JT Leroy: The Movie

Status: Movie planned about a recent hoax
image Variety reports that the JT Leroy hoax is already heading to the big screen. The Weinstein Company has committed to making a film about Laura Albert's elaborate deception. (Laura Albert was the woman who invented the JT Leroy character.) The time between the hoax being exposed and a movie deal about it being inked seems to have occurred incredibly fast. What is it... a month or two since the hoax was confirmed? The dust has barely settled.

I hope the movie is good. In its favor is that hoaxes seem to translate pretty well to the big screen. Shattered Glass (about the journalistic deceptions of Stephen Glass) was a great movie. And Princess Caraboo, starring Phoebe Cates, (about the Princess Caraboo hoax, obviously) was decent, as a kid's movie. I've read that a movie called The Hoax, starring Richard Gere, about Clifford Irving's fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, is coming out soon. That also sounds good.

In other JT Leroy news, a movie version of one of his (her?) books, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, is about to debut. The movie was made under the assumption that the story it told was true. Now that story has been exposed as a lie, prompting a rapid switch in how the movie is marketed. My guess is that most people still have never heard of JT Leroy, so the hoax shouldn't have much impact on the movie.

Related Posts:
October 10, 2005: Is JT Leroy A Hoax?
January 9, 2006: JT Leroy: An Update
February 6, 2006: Knoop Confesses JT Leroy Was a Hoax

Entertainment Literature/Language

Posted on Wed Mar 08, 2006



Comments

If anyone is interested I copied and pasted the latest Salon.com article, written by Jack Boulware (ex editor of The Nose magazine, a now defunct hipster San Francisco magazine).

It is here:

http://qwhip.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=52141#52141

He knew her. It is a very very long article, but if you go there you won't have to watch the salon.com commercial (which I did just so I could repost it to that site).
Posted by Leroy is finally found out  on  Thu Mar 09, 2006  at  11:49 PM
Do Quiz Show and Catch Me If You Can count as hoax movies?
Posted by MadRat  on  Sun Mar 12, 2006  at  03:41 PM
Yes, they do. Two more good ones.
Posted by The Curator  in  San Diego  on  Sun Mar 12, 2006  at  06:43 PM
My friend Albin Sadar has a small speaking part in Quiz Show. I am jealous every time I see him in the movie on TV.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy  on  Mon Mar 13, 2006  at  01:20 AM
I guess the only way to make it in literature these days is to write something fake, and then sell the rights to your story.

There was a time when people wanted to read actual books, not just watch movies and TV shows about fake books and fake journalism.
Posted by Big Gary in Heavener, Oklahoma  on  Mon Mar 13, 2006  at  04:31 PM
yes but back then we had to chop three forests of wood and walk fifteen miles though snow backwards before we could get to the books... ahh those were the days...
Posted by joeodd  on  Thu Mar 16, 2006  at  12:57 AM
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