Gay Talese
Self
Overview
Legendary journalist Gay Talese unmasks a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades. But his bombshell story soon becomes a scandal of its own.
Cast
Reviews
3 min readThe Journalist and the Peeping Tom: Who’s Really Watching Whom?
I’ve always been fascinated by the voyeurism inherent in journalism—the way reporters position themselves as invisible observers, documenting lives while insisting they don’t interfere. Voyeur, the 2017 documentary by Josh Koury and Myles Kane, takes that tension and twists it into something far more unsettling. Here, the journalist isn’t just observing; he’s being observed right back. And the observer, it turns out, might be just as morally compromised as the subject he’s exposing.
The film centers on Gerald Foos, a Colorado motel owner who, for decades, spied on his guests through custom-built vents in the ceilings. His targets? Couples having sex, businessmen counting cash, families arguing—ordinary people in moments of unguarded intimacy.
Foos didn’t just watch; he took notes, filling ledgers with meticulous observations about human behavior. And then, in the 1980s, he reached out to Gay Talese, the legendary New Yorker writer, with an offer: full access to his archives, his motel, and his twisted life’s work. Talese, ever the chronicler of human eccentricity, said yes.
What unfolds is less a true-crime exposé and more a hall of mirrors. The filmmakers don’t just document Foos’s crimes; they interrogate Talese’s complicity in them. At one point, Talese admits he visited Foos’s motel and even stayed in one of the rooms under surveillance.
Audience Opinions
Broad evidence
Audience 6.8/10
"A fascinating but flawed documentary that can't reconcile its subject's controversial legacy with compelling storytelling."
Gerald Foos's decades of voyeurism and his unusual relationship with journalist Gay Talese make an intriguing premise. Many feel the film doesn't critique Foos's actions deeply enough and offers no satisfying resolution, raising more questions than it answers.
What viewers praise
- Intriguing premise A motel owner secretly watching guests for decades is an inherently compelling subject.
- Unique access Direct access to Gerald Foos and Gay Talese gives rare insight into their perspectives.
- Thought-provoking themes Raises questions about privacy, ethics, and voyeurism today.
Common complaints
- Lacks critical depth Doesn't challenge or analyze the ethics of Foos's actions enough.
- Unsatisfying resolution An anticlimactic ending with no closure.
- Slow pacing Drags in parts, especially the middle.
- Ambiguous tone Wavers between fascination and critique, which some find confusing.
Recommended for
True crime documentary fans Ethics and privacy debate seekers Gay Talese enthusiasts Unconventional story lovers
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsGay Talese flushed his book in one quote. He fished it out the next morning.
June 30, 2016. The Washington Post walked the 84-year-old New Journalist through county records. Gerald Foos had sold the Manor House Motel in Aurora, Colorado, in 1980 and did not buy it back until 1988. Talese's Grove Press book, The Voyeur's Motel, due in two weeks, still had Foos in the attic for those years. Talese told the paper, "I should not have believed a word he said." Then the line that ate the publicity tour. "How dare I promote it when its credibility is down the toilet?" Twenty-four hours later Grove Atlantic mailed a correction of the correction. He was "not disavowing the book and neither is my publisher." He had been "surprised and upset" and had "probably said some things I didn't, latestnetflix.com contends, and don't, mean",.
Netflix's Voyeur exists because cameras were already in the room for that panic. Myles Kane and Josh Koury had spent about five years with Talese. They told The Telegraph they started on a living biopic of the man behind "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" and Thy Neighbor's Wife. Foos had written him in 1980, smelling a kindred subject after the sex book. Kane called the pairing "sort of like a doomed love affair." The Post story, the walk-back, and the collapse of a Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes feature all landed while they were still rolling. The Hollywood Reporter later said Amblin dropped the project after the tale was treated as fiction,.
He built vents. The calendar did not cooperate.
Foos said he bought a high-roof motel so he could watch guests have sex through ceiling vents from a walkable attic. He kept journals, counted orgasms, and styled himself a sociologist. His "observation platform" is the image the documentary sells. His dates are the problem. Early journal entries are marked 1966. Property records put the purchase in 1969. Talese already hedged in the April 2016 New Yorker excerpt. "I cannot vouch for every detail that he recounts in his manuscript." The Post added the eight-year gap. Foos said he still had keys. Talese later told Seth Meyers he had overreacted, that the Post was "wrong," and that the next owner, Earl Ballard, confirmed Foos kept sneaking in. Foos also claimed he watched a 1977 murder. No matching police record has surfaced. Treat that as his story,,.
Vanity Fair printed the reporting detail that aged into lore. Talese visited the attic himself. His tie slipped through a grate and nearly gave the game away. TheWrap quoted the deal he thought he had with Foos. "For me to tell the truth, and for him to live with it." The Guardian flagged the moment Talese says of Foos, early in the film, that "he's not creepy." The rest of the 96 minutes tests that sentence,,.
Netflix announced the documentary in August 2017 next to a Joan Didion film. It premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 4 and went global on the service December 1. The official trailer opens on Foos. "They couldn't hear me, they couldn't see me, it was exactly what I wanted." Rotten Tomatoes scored 79 percent from 28 reviews. IndieWire said the movie was "so eager to tell a good story that it tells the wrong one." The New York Times wanted a shower. Kane and Koury got both men on camera while the reporter watched his source come apart,,.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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