The great thing about Louis isn't his tolerance or patience towards the individuals, it's his intelligence when dealing with them.
He really is a perceptive and smart guy; he plays on their weaknesses and on their annoyances, or conversely compliments their strengths and good qualities, and just draws out all of the most entertaining-to-watch behavior. The great thing about Louis Theroux's works that makes them so memorable for me is that he doesn't just report at face-value or stay with a bunch of lunatics as a fly-on-the-wall reporter, but he actually gets involved himself in their everyday-activities practically, and 'extracts' precisely the information and good TV he wants from them. I guess in a (undeserving) way you could compare it to the one-off documentary/interview done with Michael Jackson a few years back on British TV... where the reporter pretty much from the start had an agenda, and just manipulated Michael to produce the TV-gold he was looking for.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual.
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