Lance Oppenheim: Chris Hansen's Reaction 'Is Exactly What the Film Is About'

Lance Oppenheim has two films arriving within weeks of each other this year, and both center on two of the most recognizable figures of the past two decades: Chris Hansen and Elizabeth Holmes.

The first, "Primetime," is his narrative feature debut, starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the Dateline correspondent whose "To Catch a Predator" turned sting operations into appointment television. The second, "You Can See Everything," is a nonfiction collaboration with Nathan Fielder centered on Holmes, shot in secret over four years and unveiled as a surprise screening at the Telluride Film Festival.

In an interview with Variety, Oppenheim traced the origin of "Primetime" to a $40 Cameo video his wife bought him from Chris Hansen. "It sounds almost glib, but it's hard to communicate how big a fascination this became for me," he said.

The Cameo arrived in 2024, before Oppenheim ever received a script. Hansen told him to have a seat and congratulated him on the release of "Spermworld." "You could pay this guy $40, and he would pretend you were a potential predator, then go on to advertise his new investigations," Oppenheim said. "There was something so macabre about it. It's almost like the man saw the meme and decided to adopt the persona."

Two weeks later, Oppenheim met Robert Pattinson and showed him the Cameo on a whim. Two weeks after that, at Pattinson's birthday party, the actor's producing partner Brighton McCloskey told him about a script he should read. The cover page said "To Catch a Predator." "I grabbed her phone, ran out to my car at 1:30 in the morning and read it all in one sitting," Oppenheim said.

Pattinson presented the screenplay wanting to produce it, initially unsure whether he wanted to act in it. "I said the only person who can play this part is you," Oppenheim recalled. He describes Pattinson's work as "a conceptual performance, almost a media collage of every Chris Hansen that's ever existed" — the cameo Hansen, the podcast Hansen, the raw-footage Hansen, even the self-parodies on "30 Rock."

Oppenheim frames the film around the idea that the real Chris Hansen no longer exists, absorbed into cultural lore. "A person can go a little bit to self-mythologize, but at a certain point, people mythologize you," he said. "That's how legends are born."

Hansen has responded to the film by appearing on talk shows and saying he was not consulted. Oppenheim notes that Hansen was initially excited — at CrimeCon he joked, "I'm sorry, I'm not Robert Pattinson, but I'm Chris Hansen" — but declined to sign a standard NDA when the filmmakers wanted to show it to him. "His reaction to the film right now is exactly what the film is about," Oppenheim said.

The director insists he set out to portray a hero, not a villain. "To me, he's a hero, a complicated hero, like Odysseus in 'The Odyssey,'" he said. "He's a human with flaws setting out to do something noble, and the effects of capitalism and commercialism make for a confusing experience for him."

Oppenheim connects Hansen's work to an older tradition. "What he does is also connected to a very ancient idea: thousands of years of performative justice," he said. "The pillory, the whipping posts. When you turn that spectacle of punishment into a television show that has to compete against 'Lost,' you've opened a Pandora's box."

"Primetime" also confronts a real tragedy: the death of one of the men caught in a sting. Oppenheim said his focus was "the psychic cost of doing this work day in and day out," and pointed to the film's effects on Chris, on Andy Bender, portrayed by Merritt Wever, and on Skyler Gisondo's character, Decoy Dan. He considered adding where-are-they-now cards but decided the film was "spiritually closer to Oliver Stone's 'JFK.'" He hopes viewers seek out David Osit's documentary "Predators" or Hansen's own new work. "People who have only seen the trailer think Hansen is the villain," he said.

As for genre, Oppenheim rejects a straightforward biopic label. He and his collaborators Rob and Joan were, he said, "interested in pushing the concept of the biopic to its furthest reaches, closer to creative narrative nonfiction, like the great works of David Foster Wallace. I call it docu-fantasia." Most biopics go through an authorization process with the subject; Oppenheim prefers his own interpretation.

On "You Can See Everything," he is deliberately guarded. "The more opinions I give on 'You Can See Everything,' the more it can corrupt the viewer's experience," he said. The secrecy was maintained by a crew of about seven or eight people, including cinematographer David Bolen — whom Oppenheim has worked with since he was 17 — and composer Ari Balouzian, both of whom also worked on "Primetime."

The Telluride screening left audiences walking in cold. "It's been a very long time since people were just greeted with a movie at a film festival," Oppenheim said. "They didn't even know it existed." Viewers argued about specific moments afterward. "That is perfect. That is the only way."

Oppenheim's son was born five days before production on "Primetime" began. He cites Jonathan Demme and Steven Soderbergh as models for making wildly different films back to back, and deflects attention toward his crew: "Without them, I would be totally fucked. I'm excited for the world to discover my collaborators."

Asked whether he has another secret project planned, Oppenheim answered: "It wouldn't be a secret if you knew. I can't talk about it right now."