Before Dan Gilroy set off to direct Nightcrawlers, he met a few real ones to understand what they did down to the last detail. He is grateful to Jake Gyllenhaal for agreeing to be a part of the movie and for approaching it seriously
Did you meet any real nightcrawlersIJ
Yes, Jake and I and Robert Elswit, our director of photography, went out a couple of nights with a guy named Howard Raishbrook, who was our technical advisor, and it was bloodcurdling. 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 four television stations. Now, the gentleman and others like him who does this see themselves as providing a service, and they legitimately are 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 themIJ Or to say what they’re doing is wrongIJ 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. My morality might be very different, and what I find important might be different from what your priorities are. 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.
Where does the demand for this coverage come fromIJ
It comes from us because statistically, as a race, humans seem to like to watch things that are graphic and gory. It probably goes back to Neanderthals watching a lion kill a gazelle, and saying, ‘Oh, there’s a bloody thing going on over there, that’s interesting.’ We seem to respond to watching violence. Maybe not all of us, but a lot of people do. look at the dilemma that Rene’s character is in as a news director. Her ratings are based on what she shows, and the more blood you show, the more ratings you’re going to get. I think my biggest hope, at the end of the film, is that people might say, ‘I am one of those people who watches those things on TV. That doesn’t make me a bad person, but what does that say about meIJ Why am strangely connected with louIJ Why do I find what he does interesting, and why am I not walking out of the theatre at this pointIJ Because what he’s doing is so reprehensIble. We really don’t judge him, and in fact, we go out of her way to celebrate what he does, or to legitimise what he does.
Do you think TV news is pushing boundaries like Rene’s character doesIJ
I’ll give you a very clear example. 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, in the last few years, twice, the delay hasn’t worked, and so you’re watching someone get executed on TV.
In many ways, this is a success story. Are you criticising a world in which lou can be rewarded for this kind of workIJ
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 have tried to portray what I believe to be true.
What were your conversations with Jake Gyllenhaal likeIJ
Very intense and very deep. I flew to Atlanta when he was shooting Prisoners to discuss the role with him. We had a dinner and we decided very early on that we were going to collaborate intensely, with a lot of rehearsal. I’m sort of a degenerate gambler and I just like taking risks. Jake is just utterly fearless and he wanted to try things. He respected the script, and not one word of the script 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.
What was the biggest challenge in making this movieIJ
We had 80 locations, and had only 28 days to shoot it. There were many times that we moved two different times in a night. You’re taking a 100 people and a line of vehicles that stretches almost a quarter mile, moving from one location at dead of night, and then you have to get to another location and shoot another three pages. The weird thing is, on most films, when you’re shooting outside on a tight budget, it’s usually when the sun goes down that you go, ‘Oh, that’s the end of the day.’ For us, it was when the sun came up. Once the birds started chirping, it was, ‘Oh, God! The sun is coming up. Just give us another five minutes of darkness.’ That was the hardest part.
Have the real night-crawlers seen the film yetIJ
Oh yeah, Howard saw it with his brothers and they loved it. They loved it because it was accurate. It was very important to them that it was accurate. They’ll say, ‘We don’t do that kind of stuff,’ but they wanted the police codes to be right, they wanted their jargons to be right. They said, ‘If we’re involved, it has to be real. You have to really show them what it’s like.’ It is utterly real.