Do not flinch if an alien approaches. Their pale, elongated bodies and big, shiny eyes take some getting used to, but extraterrestrials mix well with Earth people and share many of the same tastes. The members of one colony, sponsored by the CIA, spoke English and enjoyed chaperoned trips to Las Vegas. "They liked to go for entertainment in casinos," a UFO buff tells Louis Theroux. "They're just like we are."
Just who is "we"? In The Call of the Weird, Theroux's extended road trip in search of American oddballs, it's the wide, wonderful universe of survivalists, flat-earthers, end-of-the-world prophets, Nevada brothel owners, topless dancers, get-rich-quick motivational speakers, white-pride lunatics and the many, many Americans who have been abducted by aliens. And Ike Turner, too.
It might feel as if we have met many of these people before. Theroux certainly has. He made the same stops about 10 years ago for the BBC in a television series called Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends. In a nostalgic moment, or perhaps to pick up a quick paycheck, he decided to revisit his old pals and see how they were getting along.
This was both a low-risk and a high-risk proposition. Few assignments require less of journalists than letting a colorful monomaniac speak into a tape recorder. On the other hand, most of Theroux's subjects had seen tapes of his television show, and a fair number of them were prone to violence. "Rather than a Reunion Tour," he writes, "the trip might turn into a kind of referendum on my own methods, as voted on by my ex-subjects."
Fortunately, the kind of people who believe that the US is in Iraq to gain access to its stargates tend to be used to ridicule or unable to recognize it. Theroux, as he drove down America's blue highways, faced other, more pressing problems, like finding his subjects.
In America's mobile society, marginal people drift. Thor Templar, formerly Lord Commander of the Earth Protectorate, had given up his less-than-profitable business of selling security services to people under threat of alien abduction or attack and was now selling disks that boosted mileage by beaming mysterious rays into a car's gas tank. His career path was not atypical.
Except for a brief, uncomfortable phone call, Theroux never does hook up with Templar. When he does manage face-to-face reunions with his old friends, a second problem emerges: Most of Theroux's subjects find him highly annoying. He hangs around too long. He asks irritating, obvious questions. He returns again and again to topics his subjects make abundantly clear they would rather avoid.
Theroux, son of the writer Paul Theroux, is a terrible interviewer, unaware of the difference between television and print. Instead of sidling up to a big question, gathering material along the way, he simply blurts it out, eager to get the quick sound bite. Then he transcribes both question and answer. "Has the industry changed a lot?" he asks a producer of pornographic films. "Do you ever worry that what you do is degrading to women?"
If the questions are banal, so is the subject. At this late date, there is virtually nothing left to be said about the pornographic film industry, or Nevada brothels, which, by the way, are in no way weird. Pathetic, yes. But not weird. Nor do they rise, or sink, to the level of a subculture. In the age of cable television and the Internet, it's an open question whether subcultures even exist.
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