Before the art of letter writing was largely lost to the digital age, Gerald Foos used his own hands to write out a fateful inquiry to New Yorker scribe Gay Talese in January 1980.
The subject? To apprise Talese of his extensive “secret life” as a 40-something creepy peeper at the Manor House Motel on Colfax.
The lengthy story in the New Yorker — which is effectively an excerpt from an upcoming book by Talese based on his experiences with Foos — details how Foos bought the Manor House back in the 1960s and subsequently installed fake ventilation grills that allowed him to watch his guests from above the ceiling and keep a ridiculously thorough accounting of the people who came through and the various sexual acts they practiced while lodging at the Manor House.
As Foos put it in his letter to Talese, “(t)he reason for purchasing this motel was to satisfy my voyeuristic tendencies and compelling interest in all phases of how people conduct their lives, both socially and sexually… I did this purely out of my unlimited curiosity about people and not as just a deranged voyeur.”
Talese recounts even joining Foos at one time in one of the ceiling spaces to watch a couple from Chicago who traveled to Colorado to go skiing. At one point, Talese recalls his necktie slipping through the slats of the observation grill and almost giving them away.
The article is astonishing, but for many reasons beyond the luridness recounted by Foos. For starters, there’s the fact that Talese never went to the proper authorities to detail the repeated violations of the guests’ privacy — in fact, Foos’ story is only now coming out because a confidentiality pact between Foos and Talese signed back in 1980 was dissolved to give Foos his 15 minutes of infamy.
So why now? For starters, Foos was fairly certain that the statute of limitations had been exhausted for any crimes he committed in peeping in on hundreds upon hundreds of people throughout the years. For Talese’s part, Foos is an intriguing figure in today’s world, in which we live with the knowledge of the NSA’s massive intel-gathering operations, a world where lawsuits by Erin Andrews and Hulk Hogan have provided crticial updates to our understanding of privacy and the First Amendment.
And if you’re just not up for reading Talese’s article or forthcoming book? Director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “Skyfall”) just won the rights to turn “The Voyeur’s Motel” into a feature film. Because, you know, some people just like to watch.