From the New York Times archives:
By WARREN ST. JOHN; COMPILED BY LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Published: August 18, 2006
The fictitious author J T Leroy has enmeshed his publisher, his manager and the San Francisco woman identified as the actual author of his works in a lawsuit brought by a production company that optioned the film rights to the J T Leroy novel ''Sarah.'' Saying it was a victim of an elaborate literary hoax, Antidote Films, an independent film company run by the producers Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Mary Jane Skalski, filed the suit against Bloomsbury Publishers; Laura Albert, the author; and Judi Farkas, J T Leroy's Hollywood manager, on Aug. 11 in District Court in Manhattan. The company is seeking to recover $45,000 in option payments, along with an additional $60,000 in development costs. In the complaint the producers wrote that they thought that they were buying the rights to the story of a real-life ''talented, anguished artist, androgynous ingénue and recluse.'' Following revelations of the hoax, they charged, the book they optioned was ''discredited and a joke in the eyes of many.'' They said in court papers that they had abandoned the project. The defendants were not immediately available for comment. WARREN ST. JOHN
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