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March 02, 2006
Today in JT Leroy: Weinstein, Shainberg Win Big in Gossip Synergy
Having suffered the indignity Wednesday of viewing Asia Argento's nigh-on-unwatchable The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, I followed up with a 30-minute shower and de-licing treatment that I thought would reverse my misfortune once and for all. Alas, a splatter of related news carried over into this morning, and it appears Reeler HQ might face a complete fumigation, torching or both.
First, Ian Mohr writes in Variety that The Weinstein Company optioned Warren St. John's Times pieces exposing the tedious literary fraud Deceitful hoaxter/author JT Leroy as co-collaborators Laura Albert and Savannah Knoop. I know, I know--let's not all cheer at once. Meanwhile, an item over at Page Six notes the deal with an oddly strenuous indie spirit:
Secretary director Steven Shainberg - now completing his film about freak-obsessed photographer Diane Arbus (with Nicole Kidman in the lead) - is considering how to interpret the literary scandal, since he co-owns the rights to Sarah, the "JT Leroy" novel. Of his planned screen adaptation of the book that helped to mythologize the faux writer's tawdry past, Shainberg tells PAGE SIX'S Steve Garbarino, "My intentions are to make it utterly beautiful, mystical, graceful, daring and outrageous." Shainberg has his hands pleasantly full elsewhere, having just gotten engaged to ravishing filmmaker Rachel Boynton, whose own political comedy, Our Brand Is Crisis, just opened to raves in New York.
Ah, yes--"political comedy." I would not kick Boynton out of bed for eating crackers or anything, but she has a ways to go before her brilliant Crisis is funny (unless deadly Bolivian riots crack you up). Really, though, Page Six's 50 percent accuracy rate is neither here nor there compared to the bargain it struck to turn an ostensibly JT Leroy item into a Shainberg/Boynton item. In other words, how much Nicole Kidman gossip does it take to get your old-news book rights and your fiancée's Koch Lorber documentary mentioned in Page Six? Just asking.
I think I need another shower.
Posted by stvanairsdale at March 2, 2006 01:11 PM
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