Of far more interest to them is the slippery interplay between interviewer and subject, a tense negotiation that ought to be a staring contest, if only both men wouldn’t keep blinking. Kane and Koury don’t waste any time weighing Foos’s actions on the scale of judgment one soundbite from a New Yorker editor calling him a “sociopath” says everything that needs to be said. To put it mildly, their dynamic was not conducive to the kind of objective detachment that makes for a responsible profile. Having dedicated his life to the documentation of human behavior in its most truthful state, Talese was practically jealous of Foos’s untainted conditions.
Talese leapt at the opportunity, as unperturbed by Foos’s gross moral lapses as by Kevin Spacey’s. Foos personally approached Talese with the opportunity to break this extraordinary tale, sensing a kindred spirit in the man who cleaned up sexual deviancy’s reputation years earlier with his daring book Thy Neighbor’s Wife.
