To count down the few days left before Mischief Night and it’s follow-up, Halloween, I will be posting a day-to-day guide to my favorite horror films. All are highly recommended. Most will date from the 70’s/80’s, as I’m less familiar with 90’s/00’s horror….or maybe I’ll turn that around, I just thought of some great recent horror, let’s just see how this goes, because it’s my world to control.
Alone in the Dark (1982) – Slasher formula gets skewed all to hell in this one. Donald Pleasance, Jack Palance, and Martin Landau do what they do best: Chew up that fucking scenery with some absurd overacting!! Inventive kill scenes (a hospital orderly is broken in half across another man’s knee) and a strange humanization of the villains shows some desire to go leftfield with what is otherwise a genre exercise. It’s as if the screenwriter had a minor stroke prior to the last three rewrites. Best scene: Jack Palance wondering into a punk rock club and becoming oddly captivated by the band, The Sic Fucks (who were real, I believe), doing “Chop Up Your Mother.’
PIN: A Plastic Nightmare (1988) – Legitimate attempt at ripping off Psycho or Flowers In The Attic, a lot of folks see this movie as a serious and engaging affair. I don’t. Terry O’Quinn (Stepfather and Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy, or as I like to call it, S2MRD) will always be a poor man’s Craig T. Nelson, but I must hand it to him for this one, a career definer/destroyer that required some grapes. Put simply, this is a “psychological thriller” about an anatomically correct medical dummy that a schizophrenic boy believes to be alive, due in part to his father using it as a therapeutic tool. There are plenty of “maybe it IS alive” scenes, and the sequences of Nelson (and the boy/teen lead) using ventriloquism through the dummy are blue-blooded, roll-in-the-floor gut-busters.
Rituals (1977) - A Deliverance rip that scared the living shit out of me as a kid, and this was the edited version on the Saturday night “Creature Feature” (Memphis’ horror showcase on regular TV in the 80’s…also where I watched Dogs, Frogs, and Ants). Still sort of creepy and worth checking out for the sheer alienation of the landscape shots and a few mildly disturbing moments. Has Hal Holbrook, so, walk fast, don’t walk. Maybe you shouldn’t rent this one. I don’t want complaints.
When A Stranger Calls (1979) - A classic. Could be in my top five horror films, or could be number one; I fluctuate. This is the original “the call is coming from inside the house” movie. Slow burning, with virtually no onscreen violence, but nonetheless manages to be super eerie. With Charles Durning as the obsessed cop/detective. He’s so fat in this film that he literally rips a set of swinging doors from their hinges during a foot chase scene. And why does Durning’s character chose “throwing nails” as his only weapon? Do “throwing nails” exist?
…for making my week.
Now in the spotlight is a claim that I’ve been making (albeit extraneously and under the radar) for some time now. J.T. Leroy = Horseshit.
Before you read what I’ve pasted below, I’d like to state my position on the matter.
I obviously have no problem with hoaxes, especially a hoax on the exact people and organizations that have been hoodwinked in this particular situation - they deserve it tenfold. If the J.T. Leroy prank is for the sake of pure comedy, and the jury’s out (in my head) on this idea, it is a whopper. To use the Leroy persona as a tool to prove the spoon-fed fickleness and total lack of imagination/taste/discrimination of the intended targets…well, I harbor no bones about that. Of course they…”they” being, for instance, everyone from the NY art community to mainstream but accepted celebs (Madonna, Bono, Tom Waits) to a nice settling in the literary industry (agents, writers, and imprints…namely Da Capo - “Leroy” edited/approved the content of this month’s Best of Music Writing 2005 collection, which of course includes one of Dave Egger’s preciously awful Spin columns…I sincerely hope, though I’m not betting on it, that he was one of the fooled) would eat the abused/trailer park hustler/former drug addict/faux-Southern affectation up like it’s a last meal. But, as hinted at, I’m not convinced that this is a comedic hoax. I despise the voice with which this character addresses a readership…if there is in fact, the drive to sincerely appear authentic…or to make money. It actually puts me in a confused state. I want to point fingers and laugh at those that believed in J.T. Leroy. Conversely (sort of), I’m made intensely protective of my geographical setting and culture. And that makes me want to write a shortsighted, blanket statement that in no way accurately represents the whole of the addressed.
To all New York factory-wrapped douches, San Francisco cry babies, European fanny pack/body odor manner-less sycophants, and anyone in the margins: I hope the “real deal” continues to evade you.
And now, what this is all about…..
A Novelist’s Novelist
Is the Acclaimed JT LeRoy Just a Character Himself?
By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 13, 2005; C01
There’s never been a literary enterprise quite like JT LeRoy. It’s not
just
his career, which includes an acclaimed novel, “Sarah,” a movie based
on a
short-story collection and credit for collaborating on early drafts of
the
Gus Van Sant movie “Elephant.” It’s not just his relative youth — he’s
24 — nor the long list of celebrities and authors that have hailed him
as a
wunderkind, among them Bono, Tom Waits, Winona Ryder, Melissa
Etheridge,
Michael Chabon and Mary Gaitskill.
It’s his life story. Raised by a drug-addicted mother, LeRoy got hooked
on
heroin in his early teens and worked as a “lot lizard,” a
cross-dressing
male prostitute at a truck stop in West Virginia. He survived that
ordeal
and wound up on the streets of San Francisco, where a social worker
found
him in a psychotic haze. She took him to a shrink, who suggested that
writing would be excellent therapy. He started faxing his handwritten
pieces
to well-known writers and literary agents. Before long, he had a book
deal.
Afflicted with a crippling shyness, he rarely met any of his admirers,
and
on the few occasions he appeared in public, he wore sunglasses and a
wig.
Amazing? No question. True? Mmmm, probably not.
This week, New York magazine ran a lengthy piece that strongly suggests
there is no JT LeRoy. There is, however, a woman named Laura Albert, a
Brooklyn-raised, 39-year-old mother and one-time rock singer, who seems
to
have been writing or co-writing the work attributed to LeRoy — and
possibly
playing him on the phone. The whole long affair appears to be one of
the
great literary hoaxes of our day, and it fooled a whole lot of people
as
well as media.
Including the New York Times, which last year ran a lengthy profile of
LeRoy. In it, the reporter meets a 5-foot-5 person with a “girlish
voice,
his conversation punctuated with childlike yelps when something pleases
him.” LeRoy is described as a sweet, traumatized and streetwise victim,
grateful to be alive and avidly networking with a welter of famous
fans.
Madonna, he said, had recently sent him a book on Kabbalah.
“I was feeling hopeless and she was really good at pointing out that if
someone is in a rip current the instinct is to pull the opposite way,
but
you need to just go along,” LeRoy tells reporter Warren St. John.
Who exactly showed up for that interview is an open question. In 2001,
after
rumors began to surface that there was no JT LeRoy, a diminutive
character
with a furtive smile and a black hat started to appear, every once in a
while, at assorted events held in the author’s honor. But the writer of
the
New York magazine story, Stephen Beachy, isn’t buying it.
“My theory is that it’s an actor playing the part,” he said on the
phone
yesterday. “I’ve heard it’s a relative of Laura Albert’s.”
Beachy, a San Francisco novelist, has been sleuthing this matter for
months.
His research found not a trace of evidence that someone named Jeremy
LeRoy — the T is for “Terminator,” allegedly an ironic nickname he
earned
as a hustler — lived in West Virginia, the son of a famous theological
writer, raised by a mom who stripped for a living, as LeRoy has long
claimed. In his piece, Beachy presents an impressive sum of
circumstantial
evidence — no, there’s no proof — that LeRoy was invented by Laura
Albert.
She’s an obvious suspect here. LeRoy supposedly lives with Albert, and
her
husband, Geoffrey Knoop, and the couple’s son, in an apartment in San
Francisco. It was Albert who discovered LeRoy in traffic back in 1993,
though according to the New York story, she did so under an assumed
name and
identity that she still uses — as an outreach worker named Emily
Frasier.
Beachy’s research found that Albert was most likely behind all the
faxing
LeRoy did in the mid-’90s, when faxing was LeRoy’s preferred method of
communication. Beachy traced one number on a LeRoy fax to a guy named
Paul
Falotico, who reports that he was a friend of Albert’s. Falotico at the
time
read some of Albert’s own writing, and it touched upon the very
subjects
that would make LeRoy famous — harrowing tales about neglect, broken
families and pornography. She frequently faxed her hand-scrawled
creative
writing assignments to Falotico and asked him to type them up. That’s
exactly what JT would do with writers and agents when he began
producing
stories.
There’s much more in the New York story and by the end, Beachy is on
the
phone with JT LeRoy/Laura Albert. “I reserve the right to grow and
change my
identity,” he/she says. It’s not exactly a confession, but it’s not a
total
profession of innocence, either.
Reached by cell phone yesterday, a person calling himself/herself JT
LeRoy
struck a nearly identical tone. Except more hostile. When the person
was
asked point-blank, “Are you Laura Albert?” there was a moment of
silence.
Then, “No. Are you?”
The voice on the line sure sounded like that of a woman, with a hint of
a
Southern accent in there, plus lots of profanity. According to this
person,
the New York story is the work of a jealous writer who has a “personal
vendetta.” Beachy, this person said, was dropped by LeRoy’s literary
agent
and resents LeRoy’s success. (The former is true, Beachy says, but not
the
latter.) “You can say I am anyone you think I am,” LeRoy/Albert said.
“I’m
not here to make you feel comfortable. I’m not here to make anyone feel
comfortable. I reserve the right to be whatever gender I want to be.
From
now on, if you ask me if I am Laura Albert, I’m going to say, ‘Maybe.’
”
He/She said that there were omissions in the magazine story and that
one
photo of him/her isn’t him/her at all, but the singer Pink. And he/she
added
that if this were a conspiracy, it would have to involve a lot of
people,
including the psychologist who saved his/her life. (The psychologist,
one
Terrence Owens of St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco, returned
a
phone call yesterday to say that it would be unethical for him to
comment.)
Still, if you are Laura Albert, you just pulled off something pretty
amazing, in its own way, didn’t you?
“Yeah, wait for the movie people to come around,” this person said. “If
they
offer me enough money, they can say I’m [expletive] Mickey Mouse.”
LeRoy/Albert also said that Beachy had failed to contact people who’d
spent
quality time with LeRoy. One of those people is Ira Silverberg, LeRoy’s
literary agent. Yesterday, Silverberg said that he had traveled to
Cannes
last year with LeRoy and remains convinced that he exists. Well, mostly
convinced.
“As far as I know, the little person with whom I’ve spent time is JT,
and
that is my truth and that is what I believe,” Silverberg said. He
echoed the
allegation that Beachy has it in for LeRoy, calling him a “poorly
published
novelist who’s worked the same turf.” But he hedges a bit.
“A year from now,” he acknowledged, “this could be a very different
story.”
If there is no JT LeRoy, Silverberg is just one of dozens of people who
have
been bamboozled. Last year, a gallery in New York City hosted an
exhibit of
art and a reading inspired by LeRoy’s most recent novella, “Harold’s
End.”
Among those who showed up to read aloud were Lou Reed and Tatum O’Neal,
and
the news release touted a quote from Tom Waits: “JT’s stories are like
stitches, like exit wounds, dispatches, dispositions. He is the
brilliant,
gifted and profound fly on the wall. You’ll need handkerchiefs and
novocaine
to get through this.”
Getting through this might take more than Novocain over at the New York
Times. Not only did the newspaper profile LeRoy, the travel magazine
also
recently ran a story by LeRoy about a trip to Euro Disney. In it, the
writer
recalls the time he spent in Orlando, where his mother stripped for a
time
and where it was his job to separate the Disney money from the real
stuff.
A spokesman for the New York Times said yesterday, “We have nothing to
add
to what we’ve printed.”
The LeRoy affair is eerily similar to the strange case of Anthony Godby
Johnson, also purportedly a lost child of the streets, who wrote an
“autobiography.” The book, “A Rock and a Hard Place,” achieved literary
liftoff after the social worker mother who adopted Johnson brokered
telephone- and online-only friendships with such writers as Armistead
Maupin
and Paul Monette.
If LeRoy is a figment of Laura Albert’s imagination, what were her
motivations? Success, for one. As a critical darling, LeRoy got
assignments
from other magazines and traded up in the publishing world. And check
out
http://Jtleroy.com . There aren’t a lot of writers out there selling
signed
whiffle balls ($8 postage paid) or raccoon baculum necklaces, which are
sexual amulets that turn up in LeRoy’s novel. (Those are $17.) Though
notoriously bashful, LeRoy — or the person playing LeRoy — hung out
with
such stars as Courtney Love and Winona Ryder, almost always accompanied
by
Laura Albert.
Then there’s another question: How? LeRoy ingratiated himself to a lot
of
people over the years, which, along with those well-received books,
might be
the character’s singular achievement, if a character is what he is. His
back
story was part of it — who could resist helping a charming reformed
junkie
with such a tragic biography, and with such laudable ambitions for a
drug-
and psychosis-free life?
But then there was the execution. By sheer coincidence, this reporter
began
an e-mail correspondence with LeRoy just last week. LeRoy has
guest-edited a
collection of essays for an upcoming book called “Best Music Writing
2005,”
and a piece written for The Washington Post appears in that volume.
LeRoy
put his e-mail address in the book and invited anyone to drop a line.
This
reporter sent a note to say, basically, “Thanks for choosing my story.”
Soon
after, a very warm, totally endearing reply was received. Another
e-mail or
two later, and LeRoy asked this reporter to give him a call, saying
that he
needed some help.
The conversation took place on Monday night, as LeRoy shopped at a
Trader
Joe’s. (”Should I get these cookies?” he wondered.) He wanted this
reporter
to read a new magazine piece he said he was writing. There was
something in
that voice that made its owner sound desperate for affection, but there
was
also a forwardness and ambitiousness that seemed pretty bold. He
basically
wanted a proofreader and editor.
“I can’t punctuate at all,” he said. “I never learned that. You can
tell me
how to do it and I’ll just come back the next time with the same
mistakes.”
It was flattering, in a way. This guy is famous and vulnerable and sad
and
triumphant, all at the same time. You could see why people would want
to
help him. He seemed like a character you could love.