Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

J. T. LeRoy (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 108 minutes.

R.

In the early 21^st Century a writer name Laura Albert wrote Sarah, an apparently first person, autobiographical account of a homosexual male inflicted with HIV named J.T. LeRoy and his struggle with life. She got her sister-in-law Savannah Knoop to be the avatar of LeRoy and together for six years they pulled the wool over the eyes of the public who read the book (I not only never read it, I never heard of it and, frankly, couldn’t care less).

Directed by Justin Kelly from a script by him and Knoop, based on her book GirlBoyGirl, Laura Dern plays Laura and Kristen Stewart is Savannah, this is a creepy androgynous film that I found off-putting. Laura is an upbeat, enthusiastic mover who encourages Savannah to play J.T. For her part, Savannah seems always reluctant.

I guess everything would have been all right if Laura had just written a straight novel. But since she represented the book as the true story of a real person she found herself in the bind to present that real person. What we see on the screen is a relatively believable story of how she did it and how the two of them carried it off. Not much is said about the dishonesty involved, nor about the damage done by those who believed in the veracity of the book, only to find out it was a sham from the outset.

The film takes the story from when Savannah and Laura meet and carries it through to the denouement, as they eventually get involved in making a movie about J. T.

So it was all news to me. The film is well done and does hold interest, especially if you are new to the tale. But it is creepy, especially the lesbian scenes between Savannah (as J.T.) and Eva (Diane Kruger), who is an actress producing the film about J.T. I was never clear whether or not Eva knew that J.T. was really a woman while they are making out and having sex.

While Dern’s performance is annoying, maybe that’s what she’s supposed to be. Stewart gives a believable performance assuming that Savannah really was going along against her better instincts. Since they did it for six years, though, that’s a little hard to swallow. And she has made a career out of what she did. In the end it basically whitewashes what she/they did that was blatantly dishonest and reprehensible. But this film does tell the story, if you're interested.