Punk'd (Part 2)

AUTHOR: THE J.T. LEROY STORY (B-minus) - I can't help thinking that there is a powerhouse documentary to be made about the epic literary scam pulled off by Laura Albert, who at the turn of the millennium posed as a troubled teenage boy to burn up the best-seller lists and hoodwink a cadre of C-list celebrities. This is not it.

Jeff Feurzeig ("The Devil and Daniel Johnston," "The Real Rocky") has such an explosive story at his fingertips, but he fails to put it all together. He spends a lot of time with Albert, a chubby girl turned lean middle-aged punk, as she unfurls the story of how her creation got out of hand.

J.T. Leroy was a literary sensation, the supposed teenage son of a truck-stop prostitute, pushing all the buttons of the book world and attracting celebrities drawn to the optics of gender politics. But it was Albert doing the writing and her former sister-in-law eventually taking on the mysterious public persona of the androgynous young writer.

With most people knowing how this turns out, Feurzeig doesn't pretend to be unraveling a "Serial"-type mystery. But he engages in a few of those tropes, and this one too often drags along. Albert can be engaging, but she's a little too in love with her legacy. Publishing-world talking heads don't much insight.

If you enjoy knocking B-list celebrities down a notch, there might be some thrills in watching the likes of Winona Ryder and Tom Waits fawn over "J.T." as the second coming of William Burroughs.

This wasn't the most shocking of scams of the last generation, and in Feurzeig's hands, it has lost a bit of its pop.

GIMME DANGER (B-minus) - Speaking of pop, our Jim Jarmusch trilogy ends with this fond, occasionally engaging documentary about Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the Nixon-era bad boys who are credited with inventing the '70s punk rock movement.

Jarmusch is too much of a fan-boy to really dig deep into the crevices of the band's legacy, and his visual style is surprisingly corny.  This is a lot more fond than it is engaging.

Depending on your tolerance for Iggy Pop (ne James Osterberg), your mileage here will vary. My biggest revelation halfway through this film: Iggy is really only moderately talented -- as a singer, songwriter, performer. And his bandmates were not particularly interesting.

The Stooges pretty much stole their shtick from fellow Michiganders the MC5. Iggy's lyrics, as Jarmusch notes, were embarrassingly rudimentary. Ron Asheton imagined a few killer hooks and riffs, most notably the legendary power chords that drive "I Wanna Be Your Dog."

These slacker dudes from Ann Arbor were discovered by Danny Fields, the subject of the recent "Danny Says," and signed to Elektra Records, which released their little-noticed self-titled debut in 1969 and their even more shunned (but enduring) followup, "Fun House," the next year.

Iggy, a former drummer with the garage band the Iguanas, developed that spastic shirtless stage presence that must have seemed stale by 1972. By then, he and most of his bandmates were hooked on heroin and had lost that record deal. David Bowie rescued Iggy around that time, and they gathered the old band for one last gasp, "Raw Power," with such scorchers as "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell" and "Search and Destroy."

Iggy would go on to redeem himself later in the decade with alt-classics like "The Passenger" (famously covered by Siouxsie and the Banshees) and "Lust for Life" (forever stamped on the culture by "Trainspotting" in 1996 and later dropped through the lookingglass in a cruise-ship commercial).

In the end, here, the band members just don't have a compelling story to tell. They may have had a profound impact on a teenage Jarmusch back in the day, but his adoration can't justify a 108-minute slog through the faded past.

BONUS TRACKS
Alejandro Escovedo and Peter Buck cover "I Wanna Be Your Dog" in Athens, Ga., a few years ago:



James Osterberg drumming with the Iguanas in 1965: