‘Primetime’ writer Ajon Singh on the Chris Hansen meme machine and that Phoebe Bridgers NIN shirt

Lance Oppenheim may be the name presently affixed to Primetime ’s ascent into one of Robert Pattinson ’s most talked-about films of the year, but its exceptional screenplay’s particular strain of derangement belongs to Indian American writer Ajon Singh. His surreal writing takes the 2007 Esquire investigation into the rise and collapse of NBC’s televised predator-hunting circus and cannibalises it into a psychological crime thriller around the man, the myth and the legend of Chris Hansen , whose years of self-mythologised crusading had become inextricably enmeshed with the pursuit of other people’s depravity. Ajon speaks to The Hindu about the project’s genesis, the creative influences that informed its strange formal style, and the immediate internet afterlife it has acquired since its release.