When “To Catch a Predator” aired as part of “Dateline NBC” from 2004 to 2007, it drew the kind of praise that rarely met early reality TV. It wasn’t just reality TV, it was a social good, a way of exposing men who would sexually prey on underage teenagers, a way of getting evidence to convict men who showed undeniable intent to commit statutory rape. This is the kind of show of which even Jon Stewart, famously critical of exploitative TV, said, “I approve” when welcoming the series’ host, Chris Hansen, on “The Daily Show.”
The show ended in part because of legal entanglements related to the death of one of the alleged predators it had caught in one of its stings. Almost 20 years later, it has spawned an entire universe of unauthorized spinoffs, some still involving Chris Hansen himself.
Now there’s a documentary about “To Catch a Predator” and its aftermath: “Predators,” directed by David Osit, who stopped by the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox.
He never set out to make a documentary about “To Catch a Predator,” which he became a fan of while in college.
“I didn’t think it could be much of an interesting documentary,” Osit said. “I saw the show before I was interested in filmmaking. And then I heard about how the show ended and some crazy stories around it, but at first I didn’t think a film about the series could be interesting other than just as salacious true crime. And then one day I encountered online some raw footage collected through the Freedom of Information Act, raw interrogation scenes that were not edited for TV that showed the guys who were caught being talked to in full. And watching that raw footage I felt really bad for these guys because you are given the space to think of them as human beings. But then I would look at a chat log and then feel disgusted with them again. And then I would hear a phone call between them and a decoy and be grossed out again. So I kept having this emotional ping pong in my head and in my heart.”
Watching clips from “To Catch a Predator” again, it’s hard not to think this was 21st century America’s form of public executions. You are watching a life end as entertainment — not literally ending, but very much figuratively. Who would employ these men again? How would their families survive? Many would be prosecuted and serve jail time, in what was a unique collaboration between TV news and law enforcement.
“It’s the gallows certainly,” Osit said. “It’s the stockades. We delight in our society, and not just here in America, in the pain of other people, like Susan Sontag wrote an amazing book about that. What’s interesting to me, and I internalized in making the film, is that all of us carry a dual reservoir of empathy and cruelty. We’re capable of both of those things, all of us are. And a show like this tapped into both of those and used it as fodder.”
By having 18-year-old actors, who look younger than 18, dress and act provocatively, wasn’t there also an aspect to “To Catch a Predator” of the show exploiting victims and victims’ pain as well?
“For me ‘exploitative’ was always one of the red flag words that I wanted to avoid,” Osit said. “I wanted to do the opposite of what I felt this show did, which was flatten the world into good and evil, right and wrong, bad and good. And I wanted to give everybody at least the chance to say, ‘Why are you here? Why do you do this work?’ And the answers surprised me. People come to this work [taking up the mantle from Hansen himself] from different places. I’ve never met anybody who thinks they are evil or what they’re doing as wrong. Even people we disagree with or we elect to office, even if we disagree with them, they believe in what they’re doing. What if I dug deeper and made it so that audiences don’t already have their minds made up for them? Because that’s what this kind of show actually did do, and so much true crime entertainment: They flatten the world and say that you’re the good guys for watching this program, the bad guys are in the program, and then it ends and you can pat yourself on the back for being one of the good guys.”
Watch IndieWire’s full video interview with Osit above.
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