James frey who is he

Shortly before, they sent Frey their findings. Over dinner, he showed the report to his friend the writer Josh Kilmer-Purcell and asked what he should do. Well, some were little—he never set a county record for blood-alcohol level, for instance. But some were not so little. Not only had the three months of jail time never happened, neither had the crime that led to it: a brutal confrontation with Ohio cops that ended with Frey getting beaten with billy clubs.

In addition, he had invented a role for himself in an actual train accident that led to the deaths of two high-school girls. The Smoking Gun story was beamed around the Internet and hit the mainstream. At least he still had Oprah on his side. But two weeks later, it seemed the only thing resonating with Winfrey was the message she was getting from her fans: How can you stand by this liar? As Talese recounted at a televised publishing conference last July, the show invited her and Frey together.

Talese initially resisted. Then they were approached with a new pitch. Given this scenario, Talese agreed. But when she and Frey arrived at Harpo Studios, in Chicago, they were told that the program was not, in fact, about Truth in America; it was about the James Frey controversy. Winfrey told Frey it would be rough, but said there would be redemption in the end. There was no redemption. This was about the trust I share with the audience who faithfully supports the Book Club and buys the books I recommend; and based on that trust, I thought we were owed an explanation about the truth of this memoir.

He collected countless stares on his journey back to New York and was finally able to breathe only when he got into the taxi to go home. I was just happy to be home. I came home, and my wife gave me a hug. My kid was asleep, and I snuck in and kissed her. When Frey left the apartment the next day for coffee, reporters were staked out at the front entrance of his building, so he slipped out the back.

Soon, the reporters caught on and waited at the back too. There were no colleagues to call for support. It did not ever affect her integrity to the point where she stopped taking money from me.

And that hurt a ton. It hurt a lot. The complaint alleged that the memos demonstrated that McDonald had directed significant embellishment. According to the source Random House quickly resumed paying him. Excrement metaphors proved especially popular.

Frey riding his bicycle was enough to make the kids at Gawker double over at the sheer hilarity. The New York Times covered or mentioned the scandal on a daily basis. Two other literary scandals were playing out around the same time. Augusten Burroughs was being sued for defamation by the family depicted in Running with Scissors as revolting and bizarre the suit was subsequently settled , and cult favorite J.

Neither got the attention Frey did. When Frey learned that Dick Cheney had shot his hunting buddy in the face, he thought the torture might be over. Opening up his e-mail was a stomach-churning experience. Many ex-fans told him they hoped he would die or become an addict again.

It was enough to make him feel like a leper, a man who would stigmatize anyone who had the bad luck to be connected with him. It would be great to go to sleep for a week. When the urge got especially acute, he reached out to friends. His old friend Billy Hult recalls one such day. Do you want me to come by? To his relief, many readers offered their support by e-mail or when they bumped into him on the street, and he still had a handful of close friends who stood by him.

But the collective Schadenfreude of the New York media and publishing worlds proved too cruel to tolerate. Frey found solace in opposite directions—Hollywood and Europe. Frey had an assignment. In March , he took some friends up on an offer to come to the South of France and use their house.

His stay there with his family provided him with temporary calm. When Frey returned to New York two months later, however, nothing there had changed. He soon learned that there was one world he could control—the one he could make up at his computer.

By the summer of , Frey fell in with Glenn Horowitz, a year-old rare-book dealer, who represented a sliver of the literary world that viewed him with special interest and sympathy. The moist environment was unsound, Horowitz explained. More important, Frey had a story that Horowitz wanted to save—a remarkable rise and fall in the age of celebrity and reality TV.

Through Horowitz and McWhinnie, Frey met two other artists of the rebel vein who not only accepted Frey for what he had done, but gave him their stamp of approval. Ballard about his life. Check this out! I wish they would call me that. And then there was Norman Mailer—to Frey, the torchbearer of the rebel-genius tradition. If you would have called me, I would have explained to you how to get through all this mess!

Mailer welcomed Frey into the elite circle of bad boys. Now you have the privilege of being stomped on for the next 40 years. In fact, Frey is now arguably more successful than ever. He signed with publisher HarperCollins in and began work on a new novel, Bright Shiny Morning , which was published in He's also been highly involved in the YA genre, having co-written with author Nils Johnson-Shelton the Endgame trilogy of sci-fi YA novels , which have been optioned for possible movie adaptations by 20th Century Fox.

But the genre has also brought controversy for Frey. In , Frey founded Full Fathom Five, a publishing house meant specifically to create commercially-appealing YA novels. The most notable product of the company has been the Lorien Legacies franchise, a sprawling collection of YA novels on which Frey is credited as a co-writer. The first book in the series, I Am Number Four , even had a film adaptation that was released by Disney in But Full Fathom Five hasn't been without its troubles.

He then moved to Los Angeles and began working as a screenwriter, director and producer. In , Frey began working on A Million Little Pieces which he originally presented as an account of his experiences during alcohol and drug addiction treatment at a rehabilitation center in Minnesota.

Frey also wrote the screenplay for the film Kissing a Fool as well as Sugar: The Fall of the West, which he also directed. Both the movies were produced in The editors at Amazon. The book received excellent reviews from all well reputed newspapers including The New Yorker.