Review: When Louis Met Jimmy
Louis Theroux and the art of interviewing terrible people.
I recently started a free trial for what appears to be one of many BBC streaming services. This one, in particular, is entirely focused on their back catalogue of documentary films and TV specials. Browsing through the selection, I came across a panel dedicated entirely to Louis Theroux documentaries. In the past, I have written a fairly extensive review of Louis Theroux’ time spent with the nazis, in which I praised him in particular for his ability to interact non-judgmentally around disturbed and antisocial individuals, allowing them to speak all their distorted truths without any hints of irony or worry. (You can read my original review of that special here). Of the specials they had at hand, the one that caught my eye was When Louis Met Jimmy. I recently reviewed The Reckoning (you can also read that review here), the Steve Coogan mini-series, in which he masterfully plays against type in recreating this disturbed and disgraced British television star, and I think the background that that show provided made this one an increasingly engrossing watch. When Louis Met Jimmy is genuinely one of the most unnerving interactions ever put on television. It is also one of the most fascinating psychologically. Louis Theroux spent several days getting to know Jimmy Savile, who, years later and after his death, was revealed to be a prolific sexual predator with hundreds of victims (including children, the elderly, and the deceased) spanning decades. ‘Getting to know’ him is actually a misnomer, because from the very first moment Jimmy greets Louis into his home, to the very last second when he finally bids him farewell, at no point does Jimmy let down his guard. It’s so fascinating as a character study, watching Jimmy this man harboring this gargantuan skeleton in his little washed-up radio DJ’s closet.
Here is a man so overwhelmed by the weight of his secrets that they sit at the forefront of his mind in every interaction, no matter how innocuous. It’s to such an extent, Louis will make an innocent little remark or ask a perfectly normal question, yet Savile immediately gets shifty eyed and becomes weirdly defensive or tries to deflect by changing the conversation. Always trying to conceal his fear with a lame attempt at a joke, at no point does he seem at ease, and only when he seems semi-comfortable does he feel safe enough to reveal his past thug-like behavior or boasting not-so-subtly about the power and influence he wields among Britain’s elite. He is so intent on hiding his true self that it has actually made him stupid. The vast majority of what he says to seem charming and innocent is just rattling folksy sayings that don’t have any coherent meaning and are just him talking off the top of his head out of pure desperation. He is a total showboat with a tacky sense of style to pair it.
Throughout the doc, he and Louis’ get to experience Savile’s obsession with making public appearances and projecting a very specific image of lovable eccentric to the prying eyes of an increasingly suspicious public, among which whispers of his crimes had already been circulating. Louis occasionally manages to poke holes in Savile’s invented persona, giving us the tiniest, briefest glimpses into the real him, and when these happen Savile gets so visibly peeved that he laughs harder and jokes harder in a very concerted effort to seem unphased. The truly disturbing scenes are when he shows Louis things that in hindsight, were important aspects of his secret life: his ubiquity at hospitals, his propensity for sleeping in an rv outside, and the strange closet with all his late mother’s clothing. One of the more unsettling aspects of the show is how they play all this comically inappropriate stock music underneath these scenes of this insane person mucking about through society consequence free. It is truly something you have to see to believe.
If you watch it without context, it plays off like a very oddball road trip between two incompatible personalities. Watching it with full knowledge of what’s going on, you get a fascinating piece in which one man tries to get this celebrity to reveal his soul at least a little bit on camera, perhaps unaware of the full extent of his depravity, but certain he is not what he claims to be.
