Louis Theroux
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Louis Sebastian Theroux (born 20 May 1970) is a British television presenter, best known for his series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends and When Louis Met….
Life
Theroux was born in Singapore[link], and was educated at Westminster School (where he was a friend and contemporary of the comedians Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish) and Magdalen College, Oxford where he gained a first class degree in modern history. Also while at Oxford, he developed his skills at table football, building upon his previous experience of the game gained during a gap year in Zimbabwe.
Theroux is the younger son of the American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux, and the younger brother of fellow writer and television presenter Marcel Theroux. The actor Justin Theroux is his cousin. He holds dual US/British nationality, Theroux retains his US citizenship, although his upbringing in Britain and his English accent often lead people to think he is solely British.
His first journalism job was at Metro Silicon Valley, an alternative weekly in San Jose, California. In 1992 he was hired as a writer for Spy magazine, then got his break in television working as a correspondent on Michael Moore's TV Nation series. At TV Nation, he made segments on off-beat cultural subjects, including Avon Ladies in the Amazon, the Jerusalem Syndrome, and the attempts by the Ku Klux Klan to rebrand itself as a civil rights group for white people. When TV Nation ended he was signed to a development deal by the BBC, out of which came Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends. He also continues to write for The Idler.
On 13 May 2001 Theroux won the "Richard Dimbleby Award for the Best Presenter (Factual, Features and News)" at the British Academy Television Awards for his series Weird Weekends. He won it again on 21 April 2002, for his series When Louis Met….
His first book, The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures, was published in Britain in 2005. In this book, Theroux returns to America to find out what has happened in the lives of some of the people he featured in his television programmes since he last saw them.
Documentaries
In Weird Weekends (1998–2000), Louis followed marginal American subcultures like survivalists, gangsta rappers and porn stars, often by living among or close to the people involved. Often Theroux's documentary method subtly exposes the contradictions or farcical elements of such seriously-held beliefs as homophobia or racism. Theroux himself describes the aim of the series as “setting out to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary setting. To me, it’s almost a privilege to be welcomed into these communities and to shine a light on them and, maybe, through my enthusiasm, to get people to reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them. I don’t have to play up that stuff. I’m not a matinee idol disguised as a nerd.”
In When Louis Met… (2000–2002), Theroux accompanied a different celebrity in each programme as they went about their day-to-day business, interviewing them about their lives and experiences as he did so. His episode about the DJ and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile, When Louis Met Jimmy, was voted one of the top fifty documentaries of all time in a survey by Britain’s Channel Four. In When Louis Met the Hamiltons, the disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine were arrested following false allegations of indecent assault during the course of filming.
In his most recent programmes (2003), Theroux returned to American themes, working at feature-length, this time with a more natural tone — for example, Louis and the Brothel, which takes a sympathetic look at the prostitutes working at a legal brothel in Nevada. In March 2006, The Guardian newspaper reported that Louis had signed a new deal with the BBC to make ten films over the course of three years.
In his early work, Theroux was noted for his ability to get people to reveal things about themselves by asking questions in a seemingly naïve and innocent way. This faux-naïve style was heavily influenced by fellow documentary-makers Jon Ronson and Nick Broomfield. His style is seen as controversial by some, who accuse Theroux of being manipulative and mocking. In his interviews with eccentric and unusual people, it has been argued Theroux takes advantage of naïvety and eagerness to get attention — his subjects failing to realise Theroux finds their beliefs strange or even laughable. In this sense, Theroux’s approach is controversial, although in his subsequent documentaries some of his subjects are clearly powerful, confident people (such as the media stars he followed in When Louis Met…).
External links
- [Biography of Louis Theroux] from [A Louis Theroux Website]
- [Theroux promises to raise stakes] — a BBC News article about his new series April 20, 2006
- [Something weird about Louis] — an interview by Gyles Brandreth and published by the Telegraph (filed December 11, 2001)
- [When Amazon Met Louis]
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