The Most Hated Family in America - Filmmaker

Filmmaker

Theroux traveled from the United Kingdom to Kansas, United States to meet with members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Theroux and a BBC film crew spent three weeks in Topeka, Kansas, gathering information on the 71 members of the organisation. In an article for The Guardian, Theroux noted, "It was fascinating to see the power of a family to create its own bizarre ideology and pass it down through the generations." In a statement in The Age, Theroux posited, "Maybe, through my enthusiasm, people reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them." The Western Mail quoted Theroux on how he selects subject matter which interests him, "The subjects I'm interested in are quite extreme. They're so far beyond the pale of normal human interaction that you're never going to get a reality show on that territory."

In an interview with BBC News, Theroux stated that the Phelpses are the most extreme people he has ever met. Theroux gave his opinion on the teachings of Fred Phelps. Theroux stated, "I think that the pastor is not a very nice person. I think he's an angry person who's twisted the Bible and picked and chosen verses that support his anger, that sort of justify his anger, and he's instilled that in his children and they've passed it on to their children. Although the second and third generation are by and large quite nice people from what I saw, they still live under the influence of their Gramps."

Apart from their protests, Theroux found them to be quite kind, and commented, "It shows you what strange avenues the religious impulse can take you down. I think another part of the answer is that parts of the Christian Bible are pretty weird. There's a lot of weird stuff in there and when you take that and you add this angry, domineering kind of a father figure, which is Gramps, and you add that he has sort of separated them off from other people, other families and driven them to achieve a lot, and he was kind of a charismatic guy, and still is up to a point. He was a very verbal, very persuasive, an extremely compelling speaker. All these things added together combined to make a powerful influence."