Trevor Hogg participated in a roundtable interview with filmmaker Dan Gilroy who was attending the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival for the World Premiere of his directorial debut Nightcrawler. Beware there are spoilers…
A fascination with New York City crime photographer Weegee who also took social commentary photos from the 1930s to 1950s led screenwriter Dan Gilroy (Two for the Money) to add directing to his resume. “I couldn’t figure out a way to do that movie. Then I moved to L.A. and realized that the modern equivalent was these people who drive around at much higher speeds. I thought it was a great world to explore.” The evolution of news coverage was another source of inspiration for Nightcrawler (2014) which stars Jake Gyllenhaal (Enemy) as a wayward thief Lou Bloom who pursues a career as a freelance stringer who sells footage of automobile crashes, fires, and murder to local television stations. “As somebody who was a journalist, I’m interested and educated in the history of broadcast news. I don’t know what it’s like in Canada but in the United States maybe three or four decades ago networks decided that news departments suddenly had to make a profit.” The corporate decision caused the newsroom culture to shift away from being a public service. “I’m aware that once news is generated to make a profit it becomes entertainment in a lot of ways.” Police car chases pre-empt presidential debates as more focus is placed upon lurid and graphic stories to get higher ratings and attract advertisers. “They’re crossing their fingers that somebody is going to get killed or shot or something horrible is going to happen.”
“Taxi Driver [1976] has relevance in the degree that it’s a similar character study of somebody who drives around a car at night,” observes Dan Gilroy. “It’s indirectly related to some other films. I became interested when I was writing this about the formula of writing the hero and antihero at the same time. The films I started to look at that did this in no particular order are To Die For [1995] with Nicole Kidman who is the hero and villain at the same time; The Talented Mr. Ripley [1999] might be a more overt villain but he’s a personable enough that you connect with him; and a big one for me which is an underrated film though it has a cult status now is The King of Comedy [1982] with Rupert Pupkin [Robert De Niro] – a personable funny guy who comes close to murdering poor Jerry Lewis [The Nutty Professor]. There are not many films that have heroes and antiheroes. It’s such a great and scary formula.” Lou Bloom makes such declarations as, “My motto is: if you want to win the lottery, you have to make the money to buy a ticket.” The protagonist comes across as an individual driven by perpetual optimism whose ideas are curated from various books and the Internet. “Lou wants to be the guy who owns the station that owns the camera. The aphorisms Lou spouts and the things that he says are always in support of, ‘I’m moving forward. The nihilistic meaningless parts of this existence I don’t want to dwell on. I’m focusing in on this.’ Life is a much better place when you’re distracted in accomplishing something that you believe has relevance.”
Assisting Dan Gilroy in making the transition behind the camera were his brothers Tony Gilroy (The Devil’s Advocate) and John Gilroy (Pacific Rim) along with his wife Rene Russo (In the Line of Fire). “I watched Tony direct Michael Clayton [2007] and Duplicity [2009], and I worked on The Bourne Legacy [2012]; he is not just a director I can watch as I can sit down and talk to him about lenses, working with actors, and navigating producers and financial situations. Tony was the producer of the film and he got me the final cut. This movie does not exist in this form if Tony doesn’t get me the final cut. Lou is not who is; he doesn’t get away with murder at the end. So many things would have changed in this film. John is a wonderful editor and my fraternal twin so we’re very close; it was easy for me to sit in a room with him and have a creative dialogue. The three of us are very close. We communicate often and support each other. I creatively collaborate often with Rene. When writing scripts I’ll give her pages that she looks at as an actor so Rene can improve my dialogue.”
The part of unscrupulous TV News Producer Nina Romina was written specifically for Russo who is not a method actor. “For her it’s play. For Jake it’s, ‘I want to try to do this certain thing!’ Rene will naturally say, ‘I want to do this thing over.’ The Restaurant Scene was a 14 hour shoot where we were trying so many different things and it’s probably my favourite scene in the movie if I was honest.” A key addition to the Nightcrawler team was Jake Gyllenhaal who impressed Gilroy with his performance in End of Watch (2012). “I flew to Atlanta where he was doing Prisoners and we had this long four hour dinner. Two things we quickly established were that I wanted to create and collaborate with him, and he was going to be a producer. Jake was not a producer in a sense of developing the script but when things started to ramp up and hire department heads I would always tell him who we were hiring and if he had objection I would listen to him. Jake was intimately involved in the casting of the characters particularly Riz Ahmed’s [The Reluctant Fundamentalist] part. We auditioned over 70 actors before we found Riz and Jake was there for many of those auditions.”
“Two months before the movie Jake and I talked about what the character might look like,” states Dan Gilroy. “We had the idea of the symbolic image of a coyote because in the middle of Los Angeles they have a perpetually lean look.” The lead actor decided to lose weight for the role. “Jake got to 20 pounds down and I loved it. It was a bit of a political football. The dailies looked bizarre and frighten some people. Once we shot the first two days we were committed and what was amazing to me Jake would ride or run 10 to 15 miles to the set. Why? I don’t know. But then he would eat kale and work for 15 hours. I don’t know how Jake sustained himself in getting through but he kept to it.” Gilroy observes, “Jake is terrified of doing something that doesn’t challenge him. Jake talked about his character in Prisoners [2013] and what he did. It was my understanding it was his idea to have the Cyrillic tattoo, to button his shirt and to have an eye twitch. I have to tell you as a director when your actor comes up and say, ‘I’m going to have an eye twitch.’ Your first instinct is, ‘Dear God no!’ The studio is going, ‘Jake’s not going to have a Goddamn eye twitch in this movie!’ But when you go back to the movie those eye twitches to me bring that character in Prisoners to life.”
“Shooting at night in L.A. was better than during the day because there’s no traffic,” observes Dan Gilroy. “We had 80 locations and there were many nights where we had double moves. I’m talking about moving 150 people with a caravan of trucks that stretches a quarter of a mile.” Police helicopters flying overhead and stray dogs were encountered. It’s the reverse to what you find during the day. When the sun starts going down you start to have a heart attack but for us it was when the birds started chirping. I was like, ‘Dawn is 30 minutes away and we have two pages left to shoot!’ The scene where Jake runs down the driveway with Riz and says, ‘You should do this.’ Birds were chirping. Papers were being delivered. I thought, ‘Oh, my God! It’s over. The homeowners were going to kick us out because we spread blood all over their white carpet.” A high speed car chase involving multiple vehicles brings the crime noir thriller to a dramatic conclusion. “For a lot of films when you get to the action sequences it has become so complex and there are so many different technologies at your disposal that most directors don’t handle that kind of stuff. I gave Mike Smith [Second Unit Director] my vision of what was going on but the execution of it was Mike and his team; he literally brought some of the best stunt drivers in world. Those police cars are being driven by strange talented people, like the ice driving champion of Sweden.”
“I never wanted to put any moral label on the character,” explains Dan Gilroy. “Because I feel any morality a filmmaker puts on a character limits the audience’s ability to decide what they feel the morality of the character should be. I never wanted to put any morality on the character of Nina [Rene Russo] or news in general. Lou is a cog in a much larger world that has more complex issues and problems. In terms of the modulation of the character we wanted the acts to speak for themselves. They are reprehensible things that he does and we felt that they speak for themselves. We felt that we could counterpoint that with the personality that Lou projects. The idea that he is a personable well groomed respectful young man who you could pass in the hallway of your workplace and think, ‘There’s great hope for the world.’” Lou Bloom is ruthless and calculating. “I don’t know if Lou could pick up a gun and kill somebody but he has no problem indirectly killing somebody.” Nightcrawler is firmly entrenched in current times. “There does seem to be some undercurrent of filmmakers trying to portray the world that we’re living in and America is going through a lot of changes right now.” As for what he would like to achieve with his directorial debut, Gilroy remarks, “For people to find some personal meaning that is relevant to them.”
Nightcrawler images courtesy of Elevation Pictures.
Many thanks to Dan Gilroy for taking the time for this interview.
To learn more make sure to visit the official website for Nightcrawler.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
