HAHAHA: Holy Shit! Oprah outs James Frey
 

Oprah to author: 'I feel duped'
James Frey upbraided by talk show host

Thursday, January 26, 2006; Posted: 4:17 p.m. EST (21:17 GMT)

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- In a stunning switch from dismissive to disgusted, Oprah Winfrey took on one of her chosen authors, James Frey, accusing him on live television of lying about "A Million Little Pieces" and letting down the many fans of his memoir of addiction and recovery.

"I feel duped," she said Thursday on her syndicated talk show. "But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers."

Frey, who found himself booed in the same Chicago studio where he had been embraced not long ago, acknowledge that he had lied.

A sometimes angry, sometimes tearful Winfrey asked Frey why he "felt the need to lie." Audience members often groaned and gasped at Frey's halting, stuttered admissions that certain facts and characters had been "altered" but that the essence of his memoir was real.

"I don't think it is a novel," Frey said of his book, which had initially been offered to publishers, and rejected by many, as fiction. "I still think it's a memoir."

Thursday's broadcast, rare proof that the contents of a book can lead to great tabloid TV, marked an abrupt reversal from last week's cozy chat on "Larry King Live," when Winfrey phoned in to support Frey and label alleged fabrications as "much ado about nothing."

"I left the impression that the truth is not important," Winfrey said Thursday of last week's call, say that "e-mail after e-mail" from supporters of the book had cast a "cloud" over her judgment.

On a segment that also featured the book's publisher, Nan A. Talese of Doubleday, Frey was questioned about various parts of his book, from the three-month jail sentence he now says he never served to undergoing dental surgery without Novocain, a story he no longer clearly recalls.

Winfrey, whose apparent indifference to the memoir's accuracy led to intense criticism, including angry e-mails on her Web site, subjected Frey to a virtual page-by-page interrogation. No longer, as she did last week, was she saying that emotional truth mattered more than the facts. "Mr. Bravado Tough Guy," she mockingly called the author whose book she had enshrined last fall and whose reputation she had saved last week.

Talese and Doubleday were not spared. Winfrey noted that her staff had been alerted to possible discrepancies in Frey's book, only to be assured by the publisher. She lectured Talese on her responsibilities: "I'm trusting you, the publisher, to categorize this book whether as fiction or autobiographical or memoir."

Talese, an industry veteran whose many authors have included Ian McEwan, George Plimpton and Thomas Cahill, told Winfrey that editors who saw the book raised no questions and that "A Million Pieces" received a legal vetting. She acknowledged that the book had not been fact-checked, something many publishers say they have little time to do, but that future editions would include an author's note saying parts of the book "had been changed."

Winfrey did not unleash publishing's version of the death penalty: revoking her endorsement, a devastating and unprecedented action. Only once before has she turned, relatively mildly, on a book club pick: In 2001, she withdrew her invitation for Jonathan Franzen, author of "The Corrections," to appear on her show after the novelist expressed ambivalence over her endorsement.

Three years ago, Frey stepped up as publishing's latest and baddest bad boy, with tattooed initials on his arm -- "FTBSITTTD" -- bearing a defiant and unprintable message. Winfrey's selection made his book a million seller and Frey a hero to many who believed his story was theirs.

"In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope," Frey said Thursday on Winfrey's show. "And when I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image."

Frey's career will likely never recover, although so far he has not suffered for sales. His book, a million seller thanks to Winfrey, remained in the top 5 Thursday on Amazon.com. A second memoir, "My Friend Leonard," was in the top 20.

He currently has a two-book deal with Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, with a novel about contemporary Los Angeles due in 2007. The publisher did not have an immediate comment Thursday.

Beyond Frey, and his publishers, stories of suffering may themselves take a fall. Frey's saga comes at a time when the work, and even the identities, of such alleged hard-luck authors as J.T. Leroy and Nasdijj have been questioned. St. Martin's Press recently added a disclaimer to an upcoming book by Augusten Burroughs, another memoirist who has been challenged.

"I think for a while, this will make people careful," said Ashbel Green, a senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf.

"But this question of fact checking is a complicated one. At The New Yorker and Time and Newsweek, you have experienced people who know where to go and what's right and what's wrong. We don't. There's been a traditional dependency on the author."


http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/book....ap/index.html

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

After selling 3,000,000 books because of her, he probley doesn't care...:pimp

Actually, with how pre-pubescent he describes himself in his book, I predict:

He will relapse and go nuts on all his addictions (if there ever were any) and then 6 months from now he'll be featured on Dr. Phil





Our pills are being manufactured for our consumption.

yeah indeed ..... now people will buy it just to find out what he lied about:winkwink:

Hahaha ok this is some funny shit.

This stupid jackass will laugh all the way to the bank.....

http://www.gaymainstreet.com/TheStre...isc/jester.gif

I never read the book, but I did read the preview on amazon. When I was reading it I thought it was bull shit.

"I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can."

That paragraph right there led me to believe it was a big load of shit. I figured it was all bull shit and now it looks like it is. I guess some stupid people actually do buy into unrealistic statements like that though.

"One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack)."

Who would actually think this shit is real?

Shit..that's what I was thinking...hehe Bad publicity is GOOD:1orglaugh

Most new authors are not paid royalties on sales. They're given a flat fee. The amount of sales of this book likely only give him more leverage on his fee for the next one. The publisher's making all the profits here.

But now that the truth has been exposed, that next book won't be worth much. :)

Lying schmying. Who cares?

It's a friggin book. Give the guy some creative license.

It's a story.

Are the lives of Americans so dull that they need to find consipracy and half-truths in everything?

WHO CARES?

Look, to me if it's a good book or movie, I could care lesss if they sell fiction as non-fiction. It makes no difference in the outcome of my life.

Good job Frey, I think you shouldn't make a single damn apology. You read a book that Oprah loved, that's what matters. Lots of people loved your book dude.

I don't know man - I think if you cracked it open and read some of it you would be insulted by the machismo bullshit that's in the place of what should be introspective humility..:2 cents: