Lance Oppenheim has always lived in reality, but not all his subjects do.
The documentarian has built a career out of pointing his camera at people, from the retirees of “Some Kind of Heaven” to the unregulated donors of “Spermworld” and the self-appointed royalty of “Ren Faire.” And this year, he trades obscurity for two of the most recognizable figures of the past two decades in two films arriving within weeks of each other.
The first is “Primetime,” his narrative feature debut, starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the Dateline correspondent whose “To Catch a Predator” turned sting operations into appointment television.
The second is “You Can See Everything,” a nonfiction collaboration with Nathan Fielder centered on Elizabeth Holmes, shot in secret over four years and unveiled as a surprise screening at the Telluride Film Festival. I was in that room, and it’s one of the wildest moviegoing experiences of my life.
Oppenheim spoke with Variety about the $40 cameo that started it all, what he calls “docu-fantasia” and how a tiny crew kept one of the year’s biggest secrets.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The seed of “Primetime” was reportedly a Cameo video from Chris Hansen. How does a novelty purchase turn into a movie?
My wife got it for me for $40. It sounds almost glib, but it’s hard to communicate how big a fascination this became for me. I discovered the show as a kid through the parodies, through “South Park” and “Human Giant.” When I was 11 or 12, I was watching it on YouTube and I was confused. Is this a prank show? A news program? A circus, with Chris Hansen as this P.T. Barnum ringleader?
In the Cameo, he told me to have a seat and congratulated me on the release of “Spermworld.” This was 2024, before I ever received a script. You could pay this guy $40, and he would pretend you were a potential predator, then go on to advertise his new investigations. There was something so macabre about it. It’s almost like the man saw the meme and decided to adopt the persona.
About two weeks later, I met Rob Pattinson and showed him the Cameo on a whim. Two weeks after that, I was at Rob’s birthday party and his producing partner Brighton McCloskey said, “You’re never going to believe this, but there’s this amazing script you should read.” The cover page said “To Catch a Predator.” I grabbed her phone, ran out to my car at 1:30 in the morning and read it all in one sitting. Everything I’d been thinking about, the idea that if there is a real Chris Hansen he no longer exists because he’s absorbed all this cultural lore, was in the script.
The film is billed as “inspired by true events.” Where was the line between a Chris Hansen biopic and a movie made for entertainment?
Once the show became a runaway success and now that we’re 20 years removed from it, I think whoever the real Chris Hansen is no longer exists. He’s addressing a very serious issue and getting really disturbed people off the streets, but he’s also turning that pursuit into a commercial object. That’s a very difficult dance.
I wanted to take the internet’s version of Chris Hansen. A person can go a little bit to self-mythologize, but at a certain point, people mythologize you. That’s how legends are born. I wanted to make something that felt like a fever dream but captured an emotional truth: When you spend a lot of time doing reportage on an extremely dark subject, it must rub off on you. Rob and I watched him on Theo Von’s podcast, and Theo asked how he deals with all the darkness. He said, “I just bury it deep down inside.” That was a really telling answer.
Hansen has had an interesting response to the film, going on talk shows and talking about how he wasn’t consulted. How do you feel about that?
When he first heard about it, he was quite excited. He was at CrimeCon saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not Robert Pattinson, but I’m Chris Hansen.” Several weeks later, we wanted to show it to him and there was a fairly standard NDA he didn’t want to sign.
Since then, he has done what Chris Hansen, the showman, does and has said a lot more about it. His reaction to the film right now is exactly what the film is about. I was a fan of Chris Hansen, and I still am. That’s why I wanted to make this film. Yes, he’s a journalist. Yes, he’s an entertainer. But he’s also an artist. He made this hall of mirrors, with adult actors pretending to be children and sets that looked like something out of “Blue Velvet.” Without that show, I don’t think I would be making films the way I do.
When you describe him as a vigilante, did you feel like you were making your version of Batman with Chris Hansen instead of Bruce Wayne?
Absolutely. Rob presented me with the screenplay wanting to produce it, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to act in it. I said the only person who can play this part is you. Outside of being the best actor of his generation right now, what he delivers is a conceptual performance, almost a media collage of every Chris Hansen that’s ever existed. The Chris Hansen of the cameos, the Chris Hansen on Theo Von, in the raw footage of the show, even the self-parodies on “30 Rock.” All of that is inside this one performance.
Rob is Batman. Chris Hansen, at least in the film, is a superhero specifically when he’s across the kitchen island from one of these potential predators. Everywhere else, he’s a man who wants to be a superhero who wants the control he experiences when he’s shooting his show. There’s a gulf, and that makes for a very interesting character study.
What he does is also connected to a very ancient idea: thousands of years of performative justice. The pillory, the whipping posts. When you turn that spectacle of punishment into a television show that has to compete against “Lost,” you’ve opened a Pandora’s box. By the second week, I told Rob, “You’ve got the voice and the mannerisms down, but you’re also doing Jerry Maguire and you’re also doing Dracula.”
“Primetime” confronts a real tragedy, the death of one of the men caught in a sting. How did you handle the responsibility to the people who still live with it?
What interested me most was the psychic cost of doing this work day in and day out. Most people would consider it very heroic, but it has to have an effect on you. I know Chris Hansen has said he buries it deep down, but I wanted to attempt to humanize him. Toward the end of the film, I wanted to show its effects on Chris, on Andy Bender, who Merritt Wever portrays, and on Skyler Gisondo’s character, Decoy Dan. This moment happened to him. He will never be the same again. And yet he still sees a demon he has to vanquish. He’s still chasing that dragon. I thought about adding the where-are-they-now cards most true-story movies have, but I felt this was spiritually closer to Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” If I’m working off a scant historical record, it’s better to leave people with the moments in the film and hope they seek out David Osit’s documentary “Predators” or Chris Hansen’s new work. People who have only seen the trailer think Hansen is the villain.
Did you set out to make him one, and is this a biopic?
No. To me, he’s a hero, a complicated hero, like Odysseus in “The Odyssey.” He’s a human with flaws setting out to do something noble, and the effects of capitalism and commercialism make for a confusing experience for him.
Is it a biopic? It depends on your definition. Rob, Joan and I were interested in pushing the concept of the biopic to its furthest reaches, closer to creative narrative nonfiction, like the great works of David Foster Wallace. I call it docu-fantasia. I’m taking the hopes, dreams, nightmares and obstacles of my characters and attempting to convey a subjectivity that brings you into what they care about. It’s almost a form of emotional IMAX. Most biopics today go through an authorization process with the subject, and there are great movies made that way. But as a storyteller, I’m more interested in my own interpretation.
How do Elizabeth Holmes and Chris Hansen, two of the most recognizable figures of the last 20 years, fit into the lineage of odd characters you’ve documented?
The more opinions I give on “You Can See Everything,” the more it can corrupt the viewer’s experience. They’re both public figures seen as people with many faces, but the movies are very, very different. Both were born from collaboration, “Primetime” with Rob and “You Can See Everything” with Nathan Fielder and I made them largely at the same time with the same crew. My cinematographer, David Bolen, whom I’ve worked with since I was 17, shot both. My composer, Ari Balouzian, scored both. It was largely the same band.
As for the similarities, I’m more curious for you to tell me. I was so in the weeds on both that I’m like someone in a perfume shop who’s lost their sense of smell.
I was in the room at Telluride for “You Can See Everything.” How do you keep a project that big a secret for four years?
Keeping it under wraps was very important because we never wanted to get in front of what we were capturing. It was always about letting life unfold. Part of how we pulled it off was working with a very small crew, about seven or eight people. We had the same crew for years, and we would all drop whatever we were doing whenever a shoot came up.
Seeing the reaction at Telluride was amazing. It’s been a very long time since people were just greeted with a movie at a film festival. They walked in totally cold. They didn’t even know it existed. Now there’s a teaser trailer, but I hope people keep as much of it under wraps as possible. The best way to see it is to just let it wash over you. Nathan and I couldn’t agree on what we actually captured every day. One of us would see something, and the other wouldn’t. I heard the same thing out of Telluride. People were arguing about specific moments. That is perfect. That is the only way.
You have two movies arriving within weeks of each other. What do you hope people take away from seeing them side by side?
It’s very head-spinning. It feels like I’m in “Vanilla Sky” dream-logic world. My son was born five days before production on “Primetime” began, so he’s basically as old as the film itself. It’s emotional for me. I’ve always loved filmmakers like Jonathan Demme and Steven Soderbergh, who make films that are totally different from one another. I don’t want people thinking about me. I’d like them to think about what’s on the screen, and after the movie ends, about my crew. The people who actually get these films made. Without them, I would be totally fucked. I’m excited for the world to discover my collaborators.
Yes or no: Do you have another secret project you’re going to surprise us with?
It wouldn’t be a secret if you knew. I can’t talk about it right now.