Fantastic Fest 2014: Interview with NIGHTCRAWLER Director Dan Gilroy

While I was covering Fantastic Fest in Austin, I was able to sit down with the writer and director of NIGHTCRAWLER, Dan Gilroy. Even though he worked on films like REAL STEEL, THE FALL, and THE BOURNE LEGACY, this is his directorial debut. You can read my full review of the film HERE. Below you can find my interview with Dan Gilroy where he goes into how he views LA, what some of the important themes in the movie are, and what he thinks of sex in movies.

The idea of entrepreneurship and “bad business” is a central theme in NIGHTCRAWLER. Do you see the film as a movie with a message and if so did the message change or evolve as you developed the script?

I wrote the film to be engaging and entertaining but it does have a theme and it does have messages. I think, in a meta sense, the largest theme is that it could be seen as an indictment of capitalism but I say that knowing that there isn’t another system that I’m aware of that works better than capitalism. But I believe no systems work in a vacuum and capitalism has transformed like all systems. I think we have reached a place where it’s become “dream capitalism.” I think Lou (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a young man who has been abandoned into a world built upon transactions, where everything is dependant on the bottom line. Apart from the fact that he exceeds at what he does. The fact that he does succeed proves the horror of the world that he lives in. The world has created this character and rewards this character, and when the world is reduced to just transactions than there really isn’t much of a place for the human spirit anymore. Respect for people has gone. Some of that hopefully comes through when you have a film that has a lot of darkness and kinetic violent energy to it. That was one of the largest themes.

The character of Lou sprung from me thinking about 10 of millions young people around the world who are faced with very bleak career prospects because of the global economy. I come from a different generation. When I grew up, steady work and health insurance was commonplace. I’m very aware that people now are faced with job situations that feel very insecure. I took the initial concept of the character as someone looking for work and was desperate for a job. So again, it goes back to the economics of the world. In fact, structurally, every scene in the film is a transaction. Something is being negotiated in every scene of the film.

It feels at times like he’s hosting an infomercial because he’s selling himself as a product.

He’s selling himself as a product and he’s driven like a shark to succeed. He’s an uber-capitalist. Again, I don’t necessarily see this as an indictment of capitalism. We were trying in every way to present something that was objectively true. Whether it was the larger landscape that Lou is moving through or even the landscape of the local television news, you can also look at that as an indictment. But we did a tremendous amount of research and we never tried cinematically to present something with any moral judgment. We just wanted to objectively present it. Jake and I and the rest of the crew never wanted to give answers, we just wanted to raise questions. By the end of the film I think you are asking even more questions about the character of Lou than when the film began. We don’t really give answers like you typically see in films: this is the character’s backstory, this is what he is thinking, and in the end this is how you should be feeling about the character. I think we broke a lot of narrative rules in that way.

I was curious because early on in the film, you setup the scene between Lou and a security guard where he steals the guard’s watch. The image of the watch is shown several times throughout the movie. It becomes a symbol for where Lou got started. The other thing that is shown a lot is Lou’s sunglasses. He especially wears them a lot during the day. I didn’t know if the sunglasses were meant to be the same sort of object as the watch, where he might have stole them from someone before the film starts – especially since they are nicer sunglasses.

The watch is interesting because the character just acquires things. Sort of like a bird. Crows go around and take shiny objects and when you go into their nests there’s this collection of shiny little things. We looked at the watch as just a shiny object that caught his eye like he was a child. So we saw the watch as something very particular. The glasses were Jake’s idea. Just like losing the weight and the longer hair, one day he came to me and said, “I’m thinking about wearing sunglasses.” I liked the idea because we always looked at him like a nocturnal animal. He doesn’t like daylight. Like he’s Dracula. We liked it for that reason, but if someone read into that differently that’s great.

There has been several films that have spotlighted LA at night that the list can go on and on. Was there something in particular that you wanted to do with NIGHTCRAWLER to distinguish it from those other films?

Very much so. I moved to LA from New York and I find LA to be a physically beautiful place. You have the desert air. You have the mountains with snow on them. The ocean is a really bright blue. You come up to LA from the valley and you can see for miles. I don’t often feel it is represented as beautiful. Cinematically it is often shown as cement, freeways, and downtown. Robert Elswit, our DP, also lives in LA. Robert and I both wanted to show Los Angeles as a physical beauty. I say that even though we often show it at night where it’s dark, and I know that it often doesn’t look like we are presenting LA at night. But I feel like the LA at night we showed you can see far. We had a lot of deep focus and wide angles. We tried to present the landscape like a wildlife documentary. These wildlife documentaries are always so beautiful. So we wanted to present LA in a beautiful while adding an element to Lou’s hunting spirit. I see Los Angeles as a place of survival. You’re on your own in a lot of ways. It’s a little bit like a wilderness.

I’ve been to LA a few times and it always feels so spread out in person. In the film, you never see Lou drive for hours. You always show Lou drive around in small neighborhoods or side streets. The world of LA doesn’t seem as massive. It feels rather compact.

We avoided freeways for the most part. We never shot downtown. We were always looking for streets that had bends or curves. Robert and I talked about how if we were in the car on a straightway you would see what’s in front of you and it wouldn’t be as suspenseful. If you were going around a curve we thought you would be curious what was around the corner. We shot a lot around Mulholland Dr. We shot around curves. Going down Laurel Canyon. Always giving you the sense of what’s around the next curve. That was a conscience choice cinematically. We also looked for locations that made you go up or down. In movies you’re always on a freeway. We wanted to avoid that.

The film feels like a two-part story. The first half is Lou learning about this world and then the film has an almost second act change when he enters the house of the crime-scene. Did you imagine it as a two-part story?

I didn’t write as a two-part story but I do see it as a success story. A lot of success stories have a moment where the character has a transformative moment where the man or woman suddenly realizes something, and then they suddenly take off and fly. The transformation moment in NIGHTCRAWLER is a very dark moment where in most films that moment is light and is a celebration of the human spirit. We’re the opposite. I never wrote it as a two-part structure but I did know that the character was going to find his dark wings and fly.

One of the story elements that you were very careful to show on screen is the relationship between Jake Gyllenhaal’s character and Rene Russo’s. Rene Russo is so good in the film and the scenes between the two of them are all fantastic. It’s interesting that you allude to a sexual side to their relationship but you don’t explicitly show it. Can you talk about the restraint of not showing that fully?

It’s an unusual relationship because obviously there’s a large age difference. It’s not uncommon to see the reverse where the man is older and the woman is younger. When I wrote the script we had early financiers that insisted I shoot a sex scene between them. And I said “no.” I insisted that there was nothing that I can show you that is more interesting than what you are imagining. Because it’s such an unusual relationship and Lou is so aggressive and she is aggressive in her own way and yet still passive that whatever you can imagine is far more interesting than anything we could show. Plus, to be honest, I find watching sex scenes in films boring. It’s interesting in real life. But I find it boring. I was not inclined to show anything.

I think also showing them in the softness of the bedroom it would make these two dynamic individuals appear weaker.

I think audiences are much more savvy than studios give them credit for. Studios want to show too much and explain everything. I think audiences are dying. Engage them and let their own imaginations kick in. Like for instance, we don’t tell where Lou is from. We don’t give any backstory. We imply he’s abused and abandoned, but at the end of the day I think audiences need to come up with their own story. The film should engage them to have a dialogue with the movie.

You learn about Lou through his actions. Not through a huge narrative dump.

Exactly. Don’t explain everything. Unfortunately when you work in the studio system you don’t have that opportunity. They want you to explain everything. They insist that you do. So for me, this is like a break from the factory.

Everyone is struggling to survive in this film. Gyllenhaal, Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed as Rick.

That’s the way I see the world right now. This is a personal film for me. I see the world as a very limited opportunity, limited resource place. Maybe people don’t see it as so bleak or hard as I see it as. It just feels that way to me. I feel the people that are younger are bearing the brunt of it rather than people that are older. The thing is that when you are younger you are trying to make a mark and there’s an added imperative to push yourself. To justify your existence and so that people think of you a certain way. There’s an added pressure so you may not see the moral line that you might have otherwise seen under different circumstances. That’s why I wrote the film.

I want to thank Dan Gilroy for sitting down and talking with me about his exciting new film, and also for the cool poster (that was exclusive to Fantastic Fest) that he signed for me that you can see below.

NIGHTCRAWLER is out in theaters this Friday, October 31.