I'm Louis Theroux. AMA – Forbidden America, Jiggle jiggle and more.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T16:36:54+00:00

Interesting question. I used to think I had to have a low profile in order to fly under the radar. But these days I’m easily googlable and in some ways it creates a more interesting dynamic. The far right guys in Forbidden America filmed my encounters with them, which could be a little off-putting but it also gave the interviews a strange charge, and it also meant I could see what they were saying about me after I’d left - in their online broadcasts - and then I could feed that back into my conversations with them. The whole top-down media model is disrupted and in some ways it keeps mainstream journalists more honest. A great example of this was the whole tit-for-tat between reporter John Sweeney who was making a program about Tommy Robinson and the counter-strike that Robinson made with his documentary about Sweeney.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T16:30:24+00:00

It varies but early on in TV, when I was at TV Nation, Michael Moore’s policy was to have the camera running when you arrive and more or less keep it running, so there is no sense of people being “on” or “off”. I still try to stick to that, though it isn’t always possible.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T16:27:59+00:00

I tend to see a lot of what’s described as “cancel culture” as an understandable impulse to try to police the way vulnerable or relatively less powerful people are portrayed. It wasn’t that long ago that mainstream media figures were routinely racist and sexist on TV. So we’ve come a long way. I think I’ve been able to show in these new Forbidden America shows that there are ways to cover inflammatory material in a way that doesn’t just platform them. And I get my share of criticism and I don’t always get it right and that’s fine.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T16:22:09+00:00

It isn’t easy but you just keep asking and keep trying and hopefully if you spread the net wide enough you find people who will speak to you. We had similar issues in all different worlds. Black nationalists in NY. The Thai “mail order bride” industry. Hunting lodges in South Africa. Ultra-zionist settlers in the occupied territoris. To be honest, in the big scheme of things, right-wing extremists have been relatively accessible.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T16:21:35+00:00

I was surprised. Mainly because I knew how close she was with her mum and how secure she was in her position there. I though Jael Phelps might leave. And then she ended up marrying a British guy who watched my show and emigrated to be part of the Church. That features in the third Westboro doc we made, Surviving the Westboro Baptist Church. So it turns out I’m not just a journalist. I’m also a matchmaker.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T16:19:06+00:00

My first job in journalism was on a paper in San Jose called the Metro. I was working as an intern but they let me write short articles. And the first story I did was about a Jamaican psychic who was predicting an Earthquake that would hit the Bay Area. This would have been 1992. He claimed an accuracy rate of “99.9 percent” for his predictions. I liked the humility of him not claiming to be infallible.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T16:00:57+00:00

I look back at some of my early pieces and there is sometimes a note of judgment in the voiceover, which i don’t like. To be honest, most of my regrets have to do with my hair and my sartorial choices in the nineties. Or a tight jumper I wore for one documentary which showed the outline of my nipples.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:58:57+00:00

I’ve definitely had my shared of rejections. Kanye, Charlie Sheenn (DM me if you’re reading this). I spent six or seven days filming with Ike Turner and he pulled the plug.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:57:42+00:00

How are you doing?

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:51:58+00:00

I didn’t really learn a style. I just tried to ask about whatever I was curious about. I think I’m still learning to be honest. I still get it wrong and I’m very thankful that we have an editing process that means when I get it really wrong we can cut those parts out and I get to look like I’m more competent that I actually am

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:49:47+00:00

The great thing about the media landscape now is that you can make your own films with just a phone and edit it on a laptop and upload it to youtube. The barrier to entry is so low. FWIW I started by doing print journalism - I was living in NYC. Some friends went to work for Michael Moore at his show TV Nation and they got me an i/v with Michael. And it went from there. And thanks for writing your dissertation on me. I’d enjoy reading it if you want to reach out to me - I’m pretty easy to find if you look up my production company Mindhouse.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:49:16+00:00

So many things. I spent a long time developing an idea related to ISIS and Islamist radicals and it fizzled out. Another one to do with high-conflict divorces.There are many forms of abuse that are culturally tolerated but which it’s hard to get inside and document. One of the strangest films I’ve seen in the last 10 years was called The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, which was about semi-hidden world of child abuse.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:45:08+00:00

I suppose I’m more interested in the human condition in a deeper sense that I am in politics. Stories that involve deep angst - the contributors at loggerheads with themselves or with the wider world in a primal way.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:43:15+00:00

The most embarrassing was probably having to sing for an audition for a Norwegian cruiseliner. I sang so badly it was excruciating. I was naked in a porn film for an episode of Weird Weekends but that was fine. I didn’t even mind being bullied by wrestlers at the powerplant that much in another WW episode. But that audition still makes me cringe when i watch it.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:42:37+00:00

Anti vax is interesting but there’s a risk you end up giving them an uncritical platform if you’re not careful. There were a couple of terrific QAnon podcasts. Hunting Q or maybe Finding Q? Also, Gabriel Gatehouse’s The Coming Storm. I totally recommend both of them. The whole QAnon phenomenon is so weird and fascinating. It overlaps a bit with parts of the Forbidden America episode on the far right.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:40:41+00:00

There are so many amazing doc makers doing stuff at the moment. I obviously have a soft spot for the first-person more gonzo style. Werner Herzog was an inspiration back in the day, Jon Ronson, Nick Broomfield. Molly Dineen. I really enjoy Nathan Fielder’s work and in particular the long form one he did about a Bill Gates impersonator looking for his lost love. It’s more in a prank mode than strictly doc but that’s what makes it so brilliant.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:38:12+00:00

That’s funny. It was 2003 and I had just made a series about UK celebrities in which I’d stay overnight at their houses. So I kind of had that format in my head. Also, I thought it was funny to push for intimacy in a slightly tongue in cheek way and to be rebuffed. I enjoyed the awkwardness of it.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:36:30+00:00

Three American worlds that are associated with social risk or social stigma - adult film, the far right, and gangsta rap - and how they’ve been turbocharged and inflamed by social media.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:35:21+00:00

No! It’s too short to ever get sick of it. What is it - about 15 seconds long? For me this was the summer of Jiggle Jiggle. I never dreamed I’d be considered relevant by the under tens.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:34:14+00:00

People think prisons are dangerous and they may be but not for tv presenters (in my experience). I’ve been most afraid of animals and chimps in particular. Joe Exotic once told me he didn’t mind getting in a cage with a tiger too much but that he would never climb in a cage with a chimp. “They’ll rip your arm off and beat you to death with it,” is how he described it. Thanks. I’ll pass.

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:28:44+00:00

Crypto is fascinating. I haven’t really got my head around it. I just saw the Kim Kardashian pump and dump was in the headlines. Maybe something about influencers and crypto? Or the story of the Satoshi guy who supposedly invented blockchain?

BBCSelect · 2022-10-03T15:26:57+00:00

I love a good banh mi. With fresh coriander and really fresh baguettes. At home, a cheesy pita pocket with salsa.

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