Primetime - Big Night Planned?

All right, so the first thing to, I feel, to address in this movie is, is this the Robert Pattinson show? And yes, it is i- in portions, but I, I think I was actually really surprised at how much this is also Skylar Gazanzo's movie and Merritt Weaver's movie.

And I feel like that, like, three-hander effort is what makes this movie as successful as it is because you need the...

You need the psychology of all three of these characters and how all three of these people react to the situations that they're put in for this movie to really work, especially in the style that it's working.

This movie is, uh, [laughs] I, I, I guess I'll start with I'm saying this is not a Chris Hansen biopic, and I-- it never really felt like one even in the trailer, but obviously, you know, if you're closing a trailer out with, you know, "I'm Chris Hansen with Da- Dateline NBC," and like, you know what I mean? It, it, it, it feels like it has some of the bones for that kind of storytelling, but the visuals do not communicate with that style of storytelling at all.

This is way more, like, trippy and kind of a psychological descent into some sort of strange madness that the Hansen character is going through.

And it's much more about the psychology of these characters than about anything else, and more of a breakdown of To Catch a Predator, more than a breakdown of Chris Hansen himself.

So it automatically doesn't really follow any sort of, like, docudrama or, like, biopic rules, and I like that.

I like that, and the more that I sat with it, the more I found myself enjoying that sort of thing.

Now, yes, you do get some strange line readings and some strange, uh, physical behavior from Robert Pattinson in the performance himself, which is entertaining to say the least.

Uh, you know, sketches in the show included.

And It's like you get the best of both worlds of those things.

You do also get some depth from other characters like the Skyler Elizondo character, Decoy Dan, and Andy Bender, Merritt Weaver's character, who is essentially the producer of the show or co-producing with Chris Hansen.

I don't really tell what the dichotomy of their relationship is, but I'm pretty sure it's like producer and like star slash host.

So her character's a little higher up on the totem pole of like the TV hierarchy, so to speak.

And all three of these characters have a different relationship to what Catch a Predator is for them.

For Chris Hansen, it's a sort of crusade mission to placate his extremely like borderline narcissistic personality and like a basically kind of like a crusader to save all these potential victims of these crimes.

For Skyler Elizondo, it's more about him trying to jumpstart his acting career and how he's not he doesn't feel like he's fully being heard by this show this performance and is actually downright more traumatized by it than anything else in terms of a particular instance that happens in the movie which I I'll probably talk about it's not really a movie that you can spoil in in a strict sense but I will kind of delineate when I'm talking more of like details that happen in the movie versus me talking more generally like this um this is definitely a psychological trip and it's one it's one where I found myself really needing to kind of absorb like what this movie was giving more than I thought I was going to to be honest and it's gotten to the point as I've sat with it for a little bit longer which is a movie I felt like I needed to sit with a little bit longer so I'm not actually mad that I took the time to wait to record this one just because I felt like this movie was something that I needed to digest a little bit more and then you have the Merritt Weaver character um who is kind of more in for the can we make a good show out of this can we get good tv out of this regardless of the circumstances regardless of decoy dan's performance regardless of what chris hansen's doing uh regardless of anything at all regardless of the content that is being you know displayed uh it's can we make a good show can we make a show that is going to be number one in the prime time slot can we beat lost uh the the these are the characters motivation and then you get this underlying tone of like this is scummy tv and this this movie paired with its very like sort of cloudy uh visuals uh mixed with kind of the grain of like a film which is i i think in post-processing this doesn't look like it's shot like on that this looks like more like a digital effect of a grainy process but it's like this grain mixed with like cloudy which gives kind of the gritty mid-2000s feel this movie was very good at evoking the feelings of mid-2000s culture and and television and you don't think about it until you're kind of further removed from it but that's it it is an era you know what i mean like this mid-2000s and it's just it's an era that i lived through and i was too young for any of this so i guess i should have prefaced by saying that i never saw to catch a predator i know exactly what it is i know what the show set out to do i don't know really anything about chris hansen or his real life you know person or what happened with the show or if uh the show was judged on certain merits or not because for me uh how i perceived it at least from what i took from the film is that this show is very exploitative of putting people in situations that are obviously going to be life ending in some scenarios and it's more of for the shock of the reveal more than it is to follow up on anything that's actually bad happening or making making these predators for lack of a better term to hold them to justice in a sense because the way that the exploitation takes place it wouldn't be a way where it really holds up in court so that's kind of a conclusion that i'm drawing myself but i don't know if that's like the real life case of this is how things went for this show but it feels like nobody actually could get like tried and like do time for this sort of like punishment but of course you get the shame of like the public shame and i equated it to the feeling of how people feel when they watch like a public execution like in medieval times or whatever yes the person that is getting executed did something wrong that clearly warranted by the people that judge people in that time to be executed right um are you wrong for wanting to see that justice be taken out on somebody are you wrong for being happy about seeing that justice take taken out on somebody like it is that an incorrect feeling and i i feel like that's what this movie wants to explore most it's kind of the morality of public shame and and like what that can do for your own psychology and that that that is really big in the decoy dan character the skyler gazondo performance is very well done you know obviously he's he's got a lot of complicated character motivations as he is dan plum aspiring actor that is just trying to get a gig and get to work and that is one persona of his in this film.

He is also Decoy Dan.

He is, uh, an adult actor posing as a child to lure predators to do incriminating things on camera [laughs].

And Chris Hansen pops out and accuses them of all these things, has the- the paper, like, of the chat.

Like, you know, "It's not just chat, is it?" [laughs] And a- he has that persona as well of...

And then he's in his head as Dan Plumb thinking like, "Oh, am I, you know, am I serving the character? Am I- am I doing a good job?" And then you have kind of the Chris Hansen, Merritt Wever, like, "We don't really give a damn about your acting performance.

We just wanna make sure you're making good TV, and you're making good TV, so don't worry about it." So he's not getting properly validated by these people, and this character slowly starts to realize that as the film goes on.

But he is making money.

So i-i-it's interesting seeing kind of like a, "Oh, I got everything I wished for," and actually ultimately it doesn't really matter because of what's happening.

All right, so the first thing to, I feel, to address in this movie is, is this the Robert Pattinson show? And yes, it is i- in portions, but I, I think I was actually really surprised at how much this is also Skylar Gazanzo's movie and Merritt Weaver's movie.

And I feel like that, like, three-hander effort is what makes this movie as successful as it is because you need the...

You need the psychology of all three of these characters and how all three of these people react to the situations that they're put in for this movie to really work, especially in the style that it's working.

This movie is, uh, [laughs] I, I, I guess I'll start with I'm saying this is not a Chris Hansen biopic, and I-- it never really felt like one even in the trailer, but obviously, you know, if you're closing a trailer out with, you know, "I'm Chris Hansen with Da- Dateline NBC," and like, you know what I mean? It, it, it, it feels like it has some of the bones for that kind of storytelling, but the visuals do not communicate with that style of storytelling at all.

This is way more, like, trippy and kind of a psychological descent into some sort of strange madness that the Hansen character is going through.

And it's much more about the psychology of these characters than about anything else, and more of a breakdown of To Catch a Predator, more than a breakdown of Chris Hansen himself.

So it automatically doesn't really follow any sort of, like, docudrama or, like, biopic rules, and I like that.

I like that, and the more that I sat with it, the more I found myself enjoying that sort of thing.

Now, yes, you do get some strange line readings and some strange, uh, physical behavior from Robert Pattinson in the performance himself, which is entertaining to say the least.

Uh, you know, sketches in the show included.

And It's like you get the best of both worlds of those things.

You do also get some depth from other characters like the Skyler Elizondo character, Decoy Dan, and Andy Bender, Merritt Weaver's character, who is essentially the producer of the show or co-producing with Chris Hansen.

I don't really tell what the dichotomy of their relationship is, but I'm pretty sure it's like producer and like star slash host.

So her character's a little higher up on the totem pole of like the TV hierarchy, so to speak.

And all three of these characters have a different relationship to what Catch a Predator is for them.

For Chris Hansen, it's a sort of crusade mission to placate his extremely like borderline narcissistic personality and like a basically kind of like a crusader to save all these potential victims of these crimes.

For Skyler Elizondo, it's more about him trying to jumpstart his acting career and how he's not he doesn't feel like he's fully being heard by this show this performance and is actually downright more traumatized by it than anything else in terms of a particular instance that happens in the movie which I I'll probably talk about it's not really a movie that you can spoil in in a strict sense but I will kind of delineate when I'm talking more of like details that happen in the movie versus me talking more generally like this um this is definitely a psychological trip and it's one it's one where I found myself really needing to kind of absorb like what this movie was giving more than I thought I was going to to be honest and it's gotten to the point as I've sat with it for a little bit longer which is a movie I felt like I needed to sit with a little bit longer so I'm not actually mad that I took the time to wait to record this one just because I felt like this movie was something that I needed to digest a little bit more and then you have the Merritt Weaver character um who is kind of more in for the can we make a good show out of this can we get good tv out of this regardless of the circumstances regardless of decoy dan's performance regardless of what chris hansen's doing uh regardless of anything at all regardless of the content that is being you know displayed uh it's can we make a good show can we make a show that is going to be number one in the prime time slot can we beat lost uh the the these are the characters motivation and then you get this underlying tone of like this is scummy tv and this this movie paired with its very like sort of cloudy uh visuals uh mixed with kind of the grain of like a film which is i i think in post-processing this doesn't look like it's shot like on that this looks like more like a digital effect of a grainy process but it's like this grain mixed with like cloudy which gives kind of the gritty mid-2000s feel this movie was very good at evoking the feelings of mid-2000s culture and and television and you don't think about it until you're kind of further removed from it but that's it it is an era you know what i mean like this mid-2000s and it's just it's an era that i lived through and i was too young for any of this so i guess i should have prefaced by saying that i never saw to catch a predator i know exactly what it is i know what the show set out to do i don't know really anything about chris hansen or his real life you know person or what happened with the show or if uh the show was judged on certain merits or not because for me uh how i perceived it at least from what i took from the film is that this show is very exploitative of putting people in situations that are obviously going to be life ending in some scenarios and it's more of for the shock of the reveal more than it is to follow up on anything that's actually bad happening or making making these predators for lack of a better term to hold them to justice in a sense because the way that the exploitation takes place it wouldn't be a way where it really holds up in court so that's kind of a conclusion that i'm drawing myself but i don't know if that's like the real life case of this is how things went for this show but it feels like nobody actually could get like tried and like do time for this sort of like punishment but of course you get the shame of like the public shame and i equated it to the feeling of how people feel when they watch like a public execution like in medieval times or whatever yes the person that is getting executed did something wrong that clearly warranted by the people that judge people in that time to be executed right um are you wrong for wanting to see that justice be taken out on somebody are you wrong for being happy about seeing that justice take taken out on somebody like it is that an incorrect feeling and i i feel like that's what this movie wants to explore most it's kind of the morality of public shame and and like what that can do for your own psychology and that that that is really big in the decoy dan character the skyler gazondo performance is very well done you know obviously he's he's got a lot of complicated character motivations as he is dan plum aspiring actor that is just trying to get a gig and get to work and that is one persona of his in this film.

He is also Decoy Dan.

He is, uh, an adult actor posing as a child to lure predators to do incriminating things on camera [laughs].

And Chris Hansen pops out and accuses them of all these things, has the- the paper, like, of the chat.

Like, you know, "It's not just chat, is it?" [laughs] And a- he has that persona as well of...

And then he's in his head as Dan Plumb thinking like, "Oh, am I, you know, am I serving the character? Am I- am I doing a good job?" And then you have kind of the Chris Hansen, Merritt Wever, like, "We don't really give a damn about your acting performance.

We just wanna make sure you're making good TV, and you're making good TV, so don't worry about it." So he's not getting properly validated by these people, and this character slowly starts to realize that as the film goes on.

But he is making money.

So i-i-it's interesting seeing kind of like a, "Oh, I got everything I wished for," and actually ultimately it doesn't really matter because of what's happening.