A literary hoax is stirring things up in Hollywood. Who knows, maybe they’ll make a movie about the hoax if the actual movies flounder.

Reuters reports that best-selling authors James Frey and JT LeRoy were accused this week of possibly conning the public about the details of their “memoirs” and even their identities.

The Smoking Gun spent six weeks investigating the facts of Frey’s memoir A Million Little Pieces, which sold 1.77 million copies last year after its inclusion into Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club. Frey is alleged to have wildly exaggerated and even fabricated his past and his stories about drug addiction, alcohol abuse and crime.

The Telegraph reports that Random House has reacted to the controversy by offering full refunds to anyone who bought the book directly from the publisher.

Frey defends himself on his website: “I stand by my book and my life, and I won’t dignify this bullshit with any sort of further response.” He is scheduled to appear tonight on Larry King.

Warner Bros. Pictures, which is developing a film version of A Million Little Pieces, had no comment. Frey is currently focused on a screenwriting career and is working on a teen drama for MTV Films called Prep.

Meanwhile, LeRoy’s existence has been called into question after an article that appeared in the New York Times on Sunday. The Scotsman reports that his few public appearances have been in a blonde wig, a hat and dark glasses. The Times article contended that LeRoy, who said he was rescued from his life as an HIV-positive teen street hustler by two musicians named Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, is played in public by Knoop’s sister, and that his three best-selling books might have been written by Albert.

A film adaptation of LeRoy’s book Sarah – the story of an androgynous boy who idolizes his prostitute mother to the point of adopting her identity – is in pre-production.
“The project has been profoundly upset. We’re just trying to determine what’s the next step,” said producer Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. “Now we’re evaluating two things: one, how we feel about the project, and two, how the marketplace is going to feel about it. …It definitely gives me hesitation.”

The book was originally optioned by director Gus Van Sant, who said he has dined with LeRoy twice before. “There’s always been a suspicion that he didn’t write his material because he didn’t go out of the house,” said Van Sant. “So since nobody ever met him, they would say that.”






Related Stories: