Finally Chris Hansen went to the cinema and watched Primetime, the film with Robert Pattinson that is all about him. The journalist had been invited to a premiere but had refused to sign any embargo, and so he had limited himself to judging Pattinson’s performance in the trailer, and his comment hadn’t been particularly negative. Now, however, Hansen seems to have changed his mind and, while he was sagging into a seat in the dark of a theater, he jolted several times: not out of fear but out of disapproval. Thus he decided to share his take on Lance Oppenheim’s film in a 20-minute video he posted on his YouTube channel Have A Seat With Chris Hansen. First of all the host of the docu-reality To Catch a Predator said:
It was very bizarre, at times plausible and at other times far from reality. Obviously I’m not objective because I’m the subject, but it was far from reality and from anything I’ve ever experienced while conducting my investigations. I’m not sure I understood what the film was trying to prove.
Afterwards the presenter spoke about Robert Pattinson‘s portrayal and about his Chris Hansen being “so far from reality, ragged, gloomy, unlikable (…) my colleagues were upset, both those on the show now and the ones from before.”
Hansen clarified that 13 members of his old team went to see Primetime and, after the first half hour, they were already bored to death. As for the direction and the film’s style, the journalist explained:
(Oppenheim) wanted to make a kind of horror film with striking cinematography and he stuck to his own path. He preferred not to contaminate his vision with the positive effects that (my show) has had over the last 22 years.
The host finally criticized Hollywood and its tendency to find a villain in every story, often demonizing the good, and he concluded that he didn’t like anything about the film. When Primetime was introduced, A24 had described it not as a straight biopic but as a story inspired by real events. Pattinson, for his part, when he learned that Chris Hansen had found him fairly credible in the film’s promotional images, was very pleased. Now that the situation has clearly shifted, we’ll see whether he releases a statement or instead retreats into embarrassed silence.
Primetime, which is based on a 2007 Esquire article titled Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die and tells the story of the reality TV program To Catch a Predator hosted by Chris Hansen, will hit our screens on October 15, distributed by I Wonder Pictures.
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