Gay spy hotel
On January 7, , journalist Gay Talese received an anonymous letter in the mail. It was from Gerald Foos, the proprietor of the Manor Noun Motel in Aurora, Colorado; in the letter and subsequent ones that followed, Foos described his life as a voyeur, using his motel as a “laboratory” to spy on guests at their most intimate and banal moments. For years, he kept a detailed diary of the things he observed in the unsuspecting motel rooms.
Since then, Foos and Talese kept in touch with the intent that a book would emerge from their communication—and that book, The Voyeur’s Motel, was released last year. However, controversy swirled around the guide when The Washington Post published an article detailing timeline discrepancies in this single-source book. The blow-up led to Talese publicly denouncing it, then eventually going back on his denunciation.
Myles Kane and Josh Koury’s documentary, Voyeur, begins as The Voyeur’s Motel was in the process of being written. Using a combination of talking head interviews and hyper-specific miniature models to replicate the motel and
Review
Praise for The Voyeur’s Motel:
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Daily Mail (Event Critics’ Selection)
“This book flipped nearly all of my switches as a reader. It’s a strange, melancholy, morally complex, grainy, often appalling and sometimes bleakly funny book, one that casts a spell not dissimilar to that cast by Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer . . . Gripping . . . [Talese] lays out what he knows and does not know in sentences that are as crisp as good Windsor knots. He expresses his qualms, but trusts the reader to come to his or her own conclusions . . . An intense book.”―Dwight Garner, New York Times
“Informative and intriguing . . . [I] was enlightened and entertained by The Voyeur’s Motel.”―Washington Post
“This is a weird book about weird people doing weird things, and I wouldn’t include put it down if the house were on fire.”―Washington Times
“Whether Gerald Foos is telling the complete truth is almost beside the point. The Voyeur is so fascinating a character―insightful, observant and amoral―that the reader becomes caught up in his story
A man reportedly bought a hotel just to spy on guests, and a journalist kept his covert for decades
A bloke named Gerald Foos reportedly bought a hotel in Aurora, Colorado, in the s and set up an elaborate system to spy on guests, and then kept a meticulous diary of what he saw, including their sexual activity.
We know this because in , Foos wrote a letter to famous journalist Gay Talese confessing what he had done, and invited Talese to unite him in his hidey-hole.
Talese signed an agreement to preserve the spying secret until Foos said it was OK to share the story, which he did in
It all finally came out in this week's edition of The New Yorker, and the story will give you shivers.
According to Talese, Foos had been a voyeur from a young age, and his wife knew about his habit. When they bought the hotel together — the year was either or , as the records are apparently inconsistent — he climbed up and carved large holes in the ceiling above the beds in several guest rooms, then had special "ventilation" grates made so he could look
Gerald Foos once owned the Manor House Motel on Colfax Avenue in Aurora, where he outfitted more than a dozen rooms with fake ceiling vents so that he could watch people having sex.
He started in the mids and continued for decades, never getting caught.
In , he wrote to veteran journalist Gay Talese, who was soon to publish &#;Thy Neighbor&#;s Wife,&#; the landmark exploration of America&#;s sexual revolution that swiftly became a bestseller. Foos said he had information that might be useful for the book, or possibly a future manual.
Nearly four decades later, The New Yorker magazine this week is publishing &#;The Voyeur&#;s Motel&#; by Gay Talese, an extensive investigation into voyeurism — specifically, how Foos bought the motel to accomplish his &#;uncontrollable desire to peer into other people&#;s lives,&#; including their most private sexual moments, which he said both of his wives supported.
On July 12, Talese&#;s book &#;The Voyeur&#;s Motel&#; will be published by Grove Atlantic.
&#;It&#;s my life — my secret life,&#; said Foos, who lives in metro Denver with