That was an excellent one.

Expected more

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Journalism icon Gay Talese reports on Gerald Foos, the owner of a Colorado motel, who allegedly secretly watched his guests with the aid of specially designed ceiling vents, peering down from an "observation platform" he built in the motel's attic.The movie starts with a lie: Gay Talese says he's 80. He's 87. In fact, he says he's 80 twice. I'm not sure anything in this movie is real. The truth is, the film is more about promoting Gay Talese than about Foos. The guy who claims to be Foos looks like a phony. Died hair giant glasses so strange. Is it good? Not so much

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.

Sometimes we're better off not looking behind the curtain, or behind the ceiling vent. About halfway into Voyeur I realized I was watching a sequel. A sequel to The Odd Couple. Gerald Foos was a passable Walter Matthau and Gay Talese was as good as gold as Jack Lemmon. I kept waiting for Gay to go shopping for produce so he could tell a woman how to select a cantaloupe. This is a documentary for our times. In an era when national news organizations routinely present fake news dressed up as real news here comes a movie about fakery. The tension builds. Will Foos be able to put one over on Gay Talese, the internationally famous author whose clothes closet rivals Cher's? But damn, the man can dress. Talese is more layered than an old time burlesque queen at the start of her act.We wonder, is he really being fooled by . . . a man named Foos? Can this be real? Foos claimed he spent hours upon hours, years upon years sweating and freezing in the attic of his no-tel motel in Aurora, Colorado, viewing the sex acts of strangers and jerking off 3-5 times a night. Lucky for him he kept meticulous notes and lent an air of authenticity to his story by writing to Talese way back in 1980.I think the wrong story is marketed here. To me it wasn't about Foos and his sickness, instead it's a fascinating story about a famous writer at the end of his career, wondering if he wasn't tanking his entire reputation over a weird story from a weird guy. Even someone as talented as Gay Talese, and he is talented, is human in the end and has fears. As mismatched as they were I felt that Talese came to like Foos and moreso Foos's wife. True, maybe Talese thought of them as zoo animals who he couldn't stop looking at or maybe as strangers having sex. But there was never a second when I thought Talese looked down on them or regarded them as lesser human beings.

Greetings again from the darkness. We are watching the final product of filmmakers watching a reporter watching a man whose hobby is watching those who don't know they are being watched. Lacking a single redeeming individual, the film's creep factor slithers towards 11 on the (SPINAL TAP) scale. It's understandable if you assume this is the story of a pathetic and disgusting Aurora, Colorado motel owner who, for many years, quietly leered at his guests from a self-constructed perch in the attic. Gerald Foos methodically documented the sexual actions of the Manor House Motel guests, which numbered 2000-3000 per year. If his actions aren't remarkable (not in a good way) enough, Mr. Foos actually married not one, but two women who were complicit in his hobby.In 1980, renowned reporter and author ("from age 15 to 80") Gay Talese received a letter from Gerald Foos, kicking off a three decade relationship culminating in a controversial feature article in "The New Yorker" and a book entitled "The Voyeur's Motel". Once Mr. Foos agrees to have his name published, co-directors Myles Kane and Josh Koury jump on board to document the final steps in Mr. Talese's writing and research process. It's here that we enter the oddest man cave you'll likely see. In the basement of Talese's immaculate Manhattan brownstone is not just his writing office, but also a lifetime of research and writing … boxes and shelves of material that will surely one day be part of a museum or university collection. The unexpected parallels between writer and subject are made clear. Both are voyeurs and both are collectors. As a journalist, Talese observes the actions of people, while Foos is quite obviously the definition of a Peeping Tom. Talese collects the years of research for his writings, while Foos shows off his extraordinary sports memorabilia collection (also in his basement). Beyond these similarities, what stands out most are the unbridled egos of these two men. Both seemed most focused on getting or keeping their names and stories in the headlines. Of course, Talese has built a career on his name and reputation, while the aging Foos simply sees this as his legacy that somehow deserves historical prominence.The filmmakers remain more focused on Talese than Foos, and that takes us inside "The New Yorker" where the editors are justifiably concerned about a single-source story – one that without Talese's name attached would likely have never made it past an initial perusal. The aftermath of publication reminds us that we've seen con men before, and there is little joy in being taken on a long ride of deceit. Perhaps the best description of what we see on screen is that it's a sideshow of ego and the need to be seen (watched).