Something curious seems to be happening around Primetime. What would seem like a universally supported act – hunting and exposing people who sexually prey on minors – is somehow now at the centre of a debate. While Robert Pattinson is getting universal praise for his portrayal of To Catch A Predator host Chris Hansen, elsewhere the project is being declared as some kind of hit piece on the host.
The 67-year-old presenter has been critical of the movie, and has not been involved in the making of Primetime in any way. He has now seen it, and Hansen had this to say about it via a 20-minute YouTube Video:
“It was so bizarre and so in and out of reality, it’s hard for me to… Obviously I’m not objective because the character is, you know, me, but it was so detached from reality or anything I’ve experienced then or now doing the investigations. I’m not sure what the point of it was.”
Speaking of Pattinson’s portrayal of him in the movie, he said it was:
“…so detached, so unhinged, so dark, so unlikeable… in a way, it’s a hit piece on me and the series, which is weird.”
Hansen has his own project, I’m Chris Hansen, in the works. It is the TV host’s personal account of his work and career through interviews and archival footage.
Director Lance Oppenheim claims he did not originally set out to make a movie all about Hansen alone. The project was inspired by a To Catch A Predator sting operation in Murphy, Texas. The mission involved Rockwall County’s assistant district attorney Bill Conradt, who died by suicide as authorities and the To Catch a Predator crew were closing in on his house following sexually explicit messages he exchanged with a decoy.
Oppenheim says the project was then born because he was:
“…blown away by the theatricality of how he went about dismantling people’s lives, he would go in there and he would essentially almost have superhuman abilities that felt mythological. He like could make someone who would desperately want to be anywhere else sit down and listen to him and and essentially have a conversation with him, even though they wanted to get out of there as quick as humanly possible.”
Primetime is on general release right now.
