‘Primetime’ Is a Robert Pattinson Transformation and the Nightmare Media Movie of Our Time, With Lance Oppenheim!

I'm Sean Finnesi and this is the big picture and conversation show about prime time. Today on the show we are digging into the new Robert Pattinson starring Paranoid Satire horror thriller that portrays Chris Hanson, host of "To Catch a Predator" as a load star for a modern crisis of conspiratorial narcissism. The movie is a dark, twitchy portrait of a media culture gone horribly wrong and also kind of funny. Later in this episode I'll be joined by Lance Oppenheim, the filmmaker, making his scripted feature debut with Primetime Lance is best known for his documentaries, he last appeared on the show in 2024. He's having an amazing year between Primetime and his forthcoming Elizabeth Holmes Dock with Nathan Field, or you can see everything. This conversation is entirely about Primetime and his transition to fiction storytelling and it's a great one. This might be the smartest young filmmaker on the planet right now, stick around for it, but first, some movie news right after this. This episode is presented by State Farm, you know the feeling, long day, good meal, you finally sit down and now you're just staring at your screen. Slasher, romcom, period drama, psychological thriller, but some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help, like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan, bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Take a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, cover options are selected by the customer availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. This is surprise movie news. This is breaking movie news. It's not. It's not. It's more movie feelings. Oh, okay. I want to share with you some feelings I'm having. Oh, okay. Okay. This is why you didn't tell me ahead of time. That's not true. That's not true. I've been in a screening. Uh huh. I don't know any news that happened, but instead, did you have a breakdown? No. Did you have a, um, like a Tiffany? No. Okay. I'm incapable of either of those things at this stage of my life. I'm trying to stay even right now here in 2026. Okay. I've done a pretty good job. I think. Yeah. I have been feeling a bit low about the paramount merger. Sure. And my loneliness was lowered when word that Elon Musk was maybe going to be a part of the investment in paramounts because this is a $110 billion acquisition and David Ellison and co-need money and there's going to be a lot of debt. And I was, you know, I'm, I'm not happy about the merger. I'm not happy that Warner Brothers is no longer a standalone movie studio and television studio. And I've got a lot of concerns about it. But, you know, I've been trying to block it out and trying to, I knew that this was going to happen and forge ahead. There's nothing that we can do. And all of the business planers said to us, okay, well, Paramount doesn't buy Warner Brothers then another company has to because it was built to be sold and what AT&T did and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we as MBAs, along with our other credentials here, said, okay, sure. Well, I thought back on a few times, we were at a Christmas party in December and we were having a conversation with Matt Bellany, our colleague here on the burger podcast work. And he was like, it's going to be Paramount, you know, like just, yeah, it's going to be Paramount. Just accept it. And even he over the last whatever nine months has wavered and toggled and we had the Netflix moment and a lot of things went back and forth and back and forth. But deep down, I think everybody, especially the cynics were like, it's going to be Paramount. And so, you know, we are where we are with that. I'm trying to push those feelings aside because this is a movie podcast, right? Sure. We find ourselves on one of the like, the great kinds of movie weekends where like a bunch of different movies are coming out. And it seems like some of them might actually do well, and you're most excited about Paramount's Heart of the Beast. Well, they have a film coming out. Have you seen Paramount's Heart of the Beast? I haven't. Nor have I. I haven't. In fact, it's the only movie that I'll list here. I guess one of two movies that I'll list here that I have not yet seen, but having seen a bunch of these movies already, almost all of which we will talk about on Monday's episode. Yes. I'm like, this is working. Like it is, like we're rebuilding it, you know, it's going to take time, but it's going pretty well. And this has obviously been a very exciting year for those of us who love movies and going to the movies. And so in addition to Primetime, which we'll talk about at length here, we also have, and I'm not a shame to admit it. I'm kind of excited tomorrow morning to go see Avengers and Game Encore. A movie I've always liked. In fact, I've loved. Yeah. And they've added eight minutes to the film. Oh, no. I've watched those eight minutes as well as the original film inside the film, or appended to the end of it. Well, I don't know. Okay. I haven't seen it yet, but that's happening and I'll be able to experience for the very first time infinity vision, which is a new format that the Marvel and Disney corporation are introducing to us, which I think is just the Dolby room. Sure. But which you actually, you prefer, you know, I look, I do, but I like the Dolby room. You do. I do. No regular formats for you. They did find you with infinity vision. I watched the film this morning in regular format, and I'm not allowed to reveal what it is, but I did. What did you watch this morning? Can you reveal it? Label and Agra. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. We can talk about that offline. I don't know whether I don't know if I'm a barcode. Okay. I don't think so. It's a already primitive festival. Sure. Yeah. You saw it like four months ago, but I don't know. Okay. Do you want to spoil it? Or do you want to do Oscar, you know, save it for the next Oscars thing? I don't know. Okay. I'm a tree either way. You thought you were surprising me, and now the tables have turned. Well, let's come back to Leboa in a bit for a second, because I have to turn that over in my mind while speaking to you. A vamp. Mind thought. Sure. Okay. So imagine, do you like me to read the rest of the movies that are coming out this weekend in my movie? Well, sure. Your mother, your mother, your mother, starring Mahershala Ali, a recent guest on one more question. That's right. With someone named Zach Barron. That's right. I haven't seen this yet. I'm going. Tomorrow, I'm doing a double header of your mother, your mother, your mother, and then a heart of the beast. Okay. Back to back. Very masculine afternoon for you. Well, that is, that's the one note I have here. Your mother, your mother, your mother, which I loved is one for the dads. Well, that's, I mean, I learned that from, I did listen to Zach's entire interview with Mahershala Ali, which was also one for the dads, but you know what? For the parents. It expands. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. So that movie is coming out. Okay. Forgotten Island, which I'm going to take knocks to this weekend. Oh, you got a lot of movies coming up. Yes. This is the new DreamWorks animated film. I do my job, you know? Sure. Okay. Let's see. Resident Evil week two. Yep. The weight week two. I have also seen the weight. You've seen the weight? I have seen the weight. Oh, great. There we go. This is exciting. And the history of concrete expands. Yes. I have also seen the history of concrete. This is John Wilson's feature documentary debut. Yeah. So it is a dude's rock week at the, at the movie theaters, but that's okay because sometimes dudes are allowed to rock. Well, forgotten Island is a film about girls. That's wonderful. About young girls, thinking about what's coming next for them as they become not a girl but not yet women. Beautiful. As Brittany wants eloquently compared. She did. And I guess I'm feeling pretty cool. I'm like, this is cool. Yeah. We've got a notorist high level, you know, in the art house movie with a big movie star. We've got an old school movie star doing kind of a late period, you know, like a movie with like Robert Mitchen might have made or Robert Redford might have made in the later stages of their career. You've got the dog. Yeah. With the dog with the dog. We've got an animated movie. We've got a, this is, as Zach pointed out in his conversation with Mahershala, only the second time he's ever been the proper lead of a movie. Which is kind of fascinating because I, if you would ask me how many movies has he let out? I don't know. Five or six. And then I would have tried to name them and then wouldn't have been able to come up with them. Yeah. There's a gap there. There's a gap there. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. So you're trying to, you're trying to embrace the positive. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to love. And block out Elon Musk investing in Paramount. You haven't seen Musk, the documentary I have. I have. I have. You have. Yeah. And did that make you feel better about him? It's like, it's already outdated now. Yeah. But it does place. I would say the second half of the documentary emphasizes the way in which he is becoming unlikely and terrifying media mogul. So this doesn't tracks on to that. Yeah. It doesn't make me feel a lot better. That was the half that I needed to sneak the negrony into the movie for no, sorry, it was a Compari Spritz. Okay. You snuck a Compari Spritz into your screening of the four hour Musk documentary. Actually, the intermission, like post-intermission. Or there's an intermission. Yes. Also in a water bottle. Remember. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. All of Poland's Spring Style. Yes. Would you like me to screwdriver? Well, they gave it to me. And I, and then they were like, you can't take it into the. Oh, I see. Okay. So then I drank my water. So then you had pink water? No, I drank all of the water. It was like in the water bottle. Look at it. It was pink water. Yeah. Yes. I had pink water. Sure. How did you explain that? I had electrolytes, obviously. Okay. And then. By the way, the Italians are not asking the Italians. Don't care. Everyone who works at the Venice Film Festival is very, very chill. Got it. Okay. They were nice about it, except for the people with machine guns. And then, what, I mean, you know, Europeans just, yeah. We are not in machine guns. They love machine guns. And then, and I took the potato chips and two because I knew I would need it for the last two hours. Most of what's going on with Elon Musk is coming out October 9th. Yeah. That's the same day as the social recognition. Yeah. And I don't know if we're going to be able to stitch those two together, but they are, they do feel very related. They are stitched together. And they are both, well, we haven't even seen the social recognition. I'm not. Just trailers, but they are all somewhat related to the movie that we're about to discuss. You're absolutely right about that. And that's an elegant segue. to prime time, let's talk about it. - Yeah. - So as I said, directed by Lance Oppenheim. A Jones Sing is the writer. It's based on a 2007 Esquire piece by Luke Ditchridge called "Tonight on Deadline, This Man Will Die." The movie stars Pattinson, Naturally as Hanson, Merit Weaver, Skyler Casando, Matthew Mayer, Phoebe Bridgers, and many other amusing, would you call them stunt castings? - Yes, absolutely. A lot of signposts, signals, memory joggers, dotted throughout the movie. The story is as follows. It's told through the experience of Hanson, producers and the young actors who participated in the series to catch a predator prime time tracks the turbulent behind-the-scenes production of the mid-2000s reality television sensation. Before we get into your thoughts on the film, did you watch to catch a predator I forget? - I didn't, because this was right when I graduated from college. And so I'm fluent in all of the pop culture that this movie lovingly and also accusingly recreates an equal measure, Shoutout Fergie. And the only woman I think-- - I covered my notes here. - The only woman that I think my husband would leave me for. And, but I wasn't watching TV at that point. Because I don't know if I had my cable set up yet, not in like a, I'm too cool for cable sort of way, but in the, I'm 22 and broken in New York for the way. - Yes, sure. - So, no, I know it as I think most people do, which is as a pop culture phenomenon. And really, like as one of the first memes that gets handed down over the internet, over the ages. - That's right. The show, I guess for anyone who is not familiar with the show or has not figured out what it is from watching the trailers of this movie, was a sort of gotcha journalism program in which potential child predators, you know, sexual deviants were lured into particular circumstances and came to homes that were kind of set arranged and actors who were playing teenagers, grown adult actors who were playing teenagers, invited them into the home and acted as the person that they had been communicating with online. And then as that scenario would play out, the actor would disappear and the host, Chris Hanson, who at a long time NBC News journalist, would appear and confront these predators and interrogate them on camera and frequently segments would end with those, those predators racing out of the home and being arrested. - Yeah. - It's as deranged as it sounds. And it, I've seen it before. It was, it's a fascinating text. - Yeah. - And I do think that the movie very smartly locates it as indicative of a lot of where our culture was headed. - Right. - But it wasn't the only thing. It wasn't the only indicator of a kind of broken society. But the fact that we were sort of cheering on these scenarios was quite strange. - Yeah, this is way after cops, the TV show and America's most wanted the TV show. And we did grow up with law enforcement as entertainment. And even the type of footage that is recreated in prime time of like not, it wasn't body cams, but surveillance footage and chase footage. And I'm, you know, the OJ chase being another. - Sure. - Just like very, like it was embedded in the pop, embedded in pop culture. And I guess this is an era where things were just kind of, like heightened cops was never, wasn't on prime time. I don't imagine it as prime time. I imagined it as sort of like a, like a serious, not a, - I can't quite remember, but I mean, it was on Fox when I was a kid. - Yeah. - And it may have aired at 10 p.m. - Right. - And Fox didn't really have 10 p.m. prime time programming for a stretch. So like they would program from eight to 10. - Yes. - And then whatever was happening at 10, maybe they had the news and then cops after that, which was a little different than say NBC, which would program till 11. I think that's when it aired. But it was, I mean, it was among the most popular shows of that period, there's an amazing podcast series that came out some years ago about the history of cops. And there's, in addition to those kinds of low enforcement, reality TV shows that we were weaned on as kids, this was also the time of punked and jackass, Borat and Ali G. And this kind of intersection between kind of, antic mayhem and candid camera style gotcha programming colliding with, you know, the real life circumstances that are portrayed in this movie. - I'll throw one more thing in. This was also the era and the network of the apprentice. - That's right. - Which was again about taking local news and really giving it a major platform. And now we are living in the consequence of that platform. - Yeah, and I think this movie is interested in the ramifications of all of that. And as using this movie, as I said, it's kind of the portal to some of that. So what do you think of the movie? - I really, really dug it. I saw it in Venice at the premiere and really liked it. And, you know, that was a very busy premiere. So there were all the American press everyone was fighting for a ticket, but it was kind of funny to watch it with an Italian crowd who didn't really have the same reference. And for example, I don't think they know who Jeff Zucker is. And I would you if you're Italian. I hope you're living a blessed and free life. Or at least that's not part of your issues. And then. - This is a very American text. - It's incredibly American. So it's funny that it was in Venice. And then I got the chance to rewatch it this week. And there was, there was stuff that I had noticed that like things that also played differently after a couple of weeks of being back at home like and back to school saturated in our crazy weird media ecosystem. So I think it's really smart. I think it is very audacious in both, you know, some of the actual formal techniques, but also frankly just put in Robert Pattinson's crazy weird performance at the middle of this. And I just I'm so taken with the Pattinson of it all. It is so out there. - Yeah, that's the first bullet point I made here. - It is wild. - Yeah. - Well, it's a really interesting document to me because the movie is being sold and marketed. - Yeah. - Very specifically as Robert Pattinson is Chris Hanson. And about two thirds of the movie is that. It is like it just sends into madness media movie of which there are a great many. When I was talking to Lancey, he cited Ace in the Hole as all of his favorite movies, there's a lot of movies that we can talk about at the end of this discussion that this is working in a tradition of. And I would say the movie is not particularly revelatory, but it's accuracy and interest in the details of this time of this kind of culture. And then also creating a setup to let a great star and actor have fun like this. - Yeah. - Let it rip, so to speak, is incredibly entertaining and engaging and fascinating and fun and quite dark and quite sad. And you know, I saw the movie again last night 'cause I moderated a Q&A with Lance. - And so you saw it with an American crowd. - I saw it with a big, big crowd at the director's village theater. And there were a lot of laughs in the room. - It's funny. - There was an interesting thing about, is it okay to laugh at this? And I think it was almost a meta commentary on our feelings about the show, "How to Catch a Predator." Which is like, were you allowed to laugh at that show? And was that show funny on purpose? Or was it, did it become this kind of arch text that we felt like some remove from, even though there's something deeply sad about whatever's happening on that show at any given time? And so I could feel, you know, there's certain moments where Pattinson is being just like hysterical and really like going for it, going over the top. There are other moments where Scott LeCuzando, for example, has like very funny line readings. There's incident that feels very funny to us, even though it's perverse. - Yes, but they're playing it both ways, with even within the film, and some characters react with shock. And then there's a cut to control room, where everyone is like, (laughing) it's like a great reaction shot moment. All of the control shot moments in this movie, both like stand in for the audience, and then judge the audience at the same time, in a very clever way. And once again, are also just like memes waiting to happen. - Yeah, so few movies like this are about actual real living people. But Chris Hansen, of course, is still alive, and is interacting with this movie in some ways, although apparently he's still hasn't seen it. Pattinson is doing something fascinating because the vocal timbre, the mannerisms, the like crusader demon quality that Hansen had. - The physicality. - Yes, it's so perfectly matched. It is snapshot accurate. But it's also extremely heightened. There's been a lot of talk about Dracula being a big influence on this performance. And from the opening moments, when we see him opening a curtain, he has this kind of devilish pose to him that is really fascinating. And it goes for both behind the scenes and in front of the camera that he never totally seems like a person who knows who he is. He only kind of understands himself as this public persona. - Right, I thought you were just going to end that sentence as he never totally seems like a person. And you do watch the character of Chris Hansen going in and out of the performance of the crusader that he is in front of the camera versus the sort of dad though he doesn't really try in his personal life at all. And another interesting thing about this movie is how everyone in it is a complete failure outside of the confines of the control room or this movie set, which is possibly true. true of many TV crews, but like definitely true of many people that we know in all types of industries. Yes. And you see, there's a remove, there's like a distance to the performance itself from like basically humanity, which I think is genius and is obviously just incredibly engaging to watch because you don't know what he's going to do and he does really random stuff. And communicates pretty quickly that he is going for it with the capital G. But it is also interesting kind of in what ultimately the movie wants to say about Chris Hansen and or these programs and or, you know, how we understand other people through a screen and can you and or is it just constantly like is everyone a predator in its own way, which certainly the Chris Hansen character is you know, I rewatched with my wife this week and we had a really long and complicated conversation about what the responsibility of the producers of this show actually was and the notions of entrapment and what they're drawing out of people was the movie I thought was actually the second time I watched it, I thought was even more incisive about that question in ways that maybe I wasn't thinking about as I was trying to get my bearings because the movie is extremely stylish and has a fascinating visual framework where it's clearly, you know, Lancet has shot on I think 25 different formats and it's clearly gone through this pretty rigorous post process to give it a kind of like sort of a psychotronic hyper colorful but also grainy look that is, I guess, shot on digital, but then in the in the post process makes it look more like the TV show at times it makes it look more like your computer screen and things that you watched in the 2000s like, look, look more like like a, you know, sleazy nightclub like just don't go there environment. Like something you're not supposed to be seeing, yeah, yeah. So the movie itself has this very powerful effect, but then when you revisit the work, like it is textually about the ugliness really, I think of this this production and the fact that I think that's such an astute point you made, which is that these people are so good at their jobs and what does that mean to be so good at your job and then to only like to turn your whole life over to that. Yeah. And what and not really have the distance to examine what it is that you're contributing to the world and actually to dilute yourself into thinking, I'm really making a difference because that's something that Hansen is kind of constantly promoting to himself and to everyone who works for him and to this figure of Dan Plum played by Gisando who like comes into this world and you know, you can sense because of the, um, the acuity of his performance that like this is not right, but he's an out of work actor and he really wants the gig. Yeah. And he loves acting. And so he throws himself wholeheartedly into the work knowing that what they're doing on the show is there's something wrong about it. Right. And he has, he has like a friend character who is calling and checking in and is also an aspiring actor. Yes, the hysterical Eric Ray. So funny. So funny. I mean, the best line deliveries of, of the year so far. He's also a circle in Maddie's secret. He plays Maddie's husband and he's such a funny actor. And he's calling and he's like making jokes about, making jokes about the content, not taking any of it seriously. And then is also just telling the Dan character all the time, like, but like you're barely in it. It doesn't really count and you're not acting. So the, the, the Skylar isando character is both like the conscience stand in and trying to figure out what am I doing? And is, am I a good person or a bad person? Or is this, are we doing the right thing? Are we helping? Are we hurting? But also doesn't even like has his own motivations and then even those aren't really fulfilled. And like the nice thing I think about this movie that does point out the, the ugliness around certainly this show and kind of like the types of people that tend to gravitate towards it is that like no one really learns their lesson. You know, like no one actually, they do learn that like bad things happen. But it doesn't, it's, it's not moralizing. No, there's a devastating merit we've aligned at the near the very end of the movie that that I think speaks to. Yeah. The lack of conscience of a lot of the people that are working on it. A few more things about Pattinson. Because we've been talking about him all year. I mean, he's, he, he and, and Hathaway and Tom Holland and Zendaya are, they're the story of movies this year, which is like something we've been suggesting was going to happen on this show for like 10 years and then it happened. And obviously Pattinson and, and Hathaway have had long careers now. But for all of those people to be hitting in big movies is interesting. This one I think is probably his boldest act. Like it's the, it's the most because it's not a supporting part. It's a huge choice. It's the kind of part that if another, if an actor did it in the 90s, you'd hear a lot of annoying stories about what they did on set. Right. And you don't hear about that. It doesn't seem like he's like, I'm in character and being difficult and obnoxious. Yeah. It just seems like he makes big choices. He works with filmmakers who want him to make big big choices. And it's interesting too to watch somebody at this stage of his career play like a decaying ego test. You know, that's really what Hansen is. It's like somebody who never quite got to say the Stone Phillips level and Stone Phillips is used very musically in this movie as the counterpoint, a real serious journalist and, and Chris can't quite get there. Yeah. And so the only thing he can do is kind of lean even deeper into this deeply malevolent kind of work that he's doing. But he also thinks it's very important and powerful. Or has convinced himself is very important and powerful. And that, you know, there is a lot of the character mythologizing or self-mythologizing and and talking about the importance of the show within the movie. But it's never really quite clear what of that is actually true or real or just in his own psychodrama that's being made real to us. Yeah. I mean, he like it is it is a person who is having a breakdown in real time. And for that is Robert Pattinson's interpretation of this role. But the way that he has the breakdown is just not how any actor would play it. It's true. But do you think that the breakdown is like, let's just, because this is not literally Chris Hansen. Yeah. But in some ways it is. And is it possible that his life is just a continued breakdown? You know, that the the eccentricity that is on display, there's also on display on the show when you watch it with the halting phrasing and the sort of dramatic line readings and the oddity of his media presence. You know, you pointed out some of the great stuff that he does throughout this movie, which feels really odd. Yeah. But I could also see Chris Hansen doing some of these things, you know? Yes, the bullet proof best that he wears is used to great comedic effect. And I will say the only thing where Pattinson doesn't have it spot on with Chris Hansen is that they have they've cut his hair. They've put him in the quarter zip, which I almost wore actually for this episode. He's got the clothes he looks very much like him, but he still is also Robert Pattinson and is like incredibly handsome. And so he's there in a bullet proof, bullet proof best that like accentuates his waist just so, you know? And then it's just like lying on the floor or like lounging by an indoor pool. Yeah. And the production design on this is very excellent in recreating the like those types of early 2000s, McMansion, like aspirational houses. Yes. And also the weird lighting found there in. Yeah. Lance was really funny, just identifying how weird the set decoration of any ticetchup brand new set was where you have a bar in the middle of a living room that was he was floating and disconnected. Also always a kitchen island. Yes. So they're there. They're needed to be I guess some sort of gathering space visually. That's very funny. But yeah, so he lies down in a bullet proof best. A lot lots of like weird funny faces and you know, and and noises and and and bodily movements. The part where he's brushing his teeth and like throws his back out. It's really he doesn't actually throw his back out. He just is almost like he's taken over by some sort of demon. Yes. There is an other world equality, I guess, to what he is bringing to Chris Hansen. No, I feel like every single person in the production of the show as depicted in the film is possessed. Yeah. They're possessed by something. And I think it's just desperation for success, which is I think the most powerful. Yeah. Big note, which is that this is kind of what everyone decided that they wanted, which is like I'm doing something important and everyone should see what it is. And he is this could relate to that. No, trust me, we're all guilty. You know, especially those of us who have cameras in front of our faces. One thing that I love, love about the movie is what an amazing snapshot it is of junkie mid-autical. Yeah. And there are so many different things. You know, you mentioned Fergie. One of the first things we hear in the movie is Fergie is a London bridge. And you know, to catch a predator, of course, and even the prime time rating wars that are like depicted as per Jeff Zucker, moving shows around a schedule board, like that, the quaintness of that. Yeah. And ultimately when they go, when they get the prime time slot, they're going up against loss. Yes. And loss is referenced frequently. You know, the film, I think also using some of Oppenheim's kind of archival strategy is kind of cutting back and forth between moments from loss or moments from inside the actor studio where we see Billy Bob Thornton transforming. There's a lot, the whole movie is about this kind of the idea of transformation, both for Dan Plum, the actor and for Hanson himself. AOL instant messenger. Yeah. And that vocal chime you'd hear when you get a new message and waiting for someone to hit you on aim. The musical rent, that's really, it's used to affect. It is, at a certain point in the film, and we're not really spoiling the movie quite yet, because it's not the kind of movie where you're waiting to find out, act to act, what is going to happen. So it is a descent, but it isn't a movie that has like plot beats per se, but it does have a series of incidents that further explain the crisis of the characters, but there's fear of a national inquirer expose. Yeah, which once upon a time was such a big and loud thing that could happen to a public person. John Edwards, was he among the last people who really fell victim to that thing? Because, of course, we have TMZ now, and we just have like Dumwon, we just have getting canceled. We have all these, you know, after effects of the national inquirer, but the idea of Chris Hansen potentially being canceled by the national inquirer. But then one of my favorite scenes in the movie is him searching for himself on the national inquirer website. It's incredible, and it's not found, but the search results that are found, Paris Hilton, what else? I can't remember the other ones, yeah. Paris Hilton featuring prominently. All memorable, like again, junky, aughts, culture stuff. You know, there's a lot more Phoebe Bridgers, who is one of the stars of this movie in a nine-inch nails t-shirt, and then explaining to Bokey Woodbine's Sheriff Character what nine-inch nails is. Counting Crows Miami, playing while searching the national inquirer website, which is like, you know, album cut from the 2002 album "Hard Candy". Jonathan Lipnicki? I didn't clock it the first time. I didn't clock it until, yeah. Let's just put a spoiler warning around the rest of this conversation. We've given you 30 minutes of discussion here. Everything we'll talk about now is deep into spoiler territory. My apologies to Lucas and the booth, who hasn't had a chance to see this movie yet. Because the movie is about showing a series of setups onto catch a predator, we see a lot of different kinds of faces. And the faces that you see, I would say, are not usually the kinds of faces. You would even see it in a movie. And that was true of the show, too. Tony Revallori, great actor, who you've seen in West Anderson movies, the Spider-Man films. He's the first predator who's caught. And if you've seen the trailer, you've seen his face as the person. Later in the movie, there's a young man who comes over who I think his name is CrazyFrog 93. And it's Jonathan Lipnicki, who played the little boy in Jeremy Guilery, Bees and Docs and Smell Fear. You know, the human headway. Headways at Pounds, you know? All the stuff that my daughter is saying to me now, the fun facts that she's learned yesterday. She was like, um, soil has nutrients and dirt doesn't. Okay. I did know that. Thank you. That's a fucking Jeremy Guiler moment. Thank you for sharing that. Uh, Knox came home and was like, we got a pet snake at the classroom and it's cold blood it. I was like, well, these are facts. There you go. They're all cold blood. It all snakes. Well, I, you know, I didn't know he knew that that existed. That's learning. Um, anyway, Lipnicki plays one of the predators. And, first of all, it's very charming and amusing. And then, this is dick out. Yep. In like a, like a shiny one like with the camera with cream. Yes. With the camera. Which is where the shot. And that's when, and then so the Skylar Gazano character, who is like, this is his first decoy moment reacts like pretty humanly like with fear and shock as, you know, he's, he's being confronted with the whipped cream and the dick. And then, uh, everyone in it cuts everyone in the booths. And they're all just like still and then just like, huh, and they don't laugh, but they see the humor. They know they have goals. You know, they have something great for their show. Yeah. And obviously, Dan, decoy, Dan, as he's come to be known, is traumatized by this, you know, this thing. And again, like, there's something very, very funny about using Jonathan Lipnicki in a part like this. And asking him to do it and him thinking, this is a great idea. This is a great part for me to take and tells us a lot about kind of how we process culture and what position we put young people into in the business and what position we're putting in the Skylar Gazano's character into, who is an adult, but is playing a child. The whole thing is this kind of like, um, it's like nine mirrors facing each other at the same time and asking you like, how do you really look? Yeah. And I love all the choices like that about it. I mean, there's other specific ones like Creed Brat and appears in the film from the office in one very memorable scene that takes place on an airplane, even using both Kim Woodbott and General, I think, who we think of as maybe like a more memorable figure from 2000s movie and TV culture. Yeah. I mean, on a Ferris for that matter, who plays Chris Hansen's wife. Yes. Um, and so the movie just constantly has you thinking about that time. And maybe that's just beneficial for us as people who really came of age at that time, but it's something that I really like about it. And I marvel that Lance, who I think is only 30, I'm like, how do you even know that all this stuff? It's, I did the math so he would have been 10. So but then you think about like what you was handed down to you when you were 10. And then also this is, this is just before iPhones, this is just before like we had the internet, we had email, we had instant messenger. So, you know, how these things get handed down and preserved and like what you've seen and what, what you remember and what life it takes on, you know, as it is, is interesting. And the movie is a little bit about that, at least as much about how this time period does connect to the sad and miserable world we live in right now. No question. It almost feels like the end of the innocence. Like that's almost the idea of the movie is that once we realized we could start doing this stuff, once we realized we could literally start doing the things that were considered high satire in network, that it was all over, that like that, officially the dominoes had all fallen and we were sitting in this new era. It's also I think a great movie about making TV and not just the process by which they go about making the show, but, you know, the idea that that's really all there is that you like to find yourself by it at a certain point in the movie Chris Hansen kind of takes decoid in under his wing and they start literally having this father's son, Esk Bond. Yeah, they're playing catch. They literally have a catch. Interesting to watch Pattinson throw the ball. It seemed like it seemed like he kind of knew what he was doing. Okay. His release was like a little too quick. I know, but he's British. Sure. So he didn't grow up playing baseball more than like they played cricket. So I think they throw the ball differently. That's true. You think Robert Hansen plays cricket? I'm sure that he has interacted with it before. That's more of a bounce, right? The ball is bounce. And I, this is where I'm at over my ski is I like it don't actually know. Well, you're coming to his defense cricket. Well, I didn't see people playing cricket on the beach this summer, which is very weird. And he would cricket on the beach. I don't know. They just had the bats and the things. Okay. Balls don't bounce on sand. Listen, they had the cricket bats. They were and they were British. So they were talking about it. Maybe they were playing on like the sidewalk, like the closed off area just for walking pedestrian. I don't know. You think no British person has ever thrown a ball? That's no. I wouldn't say that there's a, as far as I know, a very low percentage of British people in major league baseball. Have we ever hear from anyone about how you pronounce the lion in lion? Oh, we got lots of feedback on Instagram to which I say I can't understand when you type this as an Instagram comment. Okay. So they didn't, there's no like rhymes with lots of people apparently said Sean was correct in his pronunciation, which I don't even remember. Well, that's, listen, I'd like a rhymes with. Okay. Not Sean. I'll get that for next up. So we're different ways. So what we're learning is that British people don't listen to this podcast and don't know how to throw balls. I'm not saying that specifically. I thought Pattinson acquitted himself pretty well given the circumstances. And then Skylar Gazondo throwing the ball back to him couldn't throw what we don't know is whether or not Skylar actually knows how to throw a ball and didn't. Okay. Or was he just portraying Dan as a kid who didn't grow up playing baseball? I read it as the latter because you're a very generous person. Well, it's because he's a good actor and the rest of the performance is remarkable. And so locked in and so specific and is also, I mean, he is the emotion of the movie. He is like the only person with any sort of emotional intelligence or, you know, an external life from the world of the making of the show. Yes. We do see Hanson with his family, but even then he feels like an alien removed from the situation. We see him showing his young children the most recent clip of Dateline NBC in which he catches predators. This is me showing Alice you on the show being like, look at how she's getting this fit off. Do you do that? No. Every time the boys look at my phone and see if they say Sean, Sean, obviously, they're happy to see you. So you don't have to turn it into something. One of the nice things in our life is that my daughter loves you and your boys love me. It's very, it's very special and important. It's very nice. So but Skylar Gazano is like, he's also playing, like, counter to Pattinson within the context of the movie. It's like not quite a two-hander, but the movie's power shifts at times. It doesn't. When I got to the end of the movie the second time, I was like, this is kind of Skylar Gazano's movie. I mean, this is why I walked down and I was like, can you run him in leading and Pattinson and supporting? Yeah. And I don't think you can. And I know you don't think you can because you hate category fraud of any time. I think it's just like a make, you know, paint your own picture as, you know, make the world fit to your needs. If you're being completely honest, they're probably co-leads, which is something that the awards complex doesn't really enjoy, but, you know. Scarlett Gazondo gets a real outer life and Hanson only seems to have an inner life for me. It's the other way around. Maybe it's Gazondo who's character. Maybe it's Dan who has the inner life and we see him kind of in crisis reckoning with it. Whereas and at times, I mean, one of my very favorite sequences in the movie is in one of the late scenarios that has been set up once they've moved down to Texas. Yeah. Where Hanson is having kind of a meltdown. That's when he's in the bullet proof best on the floor and where we were screaming at him. Yes. And and a predator arrives at the door and Dan welcomes him in and mid conversation. He transforms into Chris Hanson unbelievable. And this was one of the moments last night that got a very big laugh because it's a kind of like whoa. Oh, that's so interesting that it got a that's I that is a really heartbreaking scene to me. I think the movie is operating in this in that that like binary the whole time where it feels really sad and really funny. And it speaks to a little bit of like this issue with some things happening in Repertory Cinema right now where people are laughing at David Lynch movies at times where like they feel so uncomfortable or there's like an awkwardness in the sadness. And this movie feels like it's kind of channeling a similar energy where you don't almost don't know what to do with yourself. Yeah. I mean, there is that moment in the scene. So that's seen also that basically everyone has been the word is out on Craigslist and the address has been revealed. And so they think no one's coming. And that's why Chris Hanson is rolling around on the floor and whining and being like, it's not about the money. And the mayor says it is about the money, which is just it's great writing. And true. But so someone hasn't gotten the memo. And then it's revealed that this person is disabled and is like, I don't get out much. And so there's like a real sadness to the way they're portraying this person who is, you know, clearly there for upsetting things. And and the way that you and Skylar Gazano's as Dan is responding to all of that and telegraphing all of that in emotion. And kind of you can see him doing the math in his head, which is again, amazing acting. And then you watch him stay. So all of that to me is just like very, very sad and complicated. At the end of that scene, he does like run out of things to say, you know, and like for basically forgets his line. Yes. And I guess that that is that's like the release valve for the scene and also being played for comedy. That isn't what had people laughing. It was him nailing the qual. It was one his kind of physical transformation where his pot he rises and his posture becomes stiff and his vocal tone changes. And he is doing patents and doing Hanson. And you're right. There is something really sad about that that almost like he's put up his defense mechanism because as he's processing the sadness and like the movie drew this out of me while I was watching it, which is the men who are coming over to do these things are disturbed, right? Like they're sitting very sad and and dark and painful about those desires and the things that they would do to to helpless people, helpless children. But the movie also keeps suggesting that these men keep being like drawn out of their own privacy. They're being lured into these scenarios. And then who knows what anyone would do under if this scenario did not arise, but actually making an effort to pull them out of their privacy is its own form of destruction that is like very unhealthy and and dark. And there's no like clean way of understanding the morality of this in any direction. But what they're doing is also not right. And you can feel Dan like at war with himself in that scene thinking about that very feeling of like this guy probably should have just stayed in his house. And if he just stayed in his house, things would have been a little bit different at least tonight. And I really like a movie that would provoke me to think about what that actually means and not have to have a thunderous opinion about what it actually does mean. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it starts the conversation and the questioning. And then also because it is not handing you on a platter, here is what we think about this particular show, which was released from 2006 to whatever. Then you can also extrapolate it beyond this particular situation. And into what does this say about how TV is made, how we all consume culture, how we relate to, you know, what we see on the screen, what should be exposed, what it was like what is justice, et cetera, et cetera. The other pathway that it takes you down in the aftermath of that sequence is that Hanson and the crew are in search because of ratings of the whale of a big get of finding someone. That's right. Who will represent a real like declaration of power taking someone down from inside the power structure of the world. And that's because Lost has polar bears. That's right. They're fighting against Lost. And did you watch Lost, when he was on television now? You never saw it. I saw parts of it. And I think I did see the last episode of my friend Stephanie, tall Stephanie. Yeah, I know Stephanie was like she and her now husband were like very into it. Okay. So they got I got updates from them. Okay. But even then it was sort of like, you know, they were having like a watch along every week and doing it. And you know, I don't watch the longs in my home. Yeah. And you know, I just don't watch TV in that way. Even then, even with a show like that, even then who first three to half seasons of that show, four seasons of that show. Yeah. Cooking. Unbelievable television. That's what everyone says. And it's well represented here. But this attempt to draw out the whale, the Matthew Marr plays this character Xavier, who's sort of the chief enticer. He's a person who goes online and looks for people who are trying to engage in these activities. And he's trying to draw out someone that he believes to be, based on his own research online, a person within the government in some way. And you know, we can talk about what happens because it effectively forms the ending of the movie. But I thought again, this was kind of an insightful way of drawing out a lot of the conspiracy-minded pursuits that we have in our culture now, you know, that we have QAnon and we have January six events and we have birth or conspiracies and we have all these things over the last 10, 15 years of our national political culture that are all about like, they're not really telling you what's going on. And these guys dilute themselves in this moment into this exact scenario. Like, they are a little microversion of this thing that we live with every day now in such a smart way. The scene that, when that character is first introducing the concept of the whale and then Chris, the Chris Hansen character goes, so the president. And then they all, they're just like, I mean, that is perfect comedy. And sometimes this movie really is just like, look at these, these bozos. Yes. And it's made me laugh. But in fact, it is, I get, is it a county, or it's a district attorney who's running for county judge, who's played by Alex winner, the great Alex winner, who like Lance is a documentarian as well. And the movie's final act is fascinating. And I didn't occur to me until last night or two nights ago that it's it's zero dark 30. You know, like the pursuit and the night vision and the the weaponry and mounting cameras on guns. Yeah. And this idea of taking someone down being as much spectacle as it is justice. And I thought it was really effective. The first time around, I don't think I quite, I don't know if I didn't get it, but I don't know if I quite locked in on what it was trying to accomplish because it is immediately proceeded by this tale of traveling to India and the history of patents and characters bracelet. This idea of the monster, you know, that he's in pursuit of them, this ancient mythological demon that's kind of haunting the world. And I think I was a little hung up on that instead of the like real sadness at the heart of this movie. What did you think about the end? Well, there's also that the scene in between, which is when they team up with the law enforcement because the Alex Winter character is the DA is his realize that he's given up too much information. And so he's deleting all his profiles. And so, you know, it's that very classic. Everything's on the line, but they have to like, they got to break their routine, you know, they can't follow protocol anymore, they got to get wild, they got to do, you know, they got to push the lines. And everyone's in a room together. Pattinson has just like an incredible moment when the Dan Plum character is on the phone, setting the final bait. And it's just, I mean, it's all physical acting where he just points, but he does like a full arch down to the crotch area. And he says cock. And then he says cock. And then the they they go to a wide shot like a Renaissance painting with Pattinson like standing there with his arm arch just though, it's really, really very beautiful. I appreciated that editing choice. And so and it's kind of like everybody crossing into the darkness, right? And then at end, everybody, and even the Dan Plum character, he knows what's happening as he does it. And there's kind of like this sad sigh of like, okay, fine. The Dan character prior to that is having a intimate conversation, but not a sexual conversation without Swinter's character, the, the district's attorney. And he's just talking about things that he likes, you know, they're he's talking about Australia and going to a place that he really enjoys and musicals and Vegemite, right? Do you like Vegemite? And the movie has a complicated relationship with empathy, I would say, that it doesn't actually know who deserves it if anyone. Right. And there's a, there's a reading of the movie that's like this fucking sad person sitting in his house ostensibly We're probably going to be able to do this. representative of justice has been like drawn, his darkest desires have been drawn and made public. And of course, the movie ends dramatically with the decision that he makes because of the guilt and fear and shame and all the things of what he actually hasn't followed through on leads him to take his life. - Right. - And then we're kind of confronted with all these people, all these police officers, all these television producers and cameramen and this host and this actor and they're all observing the aftermath of this. And Marit Weaver's character is like, I think I can make this work. - Yeah. - And this is like, we can make this work on TV for an episode of our TV show. The sketch died. The sketch killed himself. You know, this isn't pure docky drama. It's totally a heightened escalation of whatever was transpiring during the production of the show like this. But it also feels totally credible to me. - Yeah, of course, that these people are so wrapped up in their own mania, the Marit Weaver moment right before that is that she's being courted for another job at ABC because of their success and she goes back and forth with it. And then right before this raid, after she's been like, I need cameras on the guns. But before everything goes tragically wrong, she calls the rival network. She calls ABC and she's like, I decided that I don't want to end just seeing stuff. And that's the only answer which is just beautiful and hilarious to me. But that these people are really, really so wrapped up in what they're doing and don't exist outside of it and have convinced themselves whether it's for some moral crusading on the part of the Chris Hansen character or whether it's just this is like what success and I'm the best at my job, the Marit Weaver character. - Yeah. - I know the dark evil flip side of broadcast news. - Yes. - And then it ends with the same way that it begins with the Chris Hansen character in almost like a trans state just repeating the chat logs over and over again, like rehearsing them but also like becoming them not in a sexual way but just in the like this has taken over his entire brain. - Well, then he has the most chilling line from the entire movie which is what would have happened if I wasn't here, which is something that he would say to potential predators as a signal of his power and then obviously represents the impact that he had on somebody taking their own life. And yeah, I'm really fascinating movie and feels, God if I was 13 this would have been my favorite movie of all time. I would have been like this is just absolutely searing. And I've seen a lot of movies like this. I love movies like this. So it's very much in my wheelhouse. I'm really, really interested to see how it goes into the culture because like even talking to Lance, it's similar to what Zach Kregger said on the show earlier this week where he was like movies are made of movies. And you can see that Lance is making movies out of movies and that he's constantly thinking about things that he likes feelings that he had while he's watching things and porting them in and some of them are as clear as like, this kind of reminds me of Zero Dark 30 and some of them are more oblique than that. But I am interested to see if this is a movie that a lot of young people see and they're like, I've never seen a movie like this before. Like you know what I mean? Like something so dark and cynical and unforgiving but also kind of funny and featuring a big movie star. Like I'm gonna be like this going to be quite powerful for a young audience. - Totally and for a young audience who maybe doesn't have the back history of the actual show or hasn't lived with the idea of Chris Hanson for 20 years they can kind of go in as a blank slate. I'm curious for people who remember the show or people who have been sold this movie by, hey, it's Robert Pattinson being Chris Hanson and you know more of the types of people embodied by Creed Breton in this movie and more like there's a robust spin-off culture of this still going on YouTube. - Yeah, Hanson is still doing it himself. - Yeah, so you start to wonder like what kind of audiences is this gonna attract and do people know what they're going to see which is exciting? - Yeah, yeah, I wonder how much of it will be looked at as like a time capsule piece versus something that feels really relaxing today because it's so, it's making great efforts to be a time capsule piece. - I think this is a real Gen Z movie. Like what, I know you loved it, so what makes you say that? - Well Amanda was asking, oh I'm curious how Lance discovered it and for me personally I'm five years younger. I vividly have memories of watching my mom on the living room couch watching to catch a predator and what would you do? John Canona's when he arrived. I fucking died and it's so fun to have him. But I think it's a real Gen Z movie 'cause not to spoil the whole conversation you have with Lance. But like he talks about when he first discovered him, he's kind of like a superhero. Like when you're young and you're viewing it and you don't kind of have like the ability to understand what's really going on. And as you grow up, five years, 10 years, 15 years later, you have like a totally different relationship and understanding to him as a person with the show as attempting at large, I think it's really gonna resonate with younger audiences. - Yeah, it's funny being in my mid 20s when the show was really on and popping. Like I thought it was quite strange and not I was not interested in spending any time with it. You know, like I was very aware of it 'cause it was so popular. But there was no part of me that was like, we gotta check it out this week. Maybe that's my own interest, but I thought it was odd. But I could see what you're saying, Jack. - Same, but also I don't really watch a lot of reality TV now. And this movie does, and this moment in culture like does anticipate all of the things that we consume now. And the different ways that we consume them. I mean, this is the, this is when it all like met together. You know, and now you have all of your network reality shows, you have your YouTube, you have like your social media, you have everything, but A, well, and semester. - Yeah, you missed that. - I mean, I, listen, when I was on it, I was thriving. You know, like that was a great medium for me. I just absolutely. - Because you were so charming and clever. - Yes. - Um, but you know, it's fine now we just have text messages. So I'm great, I'm posting, I'm living my life. - I don't want to explore aim with you anymore. - Away messages, yes, of course. - Yeah, of course, certainly, me as well. - It feels like maybe this movie is gonna do really well over this weekend, which I find quite fascinating. - Well, yeah, so I think the young crowd plus the people who are like, hey, Chris Hanson, I know who that is, and then they don't know what they've gotten themselves into. So CinemaScore will be interesting. - Uh-huh. - But I don't care. - I don't think Rimey movie. - Yeah. - And at times it feels like a horror movie. - Yes. - Um, I don't, I definitely don't care about CinemaScore. It's commercial prospects fascinate me, because as we've been saying about patents in the last six months or so, like, this is what you're supposed to do when you're him. - Yeah. - You're absolutely, do do in part three. Do the Batman part two, absolutely. I'm on board with that. Good projects for IP, good filmmakers, gonna watch 'em excited, I'm really excited about both of those movies. - Do the Odyssey. - Do the Odyssey. It's Nolan, you gotta do it. Supporting part makes sense. But like, also this, also this. Like, this movie only exists probably because Robert Pattinson wanted to do it. It probably doesn't happen if not for him. And so we're at least not at this scale. And so if he's able to draw people out, the same way he drew people out for the drama, it does like, it cleaves open. A little bit of new terrain. And then what you see is I was listening to the Mahershala conversation too. And he's like, you have to do it yourself. I like that part a lot. And Zach referenced talking to Pattinson about this. Where he was like, you think you achieve something and everyone's gonna start calling you and be like, here's all the good projects with the good filmmakers. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But in fact, what Pattinson does is he's like, very curious, watches a lot of movies, and then seeks out potential collaborators. And connects with people who have ideas for movies. - Right. - That's like what Paul Newman did. You know, like you have to do that if you want to go to the next level and be great. And also I think elevate the intellectual capacity of the movie going audience. - Yes. - You know what I mean? - Yes, that does require taste, curiosity, and work. Like there's a lot of work in that as well. And so not everybody can do it. But it's cool that we have someone as talented as Pattinson who does clearly want to do it. - Yeah, I like that a lot. Do you think it's gonna make money? - I hope so. I mean, I don't think it's, you know, gonna make, well, do I think it'll make more money than the Avengers end game release? - I would be stunned if it did. (laughing) It's, I'm the whole box office. - How much is an Infinity Vision ticket these days? - $97. No, I'm just kidding. - I was like, really? - It's like in LA, probably 23 bucks, something like that. - Okay. - So it's the same that I paid for my sneak preview screening of Verity. - Yeah, did you get one of those? - I got one of those for once in a night. - Yes, he's going with me because you'll be on a plane. - I'll be seeing it solo in New York at the Lincoln Center AMC, Lincoln Plaza AMC. - That has its pleasures as well. - I love that place. Yeah, I wish I didn't have to go up nine floors to see a movie there, but otherwise I love that place. - You have to do that at the Alamoid, you never complain. - You're right, but that's in my car. That's a totally different story. - No, then, no, then there are more escalators with none. No windows anywhere and, you know, and bad food. It's fine. - Yeah, it's fine. Awards. - So I stand by what we said on Best Picture Rankings, which is that I think it is honestly just a little to out there, parenthesis, complimentary, for Best Picture. - Okay. - I think Skylar Gazondo and supporting actor has a real chance, and then I wonder if Pattinson gets supporting for, or Odyssey, and then they're in the category together. - That would be cute. - But not in the, you know, they're both leads in this. And I like the. - What's going on in Best Supporting Actor these days? - It's a great question. - I don't really know what that race looks like. Sam Rockwell, right? He's in there. - Yeah, that's gotta be an automatic. He's wonderful. - Like Wasamo also in the Odyssey, right? - Oh, sure. - Yeah. - Jimati. - Haven't seen it yet. - Ed Norton. - I would really like that to happen. - Hmm. - Okay, let's talk about Louis Negrar very quickly. Guitarica De La Fuente. - Yes. - Who is one of the stars of the film? - Yes. - Is a potential contender? - Which, yeah, which guy? - He's the guy from a first story. - Like the, hold on. I'm just, I'm-- - That's not even spoiled. - No, no, I'm just googling the cast. - Yeah, that guy. Eyelashes. - If that's what you wanna call him? - Yeah, I mean, among them, but they're-- - They're incredible eyelashes. - A beautiful Spanish actor. - Okay, so he's in it for supporting? - I think they're all gonna go into supporting in that movie. - Yeah, I mean, I think what Netflix should do is gather as many of the men cast in this movie. Like, we're speaking roles without them. - Mm-hmm. - Just gather as many as you can and just take them from place to place for five months. And then people will be like, whoa! - The filmmakers are also beautiful. - Yeah, I know, I know, that's how I see it. So, okay, in front of and behind the screen. - Yeah, yeah. - That's great. - Did you like "Libbel" in "Libbel" in "Libbel"? - I did, very much. - Yeah, it's kind of undeniable. I mean, I look, you know, like I have, I can't wait to talk about it with you and I can't wait for other people to see it and I hope that I'm glad it's getting a large theatrical run because seeing it big-- - Got to see it on the scene. - I sat in the very front row, so it could be as big as possible. - Got to see it on the big screen. - But yeah, I was just, there were so many times and I was like, wow, I can't believe that this is happening. - Yeah, it's a, it's a, yeah. - At times, it is a real wow of a movie. - Absolutely. - Okay, I'm relieved to hear you say that in some ways. - You thought I wasn't gonna like it? No, but you know what? You'll, you'll zag sometimes. - Every once in a while, is that? I mean, again, like there are some funny traces that I can't wait to discuss. - That's not a perfect movie by any means, but it can be a real wow at times. Any closing thoughts on primetime? - Excited for people to see it. I'm excited to see Lance Omanheim's other movie which you did not discuss during this. - No, he briefly mentions you can see everything, which is the home's dock. And we'll just have a whole episode about that movie, which is coming out in October 16th, and that'll be fun. Maybe Lance will come back, you know? - That would be great. - Okay, let's, speaking of, let's go to my conversation out with Lance Omanheim. Lance Omanheim is back. What's up, buddy? - Hey, man, this is great. - Congratulations. - An honor, an honor to be here. - You're at the absolute center of movie culture for the next few weeks. How are you feeling? - Crazy. - Yeah. - Insane, hoping I don't fuck everything up, but no, this is great. And this is, you know, as, as you know, my favorite podcast, I listen religiously. - Thank you, Lance. So I have like a pair of social relationship with you and Amanda. - Okay. - It's okay, don't worry about it. - I'll keep it private for me. - Please try to do it. - Yes. This is about you, this is not about me. I don't remember when you were last on the show, if we talked about whether or not making feature films was always the goal. And if we did forgive me, but like, I kind of want to hear a little bit about, because you've spent the last six, seven years working on documentary. And now you are pivoting into a realm of documentary that is clearly scripted and an imagined feature world. So was this like on the road map along the way? - It's a good question. I mean, yes and no, I've, I've always liked narrative films. I've always liked documentaries. I've always liked movies that mix the two, like, close up Abba's "Curistami" and "F" or "Fakeworsen" while I was like, I've always been interested in that experience. I've also like, what the documentaries I've made. In some ways, I also like, at least the ones before Primetime, they sort of feel to me almost like, the intention was to make like human drama, feel like Hollywood drama. There's a lot of the same narrative techniques that exist in fiction films, but apply them to like the world of nonfiction, which is what used to, that used to be more commonplace, like in the '60s, even like the Maisel's, even Frederick Weisman would consider himself, like not a documentary filmmaker, but just as a filmmaker. But a little bit, I guess, like, this thing came about in such an organic way. And I always was interested in seeing what would happen if I could take the same people I normally work with, like my DP, David Bowen, and my editor, Dan Garber, and my composer, are you bluesy? And I have like my pod, my band, of collaborators, and like, you know, make something. But now, I guess it's like, this is such a stupid way to think about it. But I go both ways. I'm like bisexual for documentaries and movies, even though I'm a heterosexual married man. But I go, yeah, I'm interested in wherever the juice is. Was it hard to convince people to let you make a script film because I think that even if you're bisexual for both, most executives and people who think about the movie business can't see that they're overlapped. You know, that there's like a demarcation structurally in the business and even in the art form that you don't see a lot of crossover. And I was thinking about, you know, Barber Couple has made one scripted film, and Earl Morris has made one scripted film. Like, there have not been a lot of transitions from great film, great film documentarian. So, did you encounter any challenges? Like, what was it like trying to make that shift? - Years before this one, yes. I remember there was another film I was like attempting to get off the ground at one point that I think people, I had just made some kind of heaven. I hadn't made sperm world or renfer yet. And I remember it was a little bit, there was a lot more pushback and a lot of like, okay, if you're gonna make it this way, you have to work within this framework. And here's the, you know, production designer, the DP. And I was like, no, no, no, no, I gotta make this my own way. So I kind of, I didn't do that. But with this project, I think a large part of it goes back to, like, you know, Rob, who produced this movie and we connected over, you know, a different project. We were gonna make a documentary together. And then I showed him a cameo video that my wife got me of Chris Hanson, congratulating me on this, I'll tell you about it. But congratulating me on the release of sperm world. This is like 2024, well before I ever got the screenplay or anything for this. I didn't, I didn't never knew this movie existed. But we bonded and we were talking a lot about other movies. Like, I have been sex to see and kind of, like he's a very adventurous film goer and kind of voracious film watcher. And so anyway, having him on my side was helpful. And in some ways, you know, like, I think a 24 was very, I've been, I had known a lot of people there. I used to work there. I was an intern for Noisako and Ali Herding, like in, I think 2014. And I would keep in touch with everybody over the years and just be like, look, I'm making documentaries, but it's like sperm world. It's not just a movie about guys jerking off in a cup. It's like, there's more to it than that. It's about the depths of the complexity of the human soul and people would be like, okay, okay. But then people like you would come along and I'd be able to come on your show and talk about the movies or the show, the Renfair. And I think that actually helped a lot too. There's the perception of them not being just kind of narrowly in one zone. And I do think there is like a marketplace now, much more so than like many years ago. People want documentary experiences. Every actor I've ever met is obsessed with documentaries. Most narrative filmmakers, I know are obsessed with documentaries. Most like narrative filmmakers, I love. Like yeah, of course there's a few people who only made one narrative film. But I think about Herzog, Pennett Miller. He came, made the cruise, Sarah Polly. She kind of has made so many great ones. Michael Apted, who made the seven up series. You know, he directed James Bond movies. He did like two or three of them, I think. God, tomorrow we'll never die. Yeah, Kubrick, you know, he had his hand in some, you know, John Houston. There's a, I feel like there's actually a fairly rich world between those things. You're right. You're right. And even like the safeties in Josh and Benny, they then, you know, kind of also laying down the groundwork. So I really got hooked on them with Lenny Cook. That was the movie there. It was fucking amazing. It's an incredible, incredible film. No, it's true. I think it's, I think it's because a lot of the filmmakers that you just noted, maybe, maybe they didn't totally start in feature films, but we associate them most with feature films. We don't associate them with documentaries. But the thing about this movie that is so interesting is that while it is not documentary, and I guess would you even describe it as docu drama is an interesting question because of the way that it is based on a piece of journalism, but it is heightened in the same way that your documentary films are heightened and it is kind of outsized. Emotionally, and even in the incidents that report trade. So how do you think about that in terms of representing the truth versus what's real? Well, I feel like, you know, it's, I'm always interested in like the creative expression of, it's like the, of, of, of reality, right? And that's like nonfiction. I always found the non and nonfiction to be a very reductive term because all nonfiction, you know, in, in some ways, at least like every great documentary, there is a structure. There is like most documentarians credit. There are editors as, as, as writers because you're, you're shaping, you know, a story out of reality unless something actually does happen in front of you and unfolds. So I, I mean, to me, I would have, I wanted to make something that felt like sort of like almost like the contact high I experienced from watching this television show as a kid to catch a predator. to me is like one of the great experiments in mixing truth and fiction and activists and reality, like, you know, the way Chris Hanson, like, they could have just been a very dry investigative news show into this, like, the darkest subject matter of all time. But instead, he innovated, and he hired these adult actors to pretend to be children, and he, like, found these suburban houses that looked like they were out of blue velvet. But then he, like, you know, I don't know, he, he, like, started moving the furniture around until everything looked like it was, like, beamed in from Mars, like, the bar floating into the, in the middle of a living room. And he's props, like, the pepperoni pizzas and the sweet tea and the cookies. All that stuff would collide with, like, a very high-stakes, real situation. So as a kid, I was always interested in almost the, like, the theatricality of it, the darkness, the darkest expressions of human behavior mixed with this almost, like, surrealist, the levity that would come from Chris in the way he would perform, you know, when he'd, when he'd be dismantling somebody's life on camera. And I saw the show, like, you know, I name checked, you know, effort-faking close-up. I saw the show before I ever saw any, any great documentary that would, or, you know, kind of hybrid movie that was mixing those things. So I think it really was the first experience I ever had, seeing something that mixed those two things. And how old were you when you first saw it? I think I was like 11, 11 years old. And I remember discovering it through South Park, because I saw that, that great episodes, right, where everyone keeps, you know, yeah, they keep seeing Chris Hanson and they can't stop committing suicide. That was like the, I remember just being like, who is this guy? And he was portrayed on the show as this man with, like, almost mystical powers. And when I finally watched the show, I was like, damn, he kind of does have mystical powers. He has this, like, this, this, this, almost this way of being that, like, he's, he's the grand, like, grandmaster of this reality he has created in this constructed, manufactured worlds. And I was always thinking about what that would, what would that do to you if you experienced that on everyday basis? And like, you know, I love Jacob's ladder and I kept thinking, you know, it'd be so interesting to do like a descent into madness movie that's, you know, more or less defined and driven by like the emotional toll that the darkness would take on somebody. So I liked that part of it. And I knew if I made something like this, I'd have to do something that was like stranger, then stranger, then fiction. I couldn't just do the like, you know, the classic docu-drama or biopic. I don't think that was what like a Joan saying who wrote the script in Rob and I were interested in. We wanted to make like a fever dream that felt closer to the experience of watching the show. Right. The being 11 and watching the show. Like, honestly, what did you make of it at that time? Like, did you feel like he was a crusading figure? Did you feel like he was this kind of like dark vampiric grandmaster? Like, did you have a sense really of, and even of what, what was being actually portrayed? Because, you know, part of the wonder of the movie is the, wow, this was actually what the show was. And this was on prime time and millions of people weren't truly invested in watching it. And part of it is this sense that it probably took a person who had that sense of theatricality and narcissism to pull it off in the first place. So like, when you were a kid, did you think like, this is a heroic act that this man is contributing? Well, yeah, I think so. I remember being really confused. I was like, is this like, I loved like, cribs and punks, you know, an MTV. And I was like, is this a prank show? And then, you know, I started watching more of it. And I was like, no, I think this is like a news program and I started learning who Mike Wallace was. And it was like, okay, I guess this is like sort of closer to that. But there was something almost like carnival-esque or like the circus. It felt like where Chris Hansen was a ring, the ring leader of it. I definitely thought as a kid that like, he felt like such like a badass. And almost his like one, one liners in these catchphrases he came up with were like Tony Montana and Scarface. And there was this kind of like, yeah, he was doing a really heroic thing in this kind of bigger than life super sized sort of way. He felt like a superhero to me. So I think it was only until later. I mean, obviously, as I got older, I was thinking about like, you know, it was so weird that that was so funny. Like, it's such a fucked up show. It's such a these men are so fucked up. They're so scared. There's disturbed. I mean, there's a lot of really disturbing behavior. That's like, you know, that these people that come into his house are trying to do. But I kept thinking about how like the artifice of it was so odd and sometimes like funny to me just like even the way the decoys would act did not seem like, you know, like a 30-year-old actor attempting to be like a 12-year-old is like, that doesn't make any he doesn't really make any sense. It's almost like a fun house or like a this sort of hull of mirrors thing going on. But it really wasn't until I got that cameo from my my wife got me, you know, in 2024. That was that was the first time something really crystallized for me where I was like, you know, because in the video he he can gradually me on sperm world. He said he'd check it out. I don't think he ever did. But that's okay. I won't blame him. Maybe he will now. Maybe he will now. Then he asked me to have a seat. And then he started plugging all of these like different new new investigations he was doing. Okay. And I thought like, man, this is the guy I grew up with who I thought was this crusader. But now he's almost like this kind of he's embraced the strange hyper performative version of himself. It's almost like he had seen all the memes that existed in the cultural mythology that had kind of, you know, grown out from underneath him. And he's attempting to adopt it and bring it into the new investigations he does. And that felt really strange to me. And I started watching more of the cameos because some of them are public. And he called and one of them he called a guy a certified flex offender. And I remember just being like, man, this is so crazy. You could pay him like $35 and like, he's going to he'll pretend that you're like a child's predator or something. Like, there's something that seems so odd about this and confusing. Like, what would it be like to be Chris Hansen where you have to essentially code switch all the time between being, yeah, like, you know, someone that is essentially like a vigilante who's doing this, doing the work of, you know, of getting these really fucked up people off the streets. Or being a guy who's basically like PT Barnum and like a circus entertainer or, you know, someone who has fun and kind of makes jokes about sort of the whole enterprise and is sort of in on the joke of how people see him. There's a third leg of that discussion, though, too, which is explored somewhat in your film, which is sort of the role of television journalism and the way that there's like a certain band of television journalists that you kind of get filed away into not as serious as Stone Phillips. Yeah. And I really enjoy the Stone Phillips quality of the movie, but that that sort of like the suggestion that at least in the world of the movie that this kind of destroys him in a way because he's not quite at the mountaintop of credibility or prestige. And so then he's sort of forced to embrace the thing that you're good at, which is I think actually quite a relatable thing. And I'm really interested in this in terms of what Pattinson is doing in his performance and how you guys talked about the character and how you are directing the actors because and Hanson seems like a nut bar. I think most people will be like, this is just a crazy person, but there's like a little shred of empathy for him. That's like he kind of got himself into this position. There's a level of success where he's being told that he's great in doing something important. You have that incredible scene in the film where Creed Bratton is talking to him on the airplane. And he can feel Pattinson kind of like reckoning with his own success and his own like what his responsibility in the world is. And it's this mixture of joy and pride and doubt and disregard for with the self that I just thought was really, really interesting. So like how do you think about portraying him then where it's like, he's doesn't seem like kind of a ghoul at times in the movie, but at other times you're like, well, he got himself trapped in this lifestyle and there's no way out based on what he wants for his life. Well, I mean, the thing that we had that that you know, I mean, we were able to sort of look at the man as he exists today and not just that, but also all of the media that he has continued to create and have that inform the portrait. And even, I mean, it's really interesting like right now his reaction to the movie. I don't think he's still seen it, but you know, a 24 attempted to screen it for him. He didn't sign this like fairly standard NDA and he went on Fox News, which he had had planned that night. Talked to Jesse Walters about it. Jesse Walters waters. I think waters waters. Okay, there we go. He can be subject of your next film. Yeah, there's something very interesting to me, even the way that he has sort of responded to the film at first before that. I saw videos of him at crime con and he was, he was like, you know, you may think I'm Robert Pattinson, but I'm actually Chris Hanson. So that he was having fun with it. Uh-huh. And then over time, it's basically because it's entered this now, like now it's in this moral register where he's essentially, um, you know, tying this to sort of a larger critique of how Hollywood goes about making things. And that's really interesting to me. And in a lot of ways it rhymes, I think, with a lot of the things we were thinking about when we were, you know, writing the movie. And when I was talking with Rob about the movie when, when, you know, one of the big interviews that we were thinking about too is when Chris Hanson went on Conan O'Brien's late night show. And, you know, you could tell that Conan is attempting to sort of like, how do I talk to this guy who's, you know, like doing really serious journalistic work, but like I'm making a late night show that has jokes in it. And you see Chris sort of respond to it by also making jokes about himself. And, you know, the, the guys who, you know, eat the cookie when he talks to them, that sort of thing. I mean, to me, it was always like, I never wanted to make something that felt like, like, like a hit piece or anything like that. that I really have a lot of respect for Chris. And again, I come into this as like a fan of his show and mystified by him. I think seeing the cameos and seeing just like the way in which he engages with his fans, I felt like I was actually seeing in those videos like maybe who the real person was, who in one breath could be a crusader, could be a vigilante, could be an entertainer, could be on cameo next to Mark McGrath, you know, from Sugar Ray or whatever. And I thought that was really interesting and he seems like not ashamed of it. He seems almost like emboldened by it. And, you know, for me, I think when I think about Chris, I also think like, you know, he wasn't just doing to catch a predator for his entire career. He had done many, many other, in many cases, Emmy award winning like segments. You know, he reported on 9/11, he did something about white boy Rick. He, I mean, the list goes on and on, Oklahoma City Bomber, like he was there for, he was basically the guy that you wouldn't want to see on TV when something bad happened because, you know, you'd see him as, it's like something terrible what happened and he would have been there. Yeah, but he's like this canary in the coal mine for America's purion interest, you know, that there's this idea that the thing that makes him most famous is his theatrical quality in terms of exploring this show, like building this show, which then tells us, you know, and it does feel like that is very much at the forefront of the idea of the movie. Like this kind of shows us a portal to where we're headed over time in terms of what we want from our entertainment. And you know, it's, it has been talked about quite a bit and written and dramatized in movies before, you know, going back to facing the crowd and network. And there are a lot of movies that are kind of about how there's this, always this figure, the center of our media culture, who is like out loudly yelling at us about what we really want. And they're usually right. I'm curious like how much did you think about those movies in the past or like do they intersect at all with what you're trying to portray about? Because it's a movie that's set in the past, but also feels very much about now. - Absolutely. I mean, you know, my favorite movie of all time is Ace and the Whole, the Billy Wilder movie. And I remember seeing that as a kid thinking like, "Ah man, this is like, I was so inspired. I just wanted to get up out of my seat and just go and try and make something that, you know, attempted to touch that." So it's always in the back of my mind that movie and Kirk Douglas in it. - He's a real analog for Pattinson's performance too. - Yeah, it's funny. I remember like trying to show that to Rob throughout the making of it. And he's just like, I don't want to watch that. And I'm like, why? He's just like, is I have other things to do. So we would watch other movies. Like I remember with Rob, we watched Sexy Beasts together. I showed, you know, he's, I'm obsessed with Demon Lever, the Olivia Saiya's film. We were obsessed with Scarface, Jerry Maguire was another one. A lot of all of her stone movies too, just like natural boring killers, you turn. - Yeah. - Like a Bays movie's even like "Pain and Gain" that was another one. You know, we were interested in just like, what are other movies, Body Double? These are all like narcissistic mania movies though. You know, they're all like the collapse of the self. - The collapse of the self. I think also like descent into madness movies like Jacob Slatter. Like I was really, the thing that I would talk to Rob a lot about was like, how do you essentially, you know, like it's sort of a conceptual performance. You're playing not, you're not playing the real Chris Hanson. I don't know if the real Chris Hanson exists anymore. I think the man has become the meme at this point. So you have to play every version of Chris Hanson that's ever existed. In a way, it almost has to be like a media collage of not just Chris from to catch a predator or predator raw or Hanson versus predator or take down with Chris Hanson where, you know, you name all the investigations which we all watch together. You have to play also the parodies of Chris Hanson. You have to play the Chris Hanson that went on, you know, with Conan O'Brien during the Emmys and or on 30 Rock. Like you have to play the guy that's also sort of aware of where he's going. And I think he did it. And he also stitched a lot of humanity of himself into the character. Like, I think one of the reasons maybe Rob was so drawn to it. I don't want to psychoanalyze him. He should do that himself. But I think a lot, like, you know, he, he was living at the Oakwood apartment complex. I think like circa 2007, 2008. He first discovered this show through a meme from a friend from the UK. It was pilot season. He was striking out. And then, you know, he became this like internationally world famous person that once Twilight, I remember he talked about going to Comic Con suddenly, it was like his life had completely changed overnight. And there was a, there was this kind of a narrative that was starting to exist around him of who he should be and how, how he should act in life and fans that have, you know, ideas of him. And the idea of like a person versus the persona, I think, became very familiar to Rob. So there may be a part of him wanting to do this was to like get in communion with that idea. I do remember like the second week of shooting. I thought like he had done so much. I felt like Rob in the character. Like I was seeing Rob. And I thought that was really interesting even though it was like in this very kind of like refracted way. And he's like, how do you think we're doing? And I was like, I think we're doing good. And he's like, what do you think I'm doing? And I'm like, I, well, you definitely are doing Chris Hanson. But I think you're also doing during McGuire and Dracula. And I'm like, are you aware that you're doing that? And he's like, no, no, it's just like, okay, it's fine. I was just keep going with it. And I felt like that actually was like perfect for what the movie needed to be. And I think ultimately like the movie needed to be something too that was, you know, I didn't want it to be like, glib. I actually did really want it to be like a, like almost like an institutional portrait of all of these people that were inside the apparatus when the show was becoming very successful. And all of them were dealing with the pressure of turning this like very, like the darkest thing ever into a commercial object. And how did that affect them? Like spiritually, psychologically. What happens when you spend like 24 hours, you know, 24/7, you spend more time with like child predators than you do with your own family? Like that has to affect you somehow. And I know Rob, the last thing I'll say, I'm talking way too much, forgive me. He went on, he, we were like, during the research phase, he listened to Theo Vaughn's interview with Chris Hansen on his podcast. And Theo Vaughn asked him a question that was like, how do you deal with like the darkness? And Chris Hansen responded, I just bury it all, like all the way down. And he talked about how he didn't have a therapist and he just kind of deal like he has his own way of processing it. That was a huge thing for us. 'Cause we heard that and we were like, that's really interesting. That's ultimately like, there's a real mystery around how someone could do this. You can't experience the horror that he's experienced and not be a changed person. So that was like always kind of haunting or hovering over the movie. And we knew the film had to sort of touch on that. Almost like the way Rob plays him has to almost be like a guy that possesses some sort of like post-traumatic stress. And it's like, it affects his physicality and where he goes and how he does stuff. I'm curious for you, the meaningful like structural, literal differences between making something like friend-fair and making something like this. Does it feel when you're on set completely different because the scale of the production or because you're directing actors as opposed to talking to real people from whom you're trying to get interesting conversation material? Like how literally how did it feel different for you? - Well, I mean, when I'm making a documentary, it's almost like the screenplay is life, right? So it's like, I'm seeing things. I get to know people really well. You spend a lot of time. You have a lot more time. Like hundreds of days, prime time was like a 30 day shoot. Friend-fair was like 130 days, you know? With the prime time, the real challenge was like, how do you keep this alive? And how do I not just show up and just shoot like lines off a page? Like, you know, the script was really great and always had that the tone was there. And we really were tired to sculpt that together with Joan and I. But, you know, he did so much great work with it. To me, it was like, how do I keep this fresh and alive and exciting? And so part of it ended up coming, you know, just like, maybe I was definitely prepared, but my son was born five days before the shoot started. My cinematographer, David Bowen, who shot Spurmore with some kind of heaven I'm working with him since I was 17. You know, he shot listed the movie more or less in isolation while I was dealing with my newborn son. I got to set and I was like, I don't want to shot list anything. Let's just throw that away. I want the actors to come in. I don't want to do any rehearsals. I don't want to know how Rob's going to play this. I don't know. I don't want to know how Skylar or Mariette or Phoebe or. I want to just get there and I want to block it with as minimal sort of like performance as possible. I just want to know where they're going to go. And then I really want to just make space for us to really get in concert with them with the performers. And that was a really, I think that was the way we sort of reclaimed the experience. And, you know, there was like so many different moments that I just could not predict what would happen or Rob going and doing the mouthwash and spitting it out in the sink like that. Like I remember just thinking like I just need to create space for everybody and I want to treat everyone as much as they allow me to as almost like a documentary subject. I'll talk with them exhaustively before we get there about what I think it is. And then I want them to show me things. And then also just shooting it like with, you know, we shot with like 20 camera formats. So that drove the production nuts. I feel like everyone was looking at me. Like I was Tommy Wiseau or something. But it was really great. And it did keep things super fresh. And I think for the performers just like it was really, it just created so much like chaos constantly. And that's what I would tell the crew and the production I had. I'd be like, we're making a movie about people, about a production that is like spiraling out of control. We can't fake that. We have to sort of like live it a little bit too. And that's Herzoggy in right there. That's really fascinating that you have the confidence to go in and not only tear apart some plan, but like kind of go in blind and say, let's see what happens, I think that's really fascinating. The other thing that is interesting, and we talked about this a little bit when I saw you in Colorado. We've talked so much about Chris Hansen, but the movie does sort of shift in terms of who it's about and whose perspective is more centered as the movie goes on. And Skyler's character becomes almost like the perspectival character by the end of the movie. And I'm kind of curious like, did it always start out that way? How did it evolve as you were making the movie, too? Well, I always love that character in the Esquire article that this is very loosely based from the article was about. It was largely centered in the perspective of like a 20 year old actor who had no idea, it was just wanting to be in things, couldn't land any parts, showed up on the set of Catcher Predator and very quickly realized what they had gotten themselves into and attempted to kind of keep up with it just because there could have been an opportunity, but then by the end was just like devastated by the whole experience and a hollowed, you know, like spiritually corrupted a little bit. So I always loved that perspective. And I felt like, you know, this is a movie about like essentially turning like darkness into something fun or entertainment. That's what they were doing. And I was like, I need to find the humanity here. I need to find someone that could essentially save the film from just being like, I don't know, just like totally inked black. I needed to have something, some sort of light to it. You know, so I would talk with a Joan about like, we love, you know, Wall Street, the Gordon Gekko Bud Fox relationship. Bud Fox is really the main character of Wall Street. And I was sort of like, that's kind of a fun Trojan horse for this movie, where, you know, it is like a three-hander between Rob, you know, Chris Hanson, Merit Weaver's character Andy and Dan, a scholars character, D. Coy Dan. But I liked that that like, that that relationship between, you know, Chris and Dan. There were so many parts to it that felt like gravitational. I also love the stunt man. And I felt like that was another kind of interesting like, you know, I don't know, yeah, this sort of dynamic between these two people that have disparate ambitions. And Skylar was just like, I remember when I first read the script, I like, I just, you know, changed. But I just, I saw Skylar. It was like the after image of all Skylar, Gazando's performances were in my head when I read it. And I felt like he was, I just was like, I need to make this for him. I like, he is born for this part. And he's been in movies and TV shows since he was like six years old. I knew that he was going to have a way into this that was going to be like documentary like in a way where he could sort of bring his own experiences to the to the movie. And he did, like he didn't just do it on the page or just, you know, as an actor. He, um, like the ending of the movie, the last scene of the movie was born from a conversation I had with him, like almost a year into, you know, deep into production, post-production. We were editing it. The movie ended a different way prior to that. And I was like, I want this to have, I don't want this to be pure nihilistic. I want it to be like positively nihilistic. Is that makes sense? No, that's exactly where you hit. That's exactly how it feels. That's so interesting to hear you say that. Then you have these other like small but very notable choices. For example, you know, you mentioned Phoebe Bridgers is in the film operating in a similar fashion to Decoy Dan. Jonathan Limnickie shows up. Jeff Zucker shows up. Like these kind of like signals to those of us who might notice, who might recognize, you mentioned Terry McGuire. That's, I maybe didn't put together that that's part of the click there. But can you talk about like how to balance making that a good artistic choice versus just like, jingling keys in front of somebody's face and how you consider it? Well, I mean, I look for, I think partially I was like, this is a movie about, it's like, it's 20 years ago 2006. It's like, things look different than, that was, you know, I'm a, I'm a zelenial. That's what, is that what real term? I was, I was, you were 96. Yeah. Like my favorite movie outside of vase in the hole is Vanilla Sky. I know, I love that about you. I'm attracted to this period. This is my favorite movies. I gotta tell you, I was here with Zach Kregor yesterday and we were talking about you. And he was like, that guy's favorite movie is Vanilla Sky. How crazy is that? And I was like, I think when we first met, that was one of the first things he said to me. Like, one of my favorite movies is Vanilla Sky. I also love Vanilla Sky. It was the fucking thank god, man. It's like, it's the, yeah, it's like, I know if I can get along with somebody. If they like, if I love that movie, it's David, my DP and my, it's, it's, it's our, it's both of our favorite films. It's really great. It's really, I don't know if it's misunderstood. So much is like, there's a collective of us that like, we get it. I know it's like, at this point, it's been in culture for long enough. But I do think it's like, I actually weirdly even parts of that movie are maybe spiritually in this too of just like a film that kind of straddles a lot of different genres. And it refuses to kind of exist in one of them. But no, I mean, you know, I think about that time period. There's so many amazing actors that have been not left behind. Like, they've been doing great work for a while. But like Jonathan is somebody who, you know, was a child actor and also, you know, when I met him, he had sort of been like, I don't know if I want to keep acting. He was doing an acting school. He was interested in producing. But he's like, I have fallen out of love, fallen out of love with, with, with, with just doing it. And I haven't really gotten any interesting parts that have come my way. Alex Winter, an amazing actor. Also a great documentary filmmaker too. And I was just like, you know, I create Brad and I've always ever watching the office thinking like, how has this guy not been? I remember like hearing Nicholas whining ref and talk about Albert Brooks when he saw him in a lost in America and thinking about how he'd be a great villain for drive. And I was like, how has no one made Creed into like, you know, he's sort of a sinister presence? Totally. So I kept thinking about all these people that I've always just kind of like bookmarked. Jessica Hack, who's so amazing in sideways, like broke my heart, billion pieces, also has been, was in friends. And I, I hate to admit it, but I was more of a friend's guy than Seinfeld. Wow. Wow. You are as millennials. Yeah. And, you know, just like so many little pieces like that. I mean, ultimately it was like, I didn't want to just do stunt cast after stunt cast. I wanted to like meet people and just see if I, you know, it could get along with them and access something. But it makes us feel something as a viewer, you know? Yeah. There's an association and you don't totally know what that association is. Some of it is more overt than others, but Jessica Hack is a great example of like, this does remind me of broadcast television from the 1990s. You know, like that's a very powerful tool to use that is somewhere between the conscious and the subconscious. Absolutely. And like, you know, I, I love just being able to like every person just had, they would bring like baggage of every character they'd played before and just the texture of like knowing what that time was like. And but he would buy another person who just was like so incredible. And I, you know, I think Matthew mayor and other person who is just like every person that came in, I knew, I don't know if Rob knew it as much. I think when he, I remember when he first saw the, like the first cut of the movie, he was like, wow, I didn't realize this is an ensemble movie. But to me, I was always making an ensemble movie and I always knew that like the only way for this to work was to basically have like, there's a line in Chris Hansen's book protecting your children from online enemies already in your home, but I've been so deep into this shit for so long. I just, I know, I know, I know. It's not a very elegant title. I always love the title of it, but he has this, this description about like the production being like a clown car with all these different personalities. He just said that if there was a television crew following them, it would feel like real worlds. Or I think he was, yeah, it was real world. So I took that to heart. And I was like, I really need to make sure that almost every person in this movie is almost cut from like a different reality, you know, and has like their own relationship to reality. And I think it's sort of enhanced this sort of, this, this like whatever, whatever we ended up doing. Like the network, you know, a version of like a circus nightmare. Like that was, I felt like what the atmosphere was like that they had created. But everyone brought something so special to it. And I think that was, I really want, like I sat down with everybody. I had my time with each person. I got to know them and I got to ask them questions about their lives and pull that into the, into the character into the script. Marit Weaver was like very gracious with that. And we talked a lot about that, just like what's it like to be somebody, her character who is just on the road all the time and gives all of herself to this thing. And like what does she have when she comes home? She only has the show. So, you know, there was a lot of like working our way around everything and trying to push more of people's own lives into the characters too. You know, you have another documentary coming out soon, but I'm curious like, is the intention to focus mostly on feature films? Like, will you think you'll toggle back and forth? Like, how are you thinking about what you're going to do after this? Man, I just want to like get through this and survive. I just make sure these films have their own, you know, respective lives that they deserve. But I think, yeah, definitely. I want to keep my, just like eyes and ears and, you know, spirit open to whichever the wind, way the wind blows, like this film came about in such a random way. You can see everything with Nathan came about in such a random way. I got to work with like my two heroes, Rob, who I've been obsessed with forever and Nathan, who like, you know, I've seen every episode like multiple times of Nathan for you. And I got to make both of these projects with the same cinematographer, David Bowen, the same composer, Ari Ballusion, same producers, Abby Roe, my wife, and Christian Vasquez, who's been working with me since film school. I got, I had such an amazing experience, like doing it with the same bands that I kind of am like, whatever we all collectively do together, I know it will be. good hopefully. But I definitely want to keep doing like I think personally I find documentaries more maybe spiritually like enriching because I just like being in different worlds. I like being in places that I am like a complete outsider and in a way it almost feels like I'm like watching a movie in real time because I just have to be so present. I can't think about myself for my problems or anything else. I just have to be so like fucking inside something else. And I met my wife making Renfair and you know we have a child now from it. So it's like I there's the experiences of making documentaries so formative. With Nathan I feel like he became like my best friend. I don't know if he would say so with me I hope he would. But I definitely feel like he is for me. And that's a great experience. You know narrative films I think because this one ended up actually taking a life that was similar in some ways to a documentary like we shot so much material for this movie. The script was longer. The first cut was like almost three hours. Then the second cut was 80 minutes. I freaked a lot of people out doing that. But the experience of editing it with Daniel Garber who is like a brilliant, brilliant editor. He you know because we come from making documentaries it felt like a very documentary like edits. And the edit the 24 graciously because I was making both films at the same time. They let me basically have like a long post production on this on prime time. And we edited for almost like a year and six months, which is just very long compared to how a normal independent independent. But like you know the size of our movie. Usually it's like I don't know 12 weeks if you're lucky. So I don't know. I loved that part of it. I loved being able to sort of like find my way and keep the voice alive and keep the collaborations going with all these people and then invite new people in the mix. Like my great production designer Alex D. Jolando and costume designer Alex Bovary. I had so many like amazing, amazing crafts people work on this thing with. So I don't know. Yeah. Well, will there be anything specific that you'll bring from making a feature to doing a doc now because I already felt like and we talked about this couple years ago. I could never tell how much you like had your thumb on the scale when I'm watching the docs. You know what I mean by that? Like I just don't know how much I don't and I didn't think you were manipulating the truth but manipulating the scenario to kind of discomfort us around what it is that we're watching. And it felt like the movie that this film is like a literalization of that feeling. Like it's almost like you took that idea of what you'd been exploring in docs and pursued an avenue in a fictionalized story to think through that. So then either in a physical production sense or intellectually like what are you bringing back to documentary after this? That's a good question. You know, I guess like because I was making that you can see everything at the same time and that movie was so different than like any other film I've made before and like Nathan really challenged me to work in a different way and I challenged him to work in a different way too. I felt like like we blew everything up in a way. Like I didn't usually with the documentaries I made prior to that one and even on primetime like you know, I used to just shoot one camera and just like David or Nate heard sellers who shot Renfair. We would just cover things in such a kind of crazy way where it was like just pure instinct guiding everything. That couldn't that didn't work for you can see everything. That was like we needed to make that much more observational and really like as close to just true verite as much as possible. So you know, I think on like a doc again, if I you know when I go back and do it, I like I feel like I know a little bit more now about you know how to I guess like hopefully create something that feels like emotional IMAX or something. It's like before I was always trying to do that. I wanted to like make on some kind of heaven. I was so inspired by like Douglas Cirque's movies and like I was Nicholas Ray's bigger than life. I loved the like the Hollywood movies at that time and I was like, oh, what if you just did that in that world? Yeah, a technical or documentary. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now I'm like I think I could probably execute on some of those ideas a little better and and and bring people in that also aren't you know cut like in documentaries into the fold on that too. But I don't know. I'm also like part of the thing that's just so fun about documentaries. It's almost like athletic a little bit. You just have it's like you're just operating on pure instinct as long as your body can sort of take like you know when I work with this like the small crew that I normally work with we'll shoot for like 14 16 hours a day and then we'll wake up like at sunrise to catch the sunrise the next morning like we we're really chasing something we're in pursuit of like you know whatever the movie gods can give us that day. And on fiction, it was like harder to access but when when we did access it within the circus of you know like a crew of 150 people or whatever it felt really satisfying like that whole rainstorm sequence in prime time was so complicated and David was going to kill me my DP because he's like this is not the place we could just like fucking find things like there's like a water tower that's wasting so much water. It's like there's like three of them. We have like like a crazy light lightning rig like we have to sort of plan things out and we sort of did but we also didn't and I remember just like there was a few moments that that felt so satisfying in like a really ecstatic way like any time something really beautiful happens David and I always he'll turn to me and he'll just be like he'll like raise his eyebrows and I'll be like yes so it's like it's like that's what we've been chasing you know it's like a drug. Lance we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. I um I just watched John Travolta's Michael not the Michael Jackson movie but John Travolta's Michael Nora Efron film Nora Efron show and then I double whammy it with phenomenon because I forgot that both these movies came out the same year. Okay I do want to hear your thoughts on those movies but this does lead to a follow-up question within that which is you know you're you're a bit younger than I am you're more than 10 years younger than I am and yet you have a unique interest in access to a lot of the culture that I grew up watching. So why do you have so much interest and knowledge about 90s and early arts popular culture given your age. Well I mean I feel very like um like everything that was pre 9/11 I obviously I remember 9/11 and I remember where I was my my parents took me out of school but it felt like such a like a a nightmare like a like a never-ending nightmare for weeks and just like this hangover that was on my parents and my teachers at school. It's always interesting to access things that happened before that like there was more optimism maybe in the air and it's like the the era where like the internet was also a friendlier place and we go to like a cyber cafe or go to like one of the you'd be you know like at LAN you know the fact that that existed. So you know there's something that maybe is like I I grew up with some of that like I grew up with dial up but I but it's I also grew up listening to like stronger by Kanye West on my on my iPod touch so like that in some ways is closer to me than like you know I then phenom then or then Michael which I think came out in 1996. Yeah and I also just like the movie stars of that time period and I like the way the movies looked and it's like things just felt a little richer. Michael is such a weird it's one of the weirdest movies I think I've ever seen in my life. If anyone is out there you should I'm looking at the camera. I go watch that on the barrel movie. I feel like it's I don't know what I don't know what to make of it. I'm like it's so strange that he made both of those movies in succession too you know. He's playing angel in both movies. Yeah yeah and both movies made over like a hundred and twenty million dollars in the aftermath of the Pulp Fishing return. I was trying to figure out like yeah I know it's weird that he like cashed in the goodwill. He got from Pulp Fiction to play two different types of angels. I mean phenomena reminded me of like limitless. Uh-huh. Michael was like I saw that movie bright that David air movie like a long day from a while ago. And I was trying to figure out like does Michael exist inside a universe similar to that where like angels are commonplace because if you remember William Hertz character is like I need to go right about an angel and his boss is like yes and I'm like is his boss saying yes because he thinks it's like stupid or does he think yes because angels do and that that question was in the movie for me the entire time and I could not figure out what well I don't think I ever merged I haven't talked to anyone who's seen it so I'm like you know except my wife yet another filmmaker who appears on the show who maybe should just be a movie podcaster because that's the kind of thing time thing we spend is talking about a lot on the show. What is it do you remember do you have an answer whether or not that the world is populated by angels and we know of them but they're rare they're like a bald eagle or something. Yes um yeah I'll buy that I literally have not seen Michael since 1996 and I'm really thinking it was fine but you know what I'm glad you liked it. Yeah thank you I'm glad I did too it's like it's taking up so much mental real estate I guess it's better that than other things Lance congrats man you're at the center of movie culture this is awesome. Thanks for doing the show dude. Thanks man. Thanks to Lance thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on today's episode thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support as I indicated next week a grab bag of films Avengers Endgame Encore I'm going yeah your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother heart of the beast forgotten island the weight the history of concrete the thing I want to talk with you about is are old movies in movie theaters, potentially more powerful than non-event movies. And if that tells us anything about what's going on. - Oh, interesting. So like non-reptivision. - Correct, yeah. - What AMC and regal and cinema and big chains are programming a lot of old movies now. Anniversaries, one-off weekend events, and these movies are as much a part of the movie going experience as all these new releases. - Yeah. - And I'm thinking through that. So I'll ask you to do the same on Monday. - Okay. - We'll see you then. (upbeat music)