Words matter. These are the best Dan Gilroy Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
One of the things about the ’70s films I love – the films ‘Nightcrawler’ is being compared to, like, ‘Taxi Driver’ – is that they never put their flawed characters into any one box.
When an accident or a crime happens, there’s a period of time before the yellow tape goes up, before the official response becomes formalized. That allows the nightcrawlers to get very close.
I think Los Angeles is often portrayed as kind of a petri dish, where bad decisions start and then spread to the rest of the world. I don’t see it that way. I feel Los Angeles is a place of almost primal struggle and survival. It’s not a city that embraces its inhabitants.
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.
Has Werner Herzog ever said anything that wasn’t true? What a brilliant fountain of wisdom. Everything he touches I’m just fascinated by.
I watch a lot of television, for better or worse, and I am particularly interested in what Michael Moore brought up in ‘Bowling for Columbine,’ which is the idea that they’re selling a narrative of fear.
‘To Die For,’ with Nicole Kidman, is great – her desire to be a part of news, how she uses news to further her career and how it can drive you insane. I love that movie.
When I’m writing, I’m trying to access my subconscious and turn off my conscious brain. I use my conscious for research, but when I’m actually writing, I’m trying to get into a place where I’m tapping into the deeper, darker elements of what’s going on.
I had written a script called ‘Freed,’ which I had wanted to direct.
It’s the reality: film is a director’s medium, and, ultimately, they are the ones that are in charge, and you have to respect that because somebody has to be in charge. But, yeah, you do reach a point where you want to have your voice come out.
A sociopath is just a label and doesn’t encompass the entire being of a person.
A lot of times, L.A. is desaturated, and cement and freeways, and downtown.
I moved to L.A. and watched a lot of local television news, and I started to see the burn logos up on the upper right hand corner – On-Scene Video, RMG Media Group, and all these other ones. I just became intrigued with it.
I have a strong desire to communicate what I feel about the world. That’s exciting to me.
There are a lot of sociopaths running around who are probably our friends, if not us, and we don’t know it.
A script like ‘Nightcrawler’ gives me an opportunity to truly realize a vision that’s mine, which is exciting.
News has become entertainment. Once that happens, a whole series of horrific events start to happen, whether it’s the lack of dissemination of something that can inform you or something that actually negatively impacts society.
I think there is an enormous sea change happening in the global workforce. It has a lot to do with globalization. I think that people used to have a hope for a career or meaningful employment, and its been reduced to internships, part-time work or just grossly underpaid work.
All of us have a bit of a sociopath inside of us, and it’s wrong to think that somebody is just clearly sociopathic, because they’re not. It’s interesting to explore the shadings and nuances within a person. Those feelings exist within more human beings than people may want to acknowledge.
I think a first-time director always has to convince a lot of people that they’re ready to do it.
In Los Angeles, you drive around, and you’re coming back from a club or something, and all of a sudden, you’ll encounter a coyote. And they’re very lean, hungry-looking animals.
My screenwriting credits in my career are probably not dissimilar to some other ones in the sense that a lot of the scripts you write don’t get made, and the ones that do get made are certainly – as a writer, they’re not your vision.
I find Los Angeles to be a place of great physical beauty, in which you have the oceans and the mountains, and there’s a vertical sense and a desert light that you can see forever.
Shooting at night in Los Angeles is amazing. The city shuts down at 10 P.M. every night, and a whole different cast of characters comes out.
The real reason why people are going with digital is that it’s extraordinarily mobile, and it’s cheaper, and it has a great image, and you just can’t beat it at night. It’s pulling in variations of colors; it’s pulling in lights from 40 miles away – a candle would be seen.
I think there’s a connection with ‘Nightcrawler’ and ‘Blowup’ and other films where visual imagery is integral to the story. It allows you to play with images.
I’m an enormous Tim Burton fan.
A number of years ago, I found a book of photography by Weegee; he was a crime photographer in the 1930s in New York. He was the first person to put a police scanner in a car and drive around.
Media is extraordinarily important and is an extraordinarily powerful tool. There’s a reason that the first things that a rebellion or revolt will take is the media. The story you transmit is the story that becomes a given, or the narrative of a country and people.
Coming out of the ’60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the ’70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films.
Everything I’ve ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.
When I’m directing, I noticed I’m not using my subconscious at all. I’m literally using the whole front part of my brain all the time. When you walk on the set, every moment you have to be there because something’s going on that requires attention.
The smorgasbord of images now presented to us is getting bloodier. They’re becoming more frequent – almost hourly.
We rely on editors of blogs or websites and television stations to supply us these images, and the filter is becoming very thin and very porous. The ratings race for TV and websites is incredibly fierce, and one of the ways of getting people to watch is through graphic violent images.
The spirit of L.A. is untamed wilderness. It’s earthquakes and wildfires and oceans and mountain lions and fog. There’s great physical beauty.
