Author: The JT Leroy Story

JT LeRoy, gender-fluid child of a West Virginia prostitute, burned brightly like the transgressive love child of Flannery O’Connor and Truman Capote. Feuerzeig (The Devil & Daniel Johnston) strikes gold again in the film’s central character, a literary wunderkind in the late ‘90s with an obsessive penchant for self-documentation and the ability to brilliantly exploit a complex web of alter egos. Feuerzeig builds a hyper-kinetic provocation about the meaning of persona, identity and gender, and initiates us into the strange practices of the cultural elite who, from Bono to Gus Van Sant were enchanted by an outré individual who embodied their bohemian ideal. Befitting its title, Author explores the mysterious power and (potentially destructive) impulse to concoct characters in fiction and in real life. (True/False)