Review of Voyeur (2017) by Scott M — 05 Jan 2018

When I first read the New Yorker article I was both creeped out and intrigued at how this sort of thing could have happened and for so long. Reading it I even felt kind of like a creep myself, even fourth-hand knowing this information. And yet now, watching this documentary, I realized perhaps it's more of an evolution of voyeurism. Foos watches in private for pleasure, Talese watches for public consumption, and then here we are living vicariously through them both.

In general I sort of feel like the modern condition is built around voyeurism. Reality TV, the internet, anything goes sex and violence, free porn, documentaries about a man who just secretly watched people bone for a decade.... it's almost hard to judge him when he basically just came up with "binge watching" but in real life and decades before it was bought, sold and marketed. Does that still make him a creep? Totally. Does that make us creeps? Yeah dude. Doesn't matter if we're not getting off on it, we're still lapping it up at every turn.

Other than that realization this doesn't really offer much in the way of new information. It's fun to watch Gay Talese strut around in those beautiful suits and that immense ego at least. I love his damn house. I also enjoyed the doll house version of this hotel. But it's pretty strictly a talking head real-time doc of how the book happened, which honestly doesn't offer that many twists or turns that aren't eventually undone by the film itself.