Trial By Media, Pt. 2 — Primetime | Next Picture Show

0:01 It's very difficult to keep the line between the past.

0:04 And the present.

0:05 Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

0:11 We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us!

0:20 Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a Movie of the Week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Keith Phipps, here again with.

0:27 Tasha Robinson.

0:28 Scott Tobias.

0:29 And Genevieve Kosky.

0:31 And once again, all your Next Picture Show hosts are here. None of us have been arrested on false charges or otherwise consumed by the machine that powers the showbiz world.

0:39 So that's good news.

0:41 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 vet 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

1:20 a veneer of respectability that his most successful venture seems destined to strip away.

1:25 Not that Hansen sees it that way.

1:27 Given a taste of success with the program, which sets up sting operations for those attempting to meet minors for sex, Hansen decides to push it even further, ostensibly for the greater good, though whether what is being done can be described as good is highly debatable. Merritt Weaver co-stars as Andy, a producer who shares his vision and ambition, and Skylar Guisando 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.

1:53 That's up next. Who are you?

1:55 I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC.

1:57 They're going to love this.

1:59 A predator has never earned the recognition it deserves.

2:02 But I think that's all about to change. How old are you? 35. Want to try again? You know what your credit is on this show? Superhero.

2:12 Just put a pizza in the oven. Weirdly, dude, I think you nailed that.

2:16 I'm a huge fan of your show.

2:18 I don't want to be in it.

2:20 On the ground!

2:23 I need to do something big. Chris is not the guy to hold hands with.

2:28 Yeah?

2:29 Nothing I do is acting damn good.

2:30 Don't do that. They come to us.

2:33 You did this to yourself.

2:34 We're cleansing the world of an ancient.

2:41 Evil.

2:41 Sit down. It's just chat.

2:47 It's not just chat. All right, everyone, prime time. There's a lot to talk about here. Scott, I'm going to throw you a year. Where do we start with this one?

2:57 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, and really focuses on outsiders within that community sperm world, which is, uh, about the say underground world.

3:31 Of, uh, sperm exchanges.

3:34 Uh, I will say, uh, Not an unofficial and not mediated by the medical profession sort of way. Incredible film. He did Ren Faire, which is a documentary series for, was it HBO, I believe? Yeah. So very interesting filmmaker with a strong style. He is not somebody who goes for cinema verite style. He certainly is not the type of guy who does Wikipedia-style documentaries or generic documentaries. He's a stylized filmmaker in a lot of that. sensibility he really brings to primetime which is strikingly expressive and unreal and kind of like using uses the style to kind of express what it wants to express about the story and what it what it believes to be the essence of chris hansen and this whole kind of sordid enterprise

4:20 and so i think that's kind of 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 Hanson, I think, because it is, I think he's conceived, it's conceived as almost a darkly comic performance as a, as a performance that emphasizes the, The strangeness and alienness of Hansen or this version of Hansen and this version.

4:59 Of a TV guy.

5:01 You know, that's the one prevailing thought I had watching primetime. And it reminded me a little bit of American Psycho, too. You have this person who's not fully human. It 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 in front of the camera. That's the important part. He feels almost born and raised 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.

5:36 Obviously people are a little more positive on it than negative. I certainly liked it quite a bit, but I'm curious to see how it landed with all of you because it is a film that is tough and can be a little off-putting.

5:48 Yeah, I'm glad I was familiar with Oppenheim through Ren Faire, which I did watch and enjoyed. But I think kind of shares this film's a interest in persona as like personality, you know, or someone who is very like wrapped up in their own persona. sort of to the detriment of their own sense of self. And also just the darkly comic tone. And in Ren Faire, that was, you know, a sensibly pretty lighthearted subject matter, but it did manage to pull at some threads of darkness within it. And here, that darkly comic approach paired with the subject matter is, I can see how it would be really off-putting. And I maybe, no, I didn't find it off-putting. I enjoyed it.

6:43 I was prepared for it. I don't know if it is the only way I would want to have this story told. Like, I'm glad that Esquire article is out there. I'm glad there are other more straightforward critiques of what To Catch a Predator was all about and Chris Hansen was all about. one of which I think will come up in your next picture show. Or possibly before. But, you know, in the context of this specific movie, you know, the viewing experience, it was unusual and compelling. And I never really knew how it was going to move from scene to scene, you know. And that made it very watchable, despite, again, a subject matter that should feel very difficult. And I think...

7:39 Oppenheim's kind of visual language is in a kind of a similar tonal middle ground, you know, like the visual, the unusual visual language is a good extension of just the film's unusual approach overall.

7:55 Yeah, neither that unusual visual approach nor the unusual tonal approach really worked for me, I have to say. I would put this movie on the level of it's fine, but I feel like there are a lot of things it's reaching for that it doesn't actually grasp. And I just didn't connect to a lot of it because it seemed to me like it was kind of building up to a fireworks factory arrival that it never actually gets to in a lot of ways. The process of production sounds really interesting in terms of, you know, using a damaged out of date 80s camera to shoot a bunch of it for a like 90s TV look. And shooting on 16 millimeter and then converting to digital in order to, you know, give the audience more distance. But what the

8:48 actual result is, is this kind of like muddy, oversaturated cinematography where a lot of this is shot at night and it's muddy and it's hard to see people's, the details of people's faces. And I can see that working in a way But to me, the narrative was also kind of muddy. You have these three primary threads that the story follows. One with Chris Hansen and his, you know, kind of descent further into darkness as he tries to please his corporate overlords and hang on to his prime time slot. His producer, Andy, who clearly feels that she is not getting her due and is not being treated with the authority that she deserves. And then Dan, who is undergoing kind of a moral crisis slash career crisis

9:38 over whether it is morally okay to be trapping these predators in the specific way that he's doing. And also whether, you know, this is what he wanted to be doing as an actor. But none of these plot lines to my mind really get anywhere particularly interesting. I feel like Andy's kind of dribbles out at maybe the most interesting.

10:00 point and then we don't really revisit it in a meaningful way. She makes her decision on the basis of things happening around her and then everything changes and we don't really check back in with her. Dan, I don't know. We kind of get his big finale in a scene A lot of this movie is extremely fictionalized. Chris Hansen has said it's just, you know, fiction top to bottom.

10:24 But the sort of final... I feel like you're unreliable there.

10:27 Of course you are.

10:29 Understandable. At the same time, I read the article that this was based on, which is hyper-detailed about particularly that final confrontation. And it's just clear, like, how much of what happens in the movie is pure fiction. including Dan's big moral slash emotional moment, just purely made up. And then with Hanson, I just kind of felt like the movie never fully came to grips with him. It suggests a lot of things, but it just felt like a very external treatment of the subject matter. And, you know, maybe that's intentional. I just don't find it very satisfying.

11:08 Keith, what do you think?

11:09 Oh, it worked for me, actually.

11:12 What you're saying, like, where you know, describing the muddy look where you can't really see all the faces is all kind of fuzzed out.

11:18 I was like, yes. To me, that was really effective.

11:22 And Pattinson's performance is, I think, I mean, for a movie this dark, there's a lot of humor in it. Like every time He was confronted with either the image of or the actual presence of Stone Phillips, who was obviously the person he wanted.

11:36 To be, and he was just sort of quietly seething. I loved it so much.

11:40 But I feel like the, you know, the Dan, the Skyward Cassando stuff, it's a really fine counterbalance to everything else that's going on. This, you know, whether or not, you know, there's an equivalent of that in real life, I don't really care. I think that character kind of gets... invest, you know, they invest all, like, sort of the moral dilemmas of this show in that character, and we need that kind of thing to balance out what's going on around him as sort of the one, I won't even say the one rational person, because he kind of gets wrapped up in it as well, but, like, someone who maybe has a little perspective as to what is going on.

12:16 But I think there's all kinds of interesting choices in it, too. I mean, and, you know, I was, you know, right away, that first sting, the stage, I thought, This kind of reminds me of the still shot of the house that's being used and the tone that's being set. It reminds me of a paranormal activity movie. And I felt like that kind of like horror movie vibe never really fully went away throughout the movie. There's a way that kind of kept you unsettled the whole way through. I was very much on board with this one. I thought it was quite a strong effort.

12:45 Yeah, I think Gisando's performance is absolutely devastating. I always found that character's arc to be wholly satisfying and well articulated as this guy who wants to get a SAG card, and this is an acting gig for him. And then you get, right away, you.

13:04 And a well-paying one, too, it should be said.

13:05 Right, but he gets into this, right away he gets into this scene where someone comes into the room and pulls their pants down and sprays himself with whatever is, with whipped cream or something, and the reaction that he has to that moment, it's not acting, and I think that's something that Cassandra... convey so well. It's just an actual traumatic moment, and it's something that he has to reckon with, and it's something that's going to shake him.

13:29 And I think it sets the tone for this entire experience. And I feel a little bit ahead of.

13:35 You saw Predators, right, Keith?

13:37 Or not?

13:38 Yeah, yeah.

13:39 Oh, yeah.

13:40 So I feel like we're a little bit ahead, just in the sense that a lot of the territory that Tasha and Genevieve had mentioned about may be a somewhat more straightforward depiction of how the show actually operates, operated, is covered pretty well in that film among the many other things that that film does well. And so I can then accept primetime as being a complementary but much different and much more abstracted version of take, I guess, on the same story. So maybe some of that other context of just like, okay, what was it like to be a decoy? Well, I mean, there is an equivalent character, two characters, I suppose, two actual decoys. who are in Predators, the documentary talking about their experiences. They track.

14:26 Well, and there's another decoy here played by Phoebe Bridger.

14:29 That's right. Who has more experience and has actual experience with these. Is more, I guess, comfortable, I guess would be the word, with how things have to go.

14:39 Less naive. Yeah.

14:41 But also, you know, sort of in an early scene, we hear her talking about seemingly truly believing that they are doing something like for the greater good.

14:50 Mm-hmm.

14:51 And that is what gets Dan on board eventually and like gets him through this hesitation. You know, Hansen gives him this spiel about the evil he encountered in India, which we definitely have to touch on at some point as far as this film's inventions go. But to continue this thread about what the movie, you know, does and doesn't accomplish as far as To Catch a Predator goes, like, I think it helps both in terms of story and the characters of Andy and Dan to think of primetime as being about Chris Hansen, the persona specifically more than to catch a predator, the TV show and how it works. Like, you know, I don't think a tick tock of how this show and this one particular sting came together is,

15:44 is its interest so much as capture Hansen's like sort of persona as he has created it, and how it has drawn others into this project, kind of against their better interests. And like, you know, Andy is such an interesting and Merritt Weaver's just incredible as she always is, as a character who kind of, as you say, Tasha doesn't really seem to know where she wants, and it's unclear where she ends up. And that's like, Sure, maybe because she's a composite character, but also because she's a character who exists only in relation to Hansen and as does Dan. I guess Dan maybe gets a little more interiority.

16:24 But I don't know, like the whole movie just really circles around this myth that Hansen has created around himself and the show. And it really just all comes back to him. So any other character or plot threads ultimately fall away for wherever the film lands with him, which is where it begins with him. It's just like kind of repeating these lines to himself. But at the end, he is doing it while crying and seeming to, you know, maybe have recognized what all this has come to.

16:59 Well, it emphasizes that extreme unreality from the start, right? I mean, because you talked about... He has a script that he's working off of. He's reading lines. I mean, if you talk about... Whatever impression the show... leaves to me in the film is one is of this extreme unreality, is of extreme alien nature of the show, of it not being anything close to news or something that's real.

17:26 Despite the show's ostensible purpose of catching predators, nothing about it feels authentic. And then the other part of it, too, and I think, you know, it's a small moment, but I think important is the show's about revenge. You know, you get that scene on the plane where he's being talked at, really. He's being talked to about, like— By Creed.

17:45 Creed Bratton. He really has all of these very scary things to say about, don't you want to do this to these horrible guys? And then when they arrive in Murphy, there's all these men with, you know, military-grade weapons ready to descend on these awful predators. So that would be that kind of where I'm at with regard to how the show itself is depicted.

18:05 I want to push back a little against Genevieve suggesting that Dan and Andy only kind of exist in relation to to Chris Hansen, because to me, that was maybe one of the things that made their plot lines most interesting is the fact that they do exist outside him. He has an effect on them, like obviously he's kind of their their employer and he's got this sort of like dark charisma that he's casting over Dan to manipulate him.

18:32 He doesn't seem to bother using his charisma on Andy, which causes all of this friction between them. But at the same time, what makes their stories interesting is the life that they have outside him. Andy, you know, getting a job offer, trying to lure her away from To Catch a Predator, it's acknowledged that you know, by people who are not Chris Hansen, that she's doing good and important work and could possibly be doing that for a rival channel on rival shows. Like she is valuable and desired elsewhere. And her varying response to that, I thought was pretty interesting, but it kind of holds up the degree to which she has a life and career outside this moment. You know, she's not just there to prop

19:20 him up And the fact that he doesn't acknowledge that, Chris Hansen doesn't acknowledge that, is kind of the character's central dilemma. Dan, on the other hand, you know, to the degree that this movie is comedic, and it is very comedic in moments, I think to some degree one of the funniest things in the movie is how much Dan experiences... You know, there's an old joke about showbiz where somebody asks somebody playing a bit part in Streetcar Named Desire what the show is about. And he says, oh, it's about this ambulance driver and the dilemma he experiences in transporting a woman to the mental asylum after she's lost her mind. You know, the conceit that every actor is the center of their own world and the center

20:04 of their own show plays out so strongly here through Dan's experience of of To Catch a Predator. And I liked that idea of it, but it just seems so obvious that while Chris Hansen keeps having to kind of like step in and steer Dan into various curves that he wants him to navigate in specific ways, Dan is also kind of his own man. But that man is just a very caught up in his tiny little world of, you know, how do I play this more convincingly? How do I How do I practice my squeaky teenage boy voice?

20:41 Should I shave my chest or not? And so forth and so on. So that's sort of one of my problems with the film is it feels like there are three different stories here that each could have been a compelling movie on its own. And for me, they just don't fit together well enough in terms of the film's overall thrust or focus, you know, they just aren't pulling in the same direction for me. It's like three different horses sort of duct taped together haphazardly instead of all like pulling the coach in the same direction.

21:13 Well, our overall thrust and focus is pulling us in the direction of taking a short break. And we'll be right back after that.

21:20 So And we're back.

21:27 I guess one notable feature we haven't talked about is the casting of both the treatment of the predators and the casting of former child stars as predators. Those included Jonathan Lipnicki and Tony Revolori and Jason Walliner. Am I forgetting anybody else's in terms of the former child stars? Well, I guess Alex Winter, as far as that goes as well.

21:50 as sort of the bill, as the prosecutor.

21:53 The whale.

21:54 Yeah, the whale, the district attorney they're going to take down. That at one point they thought might have been President of the United States, but turns out not to be.

22:00 Also, Skylar Gassando is a child actor.

22:04 Yeah, that's true.

22:05 He was in Air Buddies. He voiced all the Air Buddies.

22:07 Oh, wow. I don't think I knew that.

22:09 But what do you think of the treatment of those characters? I almost feel like it's not enough information because we really only see them as they appear on the show And as they're arrested, and I don't want to say we should not judge them because we should definitely judge them.

22:23 These are child predators.

22:24 But at the same time, they don't really register as characters, as full characters, do they?

22:31 No, but they.

22:33 It sounded like everybody kind of did a no but at the same time. So I'm going to try the no but. I feel like no but, that's a feature rather than a bug because we're getting about as much of them as we got on the show, which is... Yeah, we don't know these people's lives. We don't know their intents per se. There seemed to be a lot of gap in some of the predators caught on this show between possibly just got entrapped into something they wouldn't have done otherwise versus the guy who showed up with a trunk full of like duct tape and weapons. You know, some of these people very clearly more dangerous than others.

23:11 So.

23:12 You know, Chris Hansen just sees them as a means to an end on one end and then possibly the manifestation of cosmic evil on the other end, which they are, we can't tell. But to me, that seems entirely deliberate.

23:26 Yeah.

23:27 One thing that I did hear Oppenheim say say with regard to the predators is that we're seeing on the show the moment their life ends, basically. And then I think when you think about something like that, you think about who is ending it and how. And, you know, how much can we trust the manner in which justice is meted out here, the fairness of it, and then most of all, the person doing, administering that justice. And who is this guy, to say?

23:56 Who is.

23:56 Where does.

23:58 his authority come from. And, uh, you know, because this is something, you know, again, not necessarily depicted in the movie itself, but legalistically to catch a predator.

24:07 Was a disaster. You can't actually prosecuting these guys.

24:11 It was not really, you know, the, the show kind of ruined a lot of the way in which you could actually, um, you know, uh, you know, catch and prosecute child predators. So there's a lot, there's a lot of, um, nastiness there that I think is kind of well depicted, but briefly, really just not really the point of the film, but it's kind of wrapped up, I think, in our understanding of Hansen himself and his fake authority, I think, his corrupted authority that he brings to the table as the host.

24:39 There are two predators slash marks that you didn't mention, Keith, that I think are the most interesting in terms of this movie and what To Catch a Predator was all about. The first one being the rabbi who gets really angry and kind of blows up and storms out, you know, in a way that none of the other men who have been caught in this situation do. And he really kind of puts it to Chris Hansen, like, what do you think you're doing? Like, he underscores, he turns the villainy back on them. And then there is the disabled man with the walking sticks, who that is a really rough scene just to kind of triangulate morally and just in terms of like sympathy. First, the reveal that he is disabled and is told to get out of his

25:42 car and hobble into the house. And then in the conversation with Dan, where he says something like, do you go to a lot of boys' houses or something? And he says, no, not really. I mostly just stay at my computer. Again, it's really hard to triangulate the morality of that scene because it's like, We are assuming that he has indeed been having these conversations that led him into this conversation and has, you know, has proclivities, shall we say, that this show is ostensibly trying to find and punish. But at the same time, it's unclear how he has actually acted outside of what the situation the show has put him in. I don't know. And how did you all read that scene? Or how did you all feel about that scene?

26:35 I'm not sure how to feel about that one, honestly.

26:37 The rabbi is interesting because it's like the situation he's in really kind of drains him of any kind of moral authority. But then what moral authority does Hansen have? And they're really kind of, they kind of cancel each other out. Yeah, the disabled scene is really interesting. For all the reasons you were saying, I'm not sure I have anything to add to that either. But I think the other exception is might be the time we get with Bill Conrad, the character Alex Winter plays, because he and Dave, the person he thinks he's talking to, kind of bond over musicals, and there's sort of like whatever else is going on, they actually do have a moment of actual conversation, if not connection, that kind of makes

27:20 it impossible to see him as just a monster, whatever he's done. So there are, you know, it doesn't dwell on any of these issues, but when it does bring them up, they're all pretty thorny and give you a lot to think about, as we're proving right now.

27:35 Yeah, there's more than I think. I mean, the stuff with that character, too, I mean, you know, keep in mind that they are aggressively trying to get him to do something he's not wanting to do. Because they fight incredibly hard to provoke him into getting himself into trouble and being on the show because this is their big chance.

28:03 This is going to be an actual news story that's going to break out in their highly artificial show. But in order to do that, there's a tremendous amount of labor and coercion and manipulation on the part of the show to stoke the worst parts of this person who ultimately doesn't appear on the show and whose death really kind of ended the show as a thing.

28:30 I think the movie also undercuts the predators, so to speak, with its treatment of Xavier, played by Matthew Maher, who is sort of the founder of this perverted justice vigilante group and is the one who is having these conversations to lure these marks out. you know, and we get a fair amount of scenes of him typing out and speaking out some really uncomfortable things, you know, and he's framed in a pretty creepy and off-putting way that underscores that the conversations these men think they are having have been totally manipulated by someone who is out to get them.

29:18 And again, that doesn't negate what they've done or what they've intended to do. But it is kind of turning it into like a little bit of a thought policing scenario, you know, that, again, just complicates the morality beyond these are predators, because there is no real prey that we are ever introduced to. The victims of child sex abuse only exist kind of in this nebulous theoretical cloud. But there are no actual child victims anywhere in this story.

29:55 So it really complicates a reading of these men as straight predators slash villains when we don't really have any sense of who their prey is or if they're even real.

30:08 I think the sequence with the man on crutches in specific... There is a moral complication there of did Xavier manage to like bully or persuade this man into acting on impulses he never would have acted on otherwise? I feel like reading the Esquire article in particular, it's just it's so clear that Conrad would not have not only would not have acted on the impulses, like possibly aware of his own impulses. You know, criminal liability and the danger that he was in, but that the badgering that they subjected him to, you know, trying to get him to.

30:53 to act on these impulses. I mean, it felt criminal, honestly, reading this article, the things that they did to try to get him to commit a crime, basically, or to commit what he thought was going to be a crime. So it seems to me that the interesting thing about the sequence with the man in crutches is Dan coming to terms with it. Yeah, it's complicated and thorny and we don't quite know what to think. We're watching in real time as Dan processes the fact that he doesn't know what to think. Like here is somebody who has literally come to this house expecting to even hoping to have sex with a minor. On the other hand, you know, what do you have under any other circumstances where he was not being manipulated by a bunch of people who

31:40 want to take advantage of his his vulnerability? So I think watching Dan kind of process all of this stuff and try to figure out who he is in in the wake of the show. And then making a strong decision about who he is, who he wants to be, which is basically Chris Hansen. In a moment where Chris Hansen himself is not being Chris Hansen is, I don't know, one of the stronger and more definitive sequences in this movie.

32:10 Well, there's obviously a lot more to talk about with Primetime. We'll be back to do just that in connection with our other film, Sweet Smell of Success.

32:18 We'll be right back.

32:25 Well, there's something you should know.

32:29 I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and we're doing a story on adults who try to meet teens online.

32:36 Please don't put this on TV, please.

32:38 Please, please.

32:39 No decisions have been made yet.

32:41 We don't know which segments will air, but I'm going to need to ask you to leave. Now it's time for connections.

32:47 We bring these two films together, talk about all the things they have in common. I think the two things to talk about are the ambition of the central characters and the media environment in which that ambition plays out.

33:00 Where do we want to start?

33:01 I think maybe a good place to start is kind of where the overlap is between Sydney and Sweet Smell of Success and Chris Hansen, the version of Chris Hansen we see in primetime. because there are places where they very strongly overlap, and then there are places where they're very different people.

33:17 Yeah, it's almost like you have to combine Sidney with J.J. Hunsaker to kind of have a true... And then Chris Henson is maybe in the overlap of the Venn diagram a little bit, although there's not sort of a straight line, I think, between any of these characters other than, as Keith put it, ambition maybe combined with a high degree of self-regard.

33:38 And amorality. I think both of them... the actions that they take to try to satisfy their hunger suggest that they don't necessarily see other people as people so much as they see them as rungs on a ladder.

33:51 And I think when you talk about Chris Hansen, the Chris Hansen of this film at least, you get the sense, if not the Chris Hansen of real life, of someone who has lost their way, who might have actually done some good. Because His work in India apparently was quite, not only legit, but quite important.

34:10 Wait, was it?

34:12 Was that for real? I'm bringing in information from Predators, the documentary. Oh, okay. So maybe it's outside the scope of this discussion, but.

34:23 No, I'm curious to know, because based on a very cursory Googling after I walked out of the film and I didn't find much of anything about said reporting in India, I assume that was a fabrication on the film's part. But is there more to it?

34:39 Especially since the film presents it, whenever the film addresses it, it addresses it in such a hallucinatory way. Right.

34:46 Yeah, but my memory of the movie Predators, at least, is that that was... the best legitimate journalism that he did, but it also kind of paved the way for To Catch a Predator based on its subject matter. But at some point, whatever, you know, righteousness that drew him to this obviously has become secondary at best if you're being kind.

35:11 And, you know, Hunsaker uses.

35:12 The sort of the veil of, righteousness to punish his perceived, his opponents or people he wants to take down. We only really get a hint of it, but he has sort of this phony patriotism and he brings in the Reds here to take down Steve. And, you know, once you find the moral high ground, you can kind of, you can do a lot of punching down, I think, as evidenced by both these characters.

35:40 Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And it's probably fair if you're talking about Sidney and J.J. to kind of bring in Andy here, too, and her relationship to Chris Hansen. And, you know, it's not quite the same thing in terms of the hierarchy. I mean, she is his producer. She is not his underling, necessarily, even though the show is his and she is reliant on him.

36:05 But it is interesting to see that, you know, her level of dependence on him and then also her having to kind of figure out exactly how far she can go with him before cutting bait, too. Because she has this offer out there and she has her own ambitions, but then there's this opportunity that she is sharing with him and that she ultimately chooses to cast her lot in with him in this incredibly risky and then obviously disastrous move to do this risky operation together. Murphy, Texas, and she pays the price. So it's sort of like she is sort of drawn into or corrupted by Chris Hansen in this moment and becomes kind of in league with him in this quest that turns out to be this extremely compromised and violent and tragic end.

37:01 I think there certainly are parallels between Sydney and Andy in terms of kind of hitching their wagon to a monster and going along with them in order to get what they want. But one of the departure points I mentioned when we were talking about Sweet Smile of Success, how Sydney has crossroads after crossroads and always picks the wrong direction. But Andy resists the Texas operation at every step of the way and is overruled. Like she can see that it's not the best thing for the show, that it's rushed, that it's going to be botched, that it's just it's not within their budget, that Hansen is kind of chasing a a desperate desire more than facts.

37:44 You know, he's, he's seeing what he wants to see and, and operating on a hunch and she keeps trying to pull back on it. She doesn't really go for it until they're there and there's no other choice. So it does kind of feel like she at least tries to steer out of the skid and it's just, just plain overruled.

38:02 I do also think, uh, looking at these characters through the lens of ambition, you also can see some overlap between Sydney and Dan, too. Dan obviously is a much more naive character and maybe a nicer guy overall than Sidney is, but he does have ambitions. This whole character triad does. And I think earlier, Tasha, when you kind of pushed back on me saying that Dan and Andy kind of only exist in relation to Chris Hansen, like you're, you're right to push back on that. I think what I was getting at more is like their arcs are informed only by him and like they're, they're all reactive to him. And to go back to the overlap with Dan and Sydney, you know, they're like trust trying to get a leg up in this industry, this very cruel

38:56 industry by whatever means they have available to them as someone pretty far down on this ladder of power. And there's also just kind of a really specific small connection between the characters, which is sort of the temptation to step into the big dog's shoes, such as it is. With Sidney, there's that kind of moment where J.J. dangles the possibility of him taking over his column for three weeks while he's off with Susan on vacation, quite frankly.

39:30 Marks.

39:31 And with Dan, of course, there's the scene that we just talked about where he takes on Hansen's role in that particular sting and steps into the shoes of his mentor, you know, and it feels weird to characterize it that way. But Pattinson's Hansen certainly seems to like see himself as guiding Dan into this world and giving him the tools to see this as a moral exercise that he has obviously internalized to an extreme degree that Dan is kind of struggling to internalize. And I guess does in that moment when he puts on his Chris Hansen face.

40:10 His very smooth Chris Hansen face.

40:13 One kind of key connection to me between these two movies or something I think about is the idea of what goes in the frame and what goes in the column, what's out of the frame, what don't we see, what don't we see in the column, because that is ultimately the power that J.J. Hunsaker and Chris Hansen and Andy, I suppose, have. over everybody else, uh, because they're, they're the ones who get to dictate what actually, what people actually see. And, uh, you know, I think that, that in both cases, uh, particularly to catch a predator, but both cases, we are given, uh, lots of evidence to question other things that we see and also question the, uh, morality and ethics and, and, and motivations of the people

41:01 who make, who are making that decision. So I think to me, that's kind of a, you know, I mean, that's, that's, key to the power that's the power that these men have but since these men are i think in the views of both films quite corrupt morally it's it's it becomes incredibly dangerous because because uh you know you know to the people who like say steve dallas or or you know or one of these uh predators who uh are alleged predators who have no control over how they're depicted and how they're put in the frame and the context in which people view their lives.

41:38 One thing these hit films have in common, too, is they work a lot of tones. They had to balance a lot of tones. We talked a bit about what Primetime is doing, but Sweet Solo Success is also something similar. It's very funny at times, but there's a real human cost to what these characters are doing.

41:56 I mean, there's a lot of fun wordplay throughout Sweet Smell of Success. A lot of the laugh lines are just really clever bits of dialogue, exchanges or juxtapositions. And they often are fairly cynical. I mean, a lot of the humor in the movie is a kind of cynical, wry, dark humor. Whereas the humor in primetime, at least that I'm thinking of, I think tends to be maybe a little ryer, a little less aimed at the dark parts of the movie and to some degree almost kind of fighting back against it. I am thinking again of just like Dan's naivete, Dan's periodic conversations with his friend back home who kind of begins every call with some kind of crass joke at Dan's expense. that Dan never laughs at and never seems to know what to do with.

42:53 And then just like his prickliness at little moments and some of the decisions that he makes all seem sort of lightly funny. Whereas Sweet Smell of Success, like if you're laughing, it's probably because somebody has been cruel to somebody else in a particularly clever, pointed or well-worded way.

43:12 There's also the noir element of Sweet Smell of Success, which, you know, noir isn't exclusively about crime and criminals. but it is heavily associated with those things. But Sweet Smell of Success, you can check my math on this, but there aren't actually outright crimes being committed, at least not in the legal sense. It's much more about the petty crimes we do to each other. But it's also taking place in this entertainment world of gossip and tabloid. It's not like a dangerous world, but the noir approach makes it seem really dangerous and makes all the horrible things people do to each other feel like crimes. And sort of the overlap between the entertainment world and criminal justice world,

44:09 I guess, is another connection between these two films. Primetime very explicitly making entertainment out of crime, whereas... In Sweet Smell of Success, it's more, you know, kind of exploring what sort of crimes the entertainment world invites, I guess.

44:26 The smallness of the world of Sweet Smell of Success is kind of astonishing when you think about it. I mean, the fact that so much power is being wielded in so many damaging ways and so many upsetting ways in the film. But when you actually think about what is going in the column... You know, it's like, I found this comedian funny. I mean, really, that's a whole subplot of the movie of just like, oh, is Sidney finding out that J.J. Hunsaker found this comedian funny? And how does he kind of manipulate events to where he gets this guy to employ him? So the actual material of the column, I mean, it certainly gets nasty. I mean, implying that this member of a jazz community Quintet is, you know, is a commie who's on drugs. I mean,

45:14 that's a personally damaging thing. But ultimately, you know, it seems like Hunsaker's column is oftentimes about things that are of no great consequence, even though the action that we're seeing and the kind of behind-the-scenes power struggle that's going on is consequential and is damaging and is larger than life.

45:35 It is interesting the degree to which Sweet smell of success takes place. Like we don't get a ton of samples of what goes into those columns. There's the, you know, this guy Herbie is a good comedian. This guy in this band smokes the madness stick while hanging out with his pinko red friends. And that's about it. You know, we don't get a whole lot of examples of what these columns are because it was it came out during an era when people knew and had easy access to it.

46:08 And in kind of a similar sort of way, but, you know, watching this movie today, there's sort of a disconnect between like that entire world, that entire era. A lot of people listening to this may have grown up in an era where, you know, reading print and newspapers is just a quaint sort of idea, let alone expecting said newspapers to have life-changing information in them about, you know, specific people in a gossip column of all things. To Catch a Predator, by contrast, even younger listeners might be aware of it to some degree. I was aware of its existence, but always thought it sounded sleazy and unpleasant, and I never watched it. But when I was curious about how what we see in the film matches up

46:56 to the real world, I was able to go watch entire episodes of it online very easily, and compilations of the most dramatic moments and the episode with the guy that sat there and ate half a pizza while Chris Hansen was interrogating him and stuff like that. So it's very easy to tap into What that world was, what that era was from where we are now, like far easier than it is to tap into this like 50s era age where something in a newspaper column about you could make or break your career, could could get you fired, could make you rich. Like who knows? Who knows what the next whose life the next column might change?

47:36 Yeah, you're kind of talking through one of the connections I wrote down here, which is that these movies both kind of capture a distinct era of in entertainment history, and one that a foregone era for that matter, like, yes, we can go and watch episodes of To Catch a Predator. But also the whole driving thrust of behind like the escalation of this plot is like they've been scheduled opposite lost, you know, they're in primetime network primetime, back when that still had a lot more meaning than it does today, you know, and when that would believably drive these people to go to the ends that they go to, to, to achieve success or what they perceive as success in this in this venue. And yeah, sweet smell success. I

48:25 don't think any of us like have a real great sense of what this moment in entertainment was. But there are like a couple scenes and allusions to the fact that JJ has a television show, which has to be that had to be like a pretty new development in this industry. And like, you know, translating his column to a TV show, I guess. But also just like the way that they're like, what's being covered, like vaudeville, the Broadway club scene, like these are things that are all kind of on their way out with the advent of television, at least as a thing of national interest.

48:57 Tasha, I think it'd be really funny if your next picture recommendation was basically like, go watch old episodes to catch the Predator. But actually, in just a little bit of like real life footnote, Winchell, part of Winchell's undoing was that he really couldn't adapt to television, whereas Ed Sullivan, one of his rivals, famously could and thrived on television.

49:16 I think it's maybe a small note, but significant in its way. that Ansecker does also have a radio show. Which, you know, just takes me back to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Wait, is it a radio show or a television show? No, it's a television show, but we see headlines at various points that say, you know, and listen to him on the radio. Oh, okay. That's the point I was going to make. It's just, you know, he's multimedia.

49:40 It's like what Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? was trying to tell us about, you know, the rise of mass media. Like, he has a wee little empire. Like, we don't know how popular his radio show is, how popular his TV show is. how long the TV show has been going on, we can just intuit that from how desired, like a word in his column or a word from him wherever in his media empire goes. But the impression is just because he has both a TV show and a radio show is he must be fairly famous because he's become the head of this wee little media empire.

50:18 I guess to kind of tag off that as we bring ourselves to the end of this discussion is both these do capture moments and particular moments of media history, but I don't think they're solely about them. And I think, you know, part of why Sweet Smell of Success is a test of time is like there's a lot. It's the human drama that takes place within the sphere that makes the film work.

50:42 Do both these films have that?

50:43 Do you think Primetime has something to say beyond this was a weird thing that happened on television 20 years ago?

50:50 I mean, there is the little point in primetime about how networks are spending a ton on narrative television and just aren't getting an audience for it. This is kind of positioned at the rise of reality television taking over. And it feels like part of what it's telling us in the way, at least I saw sweet smell of success.

51:17 You know, Scott's Scott's interpretation differed. But I saw it as kind of like focused on these men having power is maybe not a good thing. They're doing bad things with this power. It kind of feels like one of the things that primetime is examining is all of the messy, like grit that's going into the sausage of, when all we saw at the time was kind of like the entertainment value. I do really wish that primetime went a little more into some of the fallout, you know, some of the things like none of the Texas cases being pursuable because to catch a predator, you know, created these situations where people were being arrested in ways that mucked up the trail of evidence. They were being illegally arrested

52:05 without due procedure. And so the DAs had to opt out of prosecuting any of those cases. The vast majority of people featured on that show, like a handful of them went to jail, but most of them did not. So reckoning with kind of the legacy of that show, what we saw on screen versus what the reality was, feels like, to some degree, that's ultimately what it's about, what it's trying to communicate.

52:34 Yeah, yes.

52:35 Again, I think I would, I end up kind of wanting to broaden the frame out from that, is the film being not really about to catch a predator per se, but about, you know, and this maybe comes from Oppenheim's documentary background is just have the audience question what they see, you know, and question who is providing them with the information that they're seeing on screen, how their motives and methods sort of corrupt the reality that we're presented with.

53:06 I mean, these are, you know, I think it's a film that's sort of trying to prompt, you know, an interrogation of the form, more so than it is about Take After Predator broadly because I think, you know, and the other thing I think it just isn't is a film that I think just by conceit is not it's just not its goal to really get to get into the into the nitty gritty detail about this particular show.

53:28 It really just kind of takes what it needs from it.

53:30 What it seems is the.

53:31 Essence of the horror essence of it really and draw it out.

53:35 Well, I think we've taken what we needed from these films for discussion. Certainly, we're willing to continue discussion via feedback if you have any thoughts on these films. If you want to watch Sweet Smell of Success, it's available for rent on a lot of services. It's streaming on several others, including Tubi, where it is free. It's also available as part of the Criterion Collection on a Blu-ray that has lots of nice features on it. Primetime is now in theaters. We'll be right back with your next picture show. Finally, it's time to recommend a film or film-related item that complements this set of episodes. We call it Your Next Picture Show in the hopes it'll put some interesting choices on your radar. Scott's got this one,

54:17 and I think we've already kind of alluded to it, but let's go into more detail about the film in question.

54:23 Yeah, so this is a documentary called Predators by David Ossett. It's a film I've seen, gosh, at least two or three times, because I did a Q & A with him in D.C. at a film festival as well. He's a fascinating person. But in any case, this came out last year, and it was released via Paramount +, I believe, is the platform that has it or had it.

54:44 Yep, it's on there.

54:45 And it was on my top ten list. I think it's an amazing movie that kind of– it's sort of a prismatic look at the show because it starts by showing you how the show worked and giving you that context and history of there and interviews some of the decoys who were involved in the show and kind of gives you all of that information. But then it also is really quite an open query into sort of documentary ethics and what the purpose of the show is. Like what are the questions that Chris Hansen asks on the show as part of the formula of the show? What need does the show satisfy? In terms of justice, what need is it satisfied in terms of what we, the audience, seem to want from it? And then also, what are

55:37 we seeing in the frame and what are we not seeing in the frame? All that's interrogated.

55:41 But that's just for starters.

55:42 The thing that's so incredible about the movie is that it just keeps adding more layers. And the layers get quite personal with the director. It gets into really grappling with what trauma from trauma child sexual abuse is really like and what it's like to live with that and how the show confronts or doesn't confront those issues. And then it finally, you know, has an interview with Chris Hansen himself, which is quite memorable. The other fun part of it, fun slash disturbing part, is that it gets into copycat shows that have emerged on YouTube, one of which is Chris Hansen continuing to do this sort of work.

56:28 I got an ad for it before my screening of Primetime. He's running ads for it.

56:33 Yeah, he paid for some of those. But the documentary actually embeds itself with one of the copycat shows as they catch their own predator in their own sort of amateurish, uncontrolled, disturbing way.

56:49 And it is just....

56:51 Unsettling and upsetting and uh and and also sort of darkly funny it is an amazing movie i i really really strongly recommend i think i think it's quite quite an achievement and i think it may kind of scratch a certain itch if you've if you if you've seen just prime time and you're and you have these questions about um things the show the the film just doesn't care to cover all that stuff kind of gets covered in the documentary and more so i strongly recommend.

57:18 Predators Yeah, I remember you raving about it. I think maybe it was out of a festival, like on a bonus episode or something.

57:25 Yeah, yeah, right.

57:28 But it wasn't available for me to see at that point. But this seeing primetime has definitely put it back at the forefront.

57:37 Yeah, I tried it on Paramount +. You can just go relax and watch Predators. That's it for this edition of The Next Picture Show. Genevieve, can you tell us about our next pairing?

57:50 With his new movie, The Social Reckoning, writer-director Aaron Sorkin chronicles the creation of The Facebook Files, a series of Wall Street Journal articles about the company's deliberate efforts to increase engagement through harmful changes to the algorithm. Though it focuses on the collaboration between a reporter and a whistleblower alarmed by the spike in harmless misinformation and bullying, the film also checks in on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the subject of 2010's The Social Network. which Sorkin scripted for director David Fincher. Though Zuckerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg in the older film and Jeremy Strong in the new one, both are about how much his ambitions and flaws are

58:26 imprinted on the platform. So for our next set of episodes, we'll all friend each other for a discussion of the socials Network and Reckoning and the antisocial power of Mark Zuckerberg.

58:36 For now, we.

58:36 Welcome your feedback on Sweet Spotless Success. primetime, and anything else related you'd like to talk about, you can email us at comments at nextpictureshow.net or leave us a voicemail at 773-234-9730. Before we close out this week's episode, where can you find everyone these days?

58:52 Tasha?

58:53 You can find me over at Vulture. You can find me at Polygon. Hopefully you can find me other places in the near future. You can find me on blue sky at Tasha Robinson. Genevieve, what about you?

59:03 You can find me like in a broad sense over at Vulture where I am mostly behind the scenes. and on social media, where I am also mostly behind the scenes and not posting much as Genevieve Gosky.

59:19 Keith.

59:20 You can find me primarily at The Reveal. It's reveal.film, which is a movies newsletter. I co-write with Scott Tobias. I also contribute to Vulture and TV Guide and occasionally other publications. And if you're not tired of my voice yet, I also have a podcast I co-host with Mike Ryan called Ford Focus, a Harrison Ford podcast. I think that title's pretty self-explanatory. Scott, how about you?

59:39 Yeah, of course.

59:40 I'm at the reveal.film with you, Keith. I actually have an interview that I did with Lance Oppenheim when Spermworld premiered. came out and, uh, that's kind of my favorite of his docs. So I was, I was kind of happy to do that, um, with him. And, um, and then you can find me elsewhere at, uh, Vulture, the New York Times, uh, Guardian and other. Find publications. Keith and I also appeared on another podcast this week that maybe you should see. It's the Ringerverse recommends. This affects you, Genevieve.

1:00:14 We talked about shows that we were recapping at Vulture. We talked about Dark Matter.

1:00:19 All right, I'll allow it. I'm going to plug in for this show, too. And we plugged a show of.

1:00:25 So we did well for, I think, I think we did well for us. And so you get to maybe hear us on one of the ringer pods, which is cool. Hosted by Ben Lindberg, who was a pretty good host. So, and of course you can find me on blue sky at Scott Tobias.

1:00:39 You can stay updated on the next picture show at next picture show.net and on blue sky at the next picture show. You can get bonus content and open discussion at patrion.com slash next picture show. And as always, we appreciate your rating and reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks to Dan, the Big Jigs, for his assistance producing this podcast. And Dan would want us to mention that there's also a musical version of Sweet Smell of Success, but none of us have seen it, so we didn't talk about it.

1:01:04 The Next Picture Show is proud to be part of the Film Spotting Family podcast. Please tune in next time. That was a good movie.

1:01:21 Yeah, seen here before once.