More Froggy

[randy_byers]

Since his death by suicide in June, I've become fascinated by F. Gwynplaine "Froggy" MacIntyre, and I'm not the only one. Froggy was a science fiction writer and fan, a film fan famous (or notorious) for writing reviews of lost films on IMDb, and a man who told many outrageous stories about his life, most of which seem to have been as fantastic as his fake film reviews. For example, he claimed to have been born with webbed fingers (he always wore gloves as an adult) and to have served in an orphan labor camp in Australia. Not only are these claims apparently not true, it appears that nobody knows what his real name or history was. The story of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre begins to resemble that of Christian Gerhartsreiter, who amongst other things claimed to be a scion of the Rockefeller family and married the daughter of somebody I used to work with under those false pretenses.

Last weekend the New York Times ran a long piece about MacIntyre by Corey Kilgannon called "Froggy's Last Story" that contained quite a number of new revelations, including horrifying details of his death and of his abduction and tormenting of a neighbor a number of years ago. This prompted a new thread on the silent film discussion group, Nitrateville, which is where I found the above picture. Plenty of interesting anecdotes there, as in the earlier thread that I linked to in my first post about Froggy, and there's also a link to another interesting story about Froggy by Thomas Gladysz on Open Salon. Meanwhile, I mentioned Froggy's story to Scots film critic and director, David Cairns, on his film blog, Shadowplay, and he said that he thought FGM might be a worthy subject for a documentary. He followed up yesterday with a post about an e-mail exchange he had with Froggy, and the comments include a link to further remembrances collected by Corey Kilgannon on the New York Times blog, some of which seem to get us closer to who Froggy really was.

His charred remains were still unclaimed in a NYC morgue as of last weekend, although the NYTimes article indicated that a relative had finally been tracked down. Further revelations to come, I don't doubt. The story continues to fascinate. Froggy's identity seems to have been his greatest work of fiction.

Comments

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

I've also become rather fascinated by him. I confess I had never heard of him before his suicide but have since been learning plenty about him, so thanks for these links. The good person who had contacted the NYPD to advise them about Froggy is on another list I'm on, and he's clearly been suffering badly ever since, earlier believing he had actually played a part in Froggy's death (needless to say, I'm not at liberty to say who it is). I find that kind of consequence pretty distressing too, but the manner of his suicide seems to indicate a progressively worsening bunker mentality, something that usually ends dramatically with no regard for the fallout.

And concerning the high level of invention about his personal life, I'm rather reminded of Binjamin Wilkomirski (my review of his Holocaust 'memoir' Fragments is here).

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it seems that Froggy was hoping to kill everybody else in the apartment building when he started the fire. It was certainly a risk whether he intended it or not. He had clearly gone off the deep end, and I hope whoever it is who tried to intervene via the NYPD can come around to seeing that.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this adds anything to what you've already read, but there was also an article on io9:

http://io9.com/5637078/the-mysterious-life-and-death-of-scifi-author-f-gwynplaine-macintyre

It seemed like just a summary of links, though.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Luke. Lots of stuff about him is popping up, for sure.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

And then there's the meta-question:

If Froggy's identity is an issue of such fuzzy dispute, how does one verify the burnt body in question is him?

The NYT article talks about DNA testing to a possible found relative, but again, you'd have chain-of-evidence issues, I'd think. (Ie, the person who's come forward may be related to the corpse, but does that necessarily mean they're related to Froggy?)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The possibility that it isn't really Froggy's body has come up in a number of these discussions, although somebody pointed out that it would be tricky to find a corpse to substitute for oneself. Not impossible, but tricky.

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

Not impossible, indeed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Arthur_Rouse

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'd heard of him, certainly, but I'm not sure if I'd read any of his stories.

[scream4noreason.livejournal.com]

Really interesting!