Watch Jeff Feuerzeig's AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY -- and you may feel the need to bathe

Boy, that "truth" thing! Ain't it a bitch? Here comes yet another new documentary in which, for all I know, literally everything we're dished out here is the "truth." However, since everything about the original situation is also a lie, which, as lies are wont to do, begins spinning off more and more lies in order to keep the original in place, what we're soon engaging with is something so grandly nefarious that one might call it "the whopper of 'em all." Still, what the hell: If Jayson Blair can get his very own movie, why not JT Leroy?

Jeff Feuerzeig, who wrote and directed AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY, begins his film with a quote from Federico Fellini about creativity and truth -- A created thing is never invented and it is never true: It is always and ever itself -- that is clearly designed (by Feuerzeig, not by the late Signore Fellini) as an excuse for all that follows. Though it does not in the least manage the necessary excusing, it does prove but the first of many things about this fascinating-but-sleazy documentary that waves a red flag.

In truth, I would not know how to go about making an honest documentary about a situation like this, and perhaps Mr. Feuerzeig, realizing that he faced the same dilemma, chose what looks, more and more as the movie unfolds, like the easiest route. He simply hands the documentary over to its "protagonist," a woman named Laura Albert (above) who devised the whole JT Leroy scam and then brought it to pulsating, media-savvy life -- in the process, turning it into one of the most infamous, crazy, we've-conned-you-good! literary hoaxes in the history of, well, literature.

The above description sounds tasty enough to suck you in, no? Then why does this documentary begin to reek so foully, so quickly? TrustMovies thinks it's because Ms Albert never once in the entire proceedings shoulders any real responsibility for wrong-doing. She tells her tale as though it were just the most enjoyable, amusing and necessary thing to do. Now, if you feel, as Albert clearly does, that making up a story but labeling it as a true memoir, then creating the character who supposedly wrote the thing -- different age and different sex from the actual author -- in order to gain some of that wonderful stuff called fame is simply A-OK, then you'll probably embrace the documentary as all-fun-and-games.

Along the way, Albert, together with her Leroy creation (a gay, abused, teenage, would-be transgendered street urchin/hustler just longing for a world into which s/he can fit) cons everyone from supposed literature connoisseurs to celebrities in just about every field from music to movies to books to you-name-it. And, of course, the media just goes wild over a story (drugs. sex, prostitution, abuse) and a storyteller (under-age sex, queer and tearful) like this. In terms of lies and pretense, only the Donald could Trump it -- and, as we know, the media sure has given him plenty of undue attention.

What Albert really craved was success and celebrity above all, and from what we see here, she still does. And so the doc certainly shows us clearly and precisely how our culture of celebrity spawns more of the same, while feeding off itself in the process.

From filmmaker Gus van Sant -- who would of course gravitate toward someone of Leroy's ilk and is conned to a fare-thee-well (that's he above, right, with Albert and actor Michael Pitt) -- to television writer David Milch to actress turned director Asia Argento (below, right), the gullible just keep falling fast and hard. Ms Argento evens stars in and directs a so-so movie based on the LeRoy's "masterwork," The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

No one involved with Albert is safe, with doctors and analysts coming off as especially easy marks. Now, evidently, most of these folk are angry at Albert for putting them through the wringer once again via the new documentary. Well, honeys: You deserve each other. Whether or not the audience deserves to sit through this film is another question. Several times during and again at the end, I found myself muttering, Who gives a shit? I sure didn't, but then I also didn't follow Leroy's career during its ascendancy nor much during the scandal that followed.

If you followed that trajectory, the movie might just be your cup of whatever. Certainly it is full of details as to how the big lie was foisted upon us, and those details are often pretty amazing. And amusing. Overall though, it would seem as if Ms Albert is simply praying for this doc to hit pay dirt and provide her with a second round of celebrity and fame.
Good luck, dear.

From Magnolia Pictures and running a rather lengthy, considering its "true" content, one hour and fifty minutes, the movie -- after hitting the bigger cities and more noted cultural centers over the past couple of weeks -- opens here in South Florida tomorrow in Miami area at the O Cinema, Wynwood. You can click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

NICKY'S FAMILY: Matej Mináč & Patrik Pašš bring us feel-good Holocaust -- that works

You may try to resist, but I would suggest giving up fairly quickly and simply going along with this multi-award-winning 2011 Czech documentary just now reaching our shores. NICKY'S FAMILY tells the very fine story of a young British man named Nicholas Winton, back in 1938, when Europe was gearing up for World War II and the Jews of Germany, Austria and nearby countries were fearing for their lives -- and especially for those of their children. Instead of going on his planned skiing trip, Nicholas was corralled by a friend into coming to Czechoslovakia, where he learned first-hand what was happening and what Germany had planned for one of its next-door neighbors. So Winton immediately began working toward getting as many children of Czech Jews out of the country as quickly as possible.

The reason it is so easy to fall into the swing of this film is that the documentary -- directed, co-written and co-produced by Matej Mináč (at right), and edited, co-written and co-produced by Patrik Pašš (below) -- is quite beautifully organized. It incorporates, and near seamlessly, archival footage and photos with present-day (or thereabouts) material, while its re-enactments thankfully are only visual, with none of the thudding dialog that so often weighs down these re-creations, making them seem more important (but less well-done) than the actual documentary footage.

Why did Winton undertake such a mam-moth effort? This is a good question, and it's one that the film only partially answers. Perhaps, 70 years later, the man himself -- now 104 years old and still going relatively strong! -- barely knows. At the time however he saw what needed to be done and simply set about doing it. As he tells us, in one of his more famous quotes: "Anything that is not actually impossible can be done, if one really sets one's mind to do it and is determined that it shall be done."

In any case, the filmmakers detail how the job was planned and then accomplished (hundreds of children were saved, though most of their parents died in the concentration camps); what happened to the children (Britain was the only country at the time that would accept them); what all this cost in terms of time, effort and money; and how, decades later, the survivors actually, and for the first time, learned who Nicholas Winton was and what they owed to his efforts. (That's Nicholas, below, seated at right in the foreground, with some of his "survivors.")

The film does not dwell on the horrors of the Holocaust but instead concentrates on the saving of these kids. You can fault it, I suppose, for that, though by this point in time, we've certainly gotten plenty of the other kind of documentaries and narratives. (We do hear one awful anecdote about the gas chambers new to me: "When you take your children into the gas chamber, sing with them. If you sing, you will inhale the gas faster and will die more quickly.") At times these grown and now elderly survivors do talk about their parents and must stop to wipe away their tears and wait for their composure to return. But mostly they, along with their own children and grandchildren, want to show their appreciation for Winton's good work.

Although this might seem like an old and one-off kind of situation (a "Schindler" in Britain, as Nicholas has been described), there appears to be a large and strong movement of young people dedicated to emulating the work of this man, keeping alive his and their own desire to help the helpless. Seeing this movement come into focus, which ends the movie on a very "up" note, is bracing and stirring indeed. (That said, all this feel-good-cum-lighted-up-cell-phones does go on a little too long: Less would have meant more.)

There appears to be an effort afoot to see that Mr. Winton is a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize. Why not? If that idiot committee could bestow its 2009 prize on Barack Obama for doing absolutely nothing at that point in time (you can bet they'd never give it to him at this point!), why not on a man who accomplished what we see in this excellent documentary? (Shown below is the young Mr. Winton with one of the Czech children.)

Nicky's Family, from Menemsha Films and running 96 minutes, opens in New York City this Friday, July 19, at five venues in the New York area (The Quad, the JCC, Kew Gardens, Malverne and Soundview) and four in Los Angeles (Laemmle's Royal, Town Center 5, Playhouse 7 and Claremont 5). See all the current, past and upcoming playdates by clicking here and then scrolling down.

Chanoch Ze'evi's HITLER'S CHILDREN: best in a banner year's Holocaust documentaries

Enabling us to view the Holocaust anew, opening our eyes, mind and heart so that we can view one of history's most horrible events from a different angle, is no easy task, particularly in our current times, when we seem to have a new film on the subject -- narrative or documentary -- coming to theaters with each new week.  The beauty of young filmmaker Chanoch Ze'evi's new documentary, HITLER'S CHILDREN, is that it manages exactly this, while keeping us riveted intellectually and emotionally, hanging on every word uttered by the half-dozen participants interviewed by the filmmaker -- one of which, Eldad Beck (below), is an Israeli journalist now living in Germany and a third-generation descendant of Holocaust survivors, while the other five are the "children" of the title.

As any viewer, young or old, even mildly interested in WWII and the Holocaust will know, Adolf Hitler had no actual, fruit-of-his-loins children. The men and women we see here are the second- and third-generation offspring of some of the top Nazi officials immediately under Der Führer: Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hoess, Amon Goeth and Hans Frank.

We've had plenty of tales from Holocaust survivors (and now from the descen-dants of those survivors) and from the Germans who helped create or at least abetted this horror. Most often these are from what you might call "every-day folk" (were the Holocaust anything like an "everyday" occurrence). The difference with Hitler's Children is that here we have the descendants of those closest to Adolf Hitler and his gang: people whose guilt and shame, if undeserved, still clings to them like a second skin.

How do they deal with this? The filmmaker, pictured above, allows us to learn -- and in this learning, we're able to understand more -- to get our minds around a subject we may have imagined finished and closed. As it opens up again in front of us, we're forced to confront all sorts of subsidiary but important themes: parents, and how to properly "honor" them; DNA's connection to responsibility; the hereditary properties of good and evil; and more -- the centrifugal spin here is immense.

Göring's great-niece Bettina (above, who looks more like him than even his daughter did) retains a sense of humor and irony but had to get away from Germany and now lives in New Mexico. Make of it what you will (and the filmmaker simply allows us to learn this fact), but she and her brother had themselves sterilized so that the fami-ly line/name could not continue. This is guilt played out IMAX-size.

Katrin Himmler, grand-niece of Heinrich and now married to an Israeli Jew, tells us that her great uncle was such a monster that all other members of that family, who were also ardent Nazis, seemed so insignificant that nobody mentioned them or asked any questions. Feeling overwhelmed whenever she left Germany and had to face outsiders, she learned as many foreign languages as possible to obscure her German accent.

Adolf Hitler’s god son, Niklas Frank, was eight years old when his father, Hans was hung at Nuremburg for war crimes. His manner of honoring his father is to, fittingly, dishonor him both in a scathing book he wrote and in his visits to schools around his country, telling the students in no uncertain terms what his father did and what he, Niklas, thinks of that -- and of his dad. All this provides some of the most interesting footage in the film. If this is "penance," then more power to it!

Grandson of Rudolf Hoess -- Rainer -- makes his first trip to Auschwitz in the company of journalist Beck, and what happens there is doubly striking, both for what Hoess experiences and what Beck has to say about it. Finding "closure" -- every talk-show hosts' favorite goal -- is beginning to seem like a fool's errand, never more so than with a subject like this one. Mr. Beck, a third generation product, suggests that the Holocaust has no real ending. After all we've seen and continue to see, I'm inclined to agree. Think of Hitler's Children*, then, as one of the great "middles" of Holocaust film literature.

The documentary, from the ever-more-indispensible Film Movement and running just 80 minutes, opened theatrically in New York City this past Friday, November 16 for at least one week's run at the Quad Cinema and will open in the Miami area at the O Cinema on Thursday, November 29. As with all FM titles, a DVD will appear eventually.

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*Hitler's Children is also the name of an interesting 1943 narrative movie, a pulpy piece of anti-Nazi propaganda that stars the very cute Bonita Granville as an American girl studying in Germany who is declared "German" by the government and so cannot return home. As a typically American, WWII look at Hitler Youth and the travails of the Nazi nightmare, it's fun in its slightly silly, lured-for-its-day, manner. Netflix seems not to have it, but you can catch it from time to time on Turner Classic Movies.