Thankfully, unlike Norman Bates, Gerald Foos never killed anyone at the Manor House Motel in Aurora, Colorado. He did, however, cruelly murder any chance of us feeling comfortable going commando in a vacation suite ever again. Through holes he cut inside fake ceiling vents, he watched visitors having sex and lord knows what else for decades.
NetflixThe movies were certainly adult, but the rooms were definitely not clean.
From the 1960s onward, Foos had the perfect perverted setup for someone with a serious peeping hobby. But we didn't find out about his activities because of some jailhouse confession. After a productive career of watching people doing what people do in low-priced motels, he decided to go public. After all, according to the Dangle Documentarian himself, it was all in the name of "research" (he built a viewing platform above "special" rooms that he called "the laboratory").
And so, like all science-minded data collectors, he set out to sell his story to anyone with a checkbook and a high tolerance for self-delusion. Amazingly, he was successful. Not only did famed journalist Gay Talese write a New Yorker article and a book about Foos' adventures in motel voyeurism (unimaginatively titled The Voyeur's Motel), but Steven Spielberg also bought the movie rights, and Netflix made a documentary based on it (even less imaginatively titled Voyeur). Unfortunately, Spielberg's team had no idea about the documentary, and so chose to pull out prematurely -- which Foos was surely prepared for.
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