note: Whiplash review coming tomorrow.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A Los Angeles drifter with big dreams finds himself drawn into the world of “nightcrawling,” a practice where independent videographers search out violent crimes and sell them to news shows.
About: Recently Jake Gyllenhaal left the giant Disney musical, Into The Woods, because funding for this film finally became available and he loved the script so much, he didn’t want to pass it up. I figure if someone’s passing up big studio money to do a small indie film, the script must be pretty great. Dan Gilroy is best known for writing The Bourne Legacy, The Fall, and Two For The Money.
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Details: 108 pages – 11/27/12 draft
Jake Gyllenhaal has been trying to break through into that A-list category for awhile now. But no matter what he does, he’s still stuck in that B – B+ category. Actors who can bring you 10-15 million on opening weekend, but not much more unless they’re paired up with a big actor. So how do you get onto that A-list? It’s simple. Find a great character. If you can find a great character and you nail the performance, the film stays in the theater longer, which leads to more accolades, which leads to more publicity, which leads to possible Oscar nominations. And all of a sudden, when that big new production needs a star, the first name on producers’ lips is… Jake Gyllenhaal!
Which is exactly why you want to write interesting unique characters. Every actor out there is dying to find that character that’s going to light up their career. Today’s script is a perfect example. Gyllenhaal actually left a film where they drape you in money just because of the Nightcrawler lead. That’s how rare these opportunities are and why actors jump when they get their chance because writers just don’t write enough juicy characters. And make no mistake, the role in Nightcrawler is about as juicy as they get.
20-something Louis “Lou” Bloom is like a lot of people in Los Angeles. He’s trying to become relevant. He’s trying to get a job. He’s trying to make money. He’s trying to find a place that doesn’t look like a janitor’s closet. The man is desperate to find a life of importance.
Lou is also… strange. You aren’t going to find an easy way to describe him but if pressed I’d say he’s an ambitious sleazy sociopathic hustler with a tinge of autism. He will steal your bike the second you turn away, then sell it to the bike store on the next corner with a load of bullshit so tall it’d dwarf the tallest hill in Hollywood.
Here’s a little taste of that action, where he’s trying to run up the price on the bike store owner who sees right through him: “This is a custom racing bicycle, ma’am, designed for competitive road cycling. This bike has a lightweight, space-age carbon frame and handlebars positioned to put the rider in a more aerodynamic posture. It also has micro-shifters and 37 gears and weighs under six pounds. I won the Tour de Mexico on this bike.” Bike Store Owner: “No bike has 37 gears.”
So one day, Lou happens upon a nasty car wreck where a young woman is stuck inside a burning vehicle. He notices a couple of independent videographers taping the ordeal. Armed with every cop radio frequency in town, it’s clear these guys race around to wherever bad shit is happening, tape it, then sell the footage to the news stations.
Fascinated, Lou buys himself his own video camera and starts doing the same. The big difference between Lou and his much more experienced competition is that Lou is, well, FUCKING CRAZY. He will drive 95 on side streets to make sure he gets to wherever the hell the action is first. This means he always gets the best footage, and he starts selling it to the news shows for big money, or one station in particular – K.S.M.L.
K.S.M.L. is in the gutter and therefore desperate. That means they’re willing to show crazier violence and pay more. Lou takes a particular interest in the director of K.S.M.L.’s news, Nina Romina. She’s twice his age but that’s just fine. Lou has a thing for older women. When she doesn’t show interest in him, Lou just uses his leverage: “You don’t want me [sexually], I don’t wanna give you the footage I found.” Nina knows Lou is her meal ticket and therefore, obliges Lou’s advances.
Eventually, however, the oven starts burning too hot. Sweeps is coming up and while Lou is still the best in the business, Romina needs something huge. It’s at this point that Lou realizes, if he’s going to find a story truly mind-blowing story, he can’t wait for the news to happen. He’s going to have to create it himself.
Man oh man oh man is Gilroy a good writer. This script just flew by. He’s one of the few writers who can be descriptive with barely any description at all.
LOS ANGELES
Shimmering in night heat… THRUM of civilization… a FREEWAY feeds into the city as a SEMI blasts by and CUT TO
A COYOTE
Loping across a RESIDENTIAL STREET in the hills… it stops under a street lamp… darting away and CUT TO
THE L.A. RIVER
For those of you who’ve read my book, you know one of the movies I broke down was Taxi Driver. But I almost didn’t include it. I thought to myself, people don’t write like this anymore. You can’t write Taxi Driver in this day and age, so what’s the point of using it as an example? I now realize I was wrong. You can write a movie like this. You just have to update it to a new time, to a new collective sensibility. You can still have a dark fucked up character running around a city doing dark questionable things, but it needs to be faster. It needs to have more pop. More energy! Enter “Nightcrawler.”
And, of course, if you’re going to write the next Taxi Driver, you gotta have your modern day Travis Bickle. Dan Gilroy found that character in Lou. This guy is just… I can’t even summarize him really. He’s that complex. There’s this moment that encapsulates him best where he basically blackmails Nina into giving him more of the action. However, there’s a detachedness to the way that he speaks, as if he both wants and doesn’t want what he’s asking for:
“Now I like you, Nina, I look forward to our time together, but you have to understand that 25,000 isn’t all that I want. From here on, starting now, I want my work to be credited by the anchors and on a burn. The name of my company is Video News Productions, a professional news gathering service. That’s how it should read and that’s how it should be said. I also want to go to the next rung and meet your team and the anchors and the director and the station manager, to begin developing my own personal relationships. I’d like to start meeting them this morning. You’ll take me around and you’ll introduce me as the owner and president of Video News and remind them of some of my many other stories. I’m not done. I also want to stop our discussions over prices. This will save time. So when I say a particular number is my lowest price, that is my lowest price and you can be sure I’ve arrived at whatever that number is very carefully. Now when I say I want these things I mean that I want them and I don’t want to have to ask again. And the last thing that I want, Nina, is for you to do the things I ask you to do when we’re alone together at your apartment, not like the last time.”
I mean, how are you NOT going to want to play that character if you’re an actor?
On top of the character stuff, this script is a great discussion companion for a previous article, The Six Types of Scripts Least Likely To Get You Noticed. One of those scripts I was trying to warn you away from was the coming-of-age story. However, I said if you refuse to listen and still want to write one, try to add a fresh angle to it. Don’t write the traditional coming-of-age story. Write something different.
Nightcrawler is exactly that. This is about a confused man who ends up finding his calling (coming-of-age). But he does it amongst a rocket-fast storyline and a unique subject matter we haven’t seen on screen before. Gilroy took a coming-of-age story and turned it into a thriller. If you are going to take chances and write stuff producers typically hate, the least you can do is that.
Gilroy did it and wrote a classic script in the process.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (TOP 25!)
[ ] genius
What I learned: Characters whose demeanor opposes their desire can be quite fascinating. Lou is desperate to move up, yet seems completely disinterested whenever discussing so. He’ll blackmail you, but do so without the slightest hint of emotion. In other words, if you have have a character ordering a hit, have him laughing while he does it. If you have a character who’s steaming mad, have him deliver his side of the argument with a smile. That contrast never quite fits when we’re watching it happen and is therefore always engaging to watch.
