Presented by Hastings pride
JT Leroy
A notorious literary scandal when a young woman pretends to be a celebrated author.
Director: Justin Kelly
Cast includes: Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern
Presented by Hastings Pride
108 Mins / 2019 / USA
It was a true life notorious literary scandal where one woman wrote under a pseudonym with a salacious life and another posed as the fictional figure with a legion of fans. This is the story of JT LeRoy starring Laura Dern as Laura Albert, the Brooklyn writer behind the pseudonym, and Kristen Stewart as Savannah Knoop, who plays LeRoy in public. Albert wrote multiple books under the JT name, crafting the story of a teenage boy working as a sex worker.
The film chronicles the beginnings of the deception Albert and Knoop orchestrated, and the glamour, adventure, and chaos that ensued.
Stewart has a gift for showing you a character’s interior states, whilst few actors can inhabit the space between charming and monstrous as brilliantly as Dern does. This film is anchored by its two excellent leads and digs deep to show how two troubled people temporarily found solutions to their problems through their ruse.
