Interview: Louis Theroux
- Published: 19 November 2008 22:36
- Author: Katherine Rushton
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- Last Updated: 19 November 2008 22:36
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Louis Theroux dodges questions on internal BBC politics, muses on the role of the journalist-interviewer and tells Katherine Rushton why these days he's more interested in telling good stories than trying to be funny.
If Louis Theroux hadn't forged a career interviewing the world's eccentrics, he would have made a convincing CIA operative - adept
at squeezing confessions from other people while he himself remains hermetically sealed.
At the same time he is unfailingly pleasant and down to earth. Instead of deploying a PR to greet me he pops his head around the door of the BBC's Euston Road reception and offers me a cup of tea, which he makes himself, and apologises for the bloodied scrap of tissue pressed against his chin after a last-minute shave.
The faux-naif interviewee
Theroux has said in previous interviews that his on-screen persona is a heightened version of his real self, but the man in front of me is totally familiar: his brows are knitted; his limbs appear too long for him to sit comfortably; and his slow, thoughtful speech is filled with long silences. Listening to my tape afterwards I often count 10, 12, 14-second pauses.
His celebrated faux-naif interviewing style is also in evidence, coming into play as much when Theroux is being asked questions as when he is the one asking them. Whenever the discussion veers away from his documentaries, he expresses (or feigns) tremendous puzzlement.
What, for example, does he make of remarks by BBC Knowledge head of independent commissioning Richard Klein that too many documentaries offer cod sympathy or are simply an excuse for voyeurism? The furrow between Theroux's brows deepens and there is a heavily pregnant pause before he wonders aloud: "What does he mean, though? What is he talking about?" I reiterate the point.
Another silence follows - 10 seconds this time. "Richard always has an interesting take on stuff. We reported to him for a few years and he's a very intelligent guy."
Oh dear. I'm not sure that that answers the question so I try again on a different subject: what did Theroux make of the cuts to BBC Knowledge (the department he works for) and the one-time threat to the Storyville documentary strand (with which he shares a building)?
Actually, apologises Theroux, Bambi-eyed, he didn't know that was the case. "Maybe I'm being protected by the higher-ups. At the risk of offending you, and I hope I don't, I don't read Broadcast very often. I don't really know what's going on.
"I hope everything goes well. I'm sorry. I should look into that. I'll talk to [Storyville editor] Nick Fraser about it. I'll ask him what's going on... What is BBC Knowledge?"
On screen this faltering faux-naif approach lures his subjects into unplanned confessions, or leaves them looking awkward and exposed. Ann Widdecombe found herself flustered when he asked if she is still a virgin and Sir Jimmy Savile likened Theroux to the "piranha fish" of interviewers.
But Theroux thinks the charges against him are unfair. "I try just to ask the most obvious question. I don't believe in taking anything as read, or assuming [anything]. I feel you should take people at their word and there's no shame in being upfront and direct about what you ask," he says. "People ask me if I like Ali G as if I'm in the same genre as that, which I just don't get. I've never hidden what we do so I don't see it as hit and run journalism."
It is a point of honour for Theroux that he is straightforward with his interview subjects. They always see an example of his work before signing up for a programme and either he or someone from his production team will join them to view the final cut.
Theroux has also tried to maintain friendships of sorts with many of the people who have appeared in his documentaries, lunching with Neil and Christine Hamilton long after their film had aired. "I was caught up in the idea that there is a blurred line between friendship and journalism and felt that I needed to continue the relationship to be true to what I'd experienced in the field," he explains. "But actually I think that was something that I was carrying out in my head."
Having children (Albert, two, and Frederick, nine months) has consigned that idea to the past, although Theroux is still pleased to hear from his subjects. He exchanges emails with erstwhile porn star JJ Michaels, for example, who appeared in Weird Weekends. "He recently made a new porn movie. He sent me a copy of the DVD and I emailed him to say the box cover looks great and congratulations - but I don't seek that out and try and extend it."
Being chatty with a porn king is one thing, but what about people whose activities cause obvious harm to others? Previous documentaries have seen Theroux hanging out with torturers, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Shaking hands with criminals
His next effort is no different. In twin documentaries, set to air on BBC2 on 30 November and 7 December under the banner Law and Disorder, Theroux will be shaking hands with hijackers, heroin addicts, gangsters and killers in the crime-ridden ghettos of Philadelphia and Johannesburg. So what does it feel like to have those friendly encounters?
"It can be quite odd and it just brings home the strangeness of the way life is lived in general. It's like, ah, boxers shaking hands before a fight, or sworn enemies kind of negotiating - not to say that I view these people as my sworn enemies," he says. "The journalist operates in a strange grey area of being both a human being and a person who is there to do a job."
One scene sees Theroux chatting to a self-confessed murderer, Malevin, who claims he microwaved a baby and talks about crime as a kind of vocation: "I don't feel ashamed. I will die for my job. [I would be] a serial killer or whatever as long as it's crime. I do crime. [For] most of my life I like crime," he says.
Three weeks ago, the man was shot dead and Theroux looks back on their meeting with ambivalence. "I see him as a somewhat tragic figure, notwithstanding the terrible things that he'd done - or said he'd done. I feel terrible for the existence he must have led that must have turned him into that.
"There's no question in my mind he was a serious criminal but at the same time I thought he was putting on a role of a kind. Whether he'd actually put a baby in a microwave I don't know."
In typical Theroux style, Law and Disorder revels in the unnerving juxtaposition of charisma and brutality, and the complicated shades of grey that cloud right and wrong. The Philadelphia police seem brutal and unnecessarily aggressive until one moving scene where the chief of the unit explains that his brother, also a cop, was shot and killed for being too soft. In Johannesburg, the leader of a vigilante "justice" group that inflicts corporal punishment on untried suspects, cogently argues that without this rough justice all citizens face theft and violence on an almost daily basis.
This uncomfortable viewing bears more resemblance to Ross Kemp on Gangs than When Louis Met the Hamiltons and is indicative of the new approach Theroux is taking.
Ten one-hour "serious" films
He has just signed up for another exclusive deal with the BBC, which commits him to 10 hour-long films over three years and is intent on "serious stories, done our way, but somewhat darker, more nuanced than Weird Weekends or When Louis Met".
Theroux was "not 100% happy" with the niche he was carving for himself, he says. He had lost interest in quizzing celebrities and was frustrated that the work made him dependent "on the whim" of one or two highly strung subjects. "You have to tiptoe round them in a way that robs you of a certain amount of agency as a programme-maker. If you're inside St Quentin [prison], for example, there are loads of different ways to flesh out a story. If you've just got access to Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee...", he trails off. "Earlier on we were trying harder to be funny. Now I just want to tell good stories.
"I wouldn't let [the celebrity interview] be my bread and butter in the way that it was but if it's the right person and it feels big enough I would do one."
Heather Mills is reportedly keen for a show - surely she would be compulsive viewing? Theroux says he wrote to her after her split from Paul McCartney but he remains non-committal, talking only vaguely and hypothetically about offering her the chance to tell her side of the story.
It's a charming if implausible act. After Mills' well-documented outburst on GMTV, Theroux must expect her to make unmissable TV just like everyone else does. Perhaps his ability to make people unravel under questioning is also what makes him so guarded - and a famously tricky candidate to interview, I venture.
He goes silent, knots his brow again and blithely disagrees. "[Lots of] journalists seem to be frustrated by the encounter. Sometimes the journalist comes along and the subject is, 'Who am I, really?' as though I'm actually someone else. A, I don't think I am really someone else and B, I'm not particularly interested in proving that I'm not someone else and so the conversation reaches a bit of a stalemate. People want to know about my personal foibles but I'd rather be invisible - as far as I can be invisible in front of a camera."
That sounds fair enough, but trade magazines don't want to know about his foibles so much as his thoughts on the industry - so what does he make of the Ross/Brand furore? Learning from Theroux, I fight the urge to fill the ensuing 14-second silence.
"I'm a big fan of both Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. I don't know what more I can say," he says, eventually. "You're trying to get me to say something negative and I don't want to." And with that he gets up to leave.
