Trial By Media, Pt. 2 — Primetime

Scott Tobias (0:05)

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being.

Tasha Robinson (0:11)

We may be true with the past, but the past is not true with us.

Keith Phipps (0:19)

Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a Movie of the Week podcast, devoted to classic film, the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

SPEAKER_4 (0:25)

I'm Keith Phipps, here again with Tasha Robinson, Scott Tobias, and Genevieve Koski.

Keith Phipps (0:31)

Once again, all Your Next Picture Show hosts are here. None of us have been arrested on charges or otherwise consumed by the machine that powers the showbiz world. That's good news. In our last episode, we discussed Sweet Smell of Success, a depiction of a man losing his humanity in an attempt to rise to the top of the power brokers behind New York's entertainment world. While Sweet Smell of Success was inspired by real people, most obviously Walter Winchell, the film we're pairing it with doesn't even have the veil of fiction. In Primetime, director Lance Oppenheim, a documentary event making his narrative feature debut, revisits the NBC series To Catch a Predator, a spinoff of the news program Dateline NBC whose connection to journalistic ethics or any kind of ethics was tenuous at best. Robert Pattinson plays the show's host, Chris Hansen, a journalist whose multiple Emmy wins give him a veneer of respectability that his most successful venture seems destined to strip away.

Not that Hansen sees it that way.

Given a taste of success with the program, which sets up stinging operations for those attempting to meet minors for sex, Hansen decides to push it even further, essentially for the greater good. Though whether what he's being done can be described as good is highly debatable. Merritt Wever co-stars as Andy, a producer who shares his vision and ambition, and Skyler Gisondo rounds out the cast as Dan, an actor whose youthful looks allow him to join the show as one of the decoys Hansen uses as bait. That's up next.

Genevieve Koski (1:54)

Who are you? I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC.

Tasha Robinson (1:57)

They're gonna love this.

SPEAKER_4 (1:59)

A predator has never earned the recognition it deserves. But I think that's all about to change.

Scott Tobias (2:05)

How old are you?

Keith Phipps (2:06)

35

SPEAKER_4 (2:07)

Want to try again? You know what your credit is on this show?

Keith Phipps (2:11)

Superhero.

Scott Tobias (2:12)

Josh, put a pizza in the oven.

Genevieve Koski (2:14)

Weirdly, dude, I think you nailed that.

Scott Tobias (2:16)

I'm a huge fan of your show. I don't want to be in it. On the ground!

Keith Phipps (2:44)

It's just chat.

SPEAKER_4 (2:46)

It's not just chat, though, is it?

Keith Phipps (2:51)

All right, everyone, Primetime. There's a lot to talk about here.

Scott, I'm going to throw you a year. Where do we start with this one?

Scott Tobias (2:58)

Are you asking me what I think I'm doing here? Is that the question you're asking me? You're sitting me down and asking me? I am an Oppenheim fan.

He is known for documentaries and documentary shorts. He did a number of New York Times and New Yorker short documentaries and then he has done documentary films such as Some Kind of Heaven. It's a wonderful film about the villages, the cultural at that Florida retirement community known as the Villages and really focuses on outsiders within that community. Sperm World, which is about the say underground world of sperm exchanges, I would say.

Done in an unofficial and not mediated by the medical profession sort of way. Incredible film. He did Renfair, which is a documentary series for, was it HBO, I believe? So very interesting filmmaker with a strong style. He is not somebody who goes first, you know, cinema verite style. He certainly is not the type of guy who does, you know, a Wikipedia style documentaries or generic documentaries. He's a stylized filmmaker and a lot of that sensibility he really brings to Primetime, which is strikingly expressive and unreal and kind of like uses the style to kind of express what it wants to express about the story and what it believes to be the essence of Chris Hansen and this whole kind of sorted enterprise. And so I think that's kind of where Oppenheim comes from. He's shooting this movie in very vibrant colors and at a four to three aspect ratio. It really is a film that kind of immediately puts you on your back foot in terms of the style being as unconventional it is. And then it leads into how unconventional also Robert Pattinson's performance is as Hansen I think, because it is I think he's conceived it's conceived as almost a darkly comic performance is a performance that emphasizes the strangeness and alienness of Hansen or this version of Hansen in this version of a TV guy. You know, that's what the one prevailing thought I had watching Primetime. And it in running a little bit of American Psycho too is just is this you have this person who's not fully human or seems almost like an imitation of a person whose motives are kind of hard to trace and whose humanity is hard to trace and who also lives to be on in front of the camera. That's the important part. It feels almost born and raised on on camera and can't really live outside of that ecosphere. So I'm curious to know what you all thought of the film period, because it is a film that has been a little bit divisive. I think obviously, obviously people are a little more positive on the negative. I certainly liked it quite a bit, but I'm curious to see how it landed with with all of you because it is a film that is tough and can be a little off putting.