Voyeur (2017)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Fresh and Exciting

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is like a couple hacks watched The Thin Blue Line and then set out to recreate its weight and nuance but lacking both skill and a compelling subject. It tells the largely non-story of author Gay Talese's effort to immortalize a motel peeping tom. Talese's "insights" into his protagonist seem as manufactured and tenuous as the protagonist's credibility and the film indulges rather than subverts the two blustering egotists it presents. Talese lives in a home ornamented with pictures of himself, while his counterpart has a basement full of "treasures" he boasts are worth millions. Talese's books repeatedly and laughably litter the background of many shots, including one at the home of "the voyeur" where the author just happens to be sitting in an easy chair with an older volume framed nearly touching him. The revelation near the end of the subject's duplicity to the author involves something which any high school kid would have checked before writing a story for his school paper, but neither Talese nor his vaunted fact checkers seem to have bothered. The only real subject here is two old men struggling to burnish their lives with some added relevance as the sun sets. If that alone were worthy of a film, it would have taken a filmmaker with deeper skills and more original ideas.

This was creepy as hell. Man.... at the end of the day there are some weirdos out there. Pretty cool access to a strange story. Interesting characters. The cinematographer was on point most of the time. Wonder what happened to get his guy to do the film? Lol

Upon seeing that the documentary story of Gerald Foos was coming to Netflix, I could hardly believe it. When I read the source material book "The Voyeur's Motel", I thought I was maybe the only actual person to have read it (I now understand why...watch the doc to find out). Much like the book, this documentary adaptation is often a bit of a mess...but it also stumbles upon such an interesting scenario/person that it is riveting for all the right (and often very wrong) reasons all the way through.For a basic plot summary, "Voyeur" recounts the story of Gerald Foos, a motel owner who spied, peeping Tom-style, on his guests for many years via a crawlspace above the rooms. Eventually, Foos began corresponding with journalist Gay Talese and the two formed a sort of "pact of secrecy", as Foos wanted the attention/outlet and Talese knew he was on to a story. But then, a murder takes place and culpability issues abound, and Talese even discovers that Foos may not have been 100% truthful in many of his claims/statements.The "star of this show", so to speak, is easily Foos. He's such a polarizing figure that he will captivate your attention. On one hand, he seems to be a terrible human being. On the other hand, there is a "psychology fascination" with what he is doing (it initially started all about "watching for sex", but then became as much a classification of private behavior as anything). The key here, of course, is to not be turned off by the snap judgment of "this guy is a perverted creep", because there is absolutely no doubting that. But the scale of what he accomplished/observed is fascinating for those who are able to open their minds a bit and give the story a chance to play out.Sadly, this entire concept (from Foos' letters to Talese, to the book, to this doc) has been basically botched from beginning to end. There is no way to verify any of Foos' claims (besides the fact that indeed the crawlspace was confirmed by one visit from Talese to Foos), Talese actually disavowed his book at one point, and this doc is kind of all over the place too. It's messy all over the place.What carries the day and made this so fascinating to me, though, was a look into the psyche of Foos. In a lot of ways, seeing him in front of a camera makes this whole thing "work" a lot more than it did on the printed page. I really think, though, that one's enjoyment of this documentary will be determined by whether morals can be set aside for a bit. What Foos did was reprehensible, but at the same time fascinating (from a purely psychological and logistical perspective). If you can wait and pass judgment on him at the end, you will enjoy "Voyeur". If not, it's probably best you steer clear.

Sometimes we're better off not looking behind the curtain, or behind the ceiling vent. About halfway into Voyeur I realized I was watching a sequel. A sequel to The Odd Couple. Gerald Foos was a passable Walter Matthau and Gay Talese was as good as gold as Jack Lemmon. I kept waiting for Gay to go shopping for produce so he could tell a woman how to select a cantaloupe. This is a documentary for our times. In an era when national news organizations routinely present fake news dressed up as real news here comes a movie about fakery. The tension builds. Will Foos be able to put one over on Gay Talese, the internationally famous author whose clothes closet rivals Cher's? But damn, the man can dress. Talese is more layered than an old time burlesque queen at the start of her act.We wonder, is he really being fooled by . . . a man named Foos? Can this be real? Foos claimed he spent hours upon hours, years upon years sweating and freezing in the attic of his no-tel motel in Aurora, Colorado, viewing the sex acts of strangers and jerking off 3-5 times a night. Lucky for him he kept meticulous notes and lent an air of authenticity to his story by writing to Talese way back in 1980.I think the wrong story is marketed here. To me it wasn't about Foos and his sickness, instead it's a fascinating story about a famous writer at the end of his career, wondering if he wasn't tanking his entire reputation over a weird story from a weird guy. Even someone as talented as Gay Talese, and he is talented, is human in the end and has fears. As mismatched as they were I felt that Talese came to like Foos and moreso Foos's wife. True, maybe Talese thought of them as zoo animals who he couldn't stop looking at or maybe as strangers having sex. But there was never a second when I thought Talese looked down on them or regarded them as lesser human beings.