Primetime

As is with any decade, the 2000s were an interesting time to grow up. As a kid I remember my mom referring to white vans as To Catch a Predator vans, as if the name of the show itself was synonymous with child sex criminals and their usual set of wheels. The raunchy comedy ruled the day, from Step Brothers to Superbad. And it wasn’t the shadow of the Cold War that loomed over my childhood like it did for Generation X and the Baby Boomers before them, but the cultural aftershock of the war on terror. 

Primetime sends us back 20 years to a time that is already beginning to be romanticized. 2006; the year Edge won his first WWE Championship. The whole experience of the movie is visually stunning right from the opening credits. There is a hazy, dream-like visual texture, both soft and grainy at the same time. According to DP David Bolen, “What we did was shoot it all the way at exposure index 6400, which makes the image really grainy. Then we printed that to 16-millimeter film, which added all this additional texture of grungy richness.”

The lighting is hyper-stylized with neon pinks and blues buzzing through the screen. It’s a treat to the eyes and masterfully composed. But I asked myself, is this 2006 or am I watching Miami Vice? The luminescent glow radiating off computer screens onto Robert Pattinson’s face is captured beautifully. Though for its beauty, the color grading felt a bit off-period. Mad respect just for being experimental and wanting to look different when that's growing increasingly harder to find. 

I think the 80s feel I’m getting can be explained by David Bolen here: “We used Japanese broadcast cameras made in the 1980s by Ikegami, which contain a red tube, a green tube, and a blue tube. Whenever we went deep into Chris Hansen’s psyche, we would use that camera. It’s very blue at times, very red at other times. It was our experimental camera to get into the subjectivity of Chris.”

ACE IN THE HOLE

Editor Daniel Garber mentioned to Forbes how inspired he and director Lance Oppenheim were by the 1951 Billy Wilder film Ace in the Hole. In it, an opportunistic reporter exploits the story of a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his struggling career. The media circus that ensues is a damning commentary on American culture and our sensational media. You can see the parallels at play here with Chris Hansen’s ratings driven psychosis. And sprinkled throughout the background of Primetime are broadcasts of the Iraq War in permanent rotation. A circus indeed. 

The allusions to Moby Dick are great with Chris Hansen as Captain Ahab, dragging the rest of his crew down with him in a maniacal pursuit of his "white whale."

This marks the third Robert Pattinson film I’ve seen this year, and the second he’s done with A24. I’m not complaining, man’s on a run. His manic shifts in emotion and piercing eyes turn this, as Forbes described, “gonzo” biopic, into a straight psychological thriller. His vocal control in relaying that flat, midwestern accent of Hansen is spot on. He also gives one of the top 5 spit takes in movie history into that sink. 

But I felt like Tom Cruise in Digger questioning if this is really the right tone to carry this type of story.

My fear going into this, along with many others, was why focus on Chris Hansen as the figurehead of unethical journalism? Why not instead shed more light on NBC’s own greed and the network politics that got the show pulled when it rustled the wrong feathers? It's a nice touch that former NBC executive Jeff Zucker does play a caricature of himself in the movie, doggedly going head to head with Lost in the primetime slot (a keen eye can spot Friday Night Smackdown on that board). But the framing of this whole narrative was just an interesting choice. 

What was important was using the actors as a moral compass. With one veteran actor seeing what they do as a form of activism to prevent a child from becoming the next victim, and ‘Decoy Dan’ representing the naive disillusionment of being thrust into such a compromising position; a reality for many actors.

According to a 2012 Reddit AMA from a former decoy, “I had no idea what it was for or what I was getting myself into but I am in the entertainment business so I figured, why not! The rest is history... and nightmares.” She continued, “You definitely habituate to the situation a little bit but not in any way substantial enough to put me at ease. I would still feel nauseous all day every day we were shooting.” 

Despite this, she only spoke of positive interactions with Chris Hansen. “Chris Hansen is a great guy, and a witty journalist with a great personality. The crew and I watched the South Park episode that made fun of To Catch A Predator and Chris walked over and thought it was funny and the whole room finally burst into laughter.” Matt Stone and Trey Parker, bringing the world together one piece of satire at a time.

To me Primetime brings up an interesting conversation on the boundaries of creative license when working from real material. I love history but I also love the idea of the auteur. Lance Oppenheim, primarily a documentarian, has a highly stylistic approach even in his earlier work. This dramatic portrayal of To Catch a Predator appears as a natural extension of that style. Inspired by Oliver Stone with JFK and Natural Born Killers, you can understand his psychedelic approach when adapting the truth. A hypnotic snapshot of a moment in history.