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get to what happened, you suddenly realise
that there’s five dead people in a crash on
the other lane, and everybody is slowing
down to look at what’s going on, I tell
myself, ‘Don’t look. Don’t become part of
the problem.’ Sometimes I succeed and
sometimes I don’t. I would hope that when
people watch the movie, they think, and
they become a little self-aware – ‘why do
I watch this? Not that I shouldn’t watch it
or should watch it’ – but just to be aware
of the world that we live in is, I think, my
biggest hope.
Do you thinkTV news is really pushing
boundaries in the way that Rene’s
character does?
I’ll give you a very clear example. In
Los Angeles, as you know, it’s the car
chase capital of the world. In local news,
there’s a six second delay, because people
sometimes get shot, and theoretically
there’s an ethic in local TV news that
they’re not going to show that. Well, lo
and behold, in the last few years, twice,
the delay hasn’t worked, and so you’re
watching someone get executed on TV.
You watch that and you start to go, ‘Well
somebody’s going to come up with the idea
of, ‘What the hell do we need a delay for?
Because the ratings are going through the
roof when we show the execution.’ With
the FCC, the fines are not so substantial
that you wouldn’t make that decision.
Should they raise the fines?
I’m so loath to propose a solution. I really
only want to try to present an accurate
portrayal of what’s going on. I have my
own opinion of what’s going on but people
should study it. People should talk about it
and think about it.
Do you see this as relating to the recent
ISIS executions, and the availability of
those videos?
Absolutely. I draw the line there, for
myself. I can’t watch that. I do not want
to have that in my head. There’s certain
things that I just can’t watch, like that
crash, I still can’t forget that night. But
yeah, there are many people who are very
much drawn to that. People say, ‘Violent
films instil violence in society.’ I don’t know
if that’s true. I don’t know if watching these
images makes people more desensitised
or not – I’m not sure. I don’t think, as a
society, it is healthy for us to be consuming
these clips and images at the level we’re
consuming it, but it’s like fast food. I hate
to be pontificating here, but you could look
at the people who purvey fast food and say,
‘These are criminals; they’re making all of
us unhealthy,’ but we want to eat fast food,
so who’s the villain?
Is
Nightcrawler
commenting on the lack
of privacy?
Well it’s not dissimilar to TMZ and what
the paparazzi do. What Lou does is really
the news version of what paparazzi do for
entertainment, and I think the line gets very
blurred in there. With that kind of coverage
people can get hurt. People can get killed,
and then you film it.
Lou seems to represent millions of
unemployed young people, who are
increasingly asked to go further and
further to prove their value.
You’ve absolutely nailed the genesis of
the character. I’m very aware that there are
tens of millions of young people around
the world who are unemployed, whether
it’s globalisation or corporatisation, or
whatever you want to call it. Young people
just have very little hope of meaningful
careers. It’s internships that don’t pan out,
it’s no health insurance, and I’m very aware
of that. I started with Lou as a character
who desperately wanted work, and he
gives a speech to the salvage yard owner
early on, and in the self-help world of the
unemployed, that’s called an ‘elevator
speech’. The reason it’s called that is, some
day you may find yourself in an elevator
with someone who can give you a job, so
you should be able to sell yourself in 30
seconds. Lou wanted the salvage yard job.
That would have been a great job for him.
He’s not out to hurt people. He’s just a
desperate young man, and there are many
desperate young people out there who are
being forced, I think, to make decisions and
take jobs that they normally wouldn’t.
In many ways, this is a success story. Are
you criticising a world in which Lou can
be rewarded for this kind of work?
You could look at it as a criticism, but I
actually tried to make an objective portrayal
of what I believe to be true. I feel that if
you came back at the end of ten years, Lou
would be the owner of a major corporation.
I believe that many people who rise to
the head of multinational corporations
make decisions that are far worse than
anything that Lou does, and Lou will be
well equipped to survive in that world.
When you can take the pensions away
from 40,000 people, and then go and buy
a 400-foot yacht that, to me, is far more
criminal than anything that Lou does. Lou
will be well served, from his experience
night-crawling, in the corporate boardroom,
and he will thrive. For better or for worse –
and I guess you could call it criticism – but I
tried to portray what I believe to be true.
How did you create the specific
language that Lou uses?
Once I came up with the idea that
he was socially maladjusted – probably
somewhere on the spectrum of Asperger’s
or autism, if you were going to diagnose
him – and abandoned, and that he didn’t
have any emotional support, I thought that
the internet was really his family, and so
everything he says is off the internet. It’s
all things he’s memorised and recites back
when he thinks it’s appropriate, but it often
isn’t. Everything comes out just a couple of
degrees wrong, which is ultimately where
the humour comes from, because half the
stuff he says is absurd. There’s one line in
there at the end, when Rick is demanding
more money, and it’s all getting very tense.
Rick uses a curse word, he says ‘f***’,
with
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