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Chris Hansen Announces His Own Documentary After Watching 'Primetime' and Grading It a D
ReChris Hansen Announces His Own Documentary After Watching 'Primetime' and Grading It a D
Chris Hansen has finally seen 'Primetime,' the dramatized film about his career, and says he was more confused than offended. He graded it a D and revealed he has his own documentary, 'I am Chris Hansen,' in the works.
Chris Hansen has finally seen Primetime, the dramatized film about his career as the host of To Catch a Predator, and he says he was more baffled by it than offended. The real-life television host watched Lance Oppenheim's film in a Times Square theater alongside an audience of average moviegoers, and he graded the movie a D.
Hansen delivered his reaction during an interview with fellow host and journalist Jesse Watters on his YouTube channel. He also used the occasion to announce that he has "a number of documentaries" about his life and career in the works, one of which is currently being shopped around to multiple different platforms. He revealed the title of that project: I am Chris Hansen.
"It's a project, a film, in which I cooperated, produced by folks obviously I know and work with, and it was in the works well before we even heard of Primetime," Hansen said. "It's pretty good timing to have this thing out there with our agents shopping it on the West Coast to various platforms."
While Hansen praised Robert Pattinson's performance as him, he felt the actor's portrayal deviated significantly from who he is as a person, to the point where it was like watching a totally different person on screen. That detachment, he said, made it hard to be genuinely offended by the film.
"What was in it, in my mind, was something that was so overly-dramatized, so detached from reality — as the director put it, a fever dream — that it almost hit me as something that was so far from reality that it wouldn't even bother me, and I think other filmgoers will experience the same thing," Hansen said.
He went further, describing the film as "a hit piece on me and the series, which is weird, because all we do is expose bad human beings who try to hurt children." In his view, the movie's approach amounts to an insult to the thousands of men and women who work every day to do the same kind of work he did on Takedown and To Catch a Predator. "It's so far over the top that it's hard to come to grips with what they're trying to do here," he added.
Hansen pointed to a specific scene in the film where Pattinson sits in front of a vanity mirror, shirtless, rehearsing what he plans to say to the supposed predators when he gets them on camera. According to Hansen, that scene, like "almost every one" of the other scenes in Primetime, "didn't happen."
He also reiterated that he was never approached by A24 about the film. Previously, Hansen claimed he refused to sign a waiver before entering a screening of the movie, alleging that the studio wanted him to "sign away my rights." Before seeing the film, he had slammed it as a "very dramatized version" of events and even purchased advertisements for his own true crime network to air before every single screening of Primetime.
The film, directed by Lance Oppenheim and based on a 2007 Esquire article about Hansen, stars Robert Pattinson as the host. It is currently in theaters. Critical reception has been mixed: while Hansen gave it a D, other reviewers have been more enthusiastic. At least one outlet scored the film a glowing nine out of 10, calling it a "blast from the past with a sickly allure" that is "as garish as its subject: Chris Hansen's To Catch a Predator."
Hansen's own documentary project, I am Chris Hansen, is now being shopped to platforms on the West Coast. He said the timing of its release relative to Primetime is fortuitous, positioning his own account of events alongside the dramatized version currently in theaters.
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