The Night Listener- Page 2

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/27/06 at 5:02pm

The parallels would be between a person who creates radio serials being duped by a caller, and famous author of serials Amristead Maupin being duped by Anthony Godby Johnson.

Any similarities to Leroy happened after the publication of Night Listener. I read the first chapter of Sarah and told my friends the whole thing was a hoax. But only because I was acquainted with the Godby case after reading The Night Listener.

I was just trying to keep the timeline right.

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 7/27/06 at 5:13pm

And I was just referring to the hoax author duping established author plotline, not the radio/novelist serial angle.

Is your theory that JT LeRoy's fabricator was inspired by Godby Johnson?

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 7/27/06 at 5:14pm

An acquaintance of mine was involved in the Kaycee Nicole fiasco.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/27/06 at 5:26pm

First, I was responding to cheez's point, "I believe the Night Listener novel was a direct action to the JT Leroy incident as Maupin was one of the 'celebrity' authors approached to fill in and help cover up Leroy's non exsistance." Because, chronologically, that's impossible.

I don't know who or what Laura Albert was inspired by when she cooked up the JT Leroy persona. But having read Night Listener and delved into the Godby hoax, it took a few pages of reading "Sarah" for me to turn to my friends who loved it and say, "This was NOT written by an early-teen who was drug addled and AIDS stricken and who was living on the streets of the Tenderloin in San Francisco just a couple years ago." And they were all, "How do you know?" And I pointed out that it just wasn't possible that ANYBODY in that situation was turning out a story filled with truck stop menus with incongruous gourmet offerings described in florid detail. Among many, many other things.

And of course, who is going to doubt a writer who claims more than three different but overlapping victim statuses, as both Godby and Leroy did? Sexual abuse. Drug abuse. AIDS. Physical abuse. It's like the Grand Slam of "How dare you question my suffering??"

Albert, to my mind, is closer to "Augusten Burroughs" and James Frey. A fiction writer in a world of dwindling numbers of fiction readers who know the only things most people are interested in reading are true stories. Or even "true" stories. So they package their fiction as fact and rely on a fan base to respond to naysayers like me ("There's no way all this stuff happened to 'Burroughs.'") with incredulity ("But how do you KNOW?").

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 7/27/06 at 6:24pm

Apologies. Somehow I thought the use of the word "parallels" was in reference to my post.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 8/2/06 at 1:16am

Here's some more information on the story.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 8/2/06 at 9:53am

"Total threadjack, but one of the things I really loved about Barbary Lane series was that the characters were allowed to grow and change, despite the fact that several of them ended up a lot less likeable than they were when the series started."

Kringas I totally agree!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/2/06 at 1:03pm

I loved the original Tales of the City trilogy and enjoyed the second trilogy, though not as much as the first. I liked The Night Listener. Was it believable? No, but for me, it was a page-turner, nonetheless. I don't remember it being a "thriller", specifically, but it did have a suspenseful element to it. I hated Maybe the Moon, however. I just never got emotionally invested in the story or its characters.

[admanrich]

Posted: 8/5/06 at 5:31pm

I saw this movie last night. It was really good until the ending. The movie was SO short. The showtime was 7:20, and probably didn't start until around 7:30 with previews and commercials and no joke, the credits were rolling at 8:40. I wish it was like 30-40 minutes longer so they could have continued with Donna's storyline and Gabriel and Jess. It just sort of ended which bugged me.

[mrs felciano]

Posted: 8/5/06 at 5:58pm

I hated it! I was soo looking forward to this movie. It was short, but it felt like it dragged on forever.

[BroadwayBulldog]

Posted: 8/5/06 at 9:59pm

I saw it today and I would not recommend it. Contrived and strains credulity. One question: where does Donna get her money? Make that two: given our last glimpse of Donna why would she consiously choose to live as she does during the time she meets the Robin Williams character?

(A blind man joined the movie audience coming in with his seeing eye dog, and a companion. In all my moving-going experience I had never seen that before.)

[admanrich]

Posted: 8/6/06 at 12:13am

So many unanswered questions--one reason why the movie should have been longer.

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 8/6/06 at 7:16pm

A. O. Scott in the NY TIMES:

"The story told in “The Night Listener” resonates uncannily with the curious case of J. T. Leroy, whose literary renderings of a blighted childhood were recently revealed as a hoax. Clearly, there is something about tales of violated innocence, the more extreme the better, that invites credulity. Why would anyone make up such horrible stories? Why would anyone believe — or, for that matter, doubt — them? Those questions hover in the background of this film, which scratches its head and shrugs them off."

Nice to see that while he used the much better metaphor "resonates", I wasn't that far off with "parallels".

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 8/7/06 at 1:27pm

anyone else see it this weekend?!?! I couldn't find anyone to go with and figured it was one of those films that I'd want to discuss with someone afterward....

[admanrich]

Posted: 8/7/06 at 3:57pm

I saw it - PM me if you want to talk about it haha

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 8/7/06 at 4:13pm

why PM are you being courteous of not posting SPOILERS?!?!?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/7/06 at 4:15pm

I saw it last night. And as I said in the earlier thread, I actually didn't like the novel at all. Which could be why my assessment of the movie is that it isn't half bad.

I thought the relationship between Gabriel and Jess was more realistic than in the novel, although Maupin's written fictionalization of Terry Anderson, (the inspiration for the Jess character who has a producer AND a co-writer's credit on the screenplay), was much crueller in print than onscreen. I bet Terry had a hand in casting Bobby Cannavale and not Buck Angel in the part.

[SPOILER for Bulldog, sort of]: That last glimpse of Donald would have to be something of a fantasy in the mind of Gabriel, because how could the narrator (which he ostensibly is given the set up with "I'll try to tell this exactly as it happened" at the very beginning) have seen or known that about Donna. I think that was just his imagination, which ran wild after the constant ringing of the phone drove him a little mad.

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 8/7/06 at 4:40pm

I'm also looking forward to seeing Cannavale, one of my favorite actors. The articles on Maupin detailing the transition from novel to screen are very interesting. AD MAN I have not PM'd you because I've not seen it yet.