ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Director/Producer Marjorie Sturm is an award-winning filmmaker whose films span a broad perspective: narrative, documentary, and experimental. "The Cult of JT LeRoy" is her first feature length documentary. She was an interviewer, cinematographer, and the Bay Area media wrangler for the "99%-Occupy Wall Street Collaborative" Film that had its' premiere at Sundance in 2013. She received the Grand Festival Award at Berkeley Video and Film Festival for her short narrative "Smoke the Pipe Dream." Her six films are distributed internationally by Pax Recordings. Sturm has created social activism videos for Consumers Union and does ongoing freelance video work. Previously, she worked many years as a case manager with the mentally ill homeless in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. Sturm studied Psychology at the University of Michigan, and received her MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University. Sturm has lived for periods in Mexico, Nepal, India and Israel to study poetry, music, and comparative religion. She is the younger sibling of the graphic novelist James Sturm and the painter/photographer Ilona Sturm. Sturm lives in San Francisco with composer Ernesto Diaz-Infante and their two children.
Editor/Co-Producer Josh Melrod is a filmmaker, writer, and graphic artist. His first film, Cartoon College, which he also edited, premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival and screened at dozens of festivals worldwide. His editing credits include the narrative feature Northern Borders, starring Bruce Dern, and the narrative short Skunk by Annie Silverstein. His projects have been funded by the New York State Council for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Vermont Arts Endowment, the LEF Foundation, the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was named among “10 Filmmakers To Watch in 2010” by The Independent.
Composer Ernesto Diaz-Infante received his MFA in Music Composition from California Institute of the Arts. His musical compositions span transcendental piano, noise, avant-garde guitar, field recordings, lo-fi four-track manipulations, and experimental song. Diaz-Infante has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and his music has been broadcasted internationally. He has recorded more than 15 CDs of music and collaborated with numerous musicians. In 2000, his composition, I/O (for chamber ensemble), was performed by the California EAR Unit. He has been awarded residencies at the Centre International de Recherche Musicale (CIRM) in Nice, France, The Millay Colony for the Arts, Villa Montalvo, The Ucross Foundation, among others.
HD Cinematographer Peggy Peralta is a graduate of the University of the Philippines and obtained her MFA in Motion Pictures and Television with emphasis on Cinematography from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. An award-winning and multi-faceted cinematographer, Peggy has collaborated on over 20 films dealing with diverse themes and cross-cultural subjects. Her works are distinct for their heart, energy and perspective. Geared with a spontaneous spirit and an inquisitive mind, every project she dives into becomes an opportunity to discover, create and inspire. In 2008, she founded Head of the Dog Pictures, a creative shop based in San Francisco, California. She lives in the Tenderloin with her partner Lourdes Figueroa, a poet and freelance photographer.
Story Consultant Stephen Beachy is an American writer who in October, 2005 published an article in New York Magazine exposing the writer JT LeRoy as the concoction of a woman named Laura Albert, with the help of her family members. He attended the University of Iowa from 1983 to 1990, both as an undergrad and in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His novels include The Whistling Song, Distortion, along with two novellas, Some Phantom and No Time Flat. Robert Gluck said, "Stephen Beach is a visionary. In these twin novellas, he explores madness and crime with the nocturnal lyricism of empty time and space." His novel boneyard is a collaboration with a young Amish boy, Jake Yoder, whose existence is unconfirmed.
Animator and Graphic Design Sylvia Roberts has worked on films selected for festivals around the world, televised documentaries for the Discovery Science Chanel and PBS, and award winning Blu-ray DVD releases of popular films for Pixar Animation Studios. She's also contributed her animation skills to numerous projects for companies including Hewlett Packard, Adidas, and CBS Television. She received the Award of Excellence from the California Works Exhibit for her video Understand, a music video she produced, edited for the artist Cross-town Traffic of Wicked Records. Sylvia studied animation at San Francisco State University's Multimedia Studies Department, received a certificate from the Professional Sequence in Graphic Design at University of California, Berkeley Extension, and holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. A native of Missoula, Montana, she now lives with her family in San Francisco.
Story Consultant Nancy Rommelmann wrote the award-winning article "The Lies and Follies of Laura Albert" for the LA Weekly. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Reason, Byliner and other publications. She is the author of the novel The Bad Mother (2011). The Queens of Montague Street (2012), a memoir of growing up in 1970s Brooklyn Heights, was excerpted as a NYT Magazine Lives column. The story collection Transportation was published in 2013. Destination Gacy, about a cross-country journey to interview serial killer John Wayne Gacy shortly before his execution, was released in May 2014. Rommelmann recently completed writing To the Bridge, a nonfiction book about Amanda Stott-Smith, who threw her two young children from a Portland, Oregon bridge in 2009.
Executive Producers Renée and Andrew Anker
Executive Producer William Hirsch