"J.T. LeRoy" was supposed to be a biographic film. However, I had never heard of this person before. Viewers who knew this personality will have their own appreciation of how the real-life people and events were portrayed in the film. I only have this film to introduce me to the individuals involved and show me the events as they transpired. I trust they should be interesting enough to be given a movie with known stars to tell the story.
Laura Albert was an author who wrote under the pseudonym / pseudo-persona J.T. LeRoy, a teenage boy who went through a life of poverty, drugs and abuse. Her first two books were best-sellers, which led to a public clamor for J.T. LeRoy to reveal himself in public. When a movie deal was being hatched for her first book "Sarah," Laura convinced her androgynous-looking sister-in-law Savannah Knoop to assume the persona of J.T. LeRoy.
Acclaimed authors like the Mary Anne Evans and Karen Blixen are more known as their male pseudonyms George Eliot and Isak Dinesen. More recently, Joanna Rowling was asked to use the initials J.K. as a gender-unspecific pseudonym before her first Harry Potter book was published. For Laura Albert though, her reason for creating this teenage boy J.T. LeRoy was for him to assume the abuse she personally experienced in her youth.
So it was Laura Albert's own desire to gain more fame that led her to getting Savannah to become J.T. LeRoy in the flesh, as she (Laura) vicariously enjoyed all the media attention that her creation was receiving. But of course, Savannah was still her own person, so being J.T. LeRoy eventually became too difficult for her to pull off full time. This film was based on Savannah Knoop's memoirs so we are seeing the story told from her point of view, as the victim of Laura's manipulative ambitions.
Kristen Stewart had matured in age, but she still portrayed Savannah Knoop in her same monotonous dry acting style, like she did her breakthrough role of Bella Swan of the "Twilight Saga" films. Stewart's J.T. LeRoy was not a likable character with her platinum wig, dark sunglasses, and mousy aloof demeanor. Stewart was bolder here, with her scenes of breast binding and sex scenes with both male and female partners.
Laura Dern was effusively over-the-top as Laura Albert, especially in her character of Speedy, J.T. LeRoy's white-trashy manager. There is something about Dern's style that made her more likable than Stewart, even if the focus of the story was against Laura. Diane Kruger played the beautiful and aggressive director and actress Eva, who competed for JT's attention and trust against Laura, and prevailed.
JT's gender was really confusing here as presented by writer-director Justin Kelly, maybe it was meant to be. There was a point when J.T. LeRoy totally looked female already (not merely androgynous), yet no one suspected anything yet, even Eva it seemed. The pace of storytelling of the film was very slow, made even slower by Stewart's languid speaking style both as Savannah and as JT and the uncompelling style of the writing (despite the interesting premise). 5/10.
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