They couldn't hear me.
They couldn't see me.
But I could hear them and see them.
It's been a secret all these years.
It's been a secret for 47 years.
Nobody ever will be able to do what I did.
Yeah.
A lot of people
are gonna call me a pervert...
Peeping Tom.
I'm prepared for that.
But I have to tell somebody,
because I just didn't wanna die
and it be lost forever.
The beginning...
has to get the attention of the reader.
Page one, paragraph one, sentence one.
How do you begin?
I'd been a reporter
from the time I was 15.
I'm 80 now.
My life has pretty much been living
through other people's experiences,
and to be a very accurate chronicler.
An observer.
Watching other people. Listening.
I take my time,
and I am genuinely interested
in the people I'm writing about,
because there's something about them
that I feel I can identify with.
I live in a brownstone.
A small dot in a crowded block
on the east side of Manhattan.
I always dress very nicely.
Clothes make a difference.
My father was a tailor,
always beautifully dressed.
As a boy in my father's tailor shop,
I had clothes made for me.
My father was a prideful tailor.
I became a prideful journalist.
I have this converted wine cellar.
I call it a bunker.
The volume of material here represents
probably 50 years of research
propelled by endless curiosity.
With the flip of a page,
I can tell you who I was with,
who I had dinner with, where I was.
It's all there.
Look at this small type.
I have in my files, collected papers,
chronological through the year.
"Gay Talese, '53,
copy boy, New York Times."
Now we're into the '60s, '66.
This is where the Sinatra thing,
and Joe DiMaggio...
I have every article I ever wrote
and also the notes.
All this crap I keep.
Some of these boxes will testify
to the collecting of material
that later became a book, a magazine.
Everything is valuable.
Even when you don't write,
you've learned something.
Okay, well, I'm ready for a gin martini.
The story never ends.
The stories never die.
A lot of reporters think, you know,
when they leave the story, it's all over.
Sometimes it's just beginning.
I'm pursuing a story
about a man named Gerald Foos
who decided he wanted to buy a motel...
for the express purpose
of using it to watch everything
that was being done in private.
He could see what people were doing
in the privacy of their motel room,
looking down through this vent system that
gave him full access as he peers through,
watching in a crouched position.
Can't believe this story.
You can't make this up.
You can't make it up.
- Okay, do we start?
- We're rolling.
Hey, Gerald, when do you think
you actually became a voyeur?
I was brought up
in a very secluded sexual environment...
Yeah.
where my mom and dad
never told me anything about sex.
And I had to learn it on my own.
And I knew there was more to life...
and more to sex.
I just knew that it had to be more.
I had told Donna that I was a voyeur.
She says,
"Isn't that what they call a Peeping Tom?"
I says, "Yeah."
"But I call it voyeurism."
I says, "I wanna get a laboratory."
And she said, "What?"
And I said, "I wanna buy a laboratory."
I think I know how I'm gonna do it,
but it has to be absolutely foolproof
"insofar as anyone ever discovering it."
The street was basically built
for tourist travel.
That's the kind of people
that occupied the rooms.
Yeah.
I couldn't really find
what I was looking for,
and all of a sudden,
I came by the Manor House.
The Manor House Motel.
After I looked in that motel,
I fell in love with it
because it was exactly what I wanted.
Describe for us what the motel
looked like.
It had a high-pitched roof,
where I could walk down the middle.
And I figured that's where
I would build my observation platform.
- Right.
- Took about a year.
- Yeah.
- Because I didn't wanna make any mistakes.
I said, "I'll have to do
most of the construction",
because I don't want anybody to find out
what I'm doing."
When I'm thinking about this, I'm saying,
"Maybe a louver."
- Yeah.
- It's kind of a heating vent.
But my whole emphasis
was on absolutely private situation,
that they couldn't hear me,
they couldn't see me,
but I could hear them and see them.
You and Donna had been co-owners
until her death.
And the second marriage,
that woman, Anita Clark,
she filled in as adequately
as did your first wife.
What's amazing is you found two women
who were cooperative.
Maybe somebody might say
that was an act of God.
You see, I associate most things with God.
How powerful do you have to be
to create a universe?
I like to think of a supreme being.
He can do this...
and it vanishes.
It's gone.
I'm a natural person
to write about a voyeur,
because I'm a voyeur myself.
As a writer, I wanna be
inside their private lives.
I'm choosing
how we're gonna tell the story,
how we're gonna shade it,
color it, choreograph it.
And here is this weirdo,
taking it upon himself
to build this cathedral of sorts,
this little motel, a make-believe.
He thinks he's gonna see great things...
great sexual circus
every night of the week.
This relationship I had with him
starts with a letter.
I received this letter
on January 7th, 1980.
"Dear Mr. Talese,
since learning of your long-awaited study"
of coast-to-coast sex in America,
which will be included
in Thy Neighbor's Wife,
I feel I have information
that I could contribute to its contents,
"or to contents of future books."
This letter goes on.
Finally said, "If you're interested,
here's my address."
Surely, this was a kind of guy
I wanted to know more about.
I have so much respect for Gay.
We have a great relationship,
and a trusting relationship.
To me, he was like a god.
Mr. Talese is one of America's
proudest possessions.
As an author,
he wrote The Power and the Glory,
a story inside the New York Times.
You wrote the mafia book,
Honor Thy Father.
- How am I doing?
- It's correct.
Now you're back
with Thy Neighbor's Wife,
an eight-year study
of sexuality in America.
This will be the most talked about book
of the decade.
You were visiting
a place called Sandstone?
It's a nudist commune in Los Angeles.
You actually watched people
and all that stuff?
More than that. I mean...
You know the jokes you'll
face as you start the talk show rounds.
Starting here.
I became a resident writer
in a sexually free society.
We got to have sex with other people.
How did it affect
your sexual life at home?
Was it...
My wife was very unhappy,
as you can imagine.
We have daughters.
We're known in our community.
It seemed like I was doing
a reprehensible thing.
Say hello to Nan Talese. Mrs. Talese.
What I really minded
was the press about it.
And I wanted to protect
Catherine and Pamela,
and not have it hurt them.
I thought of myself at the front door,
with my arms just not letting them
into our house.
Is that about it for Gay's sex research?
It's not up to me. A person does
what he feels is right to do.
I sold my soul, if you wanna put it
that way. I don't care.
I wanted the story.
I would've done anything for it.
I felt I had to do it.
I had to go on the record.
I was there. I was participating.
I wasn't sitting in the press box
with a press card around my naked body.
For me, it wasn't a big thing,
'cause I had always had
this second sense of self.
I wanted the truth, and in this book,
being a nonfiction writer, a reporter,
I got the truth.
How do you get the truth?
You have to participate, to be there.
You can't listen to what people say.
It's what they do.
In 1980...
I flew out to see him.
I wanted to be sure
this guy wasn't lying to me.
As a guest of the voyeur,
I was gonna be a companion of the voyeur.
I went up one night and did watch.
He said, "I'll take you up."
Through the utility room,
you go up to the ladder
and you get to a landing.
You go back, and there's a locked door.
That's the door to the attic,
and only he had the key.
We went inside.
He then locked the door behind me.
You could see light coming up
from certain spots.
You're hearing televisions.
Voices.
He leaned over in one spot
where there was light...
and he pointed down,
and we looked upon a very good-looking
couple engaged in oral sex.
He made a kind of sign like that.
I leaned closer and closer,
watching intently.
And then I felt a man's hand on my neck.
It was the voyeur
who crawled around and pulled me up...
very quietly but firmly.
I looked at him.
And that damn tie of mine,
my red silk tie,
was only a couple of feet
from the head of the woman
giving a blow job to this guy on his bed.
Jesus!
He said, "You have to be careful
with that tie."
I would never write about him
unless I could use his name.
There's no point, as a nonfiction writer,
in writing about personal life
unless you use real names.
Otherwise, write fiction.
So, he wasn't buying this,
but he was continuing
to cooperate with me.
And this continued for more than 30 years.
Let me see what I can find here.
Letters. Look at this.
I have copies of every letter.
The problem in journalism,
it takes place in too short a period.
Reporters go and talk to somebody today,
and they never see them again.
Interview, in and out.
I don't do that. I like to keep in touch,
because there are chances,
maybe two or three decades later,
where you can go back
and see these people,
and you can find out
what happened after you left off.
I called up this guy and I said,
"I think you're about ready to do it."
He says, "I sold my motel in 1997."
The statute of limitations
probably allows me...
And most of those people
are dead anyway or...
"And I, at 78..."
I said, "I'm 80,
so if you're gonna do it, do it fast",
'cause neither of us will be
around much longer."
My story about the voyeur, Gerald Foos,
is gonna be excerpted in the New Yorker,
followed by a book publisher,
Grove Atlantic of New York,
is gonna publish a book.
Hi, there.
Susan Morrison, you're so famous,
except with the guys downstairs.
Those guys at the reception desk
never heard of the New Yorker.
His name is Foos, Gerald Foos. F-O-O-S.
He was never caught.
- You met him after Thy Neighbor's Wife?
- After I had finished it.
It was in the papers.
I had a lot of publicity.
He happened to read something
in the Denver Post.
He's still very willing and interested...
Yeah, I have him down.
I just cannot get...
I don't wanna do anything else
till I finish this, because...
I don't want him to die, number one.
- How old is he?
- 78.
Of course, I'm 81,
so I should worry about my...
One of us is gonna die soon,
so I wanna get this done first.
Here's what I'm worried about.
If I tell the reader
that I'm watching something...
I saw a little sex, but...
For me, I'm so jaded on that.
But if I say that I didn't see anything,
the reader is gonna lose interest.
- Oh, no. Don't worry.
- That's all.
In a way, I'm glad
that you didn't see anything so great,
because I think you run the risk
of it seeming almost too creepy.
That's another thing.
This guy is not creepy.
This is really what I have to explain.
This guy is a square guy.
If you didn't know he's a voyeur,
he could be working for Avis Rent-a-Car.
He could be selling insurance.
Anybody. He's everyman. Nobody.
That's all.
Gerald, tell me how it was
you first started as a voyeur.
I was on a farm with my mother
and father, east of Ault, Colorado.
And we lived
right straight across the street
from my mother's sister, Katheryn Eckhart.
She was younger,
and she was different in body type,
and she had freckles.
I never really knew what freckles were
in those days, but I wanted to find out.
She was, I gather,
a very attractive woman.
She was beautiful.
From my eyes, the most beautiful woman
I ever laid eyes on.
- Is that right?
- Yes, she was.
I think I had gone to bed
approximately nine o'clock in the evening.
And as I sat there on the bed,
suddenly I get this urge.
I went to the window
and I looked out across the street,
and it was like a compelling force.
I could see right straight
to my aunt Katheryn's bedroom window.
A mysterious force captivated
my entire body.
I think it was
because I was entering puberty.
And now, what beckoned to me
was the window.
God, that's good. The beckoning window.
I don't know... There's got
to be other words to describe that.
Beckoning window is perfect.
You don't even know you're a poet.
You'll come up with other words.
No, I don't have to. That's the best word.
Beckoning window, right?
Anita, what do you think?
Good word, right?
Mmm-hmm.
I finally got to the window.
- In those days, nobody pulled shades down.
- I didn't know that. That's true?
- There was a mirror.
- Mirror?
Now, I could look from here
into that mirror
and see everything she was doing
in her room.
She had beautiful red hair at that time.
Her pubic region was...
- Red.
- Very red, and she had big boobs.
Oh, my God.
Which became the reason
that I have had a fixation on boobs.
No question about it.
This is where you started masturbating.
This woman is the obsession
of your masturbatory dreams.
They're gonna say,
"It's amazing, the voyeur started out
like that? Is that what caused..."
Psychiatrists are gonna be
scratching their head...
You're gonna be famous
in all the medical journals.
They may wanna talk to me,
but I'll say, "Well..."
open your check book,
and we'll have a conversation.
"I don't talk to nobody
unless they pay me."
That's not a bad...
You're a very American fellow.
When you got mixed up with me,
you wrote me a long letter,
and at that time you wanted
to share this with me,
but you didn't want me to write about you,
at least by name.
That was the deal we had.
And a question is,
why did you even write me?
I think I was attempting
to gain some kind of notoriety,
because I did something that no one else
had ever accomplished or ever did.
- Or ever thought about doing.
- And I hoped that they don't...
The only thing
that they have in their mind
is the fact that I may be a pervert
and a Peeping Tom.
Because I wasn't that.
I was actually a researcher.
How many times did I tell you
that I was a researcher?
A lot.
I said I was a researcher,
and I believe that.
We said to Gay,
"We want you to see"
if you could get Foos to be reflective
at all about all of this,
if he had any misgivings about it,
why he decided to come clean,
"what he thought
his actual contribution was."
He thought of himself as a researcher.
A ridiculous claim.
To me, there's never been any question
that Foos is really disturbed.
A certain kind of sociopath
who just needed the attention.
But taken as a whole, this document
that Foos has produced over decades,
it's so completely fascinating.
Full of strange, weird details.
It's an amazing snapshot
of the American condition
that is interesting
and newsworthy in itself.
In 1980, he promised he would show me
the many written pages
that he had accumulated
on yellow-lined, legal-size pads.
"Approximately 35 years old, white male,
5'10", 180, white collar.
Wife, 35, 5'4",
pleasingly plump, dark hair.
Looks like Italian extraction. Educated."
Somebody else moves in.
"Unknown female companion.
30-year-old black male.
Employment unknown."
There's a little sex here.
Every once in a while, you get a summary.
"Oral sex without intercourse, five."
Intercourse only, 29.
Masturbation only, 1.
Resulting male orgasm, 35.
"Resulting female orgasm, seven."
Shows you how women don't have
that much fun.
You had watched perhaps between 2,000
and 3,000 people a year.
Mmm-hmm.
- Putting in a lot of time, too.
- Oh, till daylight.
Donna used to come up and bring me a Coke.
- Sometimes even bring me a sandwich.
- Right.
Because she knew I was up there.
Said, "Poor old Gerald, he's up there,
and he hasn't eaten."
You can only masturbate, how many times,
a couple times a night?
When you were younger,
you can do it three, four, maybe five.
I got interested in certain people.
And, of course,
I knew who was in the rooms.
I used to keep them there,
as much as I could. I gave them low rates.
One time he's watching a couple
that were very attractive.
He's looking forward
with much anticipation
toward a really good show of sex.
Just as they're about
to take off their clothes,
the guy turned off the lights
and the television set.
And the voyeur is more than disappointed.
He's angry.
They betrayed his anticipation.
And what does he do?
I went down the ladder and got in my car.
He puts on the bright headlights,
parks it right outside the window.
Then he goes upstairs.
Now he can see them.
The guy sees the lights blazing
through the drawn curtains,
and he says,
"Some dumb bastard left his lights on."
In his notes, he refers to himself often
as the voyeur in the third person.
On the observation platform,
the voyeur is a distinct, separate entity.
And I think we exist side by side.
The kind of hours that you spend...
Doesn't mean you're watching scenes
from Deep Throat.
It's not hard-core porno.
You do see sex,
but not as often as you would think.
It isn't boring.
In fact, it's worse than that. It's real.
Life is tedious.
It's people expressing
the tedium of ordinary life.
And even though it's boring to him,
he writes it down,
which is what's valuable
about his document.
Among the hundreds
and hundreds of stories,
there were cases
where people were fairly bizarre.
One time he was in the office
and the cleaning lady said,
"Listen, there must be a sheep
in one of those rooms,
'cause all I hear is bah, bah."
And so he goes up in the ladder,
and he sees two men,
one of them dressed in sheep's clothing,
and the other guy is on top of him,
having sex,
and he's making these sheep sounds.
I had an individual come
into my motel, had a bucket of chicken
from the colonel.
Sat down on the bed,
pulled out about that thick of napkins,
and set 'em over here
on the side of the bed,
and then proceeded to eat this chicken.
Sometimes that made me hungry.
And then, of course, his hands were...
What did he do? He just reached down
and picked up the bedspread...
He got so angry,
he said, "Son of a bitch!"
Son of a bitch!
And he goes, "Who said that?"
He went to the window
and he pulled back the drape
and he looks down this way,
then he looks down that way.
Ain't nobody there.
He was not discovered,
but that's the one time he lost his cool.
The thing that used to anger me
more than anything is dogs.
I used to hate 'em
when they were in the rooms.
And as he's up there,
quiet as he is,
not even hardly breathing
if he can help it,
the dog sometimes would catch...
They'd sit there and look.
He could hear anything.
That little sucker knew about it.
Some days I'd be depressed,
because here's what happens...
I'd go up there at night,
and I'd go from one room to the next.
And the only thing I was hearing was
shouting, hollering, complaining, cursing.
All that kind of stuff really bothers me.
By watching different people doing things
that I didn't think was appropriate,
I developed the distaste
for a lot of people.
He really became somewhat cynical.
He wanted to entrap people.
The first thing I started doing
was planting dildos.
In addition to the Bible that is
usually in one of the bedside tables,
this voyeur put porno magazines.
I wanted to find out
whether they'd utilize what I planted,
or come up to the office and say,
"Hey, clean your rooms out.
Get one of your maids."
I had a couple of women and men do that.
But the women that utilized it?
That was a different story.
Gerald Foos conducted a test
where he left a small suitcase
in a closet of one of the 12 rooms,
and when the person, or persons,
came in to register in the office,
the voyeur would pick up the phone
and talk to his wife.
"I had a call from a person
who's left a suitcase with $1,000,"
and it's left in a room.
"Do you have any record
of anybody finding that?"
Then they'd go to the room.
As they were hanging up their clothes,
they saw this suitcase.
It had a very small lock,
easily could be broken.
And I was sitting up there watching them,
looking out of the thing.
Then what do they do?
They broke the damn lock.
Now what do they do?
They had to get rid of the suitcase.
They would sneak the suitcase
out of the room,
put it in the trunk of their car,
drive it off really quick.
One person threw it out
the bathroom window.
You're beautiful. The
handsome gentleman to my right is Tony.
- Hey!
- What are you gonna do?
So much of the time...
a voyeur invests...
is propelled by anticipation.
And you're hoping they will do something
to make your time worthwhile.
That's a lot of investment, a lot of time,
and a very small return
on your investment,
except once in a while you see a murder.
I'm concerned about lots of things,
and I predicted things.
I think I could be implicated,
and maybe accessory to a crime.
I was observing, and there was
a white male and a white female.
He was a drug dealer.
I saw him distribute
and sell drugs to kids.
He hid 'em in a register
that was along the wall.
Screwed it out
and put 'em in behind a register.
That's where he had his stash.
The voyeur, who had a son
who had a drug problem,
was angry at seeing drugs sold.
And when he left the room,
guess what I did?
I went in there and screwed 'em off
and took the stash
and flushed it down the toilet.
When he came back that night,
he went over to the thing and...
When he pulled that sack out
and there was nothing in there,
he started blaming people.
He said, "Who the hell was in here?"
The only person who knew
where he hid it was his girlfriend.
And he accuses her,
and she quickly denies it,
but he insists that it must've been her.
Who else knew? "Wasn't me."
"Yes, it was."
She says,
"I don't know anything about it."
Starts slapping her around.
She stood up and was in his face.
He slaps her. "I wanna know. Where is it?"
She kicks him in the groin.
And he just got crazy.
He reached up and grabbed her
by the neck and choked her.
And just kept choking her.
I said, "Come on."
I was thinking, "Come on, let her go.
Let her go, man."
And pretty soon he just quit,
and she fell to the floor.
Fell right in front of the vent,
so I was looking straight down.
And I swear to you,
I could see her chest rising,
up and down, up and down.
And then he got all angry.
He was throwing things around the room.
He picked up her purse
and dumped it out on the bed
and took all the money she had.
Out the door. Into the car and gone.
This guy up there,
the voyeur is watching this...
and, of course, doing nothing.
He was stilled, he was confused,
he was frozen into inactivity.
And I looked and I swear...
I swear to God
that I saw her chest moving.
And I thought, "Well, she's okay."
So I left.
Fact is, that made me so sick
that I quit observations for the night.
The next morning, maid came to work,
and I watched her
as she went down the rooms.
And then pretty soon
she came to that room,
and she opened the door and she went in.
All of a sudden, she came running out.
I said, "Oh, no."
She came running into the office.
She said, "Gerald..."
I think the lady in number ten is dead."
Donna came in and said,
"She's dead, Gerald. She's dead."
The police came...
and pretty soon the coroner shows up
in his little panel truck.
And I'm going, "Oh."
- "I'm sick." Gay, you know?
- Yeah.
And I'm saying,
"I could be responsible for that."
We have a deal.
This man, Gerald Foos, and I have a deal.
That is for me to tell the truth
and him to live with it.
The motel, he doesn't own it now.
In 1997, he sold it to a Korean family
that has no idea what was going on.
When he sold it, he made sure
he took his magical vents with him.
He told me it was completely covered up.
That's a pretty sloppy job, Gerald.
Look at that.
There's situations that could
result in me being jailed, I don't know.
I just feel uneasy and I feel nervous.
When we first started discussing this
a year ago, we thought it was time
because the statute of limitation
has potentially passed.
But now I've found out
there's a new word called...
Uh... uh...
Whatever, but I'm the guy
they're going to indict, not you.
- Because I...
- That's what you're telling me...
I'll tell you something.
This letter that you wrote me,
I read this morning.
In this letter, you warn me
that you don't want the name
of the Manor House Motel published.
You said if this happens,
this Korean guy,
who has not a clue what happened,
is gonna potentially lose customers,
and that could cause damages.
I also talk about
what's gonna happen to Anita and me.
You would think
that I'd gotten this across to him.
I wouldn't have talked to him
if I didn't have permission.
It would've been no deal,
as it had been for 30-plus years,
so there's no change in my policy.
But suddenly this guy is forgetting
what we've agreed to.
If you have no trust
between your source and yourself,
you're in real trouble.
After you've won
the confidence of someone,
then you have to show
enormous amount of patience.
You're also not interested
in making their life
any more difficult than it may be.
- Jerry, I've been doing this all my life.
- I know you have.
It's second nature.
There she is.
Anita, she had had a marriage
to a trucker, some truck driver.
And he was a rough character.
She had two children.
One of them was born crippled.
So their lives, these two wives of Gerald,
and his own life,
filled with sadness and illness.
When you think about what
they have going for them,
it isn't a lot.
I'll turn her off.
We got several alarm systems
to protect our house.
And... Go in.
You don't have
a surveillance camera, do you?
No, no surveillance.
I don't have one of those.
That's too bad.
Anita and I don't have
any housekeepers or anything.
We're not here for that.
Why don't we start here
with the Barbie dolls?
All right.
These are a couple of interesting dolls.
He's an extremist in his obsessions.
These are the coins
that Anita has ecclected just this year.
Jesus!
When he was a boy,
one of the things he did notice
in addition to the body
of this beautiful aunt he had,
was she collected things.
This is my stamp collection.
- There's this drawer. There's this drawer.
- Oh, my God!
He told his mother
he would like to start collecting things
like beautiful Aunt Katheryn.
This started his lifelong hobby
of collecting things.
I have two Lugers here.
When you had a motel,
you used to carry a gun.
I carry guns all the time.
The entire basement area,
you think you're in a museum.
How many cards? Your total collection.
About two to three million.
- Cards?
- Cards.
There's a million cards right there
I've never even looked at.
Jesus!
I don't even know what's in there.
One of the reasons
he wanted to divulge his story,
because he'd get press attention
and he could brag about
his collection of sports memorabilia,
and he wanted to sell it.
These cards are gonna make us
multi-millionaire,
just the cards themselves.
Now this card, the Mickey Mantle card,
it's worth anywhere
from 200 to a million dollars.
And I once had over a thousand of 'em.
He has these prices he keeps quoting,
and I don't know, is this guy nuts?
But on the other hand,
I don't know. I'm not a collector.
This card here could be worth 500 grand.
- Oh, my God.
- Maybe more.
And who is it?
How do I know what these things are worth?
How do I know
if he's totally exaggerating?
I don't know.
If I reflect that he's a braggart,
then that might reflect on
all that I believed of what he saw.
The thing you gotta know in life is
when to make a choice and when not to.
I can definitely testify
to the accuracy of the room.
I mean the attic. I know that was...
I saw it. I was there.
But the rest of it, I'm getting from him,
and he's my single source.
And you're unwise to have one source.
In all that I write,
I try to guard against
being wrong about something
that could be checked upon
and found part of sloppy reporting.
The issue of that murder.
It's unresolved as of now.
I know the date, the year.
A woman in her mid-20s, or maybe younger
or maybe older, was found dead.
We have to find out
who in the hell that person was.
I'd love to have that,
because there's gonna be
a lot of skepticism
about the veracity of this.
I went to the police,
I went to the coroner,
and I went to the newspaper,
the Denver Post.
They checked on their records,
and they came back and said,
"We don't have anything about this death."
How could they not have records?
I don't know how it's possible.
They would have to have records.
I shouldn't have to search far.
You should just have the date,
the location of the death.
There should be somebody
meeting the description of a woman
dying on a motel floor...
and be that age, 20 to 30.
It shouldn't be...
I think we're here.
Thank you.
Right here, please.
- Keep walking, Mr. Talese.
- Thank you.
Jamison Stoltz,
the editor working on the book,
uncovered a murder that occurred
a couple of miles away in a motel
within a two or three week period.
This came out because
I was looking for more information,
just as you were,
on the murder that he writes about.
Could Gerald have
conflated this?
I don't know the answer.
I don't think the actual total truth
of all these incidents
are ever gonna be known.
The only person that knows them is Gerald,
and he may not even know them,
because he may not remember them.
I really like this line,
"I don't keep secrets from my readers."
As he put it, she fell through the cracks.
Yeah.
Why would this guy depict himself
in a cowardly way?
Why would a guy make up the worst story
in the book about him?
To repeat that story
is to lose any sympathy
from even the most sympathetic sick reader
I had.
You know,
Gerald's a fascinating character,
but would I stake my life or my reputation
on every single thing that he's recounted
in this story
of being absolutely accurate?
No, I wouldn't.
GT, which is how I refer to him
when I'm not speaking directly to him...
said, "Why don't you do something?"
Why don't you do an illustration
for The Voyeur's Motel?"
Little bit brighter.
This is the sort of thing
you do for your parents.
So he gave me this postcard to work from.
This is a picture that he had.
I didn't like the perspective,
and I didn't want it to be snow,
and I had this idea to look
for other pictures on the Internet.
Let's see if anything comes up.
When I looked at the street view,
this is what I got.
The most recent time.
And I called my father and said,
"Guess what? It's been torn down."
What'd he say?
"How do you know that?
How did you find that out?"
And I said, "Google Maps."
"Oh, you and the Internet!"
Come on.
Jesus! How in the hell...
All right.
- Hello?
- Hello, Gerald?
Hey, Gay.
I heard just last night...
that the Manor House Motel
is not there anymore.
Who told you that?
- It's been leveled.
- Really? That's news to me.
- I'm telling you...
- That's really not a big problem, though.
Wait a minute.
It probably makes you relieved,
because you were the guy told me
don't use the name of that motel.
Yes, I did.
I just told Anita,
and she said that's good.
Yeah, listen...
I don't know.
They probably got a good price for it.
- Listen...
- They probably got...
Probably got a million bucks
for it, easily.
Kind of makes me feel good,
to be honest with you.
Does it?
We don't have to fight
with any of these jerks, you know?
You mean
the Korean people that owned it,
- or whoever owned it.
- That's right.
We got the story written
prior to the demolition of it.
Of course we do, and we have films
and pictures and everything else.
- Even...
- We got all kinds of stuff.
That documentary crew even went in
and took pictures of the rooms
when they were there visiting you
and filming your story.
I'm pretty excited about this book, Gay.
I think this could be
one of your great books.
Well, it's gotta get that New Yorker
to publish it.
In other words, all you're waiting for
is for this thing to be published
by New Yorker magazine,
- and then we can go to town.
- That's what we're waiting for.
- I'll see you.
- This is something to shout,
thank the Lord for.
All right, well, it's a hurray
for you and the motel.
Bye-bye, Gerald.
Okay.
When you hold on to stories,
things change.
When you're writing nonfiction, thinking,
now here this piece was all set.
And then what happens?
The whole location of this story,
the motel itself,
vanishes in space,
so I have to figure it out.
So you don't need to go back
out there to see this lot?
- Would it be worth a trip?
- Yeah.
- Well, for us...
- Would it?
For us, the visual
of an empty lot would be very powerful.
If you're gonna do it,
I might as well go with you.
I can't see much out here
that's remaining.
They cleaned it off pretty good.
I feel a little uncomfortable in this...
I always loved this property,
and I built most of it
with my own two hands.
And now it's gone.
In the Bible, of course,
there's that great saying about
there's a time for everything
under the sun.
And I believe that the time
on this particular motel was up.
- What do you think?
- Sad.
- Still sad?
- Yeah.
Last night I had a dream about this place,
and I cried.
And Gerald says, "What's the matter?"
I said, "Nothing,"
and he said, "What's the matter?"
And I said, "I miss the motel."
And I was dreaming
that I was still working...
"and I felt like it was real."
I woke up, I was in bed sleeping, crying.
Yeah, it's somebody else's
property now.
He used the word "redemption" to me.
He says, "I wanna clear my conscience."
To identify or have people identify him
with this work of some worthiness,
and kind of redeem himself.
We'll see.
Sit down and I'll push your foot over.
Thank you, man. God, you're so kind.
I hope when this is all over,
that you and I and Anita
can be as good as friends
as we are before.
We'd better be better.
I've known this man since 1980.
Going over this man's
massive amount of scribble,
having to clarify what is real
and what's not real,
I'm trying to be as careful
as you humanly can...
with an unreliable person.
When you're dealing with the New Yorker,
you have to get the facts right.
I want the facts right.
But I'm worried about the fact checker.
That goddamn magazine
really has fact checkers.
I do not look with pleasure
upon the future,
when a person on the telephone
from the New Yorker
is gonna be calling him up
and asking him this and this and this.
And half of the time,
he doesn't even know what the facts are.
This is kind of
the ultimate single-source story.
The fact that Gay had actually been
on the premises
and knew that
these viewing platforms existed...
We knew that this guy wasn't making
the thing up out of whole cloth.
But, in a place like the New Yorker,
all the T's have to be crossed
and the I's dotted.
Addresses, dates, spellings of names.
All of those things are gone over
in great detail with our fact checkers.
That's an absolute value
that doesn't change.
The question was,
could we wrestle this thing into something
that didn't rely primarily
on Gerald Foos' notebooks?
Because we did find things
at odds with Gerald's account.
He described buying the motel
in a particular year.
We were able to get the deed of sale,
and we noticed that that didn't align
precisely with the date in his notes.
Whenever we found a discrepancy like that,
we wanted the reader to know
exactly what we knew
in terms of when Gerald had made an error.
We made it clear that all of what he saw,
in our in-house lingo, was sort of on him.
The voyeur tells me he bought
this motel in 1966, and I'm quoting him.
This New Yorker fact checker finds out
he didn't buy the motel till 1969.
God, how... That isn't hard
to keep your record straight.
He should know,
when he gives me information like that,
he should get it right and...
It's like...
Come in. God damn it. I wish...
Open the door!
The guy that does the vetting,
he was saying,
"Are you sure, Gerald, that that's '66?"
And, "Yeah," and he says,
"Well, could it be '69?"
And I says, "Yeah, could be very easily.
One of the nine's could've been inverted."
And... But I said, "I don't know that."
I said, "It's a potentiality."
Oh, man. I called him on that.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I got something wrong.
I lost the papers."
I don't care what papers. You need
to remember when you bought a building.
He started keeping notes in 1966,
and even had specific days
like November 26th,
November 28th and December 4th.
'66, '67, '68.
Was he backtracking or writing fiction?
What was he doing?
It doesn't make any sense.
I'm wondering how firmly
I can rely upon him.
I know the motel is real. I was there.
So he gets dates wrong.
But I don't care
whether he opened the motel
in 1965 or 1966 or 1967 or 1968.
It makes no difference.
He held the motel
for more than 15 to 20 years,
during which time he had a lot of time
to look at a lot of things.
The story is the story, and I'm moving on.
Well, I'm really sore
this morning.
That doesn't bode well,
because whenever I get sore like this,
there's a storm coming in.
Anita and I are just kind of loners.
Yeah, we don't neighbor.
Because we found out,
being in the motel business,
there's no sense in doing it.
Because the only thing you're gonna do
is you're gonna expose yourself,
and all they're gonna do
is talk about you to other neighbors.
That's what neighbors do.
Look, here's a blue jay. You see him?
Two blue jays.
Look at 'em.
They don't know
they're being photographed.
We know nobody's coming to visit us.
Nobody ever comes to our house, right?
- Nobody.
- Except the mailman.
We don't have any friends.
All our friends are dead.
- Your friends.
- Unfortunately, yeah.
You guys will be here when it happens,
and I want you to be here.
I don't want anything... I just, like...
We're all in it together.
And that's it. There's nobody else.
Everybody has been worried
about the damn piece.
I bet the voyeur's worried about it, too.
He's the one that really has a worry.
He's right there
in a little suburb of Denver...
waiting to be crucified.
Here it is,
on the front cover of the New Yorker,
in the most prominent section.
I couldn't imagine a more impressive
layout for a magazine article,
with the voyeur's name, Gerald Foos,
not obscure, but right in the headline.
"Gerald Foos bought a motel in order
to watch his guests having sex.
He saw a lot more than that."
That's a terrific headline.
Even if he hates the article,
he'll love the prominence,
'cause the thing about this guy,
he wanted to be discovered.
If he died, no one would care,
no one would know.
But now if he dies...
this thing will put him on the map.
It will get him an obituary
in the New York Times.
Gerald Foos will get an obituary.
Why? Because he's a voyeur who talked.
Talked to me.
Published in the New Yorker.
There it is.
This one is just chilling.
An Aurora motel owner watched his guests
in some of the most intimate moments
without them even knowing.
It went on for decades.
And it's all detailed
in the New Yorker magazine.
The old Manor House Motel stood right here
at the corner of Colfax and Scranton.
Now, in addition to all the sex
that Gerald Foos claims
he watched happen here,
he said he saw a murder,
but never told police.
- What?
- I did too tell police.
said he received a note from Foos
in 1980
saying he purchased the motel
to satisfy his voyeuristic tendencies.
After installing them,
he hovered above in the attic,
and asked his wife to lie on the bed below
to see if she could see him
through the louvers.
He lives up in Brighton.
Reporting live in Aurora,
Lance Hernandez, Denver7.
I can't believe that.
- What?
- I can't believe that.
Suddenly,
I got a little more shaky.
The man is nervous.
For years, he was hiding in the attic.
Now, he's been pulled out of that.
But he's been instructed,
if that's the word, by me,
"Don't go out, don't answer the door.
Don't answer the phone."
Hello. This is.
It's one of the ladies you'd meet
at the Denver Post with Gay Talese.
- How did she get my number?
- I don't know.
Hello, this is Gerald.
- She knows about the book already.
- Yes, ma'am.
What was your question
that you would have for me?
Well, I guess I wanted to know
if you've read it yet
and what you thought of it.
Well, you know, it's...
it's my life, you know, my secret life.
Yeah, we are gonna have this
in the paper tomorrow
and we'd like to get your thoughts.
Well, I can't...
I wish I could give you more.
- Why don't you wait a little bit?
- No, Gerald.
Wait a little bit
until July when the book comes out.
That's what I'd suggest.
And then you call me
and I'll give you an interview.
But you weren't filming any of this,
were you?
Never, never.
That was before the electronic age.
Gerald, that's enough.
I can't tell you any more than that.
I can't tell you any more than that,
because I'm still under contract.
Get off the phone, Gerald.
I'm not gonna answer any more questions
about it, not right now.
Gerald, I have to go.
And my wife has to go,
and she's getting ready
to go do something and...
Gerald.
Okay, well, thank you very much. Goodbye.
How did she get my number?
I don't know, unless Gay gave it to her,
'cause she talked to Gay.
There's gonna be an article
in the Denver Post,
so that's gonna really loosen things up.
I did talk to the reporter
from the Denver Post.
I spoke to her, and there's an article.
But there's nothing in that article
that hasn't been said in the New Yorker.
I went to go get the paper
this morning,
and I looked at it
and I thought, "Oh, shit."
It says, "Ex-Colfax motel owner 'thinks
he's the greatest voyeur in the world.'"
Right here. There's Gerald
in his office at the motel.
It says, "Sex, lies,
but no video tapes for hotel owner."
And then here's the book of Gay Talese.
If my phone rings,
I'm just gonna let it go.
I have a feeling
my brothers and sisters are gonna call,
and I don't know what to say.
Gerald told me to say,
"Hey, it's just a story. It's not real."
Right? But it is real.
I tell you, the shit has hit the fan.
I just talked to a friend of mine
in Minnesota.
It's all over the Twin Cities already.
It's in every city in the country
right now.
I'm not good.
I'm shaking like a fucking leaf.
It's quiet now, but it's not gonna be
quiet very soon, I don't think.
I gotta tell you guys something.
We've gotta get round the table.
I'm really pissed off.
Really pissed off.
And it's probably my fault, but...
And I'm scared.
I have a lot of fear...
because I love that lady over there
and I'll do anything to protect her.
But when Gay Talese...
makes that last statement in there,
talking about my card collection.
That... I never wanted that in there.
I don't want people to know that I got
a million-dollar card collection here.
What if a lawyer turns around and sues me?
And they put a lock on the house
and everything in it?
I can't even sell it,
because the reason they put a lock on it
is they know it's worth millions,
and, therefore,
they can get the money, you see.
God, what the...
I never saw any of those things.
Never once did he ever show me
the damn manuscript.
Never once did he show me the thing
that was written
for the New Yorker magazine.
And I would have been adamant.
"Get that out of there!"
You don't put that stuff in there.
You don't write about a man's money.
I mean, I'm really mad at Gay.
I'm mad as hell at him,
because he should have consulted me.
I'm the guy! Not him.
He's made this thing pointed.
"Hey, I'm the big star here," you know.
"I'm the big star.
"I've written all these books,
and here I am," you know.
And then he writes bullshit about me.
That's the only thing
I'm really pissed off about in there,
and I am seriously pissed off about it.
And I think Gay and I are gonna have
a hell of a real bad problem.
"He's still pondering Foos' true motive
in revealing his secrets."
One reason could be money.
Talese draws parallels...
to the Unabomber...
and Watergate's Deep Throat.
Men who did not want to take secrets
to their graves.
"Foos is hoping to come clean
30 years later and find redemption."
That's true?
Kinda, but you don't do it
with listing his assets.
- Gerald, excuse me.
- Yeah, I get it. I get it.
It's not Gay's fault.
It's your fault, too.
Everything is my fault.
- Has he called you back?
- No.
What the hell does he think this is,
some kind of goddamn game?
Gerald, it's different hours...
Bullshit. It's ten o'clock in New York.
I tell ya, it's getting to be...
- Gerald, just calm down.
- I don't wanna get sideways with that man.
I just want to tell you that I love you,
and calm down, okay?
Okay, darling. Thank you.
She is smart.
- You see what I mean?
- He trusts you.
I know, but he won't
if you say something to him.
I shouldn't have to say
anything. You should be talking to him...
Keep your voice down, okay?
Don't come between us.
Don't do that again.
Gay, I'm sorry to bother you.
This is Gerald.
I just wanted to touch bases with you
about some of the stuff...
I'd just like to talk to you
if I could, please.
If you have the opportunity, call me.
I appreciate it.
Come on.
God, this goddamn laptop is terrible.
"You called yourself a pioneer,
a truth-teller, a chance taker,"
a man to be compared,
maybe better than compared,
to Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson.
These people,
though recognized with respect today,
were vilified when they first appeared
on the public scene,
considered to be obscene and criminal.
So now the story of Gerald Foos
has gone public,
and Gerald Foos must, as a man of courage
and strength, stand tall and tough.
You take it for a while
because you want to reveal
the truth of who you are
and why you know what you know.
Okay, hang in there
as athletes and pioneers must.
"Best, Gay Talese, your pal."
You're gonna meet
the bad guy now.
Is this in reference to
that book you wrote?
- Didn't you write a book?
- Yes, sir.
I know who you are.
Come on in.
I got this call just a little bit ago.
A threatening phone call.
I'm scared to death right now.
I don't even know what the hell to do.
This guy was dead serious on that phone.
The phone rang, and the guy says,
"I'm gonna have my friends
come there and kill you,
'cause you're threatening me."
- No. See, I'm nervous, too.
- No, it's okay.
But the guy says,
"I'm gonna threaten you guys."
- He said...
- "I got friends." I didn't hear all of it.
I remembered something
the guy said.
He said, "Now you're the one
that's being watched."
Thank you, guys.
Son of a bitch. Damn, motherfuck.
Son of a bitch.
I don't know what to do now.
I don't know whether
to start getting my guns out,
and laying 'em out every place
where they're pointed
in certain directions or what.
- Don't be so nervous, Gerald.
- Oh, I don't know.
Sometimes you get nervous
when you're ready to die.
- Not really.
- I just said a bit ago
that I thought I'd die
before this book came out.
This is too much pressure on me.
All through my arms and my legs.
I feel this feeling of fear.
"10:00 a. m."
Coming to get me and kill me
because I am no good pervert.
Had my address and phone number.
"I thought that I knew the voice
but didn't know for sure."
You can't hide anymore, can you?
Sometimes I think that...
it's not real.
It's kind of a dream world.
Last night, I had a dream
most of the night that I was being chased.
I was being chased by people
who were trying to catch me.
I was running
and hiding away from 'em, and...
Just went on a long time.
You know, if I knew what I was gonna feel
a year or two years ago,
I'd have never done this.
So, I don't know if that's gonna change.
I thought there would be controversy
when the New Yorker piece ran.
Almost anybody who reads it
sees it as a really fascinating story.
People are going to react negatively
without thinking about the material
in any serious way.
On the face of it,
the fact that he was a voyeur
and built this thing
specifically to watch people,
and did it for 30 years...
is off-putting.
You could be disturbed by it.
I think it would be a bit unusual
if you weren't disturbed by it.
But I don't think that's necessarily bad
for sales of the book.
The publisher has issued orders
to me not to talk to nobody.
According to this, I can't be trusted.
We are weeks away
from the publication of the book.
Now he needs somebody to hold his hand.
This is something
I'm gonna take upon myself.
This is my last chance to take control
of The Voyeur's Motel.
We're not gonna have
a happy honeymoon in Denver, either.
That's gonna be a drag.
To have a man of his stature,
and from New York City,
you know, coming to see us...
We're just common people.
He doesn't associate with common people.
Gay says that every time
he comes to see us,
he wants us to dress up,
not like what we're wearing now.
He's used to going out with people
that are all shammied up.
All his people are all...
They're all presidents
and CEOs of companies.
They're all famous people, most of 'em.
You heard me criticize Gay
a couple of times.
I just wished
he'd have shared with me more.
But I'm not gonna let it
destroy the relationship.
It's about the book.
We gotta stick together.
'Cause if we don't stick together...
you have nothing.
That looks nice.
I want to see
who's coming out of the car first.
There's... there's old Gay.
Oh, no, he bought something for us.
- Oh, roses!
- Oh, my God.
- Roses.
- He didn't have to.
I know it,
but he wants to make things good.
He knows we've been through
a lot of stress.
Hi, Gay. How are you? Come on in.
- Flowers for you.
- Thank you.
- And look at this guy.
- How are you doing?
Where'd you get a suntan, Jerry?
All right.
Gerald, you are making history.
The editor was a little bit worried
about how the readers are gonna react.
On the contrary, they love it.
Said it's one of the greatest stories.
Can't believe this story.
That's what people say.
They can't make that up.
Can't make it up.
We sat and we read it,
you know, the entire story.
And I mean, it was...
Some good and bad in there.
Wasn't a valentine.
Some of it was surprising,
but I thought it was okay.
I might have been a little upset,
'cause I'd never seen
- any of what you had written.
- I know.
And I never saw the manuscript
at all from you.
You have a right to an opinion,
now, or next month,
or five years from now.
What you do not want to do
is ever admit falsely
that we cooperated with one another,
I showed you what I wrote.
I don't need to give you
a lecture on journalism.
But we journalists,
if we're really honest
and not hatchet job people,
which many of them are,
but I'm not one of 'em.
I write the best I can.
And when it's out there,
and it's got my name on it, there it is.
If you don't like it,
you can shoot the messenger,
you can edit it or write bad reviews,
which they do, for sure.
That's the way it goes.
- What other questions do we have?
- We didn't get total clarity.
The thing about your voyeur's journals,
that start in '66,
the question is, what exactly happened?
He explained that he'd made
the mistake of date.
Instead of '69 or...
He already answered that.
- He answered that.
- Confusion.
If you're going back
on the discrepancy of the dates,
he's already answered that.
- How much more we have to do?
- We're almost there.
Then let's get on,
'cause this is dragging.
I have a simple question
for you, Gerald.
- All right.
- Okay.
Do you have any regrets
working on this book with Gay Talese?
The question is
a legitimate question.
Essentially, Gerald,
if you had it to do all over again...
Or maybe that's...
Ask the question yourself.
- That's the question.
- Make sure it's your question,
'cause I don't wanna change your question.
I don't wanna prompt an answer from him.
Ask him the way you ask it.
Gerald, if you had it to do
all over again,
would you still participate
with this book?
Didn't you ask that same question
and it's already on tape?
Wait a minute.
He had misgivings, didn't he?
- He did.
- I want you to get him to say that.
I don't want you now, because I'm here...
What you've done is wrong.
You talked to him privately
and you got an answer.
- Now with me here...
- No.
I'm affecting his answer.
Don't you understand?
Do you have any regrets
about this process?
This is a phony answer.
I think it's unfair to him.
I want you to let him be critical of me.
What you guys are doing is sanitizing it.
He doesn't have...
He has misgivings. Of course he does.
Why shouldn't he be allowed
to have misgivings?
- I told him... Wait a minute.
- If you want...
"You know, Gay,
I thought you wouldn't use that.
- "Gay, I wish you checked with me."
- I know.
Why can't he be critical of me?
Why can't you let that be critical?
- I think I've already said that.
- Say it!
I'd ask you not to put the murder
in the book.
You did. You asked me...
That is... I didn't...
I did what I wanted to do.
I didn't do what you wanted.
I did what I wanted.
- Go out and blab to the public.
- It was your right,
'cause we had a contract.
We both have a right.
You have a right to criticize me.
And they don't have a right
to ask you the same question
if you're gonna sanitize it.
Let's make what you said...
I didn't hear it.
But in my presence,
you're not gonna be as candid
as you would be if I wasn't here.
And that's part of journalism.
Why would... How do you know
what they're thinking?
What's wrong about this
is they already asked you that question
with me not there.
Then, with me here, they're trying
to get you to answer differently,
which could expose you as a hypocrite.
Don't you understand?
- I understand.
- This is the way journalism works.
These guys are not even
credible journalists.
They're cameramen, but they don't know...
- So you think that because I had...
- They pulled a trick on you.
That I would say something to them
that I'd never say to you personally?
That is true.
- I don't know if it is.
- I bet it's more true than not true.
- That's the way people are.
- Our goal isn't to trip you up.
No, but your goal is to get him to say
a different answer to the same question.
Did we hit a sore spot on you?
I know there's a lot of trick questioning
in this game,
'cause I know this game.
I don't wanna be in your corner.
I don't wanna be your apologist.
I don't wanna be your personal biographer,
'cause I'm not.
I'm my own goddamn writer,
and you're your own person.
Let's quit. Are we over this? Are we okay?
That was a good question.
Come here, I want to ask you a question.
- Are you okay?
- Yeah.
Come here. Let me give you a hug.
Everybody around here are friends,
but someday, like Gay says, we're gonna be
around people that aren't our friends.
That's right.
You've got to stay away from them.
If you start talking
before that book comes out,
they will use what you say
against the book,
- because they wanna make it worse.
- They wanna demonize me?
They wanna exploit you
'cause you're a hot subject.
You're new.
You've just been on the Internet.
You've been on the goddamn New Yorker.
You're a hot subject.
- I get it.
- Okay.
You talk to the camera. I wanna sit here.
And get a little fresh air?
I could stay out here an hour.
Yeah, its real private,
and that's what I like.
I am used to private spaces.
Places that nobody can see me
and I can see them.
Great.
I'm confident I did enough work.
I spent enough time.
I spent more than 25 years
waiting to take him out of his dark attic.
But I waited and waited
and waited patiently,
till I could bring his story and him
as a person into the public eye.
It's a good story.
And I'll keep in touch with him
until we're both dead.
It's beautiful.
Okay.
Researchers like you to think
that they're professional at all times,
and detached and in control,
that it's all in the name of work,
but it isn't true.
I think anyone who courts
this kind of precarious existence,
or delves into something that's rather,
maybe pioneering...
I like to think of what I did
as a pioneering work.
But you're risking at all times.
How does it look?
It fits you well.
I think it's perfect.
I know there's a lot of points
in your book, but what's the point here?
You've done this exhaustive research.
What's in it for us?
Give us some free advice
after all this research.
Re-identify myself as a reporter.
I'm not an advocate.
I'm a reporter who went out in the field
and told you what America's like.
People in the show don't like it.
Some people recognize it as truthful.
Everybody wants to write
the great American novel.
Why the fuck the great American novel?
I want to do something that no one wants
to think is great, but I think is great.
I don't agree with your methods,
and I thought for sure when I came here,
I thought you were just a dirty old man.
But you're just a reporter
trying to put your point across.
That's the nicest thing
you could say about me.
I never know
how my work is gonna be received.
I've had a lot of bad reviews.
This voyeur is full of high dreams.
He thinks he's gonna be the star,
and it's gonna be read around the world.
I don't know what's gonna happen.
He doesn't know what's gonna happen.
We'll see.
What the fuck are we doing here?
How...
I had nothing but bad news
in the last three days.
The biggest mistake I made...
was talking to a Washington Post reporter
today named...
- Paul Farhi.
- Paul Farhi.
I'm so tired I can't remember my own name.
I received this e-mail from Farhi.
He said, "I'd like to talk to you."
There's some discrepancies
I'd like to discuss.
I have information that invalidates
much of what you wrote,
"and questions your reputation
as a reporter."
Wow.
In 1980,
the voyeur sold the motel to somebody,
- a friend of his, a man named...
- Earl.
- Earl Ballard.
- Earl Ballard.
A name I'd never heard of.
How could I have quoted the voyeur
from his journal
when for six years
he didn't even own the goddamn motel?
And I'm speechless, infuriated,
frustrated, helpless.
I'm unable to defend myself,
because the Washington Post reporter
is presenting to me factual information
verified by him
and a matter of public record.
I felt... I'm down the tubes.
The book is down the tubes.
So I said that my book is down the toilet.
Now I have demoted the fucking book
into the toilet.
That's the end of it.
This story in the Washington Post
is all over the fucking world.
This is the end.
This is the end of me.
I was lied to. I was interviewing a liar.
I never thought of Gerald as...
I wasn't talking to Walter Cronkite, okay?
I'm talking to this crazy guy.
I thought I knew a little bit,
but I didn't know him at all,
because I was taken in
on a long ride here into oblivion
as far as my career and reputation goes.
Pick that up
and say to call us back, please.
I called up Gerald Foos.
I said, "What the hell is going on here?"
I was fucking angry.
I had the book already published.
I'm screaming at the voyeur,
"My reputation is shot."
Yours is, too.
Our fucking careers are over.
We are done, sweetheart.
This is where I've been hoodwinked,
or seduced by you in my quest
for an honest and good story.
It is a hell of a good story.
But now I have to defend it
as not fiction.
And I didn't think I was writing fiction.
"And you've made me
look like a fake artist."
I thought
that Earl Ballard was dead.
He never really amounted to much
in the story,
so I thought I'd just leave it dead.
But the reverse was true, so...
Earl and I observed together.
Purchase of the Manor House,
that was his whole motivation.
My deal with him
was just a friend to another friend.
Or a voyeur to a voyeur.
After I sold the motel to him,
he allowed me to come and go as I please.
Almost every night.
But now he don't want nobody to know
he was a voyeur.
It's his word against mine.
And so, the book...
Sounds like
God is tearing it apart.
It's real dreary around here.
It's all cloudy,
and it just feels about the way I feel.
Somehow I wish that I could go
someplace and hide.
Gay told me, he said, "You know,
you and I are gonna die as old men",
and we're gonna be known as liars."
I let everybody down. Gay especially.
He's such a proud, upstanding man,
and I got in his life and I ruined it.
It's too late. The damage is done.
That killed it. That book is dead.
That book is really dead.
How many they got?
Right there. One?
- And they sold three?
- Three total.
Oh, God. That just...
That book is really hid there.
Nobody's gonna see it.
- Nobody's gonna see it.
- Let's see.
I thought that
the metropolitan area of New York
would sell five million copies.
What reviews?
- Do you want me to show you?
- I'd like to see a couple.
This was in the New York Times.
This was in Vulture.
"Controversial." I don't like that.
Hmm.
They're sayin' everything
I've written in here is a lie.
They're sayin' Gay knows it.
Who is this jerk, this Jack Shafer jerk?
This is the worst hatchet job
I've ever seen in my life.
Can I see that one, Anita?
Well, if anything does it, this will
surely ought to fix it up really good.
Nothing good in it, not one thing.
I can see why he hasn't called me,
'cause he took all this stuff to heart.
I've only gone through the first page
of this, and it's a nightmare.
I say pull the book off the shelf
and forget.
Here.
We knew something was going on.
You didn't want to tell us.
He's been criticized
'cause he didn't turn me in.
That's what it says here.
"Talese is as guilty as this guy."
"Coward."
Talese said, "So I have again
to answer for myself."
But the real problem is ahead."
Looks like there's a definite split
between Gay and myself.
There's just no way it can ever be healed.
And I'll blame him and he'll blame me,
and that's just the way it is.
And all this stuff here...
I feel like destroying it right now.
This is pointing direct fingers
at the voyeur
as being nothing but a creep.
- Well? You are.
- Huh?
My God, Anita.
Well...
I guess I'll...
- What you doing back here, Anita?
- Nothin'.
- Gerald?
- What?
Isn't that nice?
You wanna blow?
Make a wish first.
Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Tonight, Kristen Wiig.
Keke Palmer.
Author, Gay Talese.
There he is.
Featuring the 8G Band
with Thomas Lang.
Welcome back.
Our next guest
is one of the most influential journalists
of the 20th century.
His latest book, The Voyeur's Motel,
is in stores now.
Please welcome the very talented,
the legend, Gay Talese.
I wanted to be a writer
maybe not of the right people,
but the wrong people, the wrong side.
In The Voyeur's Motel, you found someone
who is arguably on the wrong side.
This is a man who reached out to you,
said, "I think you might be interested
in writing about this."
- Oh, he got the right guy.
- Yeah.
Let me ask you about this.
The Washington Post
did an interview with you,
where they had found
some inconsistencies in his story
as far as the years he owned the hotel.
You even say in the book that you
can't vouch for everything he said.
Do you think it's fair
for the Washington Post
to call you out for getting facts wrong?
It might be self-serving the way I sound,
but I'm not trying to be self-serving.
The Washington Post was wrong.
The Washington Post said that
during a period he didn't own the motel.
And I didn't know that,
and I was very upset.
I said, "I can't go along
and support this book."
But the next day I called the guy
who bought the motel,
and he said, "No, he still had
access to it. He had the key."
If I had known that day I was told
what I know now,
I wouldn't have disavowed the book.
That was a mistake on my part.
I overreacted.
I was very angry, and embarrassed, too,
because I took pride in my life...
A reliable reporter, that's what I am.
If Gay was here,
I'd say, "Hey, Gay, I'm sorry."
And I know that some way and somehow,
we could have a meeting of the minds.
We always had extreme trust
for each other,
and I believe I let you down,
"because I did not tell you the truth
about Earl Ballard."
In the journals,
I talked about the voyeur.
And it's empty and lonely.
Because you have nobody
that you can talk to,
or tell 'em how you're feeling.
And somehow I feel that
when I talk to you guys,
it's like somebody opened a drain...
and I'm able to free myself
of those thoughts.
And I love you guys.
I don't know, I feel a feeling
of companionship with you guys
that I don't feel with very many people.
I'll tell you, I was very surprised...
that you got the cooperation you did.
I did not believe there was any way
we could get you down to film him.
When I got permission
for you to come down...
the first day you arrived,
he started talking freely.
I thought, "Does he know what he's doing?
Does he know what he's doing?"
He opened up his home to you,
his bedroom to you, his wife to you.
He liked the publicity of the camera.
The camera turned him on.
And there it was.
The reverse procedure.
He's now being watched.