The Film is Deceitful Above All Things

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On April 7th, Asia Argento's film "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" based on JT LeRoy's collection of short stories will open at the Varsity. Asia Argento may look familiar to American audiences--she has played roles in xXx and Land of the Dead and can be seen in Sofia Coppola's upcoming Marie-Antoinette. It seems like a disparate and sparse list of films, but Asia's work is much deeper. She has worked with a slough of directors including her father, Italian horror master Dario Argento. Her fan base abroad, needless to say, is very large. She runs with the art-elite. She played Cindy Sherman in a short French film. She was engaged to Vincent Gallo. Its no wonder that she wrangled the rights to make a film for LeRoy's short stories.

When JT LeRoy burst onto the literary scene with Sarah, everyone from Dennis Cooper to the New York Times Review of Books was singing his praise. His books were supposedly semi-autobiographical and contained the type of pulp necessary for cult status--transexuals, truck stop sex, abuse, and drugs. But much like another author who fabricated a million little pieces and stitched them into a story, LeRoy was a fraud. Much like Oprah's fraud, JT LeRoy had everyone eating out of the palm of his hand. Shirley Manson wrote a song called Cherry Lips about him. Liv Tyler and he e-mailed frequently. Gus van Sant and he spent hours on the phone. You can imagine their surprise to learn that JT LeRoy was actually three people--Savannah Knoop, the effette face of the androgynous author, Jeffrey Knoop, the voice of JT LeRoy, and Laura Albert, the actual writer. What this fictitious author has that James Frey doesn't have, is the ability to write. Who cares if it takes three people to pull off the hoax? It makes the myth more on par with say, Roberta Breitmore, rather than being subsumed by the likes of Frey.

This information, of course, didn't come out until after the film had already been completed. The revelation has added a new and amusing twist to the film's marketing--check out the web site.

Of course, some people will take the path of righteous indignation and refuse to see the film. Others will be curiously drawn to it. Even after viewing it, Roger Ebert wasn't sure about his reaction to the film--that alone will put us in the camp of people curiously drawn to the filmed version of a fake person's autobiography.

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