This role has "Oscar" written all over it: prolific actor Jake Gyllenhaal has taken on another intense part, this time as nighttime video producer Louis Bloom in "Nightcrawler." In more plain language, he's an ambulance chaser, trying to get the most salacious, bloody stories on camera before anyone else so he can sell the footage to news stations.
Sounds grim, doesn't it? Moviefone Canada caught up with Gyllenhaal at the Toronto Film Festival to pick his brain about Bloom, his relationship with director Dan Gilroy, and whether or not that mirror punch in the trailer was planned.
Moviefone Canada: A nighttime video production freelancer. Such a random character, but a poignant one.
Jake Gyllenhaal: I did a lot of research in that world. To me, it's so much about how we've created this person, how he's really our creation. All day, people have given him different names - "creepy," "sociopath," names like that ... the reason I wanted to do the movie is so I could explore a part of myself, a piece of myself that is like this guy. Dan [Gilroy, the director] puts forth this character so we can all face some piece of ourselves that's fascinated with tragedy.
Your working relationship with Dan was great, right?
He was a fearless collaborator. The ideas came, and he would say no to a lot of them, but he knew when something good came up. I memorized the whole movie like a play, because I knew we were shooting in 25 days, and if I wasn't agile with those soliloquies, we were going to be f**ked. When we were on a set-up, I asked Dan if I could do the monologues into camera; in different locations, he would point the camera at me and I'd do the speeches into the camera. Later on, he would cut them together and used them to market the movie - you can see it in a few of the trailers. Dan encouraged [those kinds of suggestions] all the time.
I was like, "What if I put my hair up?" And he was like, "Do it! Do it!" [Laughs] And he also liked my facial twitches in "Prisoners" - he kept saying, "It's so cool." He wasn't afraid to encourage me, and he didn't push down ideas because of ego. He's so thoughtful.
That mirror punch that we see in the trailer wasn't planned, was it?
No. There were multiple takes on each scene, where I tried different approaches and tones. We did many different variations of emotions, because you never knew where this guy was going. We couldn't map it out and say "Let's explore this!" since we only had 25 days. It was like that the whole time.
Your character is interesting because you're sort of likable, but also absolutely unlikable.
When Nina [Rene Russo] screams at him in the office, his parent, his God, his ... whatever it is, it's delivering success. So when he can't deliver, it's sadness for him. It's not connected to human interaction, it's connected to this idea. He goes home and smashes the mirror. He doesn't know how to express that thing. So then he goes and sets out to f**k things up.
How do you feel about nightcrawling as a career - like filming death scenes and accidents?
I did a lot of research for "End of Watch," studying police officers on the street and on their beats. There were a number of times where I would see the stringers on the scenes. Their worlds are fascinating - so many scanners in their cars. They have the San Bernadino fire department, the LA fire department, every county on every scanner, and then you're scanning your scanners. They have station points. I thought it was extraordinary. They're searching for the worst possible thing.
"Nightcrawler" opens in theatres on October 31.
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