Review: "Chuck"

Chuck Wepner was a big ugly mook who became semi-famous as a footnote in both the sports and entertainment worlds. You may not think you know me, he narrates at the beginning of his biopic, “Chuck,” but you do.

It’s long been said that Muhammad Ali and his manager, Don King, picked the New Jersey boxer out of obscurity in 1975 as his next opponent after downing George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle” because they wanted a white opponent. But as this enlightening new film directed by Philippe Falardeau (“Monsieur Lazhar”) and starring Liev Schreiber shows, Wepner may have been a blue-collar club fighter, but he was hardly a nobody.

Wepner was the eighth-ranked heavyweight fighter at the time, a 6-foot-5-inch brawler known for his uncanny ability to take punch and not go down. “The Bayonne Bleeder,” they called him, a nickname Chuck detested but accepted when it bought him a round of free drinks or a salutation on the street.

As skillfully depicted by Schreiber, Chuck is somebody who revels in the affirmation of others. He carouses his little corner of Jersey, puffed up by locals who call him “The Champ,” accepting overtures from women not because he’s a philandering cad at heart but because he’s almost genetically incapable of not returning any affection shown to him.

He’s the man who bleeds -- from his face, prodigiously, but also his heart.

Liev, an elegantly handsome actor, is surprisingly convincing as Wepner, with his permanently swollen features, arched eyebrows and fu Manchu mustache. His face resembles last night’s hamburger. Mostly, he seems like a guy trying desperately not to embarrass himself.

The story -- screenplay by Jeff Feuerzeig, Jerry Stahl, Michael Cristofer and Schreiber -- actually wraps up the Ali fight about a third of the way through. Chuck never harbored any illusions about beating possibly the greatest of all time -- he was already 36 and losing a step -- but was determined to go the full 15 rounds to prove the naysayers wrong.

Instead, the rest of the movie focuses on Chuck’s life after, when he coasted on his bit of celebrity as the nobody who stood toe-to-toe with the champ. (Pooch Hall plays Ali.)

Then, of course, “Rocky” happened.

The similarities between Sylvester Stallone’s breakout movie and Wepner’s real life are too close to pass the credulity test that Sly made it up on his own. In the film’s version of events, Chuck saw the movie winning a boatload of box office and a trove of Academy Awards as his own victory, too.

But he was too embarrassed to tell anyone, even his best friend, John (a fine Jim Gaffigan), that he wasn’t paid a dime for his story. Eventually, though, pride gets the better of him and he reaches out to Stallone (Morgan Spector), and a surprising connection forms.

One of the film’s disappointments is it completely sidesteps the legal wrangles and war of words between Stallone and Wepner, which went on for decades after “Rocky” came out. In some ways, “Chuck” takes too many pains not to make anybody look bad.

The movie gets the look and feel of 1970s Jersey right -- the loud clothes, the big Cadillacs, the dim bars.

Wepner’s relationship with his wife, Phyllis (Elisabeth Moss), follows the familiar up-and-down tropes of cinematic married couples, and we can’t wait for the marriage to end fast enough. Chuck runs into Linda (Naomi Watts), a hard-scoured bartender, who continually puts him off. But there’s something there, so we’re not surprised when she keeps turning up.

I also liked Ron Perlman as Al, Chuck’s manager and cut-man. Al uses Wepner as a piece of meat he could stitch up and put out there, just trying to get through the next round and the next fight, but genuinely cared about the man underneath the scar tissue. When his boxing career is clearly over, Al sets up a bout with wrestling star Andre the Giant to keep the money and the attention flowing.

“Chuck” stands out from a pantheon of boxing movies, the story of a guy who wasn’t the most skilled fighter or possessed of drive far above his talent level. Wepner was a guy who stumbled into and out of trouble, became famous almost by accident and struggled with that, too. Chuck always took his lumps, and endured.

Review: "Author: The JT LeRoy Story"

Some years ago author James Frey was excoriated for exaggerating portions of “A Million Little Pieces,” which was presented as his memoirs, especially the depth of his personal troubles. This led to a tense January 2006 confrontation with Oprah Winfrey on her show, where she had previously celebrated his work, and Frey’s career has never really recovered.

Perhaps because it happened at nearly the exact same time, the unveiling of author JT LeRoy has gained less notice. But it’s a far more compelling story, one well explored in Jeff Feuerzeig’s fascinating new documentary, “Author: The JT LeRoy Story.”

JT was a literary phenomenon and cult figure during the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially in arts and entertainment circles. A gender-fluid boy from West Virginia who grew up the child of a truck-stop prostitute, JT -- short for “Jeremiah Terminator,” his given and adopted names -- was strung out on drugs, HIV positive and selling his own body for money by the age of 13.

After being encouraged to write by a therapist, much of his experiences were illuminated in his first two novels, “Sarah” and “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things,” published while he was still a teenager. An intensely private person who eschewed in-person interviews, JT’s mystery only grew when he started making a few public appearances, clad in a long blonde wig, sunglasses and hat. In one notable event, he conducted a reading from his book onstage while hiding under a table.

Like a moth emerging from its chrysalis, JT’s celebrity grew and grew, until he became featured in photo shoots, worked on the HBO show “Deadwood” and earned a credit as a producer on Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant.” JT befriended other celebrities, including a close kinship with singer Billy Corgan.

Except for one thing: JT was a girl. And he wasn’t even real.

JT was a literary “avatar” created by Laura Albert, a rather nondescript woman from Brooklyn who was 40 at the time of the debunking. The story was widely circulated as a “hoax” -- with Albert even going so far as to dress up her sister-in-law, Savannah Knoop, as JT for public appearances. Fractured relationships, lawsuits, fraud charges and loss of status resulted.

Feuerzeig interviews Albert extensively, added to old footage and phone recordings to draw a fuller picture. We learn that Albert really did write as a way of therapy to transcend her own history of abuse and depression. She constructed JT as an outlet for those feelings, and was as surprised as anyone when it turned into a legitimate career as an author.

The only problem: JT wrote with such hard-scoured authenticity, everyone expected him to be the real thing.

Albert and Savannah used the ruse of JT for a German television interview, and things just cascaded from there. Albert continued to sketch out the double life, writing herself and husband Geoff Knoop into the story as JT’s housemates and friends. In public appearances, Albert herself took on the role of “Speedie,” a British-accented singer and always close at-hand confidant.

In one stranger-than-fiction occurrence, Albert attends the premier of the film “The Heart is Deceitful,” directed by and starring Asia Argento, based on her book -- but is banished from the red carpet, while Savannah, as “JT,” basks in the limelight.

If you think that’s unfathomable, things only get weirder. (For instance, a strongly implied sexual liaison between Argento and “JT.”)

I don’t want to say more, because unraveling the pretzel of Albert’s emotional journey is where much of the appeal of “Author” resides. If it’s possible to construct a mountain of lies while genuinely pursuing an inner truth, then that is what Albert was striving to do.

Here’s a mesmerizing tale of a made-up person who moved people’s hearts through words. Does it really matter whose they were?