterwork," The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

No one involved with Albert is safe, with doctors and analysts coming off as especially easy marks. Now, evidently, most of these folk are angry at Albert for putting them through the wringer once again via the new documentary. Well, honeys: You deserve each other. Whether or not the audience deserves to sit through this film is another question. Several times during and again at the end, I found myself muttering, Who gives a shit? I sure didn't, but then I also didn't follow Leroy's career during its ascendancy nor much during the scandal that followed.

If you followed that trajectory, the movie might just be your cup of whatever. Certainly it is full of details as to how the big lie was foisted upon us, and those details are often pretty amazing. And amusing. Overall though, it would seem as if Ms Albert is simply praying for this doc to hit pay dirt and provide her with a second round of celebrity and fame.
Good luck, dear.

From Magnolia Pictures and running a rather lengthy, considering its "true" content, one hour and fifty minutes, the movie -- after hitting the bigger cities and more noted cultural centers over the past couple of weeks -- opens here in South Florida tomorrow in Miami area at the O Cinema, Wynwood. You can click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

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American documentaries, AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY, celebrity culture, fakes, Jeff Feuerzeig, secrets and lies, survivor literature, truth, would-be celebrities,

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Stick with Kirsten Johnson's unusual memoir/ doc, CAMERAPERSON, for its cumulative power

At the beginning of CAMERAPERSON, a strange -- and not immediately accessible -- documentary by Kirsten Johnson, we are faced with the following short paragraph of explanation:

"For the past 25 years I've worked as a documentary cinematographer.

I originally shot the following footage for other films, 

but here I ask you to see it as my memoir.

These are the images that have marked me

and leave me wondering still."

Fair enough, TrustMovies thought to himself, as he settled back to watch. Ms Johnson goes first to Bosnia and a sheepherder (below) along the road; to Nigeria where a midwife tends a newborn; back to Bosnia and then to New York, where a young boxer is in training. Locations are initially identified, but then for a time, they are not. (People are just people, anywhere, everywhere, right?) But then the identification begins again. Ms Johnson, shown at left, often seems to build to an important moment and then simply cut to elsewhere, leaving us wondering about what happens next. Then we also begin to wonder: Whose memoir is this, exactly? It certainly does not seem particularly "personal."

And then we see a pair of cute toddlers identified as the filmmaker's twins, and from there we go immediately to an interview with a young black woman (below) whose face is not shown but who appears to be in a some kind of clinic, where she may be about to have, or has previously undergone... an abortion? (I wished at this moment for English subtitles so that I could better understand what was being said.) In any case, a connection has been made: children who exist and those who don't.

We also meet the filmmaker's parents, and especially spend some time with her mom, who has, a few years previous, received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. We return again to various places we've already seen, and each time we do, further connection is made. I must admit that it took me perhaps one-third to a full half of this film before I began to feel and understand what was going on. Initially I felt that the film was anything but personal, and yet, overtime, it became so, and fiercely.

By the time we are back in that Nigerian clinic, watching the midwife (below) succeed in bringing to life a newborn (I wish I knew what happened to this infant: Did he survive without the oxygen he needed?), then seeing a Bosnian grandmother making bread (Why is it that bread-making always seems so primal and wondrous?), we are thoroughly hooked -- even when we're not quite sure what we're watching. (Is that some kind of Christian ballet being performed in Colorado Springs? Swan Lake it sure ain't.)

Remember that young boxer we saw toward the film's beginning? Expect to meet him again near the finale and witness what may be the biggest "sore loser" of all time. This is frightening stuff, and one wonders at Johnson's fearlessness. We often don't know the details of what went on previously (or after), and even when we do (the tree-cutting women of Darfar), we hear and see only one side of the equation, though that does seem enough to make a judgment call. Yet part of what Ms Johnson is doing forces us to realize that documentary film, even in the best of hands-guiding-cameras, still gives us only one perspective. And how that camera (and microphone) are wielded can make a huge difference.

Johnson is not a "war" cinematographer, but you might call her a post-war one, as she shows us people in places like Bosnia, Darfar, Rwanda and the locales of our current mid-eastern wars -- where genocides have happened and the results are there to be seen. Or not. Listen as the Bosnian grandmother -- such a stylish dresser! -- tells us that nothing bad has happened here. Really? But then we recall another woman who had earlier explained what happened in the camp where women were held prisoner and raped, telling us the story of the young girls who did say aloud that bad things were happening. The moral here would seem to turn a current slogan, much expressed in America, on its ear: If you see something, don't say anything.

Truth in documentary cinema can be as difficult to find as can fairness and kindness in how one approaches the subject of an interview (Johnson's with a young mid-eastern boy, above, who has lost vision in one eye is a fine example of both, I think). The filmmaker spends quite a bit of time in Texas, too, covering the case of that man, James Byrd, Jr., who was chained to a truck and then dragged to his death. We may remember the details that came out at the time -- much prior to the Black Lives Matter movement -- yet what we see and hear here is still something else.

At the end, Ms Johnson offers a long list of films from which this footage has come. You may be surprised to realize that you've seen a number of these. Yet how the footage fits together in this "memoir" proves an entirely different kettle of fish. It may take some patience and faith to fully experience and appreciate Cameraperson, but the cumulative effect is powerful and thought-provoking -- and most definitely worth one's time and effort.

From Janus Films and running 102 minutes, the documentary opens tomorrow, Friday, September 9, in New York City (at the IFC Center), and on Friday September 23 in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal).

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American documentaries, CAMERAPERSON, documentary styles, Kirsten Johnson, memoirs, post-war cinematography, truth,

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