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NIGHTCRAWLER
CONTENT NIGHTCRAWLing
A few years ago I heard
about these people called
‘nightcrawlers’, who’d
drive around Los Angeles at night at
100mph with these scanners going.
Just as a screenwriter, I thought,
‘That’s a really interesting world,’ but
I didn’t exactly know what to do with
it,” says Dan Gilroy.
“It was part of an idea. For me,
ideas come piecemeal; they don’t
come fully formed, and I didn’t know
what to do with it until I thought of
the character to plug into it, which
was Lou.
“Once that character plugged into
the world, it was like two parts of an
atom that fit together, and suddenly
it just made total sense to me and I knew what I
wanted to do with the world and the character.”
The result is Nightcrawler and the central,
unforgettable character is Lou (played brilliantly
by Jake Gyllenhaal), an ambitious young
man who wants to succeed and live the
American dream – even if it means filming
other people’s nightmares.
When Lou chances across a freeway accident
and sees a veteran nightcrawler, Joe Loder (Bill
Paxton), filming the police attempts to rescue
the trapped and injured driver, he’s intrigued
and fascinated. He quizzes Loder about
how much he makes from selling the
footage to the local news channels and
immediately decides that he’s found
his calling. Lou steals a bicycle and
exchanges it for a video camera and
sets out to become a nightcrawler.
Before filming, Gilroy,
Gyllenhaal and director
of photography Robert
Elswit, spent time with real
nightcrawlers on the streets of
Los Angeles after dark.
It provided invaluable insight
into the world they were about
to portray.
“It was bloodcurdling,” he
says. “The first call we went to
was a horrific car crash in which
three girls had been ejected from a car after
hitting a wall head on. I’ve got to be honest: I
don’t think I’ll ever get that image
out of my head.
“I think Jake and Robert and I were rather
stunned, watching it, but the gentleman
who filmed it very professionally got out
of the car, shot the footage, edited the
footage within five minutes, downloaded
it, and sold it to a number of
television stations.
“Now, the gentleman who
does this, I don’t judge him,
and actually he’s become a
friend of mine. He and the
other people who do this
very much see themselves
as providing a service, and
they legitimately
providing
service. In
eir minds
e stories
that they’re filming become the lead
stories on local Los Angeles news,
so if there’s a demand to watch this,
who am I to judge them? Or to say
what they’re doing is wrong?
“Obviously Lou’s character
crosses the line at certain points and
drifts into a world that’s amoral,
but I never wanted to portray them
or the news media or even Lou’s
character in that way.
“I never wanted to put a moral
label on it and say, ‘This is wrong.’
I think once a filmmaker applies
immorality to something it stops the
viewers from being able to make a
decision for themselves.
“We wanted to create as realistic a
portrayal as possible of this little niche
market and the Los Angeles media world and
let people decide for themselves who the
villain is and what the issues are.”
Working with Gyllenhaal was an “intense”
and deeply rewarding collaboration, Gilroy says.
The actor lost 30lbs to play the role because
he wanted Lou to have a gaunt, hungry look
as befitting a down at heel drifter who is
desperate to succeed.
“[Jake] respected the script and not one word
got changed. He approached it like a play, so I was
extraordinarily happy to work with him because
he respected the work, and I wanted to respect
his ability to come in and breathe life into it in a
way that I was not capable of. As an example,
the weight loss – that was Jake’s idea.”
He wrote the part of Nina Romina, theTV news
boss who encourages Lou to bring her more
and more exclusive, edgy footage, with his wife,
actress Rene Russo, in mind.
“I wrote the part for her because I always
saw Nina as somebody who had a really tough
exterior. Just like we were always trying to find
the human side of Lou; I always wanted to find
the human side of Nina."
Nightcrawler marks Gilroy’s debut as a director.
His previous credits as a writer include Freejack,
The Fall, Two for the Money, Real Steel and
The Bourne Legacy.
We wanted to create as
realistic a portrayal as possible
of this little niche market...
When Dan Gilroy first heard about the murky, nocturnal world of freelance news reporters
– theTV version of paparazzi who are armed with video cameras and nicknamed ‘nightcrawlers’ –
who race to the scene of murders, car crashes and fires to film footage for news programmes,
he knew instinctively that it was fertile ground for a film.