Chris Hansen is not at the Venice Film Festival for this weekend’s world premiere of a film inspired by his work on To Catch a Predator, but the man still proved to be the center of attention during Primetime‘s press conference.
“Obviously, I hope he likes the movie,” said Robert Pattinson when asked about Hansen’s early objections to Lance Oppenheim‘s A24 film and the fact that he purchased pre-show advertising for his streaming platform. Pattinson stars as Hansen and boarded the film early as a producer but said, “I never really set out to make a movie about Chris Hansen. I never really thought about it, and then I saw [Ajon Singh’s] script, and there’s something electrifying about it. I would hope, in some ways, the amount of inspiration that his character has given so many people who are involved in this for years now is some kind of compliment.”
Oppenheim said he first discovered To Catch a Predator through parodies of it on shows like South Park. “And when I finally saw To Catch a Predator, I was amazed. Chris Hansen was this like mythological being who had these one-liners that reminded me of Tony Montana [in Scarface]. His version of ‘say hello to my little friend,’ was ‘have a seat right there.’ I was always fascinated as a young child with the theatricality of the show. I was so confused by it. Was it a prank show? Was it a news show? Was it a circus with Chris Hansen as a ringleader?”
Primetime is loosely adapted by first-time screenwriter Singh from an Esquire article by Luke Dittrich, and it dramatizes the darkest year in Hansen’s tenure on To Catch a Predator. Pattinson stars opposite Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers and Bokeem Woodbine, all of whom joined the panel discussion today. They fielded questions on the challenging material, the process of putting the cast together, Bridgers’ debut feature film role, and how so much of film culture online has been whittled down to memes and viral jokes.
Both Oppenheim and Pattinson said they don’t mind the meme factor when it comes to their work, especially for something like Primetime because Hansen was such a viral-ready star long before that was part of the cultural lexicon. “The idea of a man who became a myth, a person who became a persona, a person who embraced the meme of himself, and yet still continued to do work in a very, very serious and dark subject, I thought that would make for such an interesting film,” Oppenheim said.
Pattinson said when he was younger and started getting into movies, he noticed how his classmates at school would always imitate individual lines from whatever big movie had just come out.
“I felt like that had been completely gone from culture for like years and years. And suddenly realized it’s been replaced by memes, and I quite like that,” he explained after it was mentioned by a journalist that his role as Hansen has already become a viral phenomenon prior to release. “I always really liked quoting lines from Jim Carrey movies and stuff like that. I loved that. I used to know [all the lines] from The Mask by heart; everybody would do Austin Powers and all these things.”
Pattinson, who is filming The Batman during a year that will see consecutive releases of The Drama, The Odyssey, Primetime and Dune: Part Three, had such a quick turnaround from filming Primetime that he had just “a few hours” to segue to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. “I definitely can hear a little Chris Hansen in The Odyssey when I watch it,” he said, to much laughter in the room.
Oppenheim’s Primetime will be released theatrically in the United States by A24 on Sept. 25. The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival concludes with an awards ceremony on Sept. 12.
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