STACK Magazine April 2015 Issue 126

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036 APRIL 2015 JB Hi-Fi
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NIGHTCRAWLin
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 a
service. In
their minds
the 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, the TV
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 – the
TV 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.