We learn how a New York reporter tries to cover for a severe professional blunder. The movie tracks a voyeur, who watches people in hotel rooms for decades. From his hiding spot where he spent hours each night staring at people through a hole in the ceiling. The reporter and the voyeur can't get enough of the limelight. They thrive on the notoriety. When it goes sour, when the voyeur's errors in fact come out, our hero reporter spends the rest of the movie covering for himself. From the start, the voyeur is being filmed in intimate detail and clearly enjoying the attention. He wants us to feel him as a victim in this experience. When all is said and done, their isn't much of a story. The film benefits from great production and editing. It would have been much better had the film used the French cinema reality style with a narrator in monotone third person. This film is depressing. The take away is that the more someone proclaims their integrity and honesty, the less likely it is to be true.

This was creepy as hell. Man.... at the end of the day there are some weirdos out there. Pretty cool access to a strange story. Interesting characters. The cinematographer was on point most of the time. Wonder what happened to get his guy to do the film? Lol

I do not get all these reviews raving about the brilliance of this documentary. To steal a tag line from the 90s hit comedy Seinfeld, I think this documentary could be billed as " the documentary about nothing". Gay Talese, at 80-something, is obviously not prepared to go gently into that good night. However, in searching for ways to rage against the dying of the light, he has completely erred in judgment and instead decided to write a book (and agree to participate in a documentary) about this purported voyeur who secretly watched his motel guests over 20 years, or is it 30 years? Who knows? Because the subject, Gerald Foos, is completely unreliable as a source, erring on three major points: 1) when he bought the motel - there is a discrepancy of three years from when he says he bought the motel and when it was actually purchased; 2) he neglected to tell Talese that he'd sold the motel a few years after he bought it; and 3) his story about witnessing a woman being murdered was not founded in fact.That a journalist of Talese's stature and reputation would write a book based on only one source, a completely unreliable one at that, is bad enough. That a major publication like The New Yorker would publish an article about it and that Talese's publisher would promote this book speaks volumes, I think, about the ovine nature of people. Somebody is deemed to be a major talent, therefore we just have to let him/her write away or shoot the film and we never have to question his/her source.My doubt about the veracity of this story was aroused several minutes in, when Foos describes the catwalk he built that allowed him to spy on motel guests through grates in the rooms' ceilings without being detected. WTF. I thought? Did he build his catwalk in concrete to completely muffle the noise of his footsteps? Why didn't the dogs of motel guests bark at the sound and/or scent of a human above them?Mr. Talese, you really need to spend the last few days or months (if not years) of your life in quiet contemplation of a life lived. If you once were this famed journalist who spared no effort to get the story right, forget about it. Your glory days are long gone.

Upon seeing that the documentary story of Gerald Foos was coming to Netflix, I could hardly believe it. When I read the source material book "The Voyeur's Motel", I thought I was maybe the only actual person to have read it (I now understand why...watch the doc to find out). Much like the book, this documentary adaptation is often a bit of a mess...but it also stumbles upon such an interesting scenario/person that it is riveting for all the right (and often very wrong) reasons all the way through.For a basic plot summary, "Voyeur" recounts the story of Gerald Foos, a motel owner who spied, peeping Tom-style, on his guests for many years via a crawlspace above the rooms. Eventually, Foos began corresponding with journalist Gay Talese and the two formed a sort of "pact of secrecy", as Foos wanted the attention/outlet and Talese knew he was on to a story. But then, a murder takes place and culpability issues abound, and Talese even discovers that Foos may not have been 100% truthful in many of his claims/statements.The "star of this show", so to speak, is easily Foos. He's such a polarizing figure that he will captivate your attention. On one hand, he seems to be a terrible human being. On the other hand, there is a "psychology fascination" with what he is doing (it initially started all about "watching for sex", but then became as much a classification of private behavior as anything). The key here, of course, is to not be turned off by the snap judgment of "this guy is a perverted creep", because there is absolutely no doubting that. But the scale of what he accomplished/observed is fascinating for those who are able to open their minds a bit and give the story a chance to play out.Sadly, this entire concept (from Foos' letters to Talese, to the book, to this doc) has been basically botched from beginning to end. There is no way to verify any of Foos' claims (besides the fact that indeed the crawlspace was confirmed by one visit from Talese to Foos), Talese actually disavowed his book at one point, and this doc is kind of all over the place too. It's messy all over the place.What carries the day and made this so fascinating to me, though, was a look into the psyche of Foos. In a lot of ways, seeing him in front of a camera makes this whole thing "work" a lot more than it did on the printed page. I really think, though, that one's enjoyment of this documentary will be determined by whether morals can be set aside for a bit. What Foos did was reprehensible, but at the same time fascinating (from a purely psychological and logistical perspective). If you can wait and pass judgment on him at the end, you will enjoy "Voyeur". If not, it's probably best you steer clear.