Here’s the True Story Behind Primetime

3 min readIn the late 2000s, Chris Hansen had everyone squirming in their seats. The host of To Catch a Predator, as part of NBC’s Dateline, was the face of the infamous reality show in which men soliciting sex from minors were caught on camera. The show’s meteoric rise and violent downfall are retold in Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, with an Oscar-ready Robert Pattinson in the lead role as Hansen. But how much does Primetime actually get right about what went down?Luckily, we don’t have to look too far. In September 2007, Esquire (that’s us!) published “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” by Luke Dittrich, which serves as the basis for Primetime and is identified as such in the credits. Dittrich’s feature goes into granular detail over the real-life circumstances of the suicide that Primetime frames as the end of its story and the end of To Catch a Predator.In theaters September 25, Primetime stars Pattinson as Chris Hansen, who is riding high on To Catch a Predator’s success when his team gets close to ensnaring the biggest whale yet. After catching all sorts of men—including Iraq-war veterans, ministers, and even a rabbi—Hansen and the vigilante group Perverted Justice figure out one of their targets (hiding behind online handles and emails) is Bill Conradt, an assistant district attorney from the Dallas–Fort Worth area.That name might ring a bell. In November 2006, Bill Conradt was about to be caught by NBC cameras during a taping of To Catch a Predator when the assistant DA shot himself in the head with a .380 Browning handgun. Despite the popularity of Predator, which capitalized on viewers’ fears about life in the digital world, the suicide of Conradt encapsulated many of the show’s legal and ethical problems—to say nothing of the insatiable hunger for ratings in a capital-oriented media business. “If it bleeds, it leads,” indeed.The death of Conradt didn’t end Predator directly or even immediately; the show aired its final episode in December 2007. And Hansen himself said the show ended simply because the series ran its course. But the fallout of Conradt’s death raised too much legal scrutiny regarding just how dangerous—and advertiser unfriendly—reality television can be when things get too real.As far as “accuracy” goes, Primetime obviously takes plenty of creative liberties where necessary while adhering to the broad strokes. For example, Hansen did have an extramarital affair—with a colleague 20 years his junior, in her 30s—which was reported by the National Enquirer. But while the movie frames the affair as a parallel situation in Hansen’s life amid the show’s sweeping ratings, it was actually reported in 2011 after Predator was already off the air.Also in the movie, Skyler Gisondo stars as “Dan Plumb,” an aspiring actor with a love for musical theater. Dan auditions for Predator and gets hired as one of its major decoys. In real life, his name was Dan Schrack, whom Dittrich identifies in his article as a then-aspiring actor. Today he is a morning anchor in Rochester, New York. And no, no predator on the show was ever caught spreading whipped cream on his penis—just butt naked. There was a guy with crutches, though.Then there’s the matter of Bill Conradt. Primetime sources plenty from Dittrich’s article—including a quick reference to Australia and Vegemite—while keeping his background as a competent Texas assistant DA intact. The movie doesn’t dive into the specifics of Conradt’s life as in Dittrich’s article, like his generally quiet demeanor among friends and colleagues and passion for Texas Longhorns football.Really, the only major change about the siege on Conradt’s home was the time of day. While the movie casts the moment at night in the immediate aftermath of a torrential downpour, the actual event took place in the midafternoon with overcast skies. Can’t blame a movie for wanting a more dramatic atmosphere.Some 18 years after its publication, Dittrich’s original article is more than worth your time. It paints as vivid a picture of the grisly scene as any movie can, along with a deeper understanding of just how bungled the operation was from the start and how Hansen’s show did more harm than good. So why don’t you take a seat—you’re going to be here for a while.