Oscar Contender ‘Predators’ Unpacks Tremendous Impact Of NBC’s ‘To Catch A Predator’ — “Ick” Factor And All

MTV Documentary Films has become a major player in Oscar competition, scoring nominations for nonfiction features Black Box Diaries, The Eternal Memory, Ascension and the shorts I Am Ready, Warden; Hunger Wardand St. Louis Superman.

While the future of the MTV doc division must be considered uncertain given the Skydance Media purchase of Paramount (which includes MTV, of course), it’s contending again this year with an explosive documentary feature: Predatorsdirected by David Osit.

The film, which premiered last January at Sundance, offers a critical examination of a show that became a TV staple – To Catch a Predatorthat aired under the banner of NBC’s Dateline news magazine. Producers of the show partnered with a self-appointed watchdog group called Perverted Justice to set up sting operations that ensnared men trying to hook up with what they thought were underage girls or boys (actors were cast in the roles of online bait for the would-be predators). After a mark showed up at a house and began engaging in seductive talk with the purported underage child, To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen would pop out from behind the scenes to question the alleged perp.

Hansen typically opened with, “Have a seat right over there,” conveniently guiding the suspected predator to a chair within perfect view of Dateline cameras. (Our interview with David Osit has been edited for length and clarity).

DEADLINE: I attended the world premiere of the film at Sundance at the Ray Theater and that was a very powerful screening. I think the audience was kind of stunned into silence. What was that premiere like for you?

David Osit: It was an out-of-body experience at the Ray. The Ray, it’s like the darkest theater you’ve ever been in. No light gets in, which is ironic and fitting for a film like this. It’s so big and it’s like a coliseum and just looking up and seeing so many people who had no idea what they were in for, that was just a thought I couldn’t stop thinking about as I watched. And I could just feel the energy of everyone behind me. I was really grateful for the reaction that we ultimately had, but those screenings were among some of the most emotionally confounding and gratifying moments of my career.

DEADLINE: Do you recall roughly what age you were when you started watching To Catch a Predator?

D.O.: I was in my sophomore year of college, which would make me 19. And I watched it, many people did at that point, with a lot of fascination, with a lot of laughter, and with a bit of “ick” and disgust, both at what was happening and just how it makes you feel when you watch it. But the original show was appointment viewing, it was the era of Must See TV.

It did something that nothing had really ever done before, which was to create entertainment through a combination of law enforcement and journalism working together. And it was entertainment, but it never became pure entertainment. It was always kind of shrouded in the aura of journalism, which is of course how they were able to do all of the gray area things that they did in terms of people’s identities being revealed. And that is what gives the show its shock value is the fact that you’re watching someone’s life and on TV, right after an episode of Friends.

Fewer than 20 episodes of the show aired over three years and people still talk about it 20 years later. Few things had that kind of impact — maybe Rootsmaybe that’s the only thing I could think of that had that kind of generational impact too, just in a very different context.

DEADLINE: One can imagine NBC very interested in ratings and yet they want to cloak it in this journalistic endeavor and quasi-law enforcement, ‘We’re getting the bad guys off the street,’ but they don’t want to be held to a legal standard at the same time.

D.O.: It was in the same lineage ultimately as something like Unsolved Mysteries or Rescue 911 more than it being news, but it could hide behind the First Amendment.

DEADLINE: Chris Hansen as host is interesting because he’s not loud, but he’s compelling. Part of what I found fascinating about the film is the rhetorical apparatus that he’s using where carefully, and for I guess legal reasons, he’s creating these “gotcha” moments. Because of social convention, social pressure, people feel compelled like, “Oh my God, I have to stay and submit to this interrogation.”

D.O.: The last words out of his mouth are usually, “You’re free to leave”… The first things out of his mouth are, “Help me understand. Tell me why you’re here. I just want to know.” It’s an invitation to share something that is now no longer private, it’s no longer just something ugly in the closet for these men. And the majority of these men feel a deep sense of embarrassment because somewhere in them they can see themselves from outside and realize that they’ve been caught doing something awful and they realize it. And that’s where the pain comes in and that’s where the audience’s pleasure comes in.

DEADLINE: These suspects, these alleged predators, are not read their rights. And so they don’t realize, apparently many of them don’t, that whatever it is they say can and will be used in a court of law against them.

D.O.: They’re not read their rights while Chris is interrogating them. And that’s the thing is eventually these men are arrested and then they’re read their rights by police, but not before. They’ve had, in many cases, a confession, a sort of interrogation under duress, which is what having cameras come out and then be told that you’re being broadcast to the world.

These men are not aware of what’s about to occur, they don’t know who Chris Hansen is. They don’t know if he’s a dad, if he’s an FBI agent, if he’s a neighbor. I think the last question they’re normally thinking at that point is, is he a journalist? But he is in many cases at that point working with law enforcement. It’s just never overtly said.

This film is not about is it wrong to catch child predators. I’m certainly not making a defense of child predators. I never would. That’s not the point. The point is that gray area shifted slowly, slowly, slowly to the point where how are we going to treat these men and what’s going to happen to them is linked to how much are we entertained by it.

DEADLINE: One troubling aspect about the show is the question of entrapment. It’s one thing for law enforcement to do it… but this is not law enforcement dangling out a lure on the end of a line. It’s a journalistic entity. So these things would not have happened in the way that they do without NBC setting it all up.

D.O.: It’s a remarkable fusion of a couple different things. There’s NBC, which is an enterprise, a journalistic enterprise that is working under the behest of producers and Chris Hansen that desires to do a couple of these investigations. And then there’s the people who were doing the work when the show aired, which was a vigilante group called Perverted Justice, an independent nonprofit that was hired by NBC to do these things, to chat with the men online. This was all extrajudicial, this was all happening outside of the purview of law enforcement. And these chats would happen, the chat [logs] would then get handed over to law enforcement, and law enforcement, basically their role was, “Let’s wait outside for the guys to show up.” So, there was a three headed dragon that executed this.

Each side isn’t doing anything necessarily wrong. Law enforcement’s there to catch a crime, which is a crime that’s happening. The journalists are there to report on the crime, which is a crime that’s happening. And the vigilantes — let’s call them not vigilantes for the sake of this conversation, there’s a lot of judgment to the word vigilante — but the independent kind of watchdog group that’s made up of civilians is doing this work because they have a vested interest in keeping the society safe and police aren’t equipped to do that kind of work at this point in time, [back] in 2005, 2004. So, altogether it creates a dynamic that, is it bad to catch child predators? No, I wouldn’t argue that. But what happens when a show’s ratings, when there’s cultural incentive, when there’s spinoffs that are all along the lines of what To Catch a Predator was, when it becomes a way to just create a product, to sell, and that’s what happened.

DEADLINE: Chris Hansen now hosts Takedown with Chris Hansena show that’s streaming on the TrueBlu platform where he investigates and interrogates suspected predators. You interviewed him for your film. What was that like?

D.O.: I felt halfway through the interview that I did have to resist the urge to be pedantic or to do “gotchas” on Chris because I had spent an entire film, as far as I’m concerned, trying to be fair to everyone I spoke to and trying to be curious in where everyone is coming from. That was the rule for me. I couldn’t make this film if I was trying to just look down on everybody I was filming. I was genuinely curious in where people were coming in from, why they do what they do, why they feel what they feel. And if I wasn’t going to do that with Chris, then I became Chris.

DEADLINE: I’m curious about any reaction you’ve had from Chris Hansen to the film.

D.O.: Chris watched the film before Sundance, and he liked it. He thought it was — the word he used was “brave” — and he had some questions and some thoughts and some things he disagreed with. But I think he ultimately found it to be fair, which is the highest compliment I think I can get from anybody. If anyone who appears in my film and says, “That’s fair,” that’s praise as far as I’m concerned.