If someone named "Laura" had called into a San Francisco suicide hotline
asking for help because she was an unhappy fat female teen who had been
sexually abused as a child, no one on the other end of the line would
have recommended that she write down and seek to publish her story; nor
would they have asked to see her in person.
Laura Albert knew this. And so she invented a persona: JT LeRoy---a teenaged boy with a history of truck-stop tricks who had also been sexually abused and who had a hooker mother, etc. Gay SF hotline doctors loved THIS story, as, ultimately, did New York publishers and gay filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and the sexually aggressive Asia Argento (who, according to this film, made out with who she thought was a teenaged boy).
I haven't read Laura Albert's work as "JT LeRoy"---but I'm disgusted by how quickly both the phone-in doctor and the trendy NY/Hollywood people jumped on (both figuratively and literally) the allegedly teenaged prostitute JT LeRoy as an author. Cool as a truck-stop boy prostitute, but not so cool if "just" a girl who'd been abused as a child.
The film itself isn't great----mainly numerous brief phone audio clips with celebs wanting to be part of the "JT LeRoy" phenomenon, interspersed with interviews with the actual Laura Albert. Overall, I think this doc is a critique of the far-left-wing gay and "gay friendly" lit/film establishment who have a narrative to promote. They don't care about "abuse" as such---they're more turned on if the sexual abuse victim in the story is a young male that they can subsequently make out with and/or publicly exploit.
Laura Albert knew this. And so she invented a persona: JT LeRoy---a teenaged boy with a history of truck-stop tricks who had also been sexually abused and who had a hooker mother, etc. Gay SF hotline doctors loved THIS story, as, ultimately, did New York publishers and gay filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and the sexually aggressive Asia Argento (who, according to this film, made out with who she thought was a teenaged boy).
I haven't read Laura Albert's work as "JT LeRoy"---but I'm disgusted by how quickly both the phone-in doctor and the trendy NY/Hollywood people jumped on (both figuratively and literally) the allegedly teenaged prostitute JT LeRoy as an author. Cool as a truck-stop boy prostitute, but not so cool if "just" a girl who'd been abused as a child.
The film itself isn't great----mainly numerous brief phone audio clips with celebs wanting to be part of the "JT LeRoy" phenomenon, interspersed with interviews with the actual Laura Albert. Overall, I think this doc is a critique of the far-left-wing gay and "gay friendly" lit/film establishment who have a narrative to promote. They don't care about "abuse" as such---they're more turned on if the sexual abuse victim in the story is a young male that they can subsequently make out with and/or publicly exploit.
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