In 1980, he wrote to Gay Talese, a celebrated New York writer and chronicler of exotic sexual behaviour, to boast: Sexually, I have witnessed, observed and studied the best first-hand, unrehearsed, non-laboratory sex between couples, and most other conceivable sex deviations during these past 15 years.. Quite how extensive they became was made clear to Talese that night as soon as Fooss live-in mother-in-law had gone to bed. Talese was about to publish Thy Neighbor's Wife when he got a strange letter. The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. Although Foos styles himself as a sociologist, describing his motel as a laboratory and his peeping space as an observation platform, he also freely confesses that the act of watching others without their consent was a sexual predilection, and that he masturbated several times a night while doing so. The mystery of his mother going in that closet and the fact he couldnt see her naked, that would have been titillating and frustrating, he says. None could think of a more extreme case of voyeurism, which is one of the more common fetishes or paraphilic disorders a technical term for sexual perversions. And if we read it as I did, and wish I hadn't he succeeds: We are guilty, too. "Maybe as a writer, I'm a smut peddler, but this is the voice of free America," Talese told NPR's Lynn Neary. Do not sell or share my personal information. But Earl Ballard, who bought the motel from Foos in 1980, disputed this. Every night and day if he felt they looked the type he would creep up into the motels attic and peer for hours down through the fake air vents installed in the ceilings of more than a dozen rooms. WebUsing archival footage, news reports, and new interviews, Kane and Koury follow Foos, his second wife, Anita, and Talese as the journalist prepares to write a major piece for the New Yorker in advance of the release of his latest book, The Voyeurs Motel. He makes some bad choices that lead him down a dark path which will eventually find him addicted to drugs, estranged from his family, and homeless, thus leading to the auctioning of his possessions from storage. The penis, Gay Talese writes in Thy Neighbor's Wife, his 1981 book on the American sexual revolution, "knows no moral code. A few mentions of the fact that most people who stayed in the motel are likely dead (questionable, given that Foos is still alive) serve to ameliorate any guilt or regret. Finders Keepers is full of that ridiculous, train-wreck, cant-look-away quality that made Tiger King such a hit. In 1973, for example, he catalogued 184 male and 33 female orgasms from 296 sexual acts, noting the sexual positions. Talese, 84, recounts his long and bizarre friendship with Colorado motel owner Gerald Foos in a forthcoming book, parts of which he sent to Talese after first contacting him in 1980. Everyone in this movie is white. Out of it stem other, lesser faults faults of fact, taste, and ethics but it is this violation that makes the whole book basically untenable. All rights reserved. In the films final scene, he marvels at how Foos responded to the cameras, given all the risks involved to his reputation. Later, when the book is released, a team from The Washington Post confronts Talese with several factual inconsistencies. Once, he saw a guests dog foul a rooms carpet and furious when they didnt own up when they checked out he frogmarched them back to the room and pointed to the stain. Help contribute to IMDb. It was a bizarre message (he doesnt once mention Foos by name), both more contemptuous and pitying of Foos than anything in the actual piece. Or rather, that what he thought was a friendship was, in fact, nothing more than a transactional relationship governed by a single motivation: the story. But a strenuously-researched book, written with the consent of its subjects, about the dynamics of a Mafia family has clear value; a rigorless profile of a single Peeping Tom does not. Foos didnt just watch, he recorded meticulously. Taleses career is jeopardized when a reporter from The Washington Post finds sizable factual holes in Fooss various accounts. For all his caution, he did sometimes take risks. Not for him the simple, if deviant, pleasures of watching a neighbour slip into her nightie. He produces immaculately kept journals of his time spying on his motel guests, but some quick fact-checking proves that at least some of his dates are wrong. (His hypocrisy and moralism on certain issuessuch as government spying, which he is againstis one of the things that make him such an interesting protagonist.) Relaxed with his hand in his pocket and his arm around Camilla, the new portrait of the King that puts William and Kate at the heart of his monarchy: Palace release official shot taken on eve of Queen's funeral to mark the start of Charles III's reign, Portland mayor Ted Wheeler LAUGHS at woman who confronts him over homelessness crisis - after she moved to the city for its progressive policies: 'I'm so sick of having politicians pander to a woke agenda that's been an epic failure', Can Prince Harry's memoirs be stopped? Gerald Foos (left) hand-picked Gay Talese to tell the story of how he spied on guests at his Colorado motel for decades. Talese, writing both his book and an article for The New Yorker, makes an enormous deal of telling us about the remarkable fact-checkers at the magazine, yet several of Fooss claims manage to fall through the cracks. The real interest of Taleses piece, in other words, is Foos himself. (The murder appears to have occurred in 1977Foos is bad with datesbefore Talese entered the picture. Nobody will ever be able to do what I did, Foos boasts early in the film. This alone makes the film by turns fascinating and unsettling. We can join them in the attic, or we can do what Foos and Talese didn't: Look away. Its good to know that Talese is finally feeling responsible for something, but the problem is that Foos behavior was able to continue undisturbed for so long, not that it is now finally public. Movies. But Talese never attempts to contact the victims, although Foos gave him their names and addresses. The links between the two dont stop there. As an amputee, John qualifies as a cluvie, but dont pity him. Photo illustration by Slate. Taleses commitment to embedding himself into his stories, then, seems to be a flimsy excuse for him to satisfy his own sexual needs. Instead, it turns itself inside-out, twists the narrative, and ends up a messy clash of gigantic egos. Hes everyman.. Anita, Fooss quiet and strange wife (who should be played by Kate McKinnon if the scrapped Voyeur movie ever gets made), says she misses the motel, and even Talese presents the voyeur like the journalist's dark twin the curious invisible observer taken a step too far. Dogs, he admitted, were an unforeseen hazard as they could detect his presence and would often stare at the vent and bark. The compulsion usually starts before the age of 15 and becomes progressively stronger and more extreme. On Thursday, he went further, telling Late Night host Seth Meyers that the Washington Post which initially revealed flaws in the book was wrong in its reporting. We get a Cliffs Notes version of Taleses controversial career, including his most famous essay, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold in Esquire, and his talk show appearances after Thy Neighbors Wife, which cast Talese as a sexual renegade. Talese writes that Foos climbed down from a ladder and struck up a conversation with the woman, who was towing her two young sons in a wagon. But he then reversed himself, saying he had over-reacted when he first learned about the ownership gap late last month. Foos wrote to Talese in 1980 with his story, guessing correctly that it would pique the interest of the writer, who had made a name for himself as a kind of undercover reporter in the jungles of free love with his book Thy Neighbors Wife. When Foos, a former U.S. Navy underwater demolition expert, bought the single-storey, green-and-white-painted motel in the Denver, Colorado, suburb of Aurora in 1969, he wrote in his journal that it was the fulfilment and realisation of a dream that has constantly occupied my mind and being. By his own account and that of county property records, Foos sold the motel to Ballard in October 1980 at least a full year before he said hed met his wife at the motel. When Foos, a former U.S. Navy underwater demolition expert, bought the single-storey, green-and-white-painted motel in the Denver, Colorado, suburb of Aurora in 1969, he wrote in his journal that it was the fulfilment and realisation of a dream that has constantly occupied my mind and being. Netflixs 2017 documentary Voyeur starts as a straightforward documentary that follows iconic writer Gay Talese as he spends 30 years with self-proclaimed voyeur Gerald Foos. After his wife died, he married another woman Anita who, oddly, was even more enthusiastic about his voyeurism. I would give as much money as Taleses book advance to hear what Nan Talese has to say about all of this. Now, with America a Voyeuristic Nationso much of it in the name of security (which I explain in the magazine excerpt) it is almost pathetic to witness the petrified voyeurseeking privacy.. Joan Didion Doesn't Owe the World Anything. Voyeur (2017) 1 Video. He draws us into his collapsible telescope: We are watchers of a watcher of a watcher watching the watched. Foos certainly felt betrayed by Talese, and immediately regretted consenting to the project upon the publication of Talese's New Yorkerpiece. Talese means to implicate us, the readers, in this chain of voyeurism. Foos is outed as a serial peeping tom in Taleses story, which creates a maelstrom of media attention, and subjects him and his wife to threatening phone calls. Voyeur (2017) 1 Video. Having bought the 21-room motel, Foos ingeniously converted it into a perverts paradise and spent the next 26 years spying on his guests sexual behaviour. But because Foos insisted on remaining anonymous, preserving for himself the privacy he denied his guests, Talese filed his reporting away, assuming the story would remain untold. That lack of consent is the book's original, irreducible sin. Although Talese was unaware of the gap in Foos ownership until told of them last month, he has essentially dismissed concerns about this while promoting the book this month. Its the women in Voyeur who could have divulged the most interesting details about their partners, but who remain in the background. In his 1996 essay "Origins of a Nonfiction Writer," Talese says that he writes about those "who have earned society's disapproval and contempt," in order to "illuminate a larger area in which a part of us all live." But on camera hes stranger still, a burly man with dyed black hair and oversized tinted glasses. But by the end,Voyeurmorphs into something unexpected, and evenmoreself-referential than the initial conceit of an author identifying with his subject: it becomes a documentary about journalism itself, including documentary filmmaking. Instead, the 84-year-old journalist ventured out to Boston University last week, and made a series of simultaneouslyinane and offensivecomments about female writers. The directors dramatize some scenes of Fooss antics in the attic, and construct a dollhouse-like model of the motel itself to reveal how Foos toyed with his customers, planting sex toys and pornography in some rooms and empty suitcases in others. She had big boobs, Foos continues, which gets an Oh, my god out of Taleseits like watching two middle schoolers share a Playboy. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. The movie is built around the question of what could compel both menstudious longtime observers of human behaviorto turn themselves into subjects, given all the attendant risks of exposure. But I dont blame the aggressiveness of reporters in trying to check the facts. You cant make this stuff up, Gay Talese says in the beginning of Voyeur, the new documentary chronicling the development of his book The Voyeurs Motel, which was excerpted as a controversial New Yorker article, and, as of Friday, is available on Netflix. Foos has large, professionally shot photographs of himself hung proudly in his stairwell; so does Talese. Gerald Foos (left) and Gay Talese in 'Voyeur'. Talese was about to publish This guy isnt creepy, Talese explains. He said Foos, a longtime friend, had told him that he met Anita when Foos picked her up while she was hitchhiking. That is not a courtesy extended to the people in the motel rooms whose sex lives are described by Talese and also in long quoted passages of Foos's journals, although Talese had their names and addresses. Anita, his wife and fellow voyeur, is still alive, but Foos is estranged from his son, Mark, whose views on his fathers unedifying obsession are not known. The story is paramount. Inthis sense,Voyeur is a close cousin of Janet Malcolm's 1987 book,The Journalist and the Murderer, about the relationship between the writer Joe McGinnis andthe subject of one of his books, Jeffrey MacDonald, a former army doctor who was convicted of murdering his wife and children on an army base in 1970. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. And if we read it as I did, and wish I hadn't he succeeds: We are guilty, too. Talese means to implicate us, the readers, in this chain of voyeurism. As a counterpoint to the films mysterious antagonist, we are allowed a brief glimpse into one tickle fetishists more above-board world of movie-making. Foos wrote to Talese in 1980, hoping someone would tell his story without revealing his name or blowing his cover. But I reasoned it was too late to save the drug dealers girlfriend I felt worrisomely like a co-conspirator. Taleses reasoning, such as it is, would mean that no one should ever turn anyone else in for a crime that has already been committed. What could justify encouraging this? Foos, meanwhile, grows increasingly hostile to his perception that Talese thinks he's better than Foos, hobnobbing with big shots in New York while Foos and his wife spend their days watching TV in the Denver suburbs. He was the subject of Gay Talese's 2016 article "The Voyeur's No.. And the adorable model of the motel they use to show how Foos spied on his customers is a twee representation of what was essentially a crime scene. Its here that things get murky. But around 1982, Ballard said he used wood and carpet to close off the vents that Foos had installed to peer into guests rooms from the annex. Their relationship is based on co-dependence and mutual self-delusions until Fooss stories start to unravel; when that happens, its every egomaniac for himself. The Jinx, for example, the investigation into the crimes of Robert Durst, pivots around Durst confessing on a hot mic. Pictured, the patch of land where the Manor House Motel once stood. And yet the methods by which the documentarians excuse it are hallmarks of a media genre that is very much of-the-zeitgeist: true crime. Talese initially disavowed the non-fiction book amid questions about an eight-year gap in Foos ownership of the motel during the 1980s. Its hard to feel sorry for him. In any case, Foos himself has said previously that he didnt have access to the motel from 1983 until 1988, when it was owned and operated by a family to whom Ballard had sold it. Talese agreed and he recalls arriving in Denver in 1980, where he was met by a slightly overweight, 6ft tall man in his mid-40s who wore spectacles and projected a friendly expression befitting an innkeeper. The film is well-made and worth watching. Im not trying to be self-serving, Talese told Meyers. Even their strange friendship had been the entire movie, its already pretty intriguing. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Pentagon: First Ukrainian troops finish training on U.S. Bradley combat In 1981, Talese released another book, titled Thy Neighbors Wife. The book was hailed as a pioneer in the study of sexuality. The extraordinary tale a chilling insight into what drives an otherwise respectable, married, father-of-two to sink to such depths will, with Spielbergs interpretation, doubtless have cinema audiences riveted and appalled. Like all addicts, voyeurs try to rationalise their addictions and Foos insisted he was engaged in a serious scientific study akin to that of the famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Knowing that Talese was a journalist who loved a good story about sex in America, Foos contacted Talese in 1980, and they began a long relationship meant to culminate in the 2016 release of the book, The Voyeurs Motel. I reached out to New Yorker editor David Remnick, who declined to comment beyond what he said to the Washington Posts Paul Farhi: While the scene is certainly disturbing (Talese writes that he was shocked, and surprised to read the account in the journal), the New Yorker does not believe that Talese or it violated any legal or ethical boundaries in presenting Fooss account of it to the reader. Reading Taleses story, it is impossible not to wonder what else Foos had been up to. Anyone familiar with Gay Taleses brand of literary journalism, which has become a defining style, is likely familiar with another pioneer, Janet Malcolm, who said this of her chosen genre, biography: The voyeurism and busybodyism that impel writers and readers of biography alike are obscured by an apparatus of scholarship designed to give the enterprise an appearance of bank-like blandness and solidity. Nowadays we can replace apparatus of scholarship with apparatus of television, the most prolific mode of true-crime storytelling, and the pitfalls of which Voyeur illustrates. 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