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Chat rooms and instant messenger are a staple of the
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modern internet. As an 80s baby, I remember not being
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allowed in chat rooms and being strictly supervised with who
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I was allowed to interact with on instant messenger. With
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good reason, as they proved quite an effective tool for predators. However,
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some folks found a simple solution to thwart at least
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some of these predators, which is how Chris Hansen ended
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up with the show on primetime. I'm Ronald Young Jr.,
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and I'm leaving the theater. Thank you. All right. This
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is Ronald, and I am leaving the theater after seeing Primetime. Primetime,
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written by Ajong Singh, directed by Lance Oppenheim, starring Robert Pattinson,
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Merritt Weaver, Skylar Gisando, and Phoebe Bridgers. Per usual, for
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a complete listing of the cast and crew, you can
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check out the link in our show notes. It is
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just me today. All right, prime time. This is a
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dramatization of the creation and execution of the show To
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Catch a Predator, starring Chris Hansen, which was on Dateline
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NBC in 2006. So most of you might have grown
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up with that show. I would have been in my
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very early 20s, I think 21, 22, something like that. which, man,
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what a different time. The premise of the show To
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Catch a Predator was that Chris Hansen and his team
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would talk to potential child predators and pedophiles online and
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lure them to a house in which they would show
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up having been promised Congress with Okay, it's disgusting. Basically,
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they would catch pedophiles who were talking with what they
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thought to be children online, and they would show up.
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Chris Hansen would do an interview with them in which
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he read some of the stuff that they said online,
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and then the police would arrest them. And they would
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do that over and over again. You have to remember,
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in the early days of this type of television, of
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this type of activity, they were doing... I mean, this
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is early television. And when I say early, I don't
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mean like, I mean early this type of television, early
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reality television, even if you will. And this was back
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when they were doing this. Cheaters was a thing. This
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show inspired the ABC version, What Would You Do?, which
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was more about feel-good television. They did this a lot.
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I think this is around the same time that Punk'd
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might have just started prank television. So they were still
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figuring out what you could do with TV cameras and
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what people would watch. And this was a show that
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people watched. They watched this show a lot. The movie
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is a dramatization of Chris Hansen and his producer, who
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was actually a composite of all the television producers that
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he had, and the decoy, who was the person that
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they used to attract the Predators to wherever they're going,
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and the rest of the Chris Hansen team as they
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were building out this show and producing the show to
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catch a Predator. When I saw the preview for this film,
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I remember thinking, I've got to see this movie because
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I thought Robert Pattinson was doing an excellent job as
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Chris Hansen. I saw it and I was like, wow,
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he's nailing Chris Hansen. And also, I love Robert Pattinson.
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I think he's a great actor. With that in mind,
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I remember thinking, I wonder what the movie's about. And
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now that I've seen the movie, I think there's a
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layer of this That is pretty good in that if
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I just look at these as characters who were making
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a television show and interacting with each other, and I
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knew nothing of Chris Hansen, nothing of anything else happening.
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I would, I would think that this was a brilliant movie.
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But this movie is actually hamstrung by the fact that
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these are real people who actually exist now and they
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had to really make up a story. Now, it's based
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on an article that came out in Esquire in 2007,
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and I forgot the name of it. You can look
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it up, and I'll try to link it in the
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show notes. As a movie, as a person just watching
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a movie, I remember thinking, the things that are working
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about this movie are the performances, which is unsurprising because
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Merritt Weaver and Robert Pattinson are brilliant actors. Both of
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them are brilliant. They play well off of each other.
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Skylar Gisondo also did a very good job. everybody that
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was acting in this movie, they all clocked in. So
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as an acting feat, this is probably around four stars, 4.25
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stars just for the acting. That's not the actual rating
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of this movie, but I will just say the acting,
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I can't say enough about how good the acting was
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in this film. Is it good enough to get Robert
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Pattinson nominated? I would say so, this year especially, because
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I have not seen a bunch of Performance from men
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that have impressed me that much that actually that weren't
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Robert Pattinson. He also did a very good job in
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the drama. He also did a very good job in
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the Odyssey. So he's already doing well. If they need
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one solo character driven performance, which the Oscars tend to like,
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this is the one. this is the one you nominate
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him for. You could also nominate him for the drama,
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to be honest with you. But I'm saying if they
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need one, if I'm working with Robert Pattinson, if I'm
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his agent, I'm already talking to all of these studios, A24,
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these are two A24 movies, and saying, which one are
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we getting them nominated for? Because honestly, I think we
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could submit both. So the acting is good. The movie itself,
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I remember thinking early on, what is this movie? What
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am I watching? And it was the same question I
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had when I saw the preview for this movie. What
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is this movie? What am I watching? There's not a
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plot here. It's really just some good acting around a
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prompt or a premise. And I know there's a script
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here and they performed the script well, but that doesn't
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mean that there was much of a story to be
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told here. And I think because I'm honestly interested in
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what Chris Hansen did Feels about all this, which and
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there's some articles out there saying he's not happy with
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the performance and he wasn't as involved in the movie
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as he feels like he should have been. I would
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like to know what he thinks, and I think that's
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best served by this being a documentary. So here's the
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big reveal. If you don't already know this. This is
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the narrative directorial debut of Lance Oppenheim, noted documentary filmmaker
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Lance Oppenheim. He's making a movie that I'm very interested
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in seeing with Nathan Fielder called You Can See Everything
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about Elizabeth Holmes. And I remember thinking about the preview
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of that, which came on right before this film. And
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I wondered to myself, what, what, what, what, what? Do
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y'all think that Lance Oppenheim's view on this would have
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been best served by the medium that he works the
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best in, which is documentary? Because I would have loved
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to have seen Chris Hansen talking about his reasoning behind
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making the show, the motivation behind making the show, bringing
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all that up, rather than it being kind of connected
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to this article in Esquire. Now, I'm sure I have
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not read the article in Esquire, so I don't know
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if some of the details that come up in the
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movie are... mentioned in the article, but because I watched
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them in a narrative form, in this fictionalized form, I
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immediately began to feel suspicious about how real this was.
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And that is in direct opposition, in direct competition with
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what you want me to believe in the film. So
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because I know there's real facts out there watching this,
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I remember thinking, what, really? What, really? And I think
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there's instances in which that kind of competition, that dissonance works.
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A movie like The Social
Network, where they give me
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enough facts that I am willing to forgive the parts
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of it that I know to be narrative. But that's
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because I have so many facts. You know what I mean?
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And because it's such a well-executed movie and it stays
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very grounded, I'm able to suspend any little bit of
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disbelief and watch what's in front of me. Whereas with
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this one, there is some surrealism going on here. There
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are things that are assumed about... or that feel assumed
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about Chris Hansen's personal life and details about his personal
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life that I don't know that I needed. And all
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of that makes it harder for me to suspend that
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same disbelief when watching this. There's another movie about this
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type of journalism called Nightcrawler with Jake Gyllenhaal. That's totally fiction,
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but that's another example of the direction this can go,
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where it's like you go totally fiction, this is not real,
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and then you can really send it with the surrealism
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and all that. But when you have something that is real,
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and you mix it with surrealism, you make it so
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that I don't know what to trust, and I feel
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unsettled in my seat. So while I enjoy the performances,
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there's plenty of this film where I'm wondering why it's here.
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Justify your existence, once again. And you've heard me say
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that on this show before. So that's one part, but
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then the other part is like, the story doesn't really,
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there's no story here. And they try to create one,
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but it doesn't work. The decoy, while performed well, I
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don't think it was important to the narrative. The producer
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has her own storyline. I don't know how important that
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is to the narrative. And again, Chris Hansen has his
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own storyline. I don't know how important that is to
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the narrative. They created a through line with the decoy
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from beginning to end. And I remember when we got
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to the end thinking, I don't know how much I
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actually care about this character in particular. And I don't
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know that this was a story about the decoy. So
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it makes it so that when it just makes me
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wonder why this film got greenlit or why this particular
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film to be specific got greenlit. There's plenty of films
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out there. There's plenty of things out there that get
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greenlit all the time. But I'm wondering when you walk
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in there and you pitch this story and you say, hey,
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we want to talk about to catch a predator. Well,
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the interesting part to me is the to catch a
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predator part. I have so many questions about why these
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folks are doing this, how they got caught up in this.
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What happened to the predators after they got arrested on
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the show? Are they registered sex offenders now? What happens
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to the decoys? What's the toll that it takes on them?
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And I feel like those are all questions that could
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be answered if they had made a documentary about this,
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which I think would have worked fine. But instead they
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made this fictionalized version and I still am left with
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a bunch of questions because I don't know what to
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believe and I don't know what is actually real. So
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with all of that being said, I think this movie
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is probably somewhere around a 3.25. I think there are
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some redemptive portions of it. All of them are in
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the acting. If I were just rating the acting alone,
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this is among some of the best stuff I've seen
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all year. Unsurprising because it's coming from Robert Pattinson, who
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is in a couple of my favorite movies of the
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year so far. You know what I mean? So it
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makes sense that this would be this would be the
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trend that he's setting. However, as a story and as
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a movie, it kind of falls short of a three.
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I would say, sometimes I was watching and thinking, is
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this a one-star movie? Is this a two-star movie? And
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it probably falls somewhere just below three,
that sacred space
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I call the 2.99, the 2.75, the 2.99, where it's like, oh,
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you were almost good. But the acting is so good
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that it pulls it just above a three, meaning I
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would definitely watch this again. I would certainly watch this again.
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And I like Robert Pattinson. I really like what's happening
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in his career right now and his breadth of talent.
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Like he is really showing his range. But outside of that.
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not a great film. I will say it, it does
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make me think I want to give Lance Oppenheim another
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shot with other sorts material. That is not something that
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is real. And I do want to dive into his
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documentary catalog. I'm going to watch, you could see everything obviously,
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but I am curious about the rest of his work
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as a result. So with that, uh, Leaving the Theater
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is a production of Oh, It's Big Ron Studios. I
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mixed this episode. Today is day one of what feels
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like probably a week-long movie marathon. I'm going to see
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two or three today, and then one on Monday when
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this comes out, and one on Tuesday, the day after
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this comes out. And I looked up, I did prep
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on like, 12 movies yesterday and i have more movies
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than i do have dates to put them out so
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it is a lot of coordination just to make this
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podcast leaving the theater work i work on several podcasts
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wait for it is still on my mind they've been
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having a few conversation that makes me say do i
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need to start putting out new episodes and wait for
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it again wait for if listeners are going to listen
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to this and be like, yes, obviously, but it's a
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lot of work to do that. I'm also working on
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an entirely different podcast and I'm still trying to set
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the launch date for that. I have a lot of
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balls in the air. I also do television now, which
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I don't talk about a lot on this show, but
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I do. And I don't know where that's going, but
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I'm enjoying the trip. So there's a lot on my plate.
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There's a lot that I'm doing. This is independent work,
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but I'm still pushing it forward. And we have not
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gone as far as we can go. We have not
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gotten as good as we can get yet. And we
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can go further with your help. I'm doing a lot
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of work. It's a labor of love, but it's still labor.
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If that means something to you, you should become a patron.
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Go to patreon.com slash ohitsbigron or go to the link
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in our show notes. Show art from Heather Wilder. themed
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music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. For more information about Primetime,
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check out our show notes. You can follow me on Instagram,
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Blue Sky, TikTok, Threads, or Letterboxd, at Oh It's Big Ron.
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That's at O-H-I-T-S-B-I-G-R-O-N. You can find out more about this
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show and other Oh It's Big Ron Studio shows by
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following us on Instagram, at Oh It's Big Ron Studios.
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Leaving the Theater will be back soon. Thanks for listening.
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I'm Ronald Young Jr., and I'm in my very early 20s,
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I think 21, 22, something like that.