Do we need to lie in order to tell the truth?

“The ques­tion to ask is not whether it’s real or fake, but whether it’s a good fake or a bad fake.” This line is from the gold stan­dard of doc­u­men­taries about art world hoax­es: Orson Welles’ F for Fake. This play­ful film delights in switch­ing between arti­fi­cial and raw mate­r­i­al in order to prove that, as long as art is ren­dered in con­vinc­ing detail, a truth will res­onate. Maybe not ​‘the’ truth – down on the ground in the facts of this world – but what does news data mat­ter if art stim­u­lates abstract real­i­sa­tions? How can we ascend to the peak of our imag­i­na­tions, with­out the ben­e­fit of some mag­i­cal fakery?

It’s a shame that Welles isn’t around to weigh in on Author: The JT Leroy Sto­ry. Direct­ed by Jeff Feuerzeig (respon­si­ble for 2005 won­der-work The Dev­il and Daniel John­ston), it’s also kind of direct­ed by Lau­ra Albert – bet­ter known by her epony­mous pen-name. ​‘JT LeRoy’ was a blonde androg­y­nous, for­mer teen hus­tler and abuse sur­vivor, whose writ­ing (then seen as ​‘mem­oir’) caused the hippest celebs to wor­ship at his church. Gus Van Sant, Court­ney Love, Michael Pitt, Bil­ly Cor­gan, Shirley Man­son, Lou Reed, Asia Argen­to and count­less oth­ers are cap­tured on film and, more intrigu­ing­ly, record­ed on the tapes that Albert kept of her phone con­ver­sa­tions. Phone was the inter­ac­tion por­tal, until, in the 2000s, demand for a phys­i­cal pres­ence became such that Albert dressed-up her boy­ish sis­ter-in-law, Savan­nah, who then trav­elled the world, lap­ping up inter­na­tion­al acclaim, with Albert by her side pos­tur­ing as an assis­tant named ​‘Speed­ie.’

Feuerzeig’s film is the truth accord­ing to Albert, who nar­rates the doc, fold­ing in anec­dotes about her per­son­al pre-JT ori­gins. Her per­spec­tive comes across in the broad­ly open but dis­turbing­ly spe­cif­ic style that made the likes of ​‘Sarah’ and ​‘The Heart Is Deceit­ful Above All Things’ so com­pelling. There is no doubt that she is a great sto­ry­teller and no doubt that her life was shaped by child­hood events no less trau­mat­ic than the bag­gage she sad­dled to her male alter-ego. In short, there is no doubt that the crux of the fake iden­ti­ty she invent­ed was true, inso­far as emo­tion­al truth car­ries weight.

Accord­ing to Albert, she was too uncom­fort­able to talk or write about her­self direct­ly as a female abuse sur­vivor and some­one inhab­it­ing a fat body. Mul­ti­ple times we hear about her phys­i­cal shame. Keep­ing her work alive meant keep­ing the mythol­o­gy of its cre­ator alive. Her pre­mo­ni­tion about the type of writer her fans want­ed to see was borne out by what hap­pened after a street-chic waif with big eyes and a shock of blonde hair emerged. Would the same lev­el of suc­cess have met Albert as she was? We’ll nev­er know. It’s pos­si­ble that, like many of us, she was prop­a­gat­ing her pho­bic val­ues through self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy – push­ing out a glam avatar and by doing so push­ing down chances to suc­ceed au natural.

The motor of Feuerzeig’s doc­u­men­tary is the spec­ta­cle of see­ing the juicy range of high-fly­ers who believed in the work and there­fore – implic­it­ly, unques­tion­ing­ly – the exis­tence of JT LeRoy. This is a super­fi­cial delight – an appro­pri­ate one giv­en Albert’s image con­cerns and a deeply engag­ing one due to those end­less tele­phone record­ings (If you’ve ever want­ed to hear Court­ney Love snort­ing a line of coke in real-time, now’s your chance!) What is endur­ing­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, how­ev­er, is the slew of ques­tions on iden­ti­ty, authen­tic­i­ty and artis­tic legit­i­ma­cy that the doc leaves you mulling.

If enough peo­ple believe in a being does it come to exist legit­i­mate­ly in the pub­lic con­scious­ness, like God or The Can­dy­man? Does it mat­ter if a per­son lies in their tran­sient dai­ly life if their immor­tal artis­tic out­put rings true? Is it even pos­si­ble to be entire­ly truth­ful at every stage in cre­ation? In telling one big lie, did Albert free her­self to tell one big truth?

Maybe I’m a fool but when I heard Albert artic­u­lat­ing her elab­o­rate motive for dup­ing mil­lions, (while also rak­ing them in) it scanned like an extra­or­di­nary vic­to­ry for cre­ativ­i­ty. She claims to be root­ed in innate gen­der and iden­ti­ty flu­id­i­ty, and I am will­ing to believe this. Per­haps she is camp­ing out in the blind-spots of tol­er­ant and good-natured cul­tur­al appre­ci­a­tors but it seems more plau­si­ble that by putting on another’s face she gained the free­dom to forge con­nec­tions that she wouldn’t have had the con­fi­dence to pur­sue from her own body.

What more empow­er­ing sto­ry is there to tell about cre­ativ­i­ty than this one about a woman who entered her imag­i­na­tion and came out the oth­er side rich­er and with more friends? She was a good fake, so very good that some of her new artis­tic pals instant­ly for­gave the duplic­i­ty. It wouldn’t be so if the books she wrote espoused a stiff and rig­or­ous approach to moral­i­ty, but they are cen­tred around the inno­cence that can exist in sleazy places. Her lies are account­ed for by her truth, and her truth is buried in her lies. The two are so inter­twined that if you want one, you accept the other.