It's cliché to say but sometimes life is stranger than fiction. Case in point is The Devil And Daniel Johnston director Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary on Laura Albert, a fascinating if one-sided story.
JT LeRoy burst onto the literary scene in the nineties with Laura, a searing semi-fictional biography of his youth. The story documented how his sometimes-abusive mother, the titular heroine, was a 'lot lizard', a prostitute who whose stamping ground was truck stops. The book is an underground sensation and, after the publication of the follow up The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, the shy, reclusive writer (he would only appear in public in a wig and shades) garners celebrity fans like Tom Waits, Winona Ryder, Mathew Modine, Bono, Shirley Manson, Billy Corgan, Courtney Love and more. Asia Argento adapts the book into a film. He pens the first draft of Gus Van Sant's Elephant.
But then in 2006 a New York Times story breaks. Maybe JT LeRoy isn't who he says he is. Maybe he's Speedie, an English woman posing as his manager. Speedie meanwhile fronts a band (using a different stage name but with lyrics penned by JT) with partner Geoff Knoop, whose half-sister Savannah rumoured to be the person posing as JT. The theory was that a woman called Laura Albert is JT and Speedie and suddenly the authenticity of the work is put in doubt…
After not engaging in Marjorie Sturm's The Cult of JT LeRoy documentary, Laura Albert is the ringmaster here, explaining how and why JT and Speedie came to be and her thinking behind each twist and turn of her career. After a troubled youth when she understood herself to be 'gender fluid' ("Sometimes I would go out as a girl, sometimes I would go out as a boy"), she contacted a helpline where Dr. Terrance Owens (the conversations, like those of her family, friends and celebrity fans, are recorded) encouraged her to get her thoughts down on paper. She began writing as teenager 'Terminator' with some short stories catching the eye of publishers.
It's not a case of multiple personality disorder she explains as she consciously "makes the switch" between Laura and JT (and later Speedie), saying she couldn't write Laura as Albert and so conjured up an 'avatar' in JT to get the words down. She then got in touch with Dennis Cooper, who championed her work and put her on to Bruce Benderson whose agent took up the baton.
Feuerzeig's weaves through the complicated and layered narrative, bouncing around from Albert's youth and JT's rise to prominence. He delights in the bizarre scenarios, like Albert-as-Speedie watching Savannah-as-JT receive advice from Bono-as-Bono about the perils fame backstage at a U2 gig ('The Bono Talk'). There’s also the odd 'coming out' to Billy Corgan, who keeps Albert's identity secret. It may be missing the contemporary opinions of the celebrities that once championed LeRoy's work but Author is still a captivating documentary.