In 2013, Josh Koury, adjunct associate professor of Film, Media, and the Performing Arts, started following legendary journalist Gay Talese as he embarked on a bizarre book project. The project began as a behind-the-scenes chronicle of a writer at work, but the investigation led to a much more complex and interesting narrative.
The resulting film, Voyeur, which premiered at the New York Film Festival in September and is now on Netflix, shadows Talese as he grapples with the story of Gerald Foos. The Denver area businessman purchased a motel in the 1960s for the express purpose of spying on guests through vents he installed in the ceilings. Foos chronicled his patrons’ sexual activities in detailed notes, imagining himself a dispassionate, Alfred Kinsey–style researcher.
At Foos’ invitation, Talese traveled to Colorado in 1980; he was intrigued by the similarities between his observational journalism and voyeurism. Though he witnessed the vents first-hand, he was unwilling to write the book without the use of Foos’ name. In 2013, Talese finally got Foos’ permission, and plans for the book went forward.
Koury and his filmmaking partner, Myles Kane, began the project unsure if they would be granted access to Foos. “When we did, the story became more layered, and at the end of the day it is about the complicated relationship between subject and author,” Koury says.
The film crew trails Talese as he researches Foos’ increasingly dubious story. Foos claimed to have witnessed a murder, but fact-checkers found no record of the crime; his notebooks began in 1966, but property records showed he didn’t purchase the motel until 1969; documents revealed Foos didn’t even own the hotel in the 1980s, and only came to reacquire it at the end of the decade before selling it in 1995. As the discrepancies pile up, Foos and Talese clash on screen, each vying for focus and becoming frustrated because they can’t control the story.
As tensions mount between Talese and Foos, the meaning of the film’s title becomes clear. From Foos to Talese to the audience, Koury says, “to a degree we are all implicated in this chain of voyeurism, we are all kind of in this strange soup together.”
Voyeur plays at IFC through Thursday, December 7 and is available on Netflix.