Gerald Foos is
the former owner of the Manor House
Motel, which operated in Aurora,
Colorado. He was the subject of Gay
Talese's 2016 article "The
Voyeur's Motel" in The New
Yorker, in which Talese disclosed that Foos was a long time voyeur of
people staying in his hotel, having installed grilles in the ceiling of most of
the rooms that enabled him to view his guests without their knowledge. Foos's observational focus was the sexual
activities of those staying at the Manor
House.
Both Talese's publication of the article and Foos's actions
sparked controversy. Foos justified his
actions as a means of conducting research concerning sexual behaviors. Talese released a book about Foos and his
motel in July 2016, also titled The
Voyeur's Motel.
In April 2016, Steven
Spielberg purchased the rights to create a film based on Foos's life, with
director Sam Mendes tapped to
direct. The film was cancelled in November 2016 after Spielberg and Mendes
learned of an upcoming documentary feature about the same subject. In regard to the decision to cancel the film,
Mendes expressed frustration that no one had advised them of the documentary's
existence, but said "it has so many
things that are wonderful and can only be achieved by a documentary...the story
became infinitely more interesting and more complicated, but impossible to tell
in a narrative movie."
The New Yorker
article was expanded into a book by the same name. Concerning the book, author
and critic Michelle Dean wrote in:
[S]hortly before the
book appeared, The Washington Post published
an article [by Paul Farhi] that
called Foos’s veracity into question. The reporter pointed out that Foos hadn’t
owned the hotel for part of the time recorded in his journals. Talese,
confronted with this information, did nothing less than freak out. “I’m not going to promote this book,”
he told Farhi. “How dare I promote it
when its credibility is down the toilet?"
However, Gay Talese
discovered that the person who had owned the hotel for that period was still
alive, and contacted him and reported that the person said that Gerald had a
key and complete access over this period. Gay
Talese stated that he had overreacted. Gerald
Foos claimed that he had not brought it up as he had not wanted this
person's name connected to the voyeurism. The documentary film, directed by Myles Kane and Josh Koury, was released on Netflix Dec. 1, 2017, with the title Voyeur.
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