00:00A television host becomes a national hero for exposing predators on camera,
00:05catching dozens of them in living rooms across the country while millions watch at home.
00:10Then one operation goes wrong.
00:12A man takes his own life while the cameras are still rolling,
00:16and the host has to live with exactly what he built.
00:20This is Primetime, the true story behind To Catch a Predator, starring Robert Pattinson.
00:26And by the end, you'll be asking whether the man catching monsters became one himself.
00:56Now, let's rewind to 2006, when a Dateline correspondent named Chris Hansen
01:01was about to become a household name for all the wrong, right reasons.
01:06Chris Hansen hosts a segment for NBC's Dateline called Predator,
01:11working with an online watchdog group, Perverted Justice, run by a man named Xavier Von Erk.
01:18Xavier's people pose as minors in chat rooms, waiting for adults to solicit them for in-person meetings.
01:25When someone takes the bait, Predator sets a trap.
01:28A decoy invites the target into a house,
01:30and once he's inside, Chris steps out and confronts him on camera before police move in.
01:35The show's current decoy is a young woman named Del Harvey,
01:41who plays both boys and girls online, depending on who the target thinks they're meeting,
01:47always staying calm and fully in character,
01:51no matter how uncomfortable the conversation gets.
01:55She's a total pro at this point,
01:57right up until Chris makes his entrance with a transcript in hand,
02:00and reads the suspect's own messages back to him,
02:03word for word, on camera, in front of a rolling crew.
02:09The show is produced by Andy Bender,
02:12a fiercely ambitious producer who treats every sting as a ratings opportunity first,
02:17and a moral crusade second.
02:20When NBC's programming chief Jeff Zucker sees Predator's numbers exploding,
02:25he moves the show to the primetime Wednesday 9 o'clock slot,
02:29putting it in direct competition with ABC's biggest hit at the time,
02:33lost.
02:35Chris is thrilled.
02:37Jeff tells him thrilled isn't enough.
02:40He wants bigger, more dangerous predators,
02:44and he wants them now.
02:46Enter Dan Plum,
02:48a 23-year-old aspiring actor who auditions for Predator
02:52without fully understanding what the job actually involves.
02:57He trains his voice,
02:58works out to look the part,
03:00and shows up excited for his first day as a decoy.
03:04Nobody prepares him for what actually happens.
03:07The Predator he's supposed to stall
03:10pulls down his pants right in front of him,
03:13and Dan is left completely shaken
03:15before Chris even steps in to make the arrest.
03:20Rattled, Dan wants to quit.
03:22Andy pushes Chris to talk him down personally,
03:24so Chris sits Dan down for a drink
03:27and delivers the pep talk of a lifetime,
03:29telling him he's a superhero,
03:31that he's saving children,
03:33and dubbing him Decoy Dan on the spot.
03:36It works!
03:37Dan stays gets coached by veteran decoy Del Harvey
03:42on how to read a target and stay in character,
03:45and slowly starts to believe his own hype
03:48right alongside Chris.
03:51Robert Pattinson plays Chris as a man
03:54completely intoxicated by his own celebrity,
03:57a performance critics have described as
03:59somewhere between a motivational speaker
04:02and something genuinely predatory itself.
04:04There's a running bit where Chris practically glows
04:08with anticipation right before every sting,
04:11lessing his target sit in stunned silence
04:14before quoting their own chat logs back at them,
04:17always ending with the same theatrical whispered catchphrase.
04:22Showtime.
04:24Behind the scenes,
04:26Chris's personal life is falling apart
04:29just as fast as his career is taking off.
04:32He's been having an affair with a woman named Christin,
04:36and after Predator lands the primetime slot,
04:39he tries to end it
04:41and recommit to his wife,
04:43Mary Joan.
04:45Christin doesn't take the breakup well,
04:47and a reporter who's been quietly following Chris
04:50snaps a photo of the two of them together,
04:53then uses it to blackmail him
04:55right before a broadcast.
04:57Chris panics,
04:58unable to tell Mary Joan the truth about any of it,
05:01and instead takes his frustration out on Andy,
05:05snapping at her over things
05:07that have nothing to do with the actual problem.
05:10It's a pattern that repeats throughout the film.
05:13Every time Chris's real life threatens to catch up with him,
05:17he redirects all of that pressure
05:19straight into chasing an even bigger Predator for the show,
05:23as if one more sting could somehow cancel out
05:26everything falling apart at home.
05:28With that blackmail threat hanging over him,
05:31and Jeff Zucker demanding bigger targets to compete with Lost,
05:35Chris turns his attention to a case Xavier has been chasing for weeks.
05:40A suspect too tech-savvy to trace,
05:43who keeps slipping past every attempt to pin down his identity or location.
05:47Xavier finally gets a name,
05:50Bill Conrad,
05:51an assistant district attorney for Rockwall County, Texas,
05:54and the team decides to pack up the whole operation
05:58and head south to catch him.
06:00The night before the Texas shoot,
06:04Dan and Chris share a quiet,
06:06almost human moment,
06:08talking about the job
06:09and what it means to do work nobody else understands.
06:13Chris even opens up about earlier work,
06:16investigating missing children overseas.
06:20One of the rare moments the film lets him seem genuinely sincere
06:24instead of performing.
06:26It doesn't last long,
06:28because the next morning,
06:30everything about this particular sting
06:33starts going sideways almost immediately.
06:37Xavier gets word that a different target has taken the bait,
06:41and right as the operation kicks off,
06:43Chris receives another blackmail message from the reporter.
06:47Furious and distracted,
06:48he breaks protocol,
06:50walks straight out to the target's car himself
06:52instead of waiting inside,
06:53and finds it completely empty.
06:56The Predator has slipped away entirely.
06:59And worse,
07:00he posts a warning in an online chat room
07:03telling other targets that Predator is running a sting in the area.
07:07Endy insists their location is now compromised
07:11and pushes to shut the operation down
07:13before things get worse.
07:15But there's still another Predator waiting inside the house,
07:18and when Chris fails to make his usual dramatic entrance,
07:23Dan does something nobody planned for.
07:25He steps into Chris's role himself,
07:28confronting the man on camera in Chris's place
07:31before the actual host even catches up to the moment.
07:35But it's Dan's first real taste
07:37of being the one in control.
07:41Meanwhile,
07:42Andy is quietly entertaining an offer
07:44from an ABC executive named Patty,
07:47who wants to hand her a show of her own
07:49and clearly enjoys bad-mouthing Chris in the process.
07:53Andy doesn't take the bait right away,
07:55but as she watches Chris spiral,
07:57chasing bigger targets against her advice
07:59and ignoring how thin their actual information on Bill Conrad is,
08:03she starts seriously considering walking away from Predator for good.
08:07When the first attempt to lure Conrad to the Stinghouse
08:11collapses without him ever showing up,
08:14Andy sees the chaos as her sign to finally take Patty's offer.
08:19Chris finds out and, instead of arguing,
08:22simply tells her they've got an even bigger Predator lined up.
08:26It's enough to make her pause and reconsider,
08:28right as everything back home for Chris
08:31is also about to reach its own breaking point.
08:35When Mary,
08:36Joan calls Chris after finally learning about the affair
08:40and coldly ends the call,
08:42leaving him visibly spiraling in front of everyone,
08:46Andy realizes just how much he genuinely needs her
08:51to keep functioning at all.
08:52She turns Patty down for good,
08:56choosing to stay through what turns out to be
08:59the single worst decision this entire team makes
09:03in the whole film.
09:06For the second attempt at Conrad,
09:08Xavier keeps him talking online for weeks
09:10until the man finally agrees to come to the house.
09:13But when the moment arrives,
09:15Conrad won't leave his own home,
09:17no matter how hard Dan tries to coax him out over the phone.
09:20So Chris makes a decision
09:22that breaks from everything the show normally does.
09:25Instead of waiting for Conrad to walk into their trap,
09:28he sends armed police directly to the man's house instead.
09:34As officers close in on the house,
09:37Dan stays on the phone with Conrad,
09:40still trying to talk him into coming outside,
09:43realizing there's no way out
09:45and that his life is about to be publicly destroyed
09:48on national television.
09:50Bill Conrad takes his own life inside his home as police
09:54and an NBC camera crew close in around the property.
09:59Dan sits frozen in the car afterward,
10:02unable to fully process what just happened.
10:06Chris, for maybe the first time in the entire film,
10:11looks genuinely shaken
10:13instead of performing for the cameras,
10:16staring numbly into the distance,
10:18while quietly repeating his own catchphrases,
10:23like he's trying to talk himself back into character
10:27in the movie's coldest, most telling moment.
10:31Andy's first reaction to Conrad's death
10:34isn't grief at all.
10:36It's the calm realization,
10:39spoken almost matter-of-factly,
10:41that she can still use the footage.
10:44The local police chief,
10:47thrilled with the outcome regardless of how it happened,
10:50treats it as a win for his own personal crusade
10:53against predators in his county,
10:56delivering one of the film's darkest,
10:58most uncomfortably funny lines in the process.
11:02Nobody in that room seems entirely sure
11:04whether they just witnessed a tragedy
11:06or captured their biggest ratings moment yet.
11:09And that exact ambiguity
11:10is the whole point the film is making.
11:13In the aftermath,
11:15reports on primetime's exact ending vary slightly,
11:19depending on the outlet.
11:21Some describe Dan receiving formal recognition
11:24from the Screen Actors Guild
11:25for his work on the show
11:27not long after Conrad's death.
11:29Others describe a jump forward
11:31to the following year,
11:33with Dan having quietly walked away from acting,
11:36and Hollywood altogether
11:37after everything he witnessed on that shoot.
11:41Either way,
11:42the film makes clear
11:43that nobody who was in that house
11:45the day Bill Conrad died
11:47walked away from it unchanged.
11:50Even the people who publicly insist
11:52they came out of it
11:53just fine
11:54and he stays on
11:56with Predator.
11:57Chris keeps chasing
11:59his next big predator
12:01and the show itself
12:02keeps airing
12:03for a while longer,
12:06right up until Conrad's death
12:08becomes the exact controversy
12:11that eventually gets it cancelled
12:13for good.
12:15Primetime never hands you
12:17a clean hero
12:18or a clean villain.
12:21Chris Hansen
12:23comes across as a man
12:24who genuinely believes
12:26he's saving children
12:27while also being
12:28completely intoxicated
12:30by his own fame
12:31in catchphrases.
12:33Andy Bender
12:34chases ratings
12:35with the same intensity
12:36Chris chases Predators.
12:38And Dan,
12:39the one character
12:40who starts out
12:41as purely well-meaning,
12:43ends the film
12:44having gotten
12:45exactly what he wanted,
12:47at the cost of watching
12:48a man die
12:49in real time.
12:51The film is loosely based
12:54on real events,
12:55drawn from a 2007
12:57Esquire magazine article
12:59about the actual death
13:00of Bill Conrad,
13:01an assistant district attorney
13:03whose 2006 sting operation
13:06contributed directly to
13:08To Catch a Predator's
13:09cancellation not long after.
13:11It preneed at the Venice Film Festival,
13:14competing for the festival's top prize,
13:16and critics have widely praised
13:18Robert Pattinson's
13:19transformation into Hansen
13:21as one of the best performances
13:23of his career.
13:24It's worth repeating, though,
13:26that Chris Hansen himself
13:28was not involved
13:29in making this movie,
13:30has publicly disputed
13:32several events depicted in it,
13:34and has said
13:35he considers the whole project
13:37exploitative,
13:38going as far as
13:39buying advertising
13:41before theatrical screenings
13:42to push back
13:43on his portrayal.
13:45So keep in mind,
13:46this is a dramatized,
13:48stylized version
13:49of real,
13:50painful history,
13:51not a documentary.
13:52And it clearly has
13:54its own point of view
13:55about the man
13:56at its center.
13:58Visually,
13:59director Lance Oppenheim
14:01shoots the whole thing
14:02to look like grainy,
14:04oversaturated early
14:052000s videotape,
14:07giving the film a queasy,
14:09almost hallucinatory quality
14:11that critics have compared
14:12to a horror movie
14:13as much as
14:14a straightforward drama.
14:16Even the film's score
14:17has been described
14:18as throbbing and uneasy,
14:20constantly reminding you
14:22that underneath
14:23all the primetime gloss,
14:25something is deeply,
14:27deliberately,
14:28wrong with what
14:30you're watching unfold.
14:32So, after everything
14:34you just heard,
14:35who do you think
14:36primetime is really
14:37asking you to blame?
14:38Chris Hansen,
14:40the system built around him,
14:41or the audience
14:42that made this kind of
14:43television a hit
14:44in the first place?
14:46Drop your take
14:47in the comments,
14:48because this one's
14:49genuinely split people
14:50right down the middle.
14:51If you want more
14:52breakdowns like this,
14:53hit subscribe,
14:55tap the bell,
14:55and I'll catch you
14:56in the next one.
