Results tagged “jtleroy”

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue at Emmons Ave. and Knapp St. in Brooklyn, a serious assault on West 37th St. and 11th Ave. in Manhattan, and a bank robbery on Flatlands Ave. in Queens.
• The body of the Ecuadorian man who was killed in a bar fight earlier this week will be returned home at the expense of a businessman, also from Ecuador, who appreciated the man's abbreviated attempt to support his family from abroad.
• The woman thought to have been trying to throw herself from the Staten Island Ferry in a suicide attempt was actually just drunk.
• Showing up subway-riding Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff commutes to work on his bike. How is it again, with bike-riding DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, that NYC remains a bike-unfriendly city?
• Woody Allen is trying his hand at opera, from the safe distance of LA. He'll be staging one act of Puccini's three-part "Il Trittico" for the Los Angeles Opera company.
• A jury found that the author who published under the name JT Leroy did defraud a film company and she's been ordered to pay damages.
• The Snapple Theater Center has renamed the space currently hosting a revival of "The Fantasticks" The Jerry Orbach Theater.
• Politics reach a new level of childishness as Giuliani says of Bloomberg: He's copying me.

Working Harbor Tour, by Frank Lynch at flickr

A note to anyone writing under a pseudonym: Don't let the pseudonym become larger than life. After deliberating for a couple hours, a jury came to a verdict in a film production company's lawsuit against Laura Albert, who wrote novels under the name JT Leroy. A tipster at the Federal Court just gave us the scoop:

Jury verdict in: Laura Albert and Underdogs Inc. are both liable for fraud and for breach of contract. Damages: $110,000 for economic damages, $6,500 for punitive.

For a few years, Albert had forwarded the illusion that JT Leroy was an actual person by having her ex-boyfriend's sister pose as "JT Leroy," the troubled son of a prostitute whose hard life gave inspiration to "his" books. Antidote Films had claimed that because the contract was with JT Leroy, not Albert, and since JT Leroy never existed, the contract should be found void (thanks, Frankenstein) and Albert should return the $45,000 in rights money. Albert, whose mother testified about her psychological problems, gave riveting testimony about her own difficult childhood, how she didn't want to write under her own name and how she channeled the "JT Leroy" persona to write.

A Bill Cosby cartoon, Adidas sneakers and even mayor Ed Koch figured into the trial of Laura Albert, aka the author who created the literary sensation JT Leroy. Albert is being sued by a film production company; Antidote Films paid JT Leroy $45,000 for one of his novels, but now the company says that the contract is void because JT Leroy doesn't exist. Last week, Albert's mother gave wrenching testimony that mentioned hospitalizing her daughter for depression at young ages but it was nothing compared to Albert's own testimony yesterday.

Yesterday, a Manhattan jury heard testimony from the mother of the Brooklyn Heights woman who created JT Leroy, the supposed truck stop hooker's son turned literary sensation revealed to be a hoax last year. Under the persona of JT Leroy, Albert wrote novels about prostitution, sex abuse, and drugs; when Leroy became a hot commodity, she had her then-boyfriend's sister pose at Leroy. But now a film production company is suing Albert for money advanced towards making a film based on "Leroy"'s novel Sarah, arguing that since JT Leroy signed the contract and since JT Leroy doesn't exist, the contract is void.

The publishing world is in a tizzy over rising novelist's Kaavya Viswanathan's admission that she unintentionally copied passages from books by Megan McCafferty in order to write, How Opal Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, about an ambitious NJ teen who wants to get into Harvard. Viswanathan, just featured earlier in a rather glowing NY Times article about being a Harvard student with a $500,000 two-book deal at Little, Brown, was exposed by the Harvard Crimson over the weekend, and has now had to 'fess up. (Hats off to Harvard Crimson writer David Zhou for reading all three books over the weekend - check out examples of the similar passages, but really, hats off to the reader's tip-off started this.) McCafferty, a Columbia alum, whose two books about a smart NJ teen named Jessica Darling "inspired" Viswanathan to "internalize" prose, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, Gothamist has read and enjoyed, just hopes that that an agreement can be reached; no word on whether Viswanathan's admission and the fact that Little, Brown will not only remove/edit the similar passages but also acknowledge McCafferty is good enough (we're thinking there may have to be a payday). The Columbia Spectator weighs in and while it doesn't break any news, it has definitely found a great quote:

“I have read the McCafferty books and they are in that vein of unavoidable, awesomely bad, Y.A. chick lit that one usually ends up burning through on an idle Sunday evening or ten. They are good. But they are not worth plagiarizing,” Jennifer Bernstein, CC ’09, said. “Thank you, Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, for this moment of pure schadenfreude.”

Exactly - everyone needs a bit of schadenfreude to get through the day, but if we find out that Dr. Seuss didn't write and illustrate his books, we're going to be very, very angry.

This week’s new movie releases are all about men behaving badly, and of course the women who put up with their crap. Though if that's not what you're into there's always some good Irish beer or Korean kimchee to tempt your movie palate.

Brian Van sent us this photograph of Nicole Richie delivering Dr. Diet Pepper at 6th Avenue and West 3rd Street. This is 99.9% Nicole Richie, but with this whole "sunglasses bigger than your head" trend, how can we be so sure that it isn't that chick who has been playing JT LeRoy?

- The principal of Brooklyn Tech had his daughter attend a Brooklyn public school...even though they live in NJ, so now he resigned and must pay the Department of Education back for her tuition!

Wow, Gothamist takes a break to re-read The Chronicle of Narnia and suddenly contemporary literature is rocked! The big stories: The Smoking Gun's expose on bestselling author James Frey's lie-laden memoir (and Oprah book), A Million Little Pieces, and the NY Times'investigation in JT Leroy, revealing he doesn't quite exist! Next, we'll find out JK Rowling is a marketing scheme cooked up by the British government! The Smoking Gun's article about Frey's lies seems so thorough that TSG will certainly be able to write the Cliff's Note for it. Sure, it's a compelling story, and sure, some writers embellish their memories...but embellishing whole parts? Wil this drive Frey fan Lindsay Lohan back to the brink? Now, all the 2003 blustering about people wanting to kick the crap out of Frey makes even more sense - remember Neal Pollack's issues with James Frey? And Jonathan Franzen must be looking pretty good to Oprah now.