Voyeur, sexual spying
A Netflix Documentary about a Peeping Tom
It all started in 1980 when a sociopath named Gerald Foos contacted writer Gay Talese to divulge his sinister plans to buy a motel and outfit it with secret visual access to the rooms. His purpose? As the title Voyeur implies, Foos wanted to watch every dirty little thing going on behind the cheap wooden doors of his establishment.
Talese was intrigued enough to go visit the Manor House Motel in Colorado and even participated in a snoop session with Foos spying on a couple having sex…for research, of course. The two men stayed in touch over the years until 30 years later when Talese published The Voyeur’s Motel, in the New Yorker, and then turned it into a book. When it hit bookshelves, well, let’s just say, the shit hit the fan. Talese received scathing reviews, along with Foos’s wrath.
Directors Myles Kane and Josh Koury have patched together a he said/he said documentary, very similar to Errol Morris’s Award-winning film, The Thin Blue Line, using actual footage plus elaborate reenactment scenes based on Foos’s recollections. And with a soundtrack by Joel Goodman that’s eerily reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti’s bass-heavy music on Twin Peaks meets Phillip Glass’s repetitive synthetic sounds, this fascinating documentary about obsessive voyeurism is a must-watch.
Voyeur airs on Netflix beginning December 1st.
