UnPlugged

Relive punk legend Patti Smith's unbelievable Houston night: Voices BreakingBoundaries releases exclusive video

As it prepares to launch a new season of programming, the nonprofit arts group Voices Breaking Boundaries has released an exclusive video of punk icon Patti Smith's memorable night in Houston. Smith appeared at the University of Houston’s Cullen Performance Hall last year and it turned into quite the event — one Voices is giving anyone the chance to relive.

A nonprofit grassroots organization dedicated to social justice through art, Voices Breaking Boundaries has been bringing globally-minded and politically-active artists to Houston since it was established in 2000.

VBB founder Sehba Sarwar’s relationship with Patti Smith began with a chance encounter at New York's LaGuardia Airport in 2003, following Iraq War protests the two both attended the day before. Already scheduled to interview Smith for her Strange Messenger show at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Sarwar introduced herself to the punk icon, sparking a friendship that has lasted nearly a decade.

“My daughter is one of the few 7-year-olds who sings Patti Smith songs in school,” Sarwar says, smiling.

Smith packed the Cullen Performance hall with almost 1,500 people (The video of the show is available on the VBB webiste).

“I left my little rural area in South Jersey with about 20 dollars, no where to stay and no job,” she said to start the show. “My mother gave me a waitress uniform. But as my mother said, ‘I know you’ll never make it as a waitress.’ She was right.”

“After a surprisingly low attendance at a 2003 concert in Houston, Patti was nervous about the crowd,” Sarwar says. “We decided to make the tickets affordable at $5 a piece and the theater nearly sold out of seats.”

In conjunction with the recent release of her award-winning memoir, Just Kids, Smith focused the first half of the performance on her time with legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“I left my little rural area in South Jersey with about 20 dollars, no where to stay and no job,” Smith said to start the show. “My mother gave me a waitress uniform. But as my mother said, ‘I know you’ll never make it as a waitress.’ She was right.”

Smith read several excerpts from the book, before closing with a solo set featuring “My Blakean Year” as well as an a cappella version “Because the Night,” a song she famously co-penned with Bruce Springsteen in the late 1970s.

This Oct. 22, Voices Breaking Boundaries offers its annual “living room art production” — a one-night art exhibition installed in a local Houston house. Taking place at two homes in the Third Ward, one of which belongs to Project Row Houses founder Rick Lowe, the event will feature more than 10 artists from Houston and Pakistan.

Titled Third Worlds: Third Ward/Karachi, the art show brings together video, music, installations and performances to explore commonalities between the United States and Pakistan.

Movie Review

Robert Pattinson plays infamous host who catches predators in Primetime

Robert Pattinson in Primetime

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson in Primetime.

Robert Pattinson is among a select group of actors with multiple high-profile roles in 2026, having already starred in The Drama and The Odyssey, with Dune: Part Three yet to come. But the one that may earn him an Oscar nomination — if not win — is Primetime, in which he stars as Chris Hansen, the former host of the Dateline NBC show To Catch a Predator.

The film, directed by Lance Oppenheim and written by Ajon Singh, plops viewers right in the middle of the short-lived run (2004-2007) of the program, which aimed to expose men for trying to have sex with teenagers. Hansen is obsessed with making the show successful, which means enticing as many child predators as they can and recruiting young-looking adult actors to serve as decoys for sting operations.

Helping him in his pursuit is producer Andie Bender (Merrit Wever), who has her own ambitions; recruiter Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher), who perhaps enjoys trapping predators a bit too much; and decoys Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo) and Del (Phoebe Bridgers), who have to muster all the improv skills they can when the men show up. As the story proceeds, each participant weighs their own level of comfort with the controversial practices of the show as a whole.

Depending on the audience, the film can play as a serious drama, a comedy, a horror, or a combination of all three. It seems like Oppenheim wants to confront the audience with the uncomfortable feeling of not having anyone for whom to root. You certainly can’t feel bad for the predators, who actively engage with someone they believe to be a child. But the process of getting men on the show, as well as the treatment of the decoys, is itself unsavory and difficult to defend.

At the center is a protagonist whose persona is interesting as a character, but less appealing as an actual person. As Hansen pushes everyone around him to do all they can for the sake of the show, his hubris puts him right in line with your standard antihero. But the idea of a man obsessed with his job who all but ignores his family and cheats on his wife is ultimately not that compelling and plays like the cliché it is.

If the film was supposed to be an exposé on what Hansen and the show as a whole got wrong in the pursuit of justice, it fails to bring about any strong feelings on either side. The one area where it does succeed is in its depictions of the two decoys, and Oppenheim might have been better served by showcasing them more. The film does shift toward being more of a story about Dan than Hansen, but not enough to make a big impact.

Oppenheim has seemingly devised the film as an acting showcase, and in that regard it works well. Pattinson is all-in with his performance, going to great lengths to demonstrate Hansen’s passion for the show. He has many fantastic line readings, including a one-word utterance late in the film that brings the house down. Wever and Gisondo are just as good, and Bridgers — making her acting debut — steals several of the scenes she’s in.

The impact To Catch a Predator had on society despite the small number of episodes (20) it had is something worth exploring, as the documentary Predators did in 2025. But Primetime doesn’t get to the heart of the matter in a way that makes for necessary viewing, leaving it as a testament to the skills of its actors and not much else.

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Primetime opens in theaters on September 25.

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