J. J. Ros posted a photo:
'Harold's End', JT Leroy.
'Where the Wild Things Are', Maurice Sendack.
'slide:ology', Nancy Duarte.
'Remix', Lawrence Lessig.
J. J. Ros posted a photo:
'Harold's End', JT Leroy.
'Where the Wild Things Are', Maurice Sendack.
'slide:ology', Nancy Duarte.
'Remix', Lawrence Lessig.
chaii posted a photo:
Boredom struck so I cleaned out my bag. The mix was so wtf that I thought it was worthwhile photo'ing.
:edit: the whole lot went straight back in, hah!
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer posted a photo:
Savannah Knoop is an American fashion designer and DJ, who was outed in 2006 as being the public persona of wunderkind writer JT LeRoy. I spent a fascinating day hanging out, interviewing and taking photos in Hollywood, for the article I wrote in this month’s issue of Gay Times in the UK:
‘I’ve apologised to the people in my life,’ reveals Savannah Knoop as we drive along Sunset Blvd. Discarded are the blonde wig and oversized hat, with only a pair of dark sunglasses as a remnant of the JT LeRoy persona. ‘But the media seem to want an apology for all of it, for everything that’s ever been, for everything you thought something was and it turns out to be it’s not.’
The San Francisco-based fashion designer with eco-friendly company Tinc, is visiting Hollywood to DJ at a friend’s birthday party. Before the tape starts rolling, we’re trying to avoid discussing her role in the literary scandal of the decade, but the events are so fascinating that conversation keeps drifting towards the complex, labyrinthine gender-bending deception that touched the lives of Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson and her lover Asia Argento.
In January 2006, The New York Times exposed to the world that JT LeRoy, the best-selling author, a teenage wunderkind who was described as a sexually abused ex-junkie prostitute and male-to-female transsexual, was actually a woman all along. She was Laura Albert, who had fabricated the penname in 1996 for her magazine writings before releasing the autobiography, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both in 1999, turning the writer into the overnight darling of the avant-garde underground elite. Savannah, her then sister-in-law was named as co-conspirator (along with husband Geoffrey Knoop and son), outed for playing the physical embodiment of JT LeRoy that appeared at book signings, celebrity parties and posed for photo shoots. It was a whole JT family and Laura Albert was ever present, occupying the role of ‘Speedie’, LeRoy’s overly protective manager, a wild and demanding extravert that did most of the talking for the whizzkid writer who ‘didn’t like to be touched.’
Though the books were always published as fiction, the public and critical reaction was scathing and condemning, leading to a lawsuit by the film company who had optioned the rights to the first novel. Many now questioned the literary worth of LeRoy’s work that had seemed so seeped in Truth and authenticity, whose tales of the American underbelly had touched so many, while others saw Laura Albert’s aims fuelled simply by ambition and self-promotion.
‘It’s hard for me to say because when I read them I knew Laura was the author,’ she explains. ‘It’s a debate which people keep on going back and forth about. Some people feel like the books don’t mean anything now, others that’s its more about the character and the interesting story. I think they stand by their own merit and I actually kind of loved them.’
We make a pit stop at Amoeba, the West Coast’s largest record shop. Savannah is in vinyl heaven and although an avant-garde jazz head, she hits the dance section for a few extra tunes to DJ the following night. While it’s difficult to believe that she could have been mistaken as a man, she certainly possesses an androgynous and otherworldly quality. Savannah was a boyish 18 when she became JT but the sex change story was introduced to add a modicum of credibility. It was all very campy.
Top of a heavy vinyl stack is a 12” remix of MARS’ Pump Up The Volume. ‘To get them up and dancing,’ she notes as we head to the cashier. I suggest we grab some guerrilla photos in the splendidly graphitised Amoeba car park elevator. As the flash fires, slowly, the calm veil falls to reveal a distinct nervousness at the attention from the camera. While accommodating and friendly, Savannah clearly dislikes the experience and the uncomfortableness remains until the Nikon is safely back in the bag.
Recently, Savannah has become an author with the tell-all Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, While resonating as a cautionary coming-of-age tale laced with lyricism, it’s a work filled with angst-ridden doubt and guilt over the snowballing of events that led to her assuming the JT role for six long years. As the recorder finally starts whirring inside the photo studio and the questions flow, reliving the schizophrenic past is clearly upsetting for Savannah.
‘In a way I was having a kind of identity crisis,’ she recalls, taking a drag of her roll up. ‘I had thought playing JT was going to be just an experiment, or something to just try out, but it had taken on such a huge part of my life. Now everybody keeps asking me “Do you know who you are today?” Do we ever? Do you ever get to that point of thinking “I’m finally there’? It’s just always in motion. Who is the real Savannah? I have a hard time with that question too.’
Her whirlwind adventure across the globe included cameos in movies and red carpet premieres, all whilst still holding down a waitress job in San Francisco where her continual absenteeism led to fibs like, ‘I’ve had another accident,’ or ‘Another baby’s been born’. Everything was top secret; even Savannah’s roommates were clueless. After the story broke, it was only the mundane life as a part-time server in a restaurant that remained.
‘It almost felt like there was this feeling of “Ok, I’ll do it just one more time,”’ explains Savannah regarding the numerous times she quit from the project. ‘I was in a place in my life where I wanted some kind of adventure and it had an addictive quality. It was so exciting and I would think, “What am I without this part in my life?” It always made everything shine brighter. There was also just this feeling that JT was his own entity. I would really feel like he was there, that I would step away and this other person would take over as a character. It would be eerie.’
The scandal has been described as literary fraud, but no Shakespeare has been ripped off here. JT never existed. While a myriad of famous and infamous personalities were fooled, perhaps the only real damage was done at the level of personal interactions and relationships. A group with understandable disappoint though, was the transgendered community, one that has so few enough role models or representatives.
‘There was this feeling that JT was the spokesperson for the queer community and his books reached straight people as much as gay people,’ she notes with remorse. ‘When it came out, there was that feeling of, “Oh, we really needed you to be. It was important that you existed because you are speaking on our behalf.’
Playing with gender had been part of the intrigue for Savannah. ‘As a 13 year old I had been obsessed with Orlando and that wanting to explore the two spirits of your gender has always been there. I probably would have reached that on my own terms but this was such a specific way to explore it. I mean, the whole thing with labels; what do you claim yourself? I like Queer because it’s kind of all encompassing. Queer is a Queer. Most people are queers. I guess some have very specific definitions, but I like the one that people can be whatever they want to be.’
Laura Albert has described the JT and Speedie characters as ‘performance art’, and it’s fair to say that the team rattled a few cages, raising questions about authorship and anonymity, the right of free speech and the strange aura of celebrity.
‘It was constantly espousing art, to create art and live in art. I think we both had that mission,’ she beams. ‘I found Laura to be so refreshing, just so punk. It would be like, “Here we are, doing something we’re not supposed to. We don’t play by rules, the JT family. See what we do next.”
‘People acted so surprised when the story broke, but the whole time JT would constantly be asked, “Why do you wear the wigs and sunglasses? You could be anybody under there? How do we know you wrote the books?” And depending on who was doing the interview, Laura and I would both answer, “But you know you don’t know who I am. I could be anybody. It doesn’t matter.’” I think there was always full disclosure that perhaps I wasn’t JT. Speedie would often quip, ‘Perhaps I wrote the book.’ I think that when we could play like that, it was the most pure mission statement.’
Savannah has yet to receive much feedback about Girl Boy Girl from the various players that graced JT’s stage but she’s ‘sure that it’s mixed.’ Laura Albert had publicly condemned the announcement of the book and upon reading the completed manuscript her opinion has remained negative.
’I originally asked her if she wanted to do something together because I didn’t know how I would write it without her, but she said no,’ shrugs the author. ‘We were so entwined in that experience. At a certain point I stopped answering her phone calls because there would be this emotional onslaught. It was really upsetting because in a way I think I really wanted her approval. I liked her writing a lot too and I think she’s an amazing artist. She was kind of my mentor.
Perhaps her deepest regret is her lack of disclosure to the Asia Argento, the ironic director of the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It was an intimate and romantic relationship that pushed the deception its utmost limits. Surely the Italian actress must have known this wasn’t a male-to-female transsexual?
‘That whole interaction - it was so fucked up,’ she sighs. ‘There were so many points where I thought, “I have to tell her, I have to!” but I just couldn’t. She was one of the people I connected to, regardless of whether we slept together or not. That doesn’t matter. We resonated with each other. I assumed that she knew and it was just one of those things that you just don’t talk about. But when the story came out she said she didn’t. I can imagine her going, “What? What the fuck?”’
Since JT LeRoy didn’t really exist, he can never truly die. With Girl Boy Girl now offering an insider’s perspective on the scandal, the furore will continue to simmer. Unbound from her fictional life, Savannah Knoop is reflective and a little wiser, hoping her new insight will steer her into even greater adventures.
‘It was just a strange round about way of finding out who you are through being someone else. And a what a weird adventure, a different unorthodox way of doing it, of finding myself where I am today because I can’t say that I’m there. Everybody plays a role in life. Often people have a public persona and a private persona. This was just far more complicated than most.’
www.sevenstories.com
www.tincwear.com
www.gaytimes.co.uk
Her.Locket posted a photo:
J.T Leroy.
Sometimes, but very rarely, there are authors & characters which i feel a connection with. Im introverted & being so is being part of the minority, of a big, loud & extroverted world. It takes some time to come to terms with & accept it. Sometimes i try to force myself to be more 'out there' but i just feel like an idiot & it feels fake. Being introverted is not easy.
J.T Leroy is an author which made me feel ok with who i am. He gave me hope & a place to fit in, inside my own head & outside in the world. We had alot in common from what he would write in his books.
But as soon as i began to really feel inspired by him & his writing i find out he was all a joke. He was a fake. A girl pretending to be a boy, who dresses up like a girl. Made up by Laura Albert. All autobiographical stories, not true.
I was really sad & upset when i found out about this. I couldn't care less about James Frey's stunt, but the J.T hoax, i did. But im not anymore, because atleast i know that it took someone's creativity, personal experience & mind to still write those books. So in some way, they are still real, just not in the form of Jeremiah.
Girl boy girl
rick posted a photo:
I took a picture of this sticker before, but it's funnier in front of a picture of J.T. LeRoy.
*°freckles°* posted a photo:
unstablelandscape posted a photo:
unstablelandscape posted a photo:
rick posted a photo:
