Am I The Only One?

This was a crime/drama/thriller. However, if you want a film that fits nicely in a traditional Hollywood narrative then there are about hundred thousand other titles where good triumphs over evil and sre completely unrealistic.

Not so much capitalism, but consumerism... Yes, capitalism and free market economy and consumerism are tied together. But this film does not critique this aspect at all. It is more concerned with human behavior, specifically how a sociopath can exist undetected and actually thrive thanks to his lack of compassion or basic decency towards other people... Anyway, capitalism is not on display here. This is a story of a deranged man, enabled by our devolved society.

Every scene in Nightcrawler is ultimately a transaction. I’m very interested in the economic aspects of it, what it says about capitalism. I believe that Lou moves through a landscape of a world of transactions. I believe that’s the world we’re increasingly living in. I believe it’s a much more dog-eat-dog world. I believe that people are much more aware that whatever safety net we thought was there is really not there. What used to be a domestic competition is now a global competition. People are willing to do your job for a fraction of what you do.

I believe that Lou is representative of our times. And I believe the Lous are increasingly being rewarded… If you came back ten years in the film, Lou would probably be running a major company. I feel a lot of the people in the boardroom have sociopathic behavior and are being rewarded for it. They are making choices that are affecting tens of thousands of people’s lives. They are putting people out on the street… What Lou does would serve him very well in the boardroom… He’s an uber-capitalist. He’s a hyper-capitalist… The thing about hyper-capitalism is that everything becomes bottom line. Hyper-capitalism to me almost becomes the jungle. It’s the strong will consume the weak.

Interviewer: What I love about Lou is that he feels like if you shoved the Great Gatsby under a rock and just fed him self-help books and other forms of bullsh t for 50 years, and then saw what crawled out. Where did that whole “achiever” element of Lou’s personality come from?

Gilroy: I had heard about the nightcrawling world, and I’m very aware that there are tens of millions of young people around the world who are facing bleak employment prospects. Italy has 45% unemployment under 30 — it’s insane. So [I was exploring] idea of a desperate younger person looking for work.

I started [sic] to think of the anti-hero; I think you have to be careful and aware that you don’t want it to be a reductive study of psycho-babble. You are looking for something more. You want the audience to connect in a way that goes beyond a just sort of a pathological study. The idea of a character who had an implied back story of abuse and abandonments; I pictured him alone as a child, and all he had was his computer and he was going on his computer a lot surfing — this is the back story. And in his desperate loneliness and probably raging insanity, the precepts of capitalism became a religion to him. If you only had [one] direction to climb, which is up, then to have a goal would give sanity. I imagine he started to scour the internet for self-help maxims and aphorisms, and Forbes 500 corporate-HR manual speak. I believe he’s an uber-capitalist, and capitalism is a religion, it’s a religion that gives him sanity and which ultimately drives him insane and pushes him over the edge. It’s [sic] a mindless pursuit of a goal that can never be achieved. That ultimately leaves only a hunger, which goes back to the coyote — this perpetual hunger that can never be satiated.

The whole Zen thing of that wanting is to suffer, which capitalism never seems to get, because all capitalism is wanting.

It’s the perpetual spirit of poverty. I don’t know another system other than capitalism, maybe some mixed socialism thing. I wouldn’t want to hazard what the better system was, but I think we’re entering into this period of hyper free-market [capitalism] that’s becoming very much like the jungle, in which it is acceptable that the weak perish at the hands of the strong, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. And I feel like the world as I see it — and this is a personal film on a lot of levels — has been reduced to transactions, and that Lou thrives in that world because that’s the only thing that has any relevance to him. And we approach it as a success story of a guy who is looking for work at the beginning and is the owner of a successful business at the end, and the reason I approach it that way is because I didn’t want at the end for the audience at to go, "oh, the problem is this psychopath!” I wanted the audience to go “maybe the problem is the world that created and rewards this character.” Maybe it’s a larger question.

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When capitalism becomes dog eat dog, the problem is a) who wants to be a dog? And b) who wants to eat one?

Right, you’re going to be one or the other. And Lou is someone who has made peace with it and understands it and has no emotional attachment to thwart him or to slow him down. I find much of my energy in a day is worrying about people I love or myself. I wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and find myself worrying about myself and friends and stuff and people I’ve encountered. Lou is unencumbered by that, and it gives him great ability to focus in and hunt.

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... And if you were wrong about the bottom line being the only thing that's important, you wouldn't be being rewarded.

I believe — and when I was writing this film, I firmly believed — that if you came back in 10 years, Lou would be running a multi-million dollar, multi-national corporation. Lou would do better in comparison between himself and a corporate head who broke the company apart and put 40,000 people out of work and then went off to build an 8,000-foot square home and wound up on the cover of BusinessWeek Magazine...

... For increasing shareholder value.

These attributes are celebrated, and I believe Lou is a small fish compared to other people. And I believe Lou will [sic] do well and thrive when the movie ends.

It's the reverse of a canary in a coal mine: The better he does, the worse trouble we're in.

Absolutely. I believe it's only the stupid sociopaths that are caught, and I believe most sociopaths are insanely brilliant in deciphering what human cues need to be manipulated, and the sociopaths know people like lions know gazelles; they know every weakness, they know every smell, they know every element that can be manipulated... and Lou understands people and knows how to do that.

I love dark movies, those are usually my favorite type of film. I will give Nightcrawler this, I wasn't bored, I was interested enough in the story that the film flew by it's running time.

I thought Jake gave a solid performance as well, I was so impressed with Gyllenhaal in Prisoners which I thought was a great film, definitely recommended if you haven't seen it yet. Never go by the Academy, even though I liked Crash, it surely wasn't the Best Picture of that year and the fact that Eddie Redmayne won over Keaton this year was ludicrous especially if you seen Redmayne's performance in Jupiter Ascending. Keaton was fantastic in Birdman.