Book description
For ten years Louis Theroux has been making programmes about off-beat
characters on the fringes of US society. Now he revisits America and the
people who have most fascinated him to try to discover what motivates
them, why they believe the things they believe, and to find out what has
happened to them since he last saw them. Along the way Louis thinks
about what drives him to spend so much time among weird people, and
considers whether he's learned anything about himself in the course of
ten years working with them. Has he manipulated the people he's
interviewed, or have they manipulated him? From his Las Vegas base,
Louis revisits the assorted dreamers and outlaws who have been his TV
feeding ground. Attempting to understand a little about himself and the
workings of his own mind, Louis considers questions such as: What is the
difference between pathology and 'normal' weirdness? Is there something
particularly weird about Americans? What does it mean to be weird, or
'to be yourself'? And do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose
us?
Louis Theroux went to America after graduating from Oxford
University, where he wrote for satirical magazine Spy. After working
on Michael Moore's 'TV Nation', Louis hosted his own show, 'Weird
Weekends' for the BBC. He followed this with the hugely popular series
'Louis meets...' in which he spent time with, amongst others, Jimmy
Savile, Neil and Christine Hamilton, and Chris Eubank. This is Louis'
first book.
