As the journal progresses, however, the story takes a disturbing turn: Foos had a habit of going into his guests rooms and dispensing with any drugs they had; he had witnessed drug deals from the attic and disapproved. He wasnt exaggerating. Had movie mogul Steven Spielberg stumbled across the Manor House Motel, sandwiched between fast-food outlets and car repair shops on the gritty main street of a nondescript U.S. town, chances are he would have hurried straight past. Shes long ago accepted what he is. Taleses pushback comes as new questions concerning the veracity of The Voyeurs Motel have come to light. I was lied to. Although he admits to being sexually aroused by his spying, he is also intellectually curious: He fastidiously records details about the occupants (especially about their sex lives), and believes himself to be gleaning a great deal of sociological insight into them. But Earl Ballard, who bought the motel from Foos in 1980, disputed this. Thats what makes Voyeur both a product of its time and a completely outdated one. WebGerald Foos is the former owner of the Manor House Motel, which operated in Aurora, Colorado. My voyeuristic urges will now be placed into effect on a plane higher than anyone else has contemplated.. ", "Often regarded as a weapon," he writes, it "is also a burden, the male curse. 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. He glosses over his crime under the guise of research and observation of the human condition, even while he admits that he specifically sought out guests engaged in sexual relations. He never even performs the basic exercise of imagining what it would feel like to be the victim of voyeurism. I think of the queasy and incisive book Janet Malcolm could have written. But Foos was unwilling to reveal himself to be the voyeur, so Talese abandoned the idea, left behind in his many archives in the basement of his Upper East Side townhouse. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. And if we read it as I did, and wish I hadn't he succeeds: We are guilty, too. Gerald Foos, the story goes, is a man whose life was spent in the shadows, lurking in an attic above the Manor House Motel, where for more than 20 years he observed guests fight, sleep, watch TV, shower, and have sex. Add a bio, trivia, and more. That lack of consent is the book's original, irreducible sin. Finders Keepers is full of that ridiculous, train-wreck, cant-look-away quality that made Tiger King such a hit. 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. Is that worth the violation? We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Foos almost gave himself away several times. In 1973, for example, he catalogued 184 male and 33 female orgasms from 296 sexual acts, noting the sexual positions. Dr John ONeill, director of the Menninger sex addiction clinic in Texas, dismisses as self-delusion Fooss attempts to intellectualise his peeping and his insistence he never hurt anyone. Being a journalist does not absolve you of being a human; a voyeur is not just a benign disembodied eye. 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. Voyeurism is about hiding and the powerlessness of childhood. The Netflix documentary explores the writer Gay Taleses odd relationship with his subject Gerald Foos, a peeping tom. For all that Talese spends the movie humblebragging about his journalistic integrity, its clear he cared more about telling a salacious, titillating story than in checking the facts from his single, already unreliable source. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. 'I Write About Awful People,' Says Gay Talese, Credibility Concerns Overshadow Release Of Gay Talese's New Book, Foos lied to Talese about a number of important facts. See rank. Nov 30, 2017, 11:41am PST. 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. The metaphor is clearthe voyeur, as Foos frequently refers to himself in his records, feels godlike, with a power over the mortals he observes that spurs his ever more entitled behavior. Talese, one of the progenitors of a literary form of non-fiction called the New Journalism, said in an email that he would address questions about his reporting, but then did not reply when pressed for specifics. A Voyeurs Comeuppance. He was born on November 27 2008. 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. Gerald C. Jerry Martin Jr. of Braintree, passed away unexpectedly on Tuesday. I think the book will create a real situation, lets put it that way, he says. The author traveled to Aurora, where he and Foos crept into the 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.. Other documentaries feel so tame after the dumpster fire flamboyance of Tiger King. In interviews to promote The Voyeurs Motel over the past week, Talese has defended his reporting about his subject, Gerald Foos, who said he spied on guests of his Colorado motel from an attic perch for decades. Hes absurdly grandiose at times, apparently delusional at others, and yet almost pathetically needy for Taleses approval. They even uncover the discrepancies later revealed by The Washington Post, but are undeterred. 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. Talese had ethical doubts occasionally, in this book, he'll produce these qualms as if for applause, and then immediately usher them offstage but he flies to Colorado anyway. But so far is he from Malcolm and her characteristic self-interrogation that, in a recent NPR interview, Talese compared himself to Alfred Kinsey and James Joyce, saying that in their times they were both considered peddlers of smut as if his critics are prudes unhappy that he is explicit about sex, rather than concerned about his factual errors and the ethical problem of writing about people without their consent. What could justify encouraging this? The level of meta-storytelling they attempt to tell delves into all the most superficial corners, like watching Taleses daughter, an artist, paint Fooss motel for her fathers book; Talese and Foos, when they first meet in 2013, stay at a motel, in case you didnt know what theyre getting at here. 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. Talese initially disavowed the non-fiction book amid questions about an eight-year gap in Foos ownership of the motel during the 1980s. Morgan Entrekin, the president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, told me that because of the books reliance on over 20,000 words of copyright material, we either have a choice of not using it, or paying the copyright owner a fee. When I asked about Foos, Entrekin responded by saying, Is the guy a particularly savory character? Talese means to implicate us, the readers, in this chain of voyeurism. Pocket. So much of the damage comes in the discovery, the horror of finding out that your private moments were not private. 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. Yet that pales into insignificance compared with some of the behaviour Foos observed as an adult, such as the trio two neatly dressed men and a woman who turned up within months of him opening for business and asked for a single room. The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. Gerald Foos (left) and Gay Talese in 'Voyeur'. Foos rushed up to the attic to find the womans husband photographing her as she had sex with the other man. Talese was about to publish Thy Neighbor's Wife when he got a strange letter. He draws us into his collapsible telescope: We are watchers of a watcher of a watcher watching the watched. It could have included abuse, but is always likely to have been abnormal. Its astonishing that, on so many levels, Taleses work was validated, and funded, to such an extent (the documentary included). I dont know if Im ready for anything, to be honest with you. However, Talese knows Foos was telling the truth because he invited the writer to see his twisted operation for himself. 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. One such voyeur victim, apparently, of the terrible and stern dictates of the penis is Gerald Foos, the subject of Talese's new book. That lack of consent is the book's original, irreducible sin. Mid-media storm in Voyeur, Fooss wife Anita stares hesitantly at a copy of The Denver Post on their driveway, as if afraid its going to bite her. He opened up his home to you, his bedroom to you, his wife to you, Talese says, as the camera pans over his home, his office, a photo of him with his wife. 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