[Did this
short review of a new Netflix documentary for India Today]
A parallel is thus drawn between Foos and Talese and their interests in observing, chronicling, hoarding; there is a visual link of sorts, too, between Talese’s neatly organized “bunker” – where he keeps everything he published as well as all the notes he ever wrote – and a cute little model of Foos’s (now demolished) motel. Talese admits that he is a voyeur himself, deciding how to "shade and colour and choreograph" other people’s stories.
In what
feels like a version of Folie à Deux, the paths of these two men crossed in
1980 (spurred by the publicity around Talese’s book Thy Neighbor’s Wife – about American sexual mores post-WWII – Foos contacted
him with information about his own “research”) and they became friends for a
while. Journalistic ethics were muddied (Talese eventually published a New Yorker article and a book, before realizing that Foos’s story had holes larger
than the ones he had cut out in the motel’s ceiling) and the voyeur came to
feel like he had
been exploited, his secrets excavated. “You don’t put that kind of stuff in
there, you don’t write about a man’s money. I’m really mad at Gay,” says the
man who spent years spying on other people in their most private moments.
Despite this gripping subject matter, and a few stylistic flourishes – Foos creepily playing a younger version of himself, complete with dyed beard, tinkering about with the doll-house, lifting the roof to peer inside; an arresting series of dream-images of his “subjects” looking up, seemingly aware of his
presence – Voyeur is often a listless
film. Perhaps its banality is part of the point (viewer, you came in
expecting a racy narrative about a man who secretly watched people having sex; instead
see two old guys – their heydays long gone – grumbling and pontificating),
but it also feels unfocused, and doesn’t address important questions. How did Foos
lead a somewhat functional life while spending night after night on his
watching station? What did his two wives think? (The second wife, Anita, is
very much part of this film, but she is usually a cipher, a taciturn presence
lending strained support, vacantly singing Happy Birthday to him.) How did a
journalist as canny as Talese let himself be misled?
For anyone who has read Talese’s article and heard about the subsequent controversies, little here will be new or revealing; in fact, the article contains things that make Foos seem more interesting – a melancholy, philosophizing scholar manqué – than he comes across in Voyeur. This film offers a mildly intriguing portrait of the contradictions in a man who wanted to play God and maintain full control over his private universe but also yearned to share his story with the world via a famous practitioner of long-form journalism – thus ensuring that some of the control would be lost. An introvert who spent years in solitude on a viewing platform, and an exhibitionist who wanted to brag about his “achievement”. At times, it feels like Foos may have been an apt subject for another recent (and superior) Netflix production, Mindhunter, which is about other sorts of attention-seeking sociopaths who were committing much bigger crimes in the same period.
----------------
[Related piece: journalistic ethics in the context of the Jeff MacDonald murder case]
-----------------------
Who is the voyeur in Voyeur? The obvious answer is Gerald Foos, a Colorado motel-keeper who spent three decades spying on the sexual and other activities of his guests through vents installed expressly for the purpose. But the man we meet first in this Netflix documentary is the celebrated journalist Gay Talese, and this is what he says: “My life has pretty much been living through other people’s experiences… watching other people."
Who is the voyeur in Voyeur? The obvious answer is Gerald Foos, a Colorado motel-keeper who spent three decades spying on the sexual and other activities of his guests through vents installed expressly for the purpose. But the man we meet first in this Netflix documentary is the celebrated journalist Gay Talese, and this is what he says: “My life has pretty much been living through other people’s experiences… watching other people."
A parallel is thus drawn between Foos and Talese and their interests in observing, chronicling, hoarding; there is a visual link of sorts, too, between Talese’s neatly organized “bunker” – where he keeps everything he published as well as all the notes he ever wrote – and a cute little model of Foos’s (now demolished) motel. Talese admits that he is a voyeur himself, deciding how to "shade and colour and choreograph" other people’s stories.
In what
feels like a version of Folie à Deux, the paths of these two men crossed in
1980 (spurred by the publicity around Talese’s book Thy Neighbor’s Wife – about American sexual mores post-WWII – Foos contacted
him with information about his own “research”) and they became friends for a
while. Journalistic ethics were muddied (Talese eventually published a New Yorker article and a book, before realizing that Foos’s story had holes larger
than the ones he had cut out in the motel’s ceiling) and the voyeur came to
feel like he had
been exploited, his secrets excavated. “You don’t put that kind of stuff in
there, you don’t write about a man’s money. I’m really mad at Gay,” says the
man who spent years spying on other people in their most private moments.Despite this gripping subject matter, and a few stylistic flourishes – Foos creepily playing a younger version of himself, complete with dyed beard, tinkering about with the doll-house, lifting the roof to peer inside; an arresting series of dream-images of his “subjects” looking up, seemingly aware of his
presence – Voyeur is often a listless
film. Perhaps its banality is part of the point (viewer, you came in
expecting a racy narrative about a man who secretly watched people having sex; instead
see two old guys – their heydays long gone – grumbling and pontificating),
but it also feels unfocused, and doesn’t address important questions. How did Foos
lead a somewhat functional life while spending night after night on his
watching station? What did his two wives think? (The second wife, Anita, is
very much part of this film, but she is usually a cipher, a taciturn presence
lending strained support, vacantly singing Happy Birthday to him.) How did a
journalist as canny as Talese let himself be misled?For anyone who has read Talese’s article and heard about the subsequent controversies, little here will be new or revealing; in fact, the article contains things that make Foos seem more interesting – a melancholy, philosophizing scholar manqué – than he comes across in Voyeur. This film offers a mildly intriguing portrait of the contradictions in a man who wanted to play God and maintain full control over his private universe but also yearned to share his story with the world via a famous practitioner of long-form journalism – thus ensuring that some of the control would be lost. An introvert who spent years in solitude on a viewing platform, and an exhibitionist who wanted to brag about his “achievement”. At times, it feels like Foos may have been an apt subject for another recent (and superior) Netflix production, Mindhunter, which is about other sorts of attention-seeking sociopaths who were committing much bigger crimes in the same period.
----------------
[Related piece: journalistic ethics in the context of the Jeff MacDonald murder case]
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