Revealing himself to wider scrutiny for the first time, Foos admits he is nervous, explaining that he fears some may not be bowled over by his decades of devoted research. And if Talese has consulted victims, lawyers, or the vast academic literature on voyeurism, there is no hint of that research in this book. He then published it online. If a guest intrigued him and she lived nearby, he would follow her home. The success of some kinds of documentaries can often be traced to what is, frankly, serendipity. What starts out as New Zealand journalist, David Farriers curiosity about something called Competitive Endurance Tickling quickly spirals into an investigation of one persons sick scam to blackmail young (white, heterosexual, able-bodied) men into obedience and silence. We are witnessing something very private from people who did not give us their consent. Being a journalist does not absolve you of being a human; a voyeur is not just a benign disembodied eye. The links between the two dont stop there. Both Foos and Talese are inclined to talk, and the filmmakers give them space to do so rather than interject with follow-up questions. 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. Add a bio, trivia, and more. The comments below have not been moderated. So much of the damage comes in the discovery, the horror of finding out that your private moments were not private. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Experts say that a feeling of having secret power over people is a crucial part of its attraction. That Fooss decades-long misconduct is excused by the disputable fact that it is fascinating marks the films tonal dissonance. The film is well-made and worth watching. The film does an excellent job of giving these women a platform for expressing how these two men have turned their lives completely inside-out. Foos, of course, is not famous, and in this context is a criminal, but he also considers himself a sort of freelance social scientist, an Alfred Kinseytype, and says that he bought the Manor House Motel as a laboratory. In a set of typed diary entries hundreds of pages long, Foos logged the sexual acts he witnessed, as well as the mundanities of the daily lives of the guests in a middle-of-the-road Colorado motel: positions, numbers of orgasms (and who had them); as well as pacing, television-watching, and bedspread picnic-eating. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns--when the article or book appears--his hard lesson.". Thats what makes Voyeur both a product of its time and a completely outdated one. Readers and soon cinema-goers will doubtless come to their own conclusions. But even if we were to allow this grossly utilitarian justification, what have we learned? WebGerald Foos. In hindsight, some errors are glaringly obvious: There are some obvious and damning gender dynamics at work here, between Gay and Nan and between Foos and his wife, Anita, but Kane and Koury do little to delve into the sexual politics that make Fooss motel an endeavor of masculinity, and an incredibly violating and disturbing one at that. Revealing (The absurdity and bathos of the scenewith Taleses tie slipping through a slat and dangling over the bed, thus almost revealing him and Foosis just one of the bizarrely compelling, borderline unbelievable bits in the piece. Ballard said the story about the sign couldnt be true because Ballard owned the motel at the time Talese said Foos met Anita. When Talese finally got to the motel, he made a fateful decision: He entered the attic with Foos and watched an unsuspecting couple have oral sex. Foos (and occasionally Talese) was the author of the first, and Talese the author, in every sense, of the second. As Talese puts it in Thy Neighbor's Wife, "Men were natural voyeurs, women were exhibitors.". However, Talese means to implicate us, the readers, in this chain of voyeurism. Its the women in Voyeur who could have divulged the most interesting details about their partners, but who remain in the background. Are they still alive? Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. When he writes stories, he explains, hes being similarly omnipotent, setting the mood, the style, and the landscape, and choreographing the action to his liking. Taleses commitment to embedding himself into his stories, then, seems to be a flimsy excuse for him to satisfy his own sexual needs. All rights reserved. The story is about a strange man named Gerald Foos, who owned and operated a motel in Colorado. Instead, it turns itself inside-out, twists the narrative, and ends up a messy clash of gigantic egos. A Voyeurs Comeuppance. Hes now being watched. But Foos isnt the only one. But the Voice of Free America didn't do his research. But Earl Ballard, who bought the motel from Foos in 1980, disputed this. The camera turned him on. WebGerald Foos is the former owner of the Manor House Motel, which operated in Aurora, Colorado. Taleses career is jeopardized when a reporter from The Washington Post finds sizable factual holes in Fooss various accounts. Voyeurisnot a flawless film--ittacitlyreinforces theidea that Taleseis a literary rock starwhile Foos is kind of a loser--but it also doesn't let either subject entirely off the hook. Had the guests been able to investigate them closely, however, they might have been in for a terrible shock: a pair of eyes sometimes two pairs of eyes staring down intently at them. Foos rushed up to the attic to find the womans husband photographing her as she had sex with the other man. I was interviewing a liar. In his kitchen, Foos laments that the whole world is going to point fingers at the voyeur, saying that hes nothing but a creep. Well? his wife replies. After reacquiring it, Foos sold it for good in 1995. There are so many meta levels to this new non-fiction Nobody will ever be able to do what I did, Foos boasts early in the film. Talese traveled to Colorado to meet Foos and see the motel for himself. All of which catches the attention of the foots biological owner, John Wood, who wants it back. If there is a problem with your work, you can affix a disclaimer to it and move along, or you can make the problem the focus of the work, examine it, let it work its uneasy fingers into the story. 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. In an interview on Friday, Foos stood by the account in the book, and criticized Ballard, with whom he had a falling out in 1990. That lack of consent is the book's original, irreducible sin. In preparation for writing the book, He hailed his dingy motel the finest laboratory in the world for observing people in their natural state, logging what they did in his Voyeurs Journal in such detail that he would even visit their rooms when they were out to double check a womans bra size. Is that worth the violation? When the men contact the sites to have their likenesses taken down, they are almost instantly met with threats of lawsuits and exposure, as well as threats against their families. If you thought Tiger King was too optimistic and cheerful, Tickled will surely disavow you of your remaining faith in humanity. Foos insisted that he never harmed any of his guests, since none were aware of his watching them, and so the worst that might be said was that he was guilty of trying to see too much.". There, he accompanied the titular voyeur into the attic of the titular motel to watch unsuspecting guests have sex, go to the bathroom, and otherwise live their private lives. Foos ended up selling the property in 1995. If theres anything in it for them, the film never explores that, either. (Foos watched the whole thing happen, and did nothing; once the drug dealer departed the room, he noticed that the victim was still breathing but decided not to help her.) Pictured, the patch of land where the Manor House Motel once stood. While the movie centers on the two men and their years-long legal battles, much sympathy is given to the women who are forced to endure life alongside them. He explains this to the directors of a new Netflix documentary debuting Friday because Foos has come to be that most contradictory of beings: a voyeur who wants to be seen. 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. 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. 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. And it was exposed that one of the juiciest tidbits of Taleses book, when Foos witnesses a man strangle a woman in a room below in 1977, has striking similarities to a crime that occurred in a motel a few miles away, but no records could be found to corroborate the event that Foos described. The couple eventually married after Foos divorced his first wife, who died in 1984. Sometimes she would lie next to him to watch, too, and occasionally they would have sex up there on what he called his viewing platform. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. John had the idea to turn his amputated foot into a memorial to his dad (as you do), but life is never that simple. The rooms were unremarkable, save for one particular feature: some slightly unusual vents, 6in x 14in louvred screens, prominently located in the ceiling of the bedrooms. Pocket. Im not trying to be self-serving, Talese told Meyers. Beckoning window is perfect, he exclaims. Just as The Voyeurs Motel declined to ask Foos how he thought his victims might feel about being so studiously spied upon, even for the purpose of scientific research, Voyeur doesnt compel him to do any soul-searching. Theres a message to be had about trusting people you never meet face to face, as well as the permanence of the fingerprints we leave online. 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. 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