“There is truth, and that is all that matters.”
So goes the mantra – repeated every other page or so – in James Frey’s best-selling, Oprah-touted memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” in which he portrays himself as a scum-of-the-earth, drug-dealing outlaw who finds redemption in a rehab clinic.
But the scribe – who was exposed last week for exaggerating his criminal past – has in fact lived a privileged life.
Born in Cleveland to a well-to-do family, he moved to St. Joseph, Mich., at age 12, when his father, Bob, was named assistant general counsel for Whirlpool Corp.
His parents were loving and happily married, pals said.
“They’re great people. Kind, generous and supportive,” family friend Donna Dumke told The Post.
But the 36-year-old author now paints a picture of an unhappy childhood.
“I didn’t relate to any of the kids … I hated heavy metal, I thought working on cars was a f—ing waste of time,” he writes. “I started getting taunted, pushed around and beat up.”
He claims this unhappiness drove him to start boozing and smoking dope in middle school.
If that’s true, it’s news to many.
“I saw Jimmy a lot. The outward impression was that he was always healthy, happy and self-assured,” said Nancy Ast, mother of one of Frey’s schoolmates.
“We lived in one of the highest per-capita-income areas in the whole county, so it’s unlikely that he would’ve associated much with ‘metal heads’ or ‘motor heads,'” she added.
Yet, on his Oprah appearance, he elaborated on his outsider image.
“Once people started saying I was the bad kid, I was like … ‘I’ll show them how bad I can be,'” he said.
Amy Heugel, a fellow student at Frey’s St. Joseph’s HS – where he was voted class clown – scoffed at his current bad-boy pretensions.
“It’s sad that he perceives himself as a tortured character. That’s not how we saw him,” she said. “He always seemed happy-go-lucky.”
While locals ignore many of Frey’s dismal portrayals of life in St. Joseph, one twisted claim remains a sore point.
In 1986, classmates Jane Hall and Melissa Sanders were killed in an apparently booze-linked car crash after the driver, another St. Joseph’s student named Dean Sperlik, tried to beat a train at a railroad crossing.
In Frey’s book, the accident happened when he was just 12 years old.
He creates a composite character out of the two teens – whom he dubs “Michelle” – and he writes that he was implicated in the fatal accident because he would sometimes help Michelle sneak out on dates.
“Flat-out lies,” Melissa’s mother, Marianne Sanders, told The Post.
“The story in his book was wrong,” added Jane’s mom, Vicki Popke.
In 1988, Frey entered Denison University, in Granville, Ohio, where he majored in film production.
His life at the upscale liberal-arts college was not quite the drug-fueled thrill ride he describes in his book – blacking out almost every day dealing drugs to buy more drugs, being probed by the cops.
“He had a new Toyota SUV and always seemed to have plenty of money,” said classmate Stephen Jiranek, who graduated the same year.
Another classmate, who spoke anonymously, dismisses Frey’s claim in the book that, in 1992, he fled to Paris after jumping bail on drug-possession charges.
“What really happened is that he went Paris to work at his father’s company,” the classmate said. “Not only did he plan the whole trip, but he brought two Denison girls with him.”
The classmate also said he saw Frey “do a little coke and smoke some pot, but there was no crack at Denison.”
That would debunk a central theme of the book, that Frey’s six-week stint in Hazelden, a rehab clinic in Center City, Minn., began after three years of crack addiction.
Numerous other incidents, such as Frey attacking a fellow patient at Hazelden, sound false to a former patient, who told The Post they could not have happened at the posh, secure facility.
Two years after rehab, he moved to L.A. and sold his first screenplay, “Kissing a Fool,” which would star David Schwimmer.
The producer who bought it says he was surprised to find the writer in top physical form.
“I’ve known a lot of people who’ve lived the hard, drug-ravaged life James said he lived. They’re pretty banged up … But he had none of that,” Tag Mendillo told The Post.
In 2000, Frey hunkered down for a year in his Venice bungalow to write “A Million Little Pieces.”
According to one report last week, Frey once declared, “I’m going to try to write the best book of my generation, and I’m going to try to be the best writer.”
Frey declined to comment through his publisher. The night before The Smoking Gun Web site first reported exaggerations in Frey’s book, he fired off an e-mail to friends, which was obtained exclusively by The Post.
In it, he wrote: “If anyone, from any publication, TV show, radio show or anything else, contacts you to speak about me or ask questions about me, please say no comment and hang up the phone.”
philip.recchia@nypost.com
Author James Frey’s memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” was found to have quite a few holes in it last week. Here, The Post raises some more questions, including some about Frey’s sequel, “My Friend Leonard.”
1. DID FREY DO PRISON TIME?
Despite this passage at the end of “A Million Little Pieces,” in which Frey writes he is leaving rehab for a three-month Ohio prison sentence, an investigation by The Smoking Gun Web site revealed that there is no record of Frey ever doing more than a few hours in an Ohio holding pen.
When someone from the Web site told Frey the longest jail term on record for him was custody served prior to making bail – no more than five hours according to Granville police – Frey replied, “Yeah, that’s something more to the line of what we’re talking about.”
The Web site also spoke to Ohio authorities who said Frey’s descriptions of the facility where he would have served were way off base.
This opens up a morass of problems concerning Frey’s sequel, “My Friend Leonard,” published last June and currently No. 1 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.
“Leonard” chronicles those supposed three months behind bars and culminates in Frey’s release and desperate attempt to return to his rehab girlfriend, Lilly, in a Chicago halfway house. When he arrives, roses in hand, Lilly has just killed herself.
2. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO LILLY?
If there was no prison sentence, then what are readers to make of this critical passage – and others in which Frey anguishes over making it to the increasingly desperate Lilly in time – in “Leonard”?
Halfway houses must file a critical-incident report with the state in the event of a suicide. Illinois Department of Human Services spokesman Tom Green told The Post that no such record exists for around that time period.
All suicides must also be reported to and investigated by the Chicago medical examiner’s office. Cook County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Edmund Donahue said there are no records of a woman in her early 20s hanging herself in a halfway house around that time. Edmund said morgue records show only two young white women died from hanging in Cook County – which includes the greater Chicago area – in that period. He also said neither victim had a relative (Lilly’s grandmother in the book) die around the same time.
The day after Lilly’s death, after a night sitting in his car resisting his strongest urge to drink so far, Frey and a friend go to the morgue so Frey can view Lilly’s body. Later, Frey borrows $30,000 from Leonard and has the bodies of Lilly and her grandmother buried side by side in a Catholic cemetery. And, Frey writes, his friend Leonard sets up a trust fund to tend the graves and have fresh flowers delivered to them forever.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office requires those who want bodies released into their custody to sign a form, which is then kept on file. Donahue said there is no record of James Frey ever visiting the morgue or signing for any body that was ever kept there.
“I don’t recall that. I have no such recollection. That would be unusual to have someone visit – that doesn’t happen,” he said.
The Post called every cemetery listed in the greater Chicago area. Not one said it had two identical stones similarly described, purchased at the same time in the period around 1994. Not one had a record of James Frey purchasing any plots at their cemetery.
Not one said it administers a fund to tend twin graves and replenish them with roses.
3. DID FREY ENDURE THE NOW-LEGENDARY ROOT CANAL WITHOUT NOVOCAINE?
In Frey’s books, he endures and enjoys an unbelievable amount of pain – most notably, two root canals with no anesthesia. He writes that there were no drugs because he is a recovering addict. The Post spoke to staffers at every dental office in Center City – where Hazelden, the real-life clinic where Frey underwent rehab, is located – and in the nearby towns of Lindstrom, Chisago City and Taylors Falls. None of the dentists had any record of Frey or his supposedly anesthesia-free dental surgery.
“We’ve all read ‘A Million Little Pieces,’ and the part about the root canal has to be fictitious,” said a nurse in the office of Dr. Jeffrey Rivard, a Center City dentist who has been in practice there for 26 years.
“Frey’s description of the town he drives into does not match any nearby town – I’ve lived here all my life,” she said.
The incident is so unbelievable that two years ago, the Minneapolis Star Tribune put the question of a dentist denying a rehab patient anesthesia to Dr. Scott Lingle, president of the Minnesota Dental Association.
“Absolutely false,” Lingle told the paper. “No dentist would tell a patient that. I wouldn’t give him a narcotic postoperatively, but Novocaine wouldn’t affect an addiction.”
4. COULD FREY REALLY HAVE BROKEN ALL THE RULES OF REHAB?
Frey characterizes himself as a renegade who gets away with breaking all the rules at one of the world’s most noted rehab facilities. He beats up fellow patient Roy. He meets Lilly for nightly trysts despite rules against male and female clients interacting. When Lilly escapes, Frey goes after her and, with the help of a clinic staffer, finds her in a crack house. When they return, they’re welcomed with open arms. He also never subscribes to the center’s 12-step program.
A former Hazelden patient, who talked to The Post on condition of anonymity, said the behavior of Frey in the book would have led to his immediate expulsion.
“If you get violent, you’re gone,” he said. “My roommate verbally threatened someone with ‘I’ll kill you’ and was thrown out in five minutes.”
He also said men and women are strictly separated.
As for Lilly leaving the Hazelden grounds and Frey chasing after her, the former patient says no way: There’s a zero-tolerance policy for patients who bolt. “Them taking him to go find her is so beyond anything that happens. If you jump the wall, you’re gone.”
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