Louis Theroux Documentary Analysis- Gambling in Las Vegas & Behind Bars

Louis Theroux is a British broadcaster best known for his Gonzo style journalism, gonzo journalism tends to favour style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for a topic or event being covered.

His first journalism job was at Metro Silicon Valley, an alternative weekly newspaper in California. In 1992 he was hired as a writer for Spy magazine. He was also worked as a correspondent on Michael Moore's TV Nation series.

His 2007 Documentary Gambling in Las Vegas shows the audience about the life of gamblers and what they get up to in casinos in Las Vegas, how much they spend, win, lose and how they feel about gambling.

He tries to find out why gamblers continue to play even when they lose money. In this documentary he raises the topic of gambling addiction.

He gives us a non-judgemental but rather biased look towards ‘the high-rollers’ of Las Vegas’s casinos. He also tries to experience the life of a gambler he even wins some money playing pontoon and leaving the audience with the thought that gambling only makes sense ‘when you’re winning’.

One scene shows Louis conversing with an elderly lady who loves to play the slots, she reveals to him that she has lost $4 Million over the years playing the slots and that the casino ‘treats her well’. This gives us the idea that the casino is ‘using’ the woman only for financial gain and acts like she is a valuable customer.

He shows that gambling addiction has gotten to the gamblers he associates with; he also shows that they are totally oblivious to the fact that they may be addicted. He also shows that addicted gamblers have the idea the ‘if you’re winning then why stop’.

Louis gives the audience an intimate insight about gambling addiction as he experiences the lives of ‘addicted gamblers’. He makes the audience judge the gamblers shown in the documentary as he does not judge them himself.

He also uses this style in his 2008 documentary ‘behind bars’ that sees Louis visiting a state prison (San Quentin) where he gets to know the lifestyle of inmates as well as conversing with them and experiencing the typical day of life of a convict.

Scenes are shown of Louis eating with two other convicts , everyone seems very open to Louis, he presents  himself as a polite interested, non-judgemental person for people to talk to He also goes into the court yard to talk with criminal ‘factions’ that are separated by race.

Louise’s style is that he tries to experience from the convict’s point of view about prison life, he shows a great deal of empathy towards these convicts as he tries to find out why they did the crimes they did and how they feel about prison life in general. He remains fairly relaxed through the whole documentary; this is done to give the message that possibly the stereotypical view of prisoners is wrong and that you don’t have to be completely cautious and paranoid around them and that they are not necessarily ‘bad people’ but misunderstood.

The documentary shows that Louis is trying to create something that is not judgemental; he purely leaves the judging to the audience about prison life and dangerous criminals.