{"id":202911,"date":"2021-03-15T23:16:03","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T20:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-man-who-inspired-nightcrawler-and-other-movies\/"},"modified":"2021-03-15T23:16:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T20:16:03","slug":"the-man-who-inspired-nightcrawler-and-other-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-man-who-inspired-nightcrawler-and-other-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"#The Man Who Inspired &#8216;Nightcrawler&#8217; (and Other Movies)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#The Man Who Inspired &#8216;Nightcrawler&#8217; (and Other <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Movies<\/a>)<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n                <\/aside>\n<p><!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 3.7.9-->\u201cIf it bleeds, it leads.\u201d That\u2019s the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>room mantra introducing <strong><em>Nightcrawler <\/em><\/strong>protagonist\u00a0Lou Bloom (<strong>Jake Gyllenhaal<\/strong>) to the cutthroat world of \u201cstringing,\u201d in which freelance videographers prowl LA\u2019s streets in search of grisly footage to sell to news stations.<\/p>\n<p>The phrase is a neat summation of the lurid priorities of news directors like Nina (<strong>Rene Russo<\/strong>), but by proxy, it\u2019s also an indictment of TV viewers who lap up such macabre scoops, hiking the ratings of stations like Nina\u2019s KWLA-6 and tacitly encouraging the ethical transgressions of people like Lou in the process. Although we never actually see the viewers who eat up KWLA-6\u2019s sensationalized broadcasts, the invisible thousands who make up the station\u2019s audience are always lurking outside of <i>Nightcrawler<\/i>\u2019s frame, their morbid interests implied in every scene.<\/p>\n<p>In marrying scathing <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a> commentary with sociopathic character study, <i>Nightcrawler<\/i> sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between the news, stringers like Lou, and our own voyeuristic impulses. The film\u2018s writer-director, <strong>Dan Gilroy<\/strong>, was inspired to bring these elements to a head by someone whose work <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2014\/11\/10\/rembrandt-lighting\">he placed<\/a>, like <em>Nightcrawler<\/em>, at the \u201cintersection of art and crime and commerce\u201d: the pioneering tabloid photographer <strong>Weegee<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>An unlikely celebrity, Weegee (born Usher Fellig) almost single-handedly launched stringing\u2019s profile with his sensational front-page photos of grisly crime scenes, fires, and car accidents in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. It\u2019s not hard to understand why Gilroy was so inspired by his work, or why Weegee\u2019s images endure while the news stories that originally accompanied them have largely faded into history. His freelance photos for New York tabloids went beyond simple reportage. By blending an arresting film noir aesthetic with gritty documentary realism, he could cast even the city\u2019s more run-of-the-mill incidents as sensational spectacle.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s electricity in Weegee\u2019s work. His use of a ginormous flash made it seem like his images were lit by lightning, explosive split-second bolts that exposed things you weren\u2019t supposed to see. He usually shot at night and favored high contrast, a combination that gives his unsparing photos the gut-punch impact and suggestiveness of Renaissance chiaroscuro. In photos of curb-side crime scenes like \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/on-the-spot-1\">On the Spot<\/a>,\u201d for example, the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/body-with-dead-on-arrival-tag-0\">blinding whites<\/a> of body sheets are set hard against the sordid blackness of bloodstains and creeping shadows. He had an eye for unearthing the theatrical in the everyday \u2014 many of his photos could easily serve as <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/henry-rosen-and-harvey-stemmer-arrested-for-bribing-brooklyn-college\">album<\/a> <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/charles-sodokoff-and-arthur-webber-using-their-top-hats-to-hide-their-faces\">covers<\/a> \u2014 just as he had a knack for identifying the ironic in the tragic (\u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/police-and-bystanders-with-body-of-stanley-sandler-a-passenger-in-an-3\">Joy of Living<\/a>\u201d, for example). Full of suggestion and drama, his best photos have a surreally cinematic quality; they look almost like entire movies condensed into a <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/police-and-bystanders-with-body-of-racketeer-joseph-little-joe-la-cava-new\">single frame<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Weegee rarely spared tabloid readers the graphic results of a murder or a crash, and it wasn\u2019t uncommon to see a bloodied face or a battered body in one of his photos. Often, though, he turned his Speed Graphic camera and uncompromising flash the other way, capturing with equal frankness the hungry stares of onlookers. Photos like \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/balcony-seats-at-a-murder-0\">Balcony Seats at a Murder<\/a>,\u201d \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/mannequin-murder-new-york\">Mannequin Murder<\/a>,\u201d and \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/artworks\/143616\/their-first-murder\">Their First Murder<\/a>\u201d aren\u2019t so much snapshots of crime scenes as they are portraits of voyeurism, the age-old human obsession with seeing.<\/p>\n<p><em>Nightcrawler<\/em> picks up that baton. Its unseen TV audiences are the modern equivalent of Weegee\u2019s rubberneckers, just as Lou is an updated, corrupted version of the photographer himself. Like his predecessor, Lou is a bootstr<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>er, energized by ambition and pressing economic need into making a living out of exposing the dark underbelly of his city. Gilroy\u2019s creation is almost constantly accompanied by the blare of his police scanner; Weegee, too, spent much of his time listening out for promising calls on his police radio, and he also kept a bell, synced with the Fire Department\u2019s alarm system, in the room he rented near police headquarters.<\/p>\n<p>Partway through <em>Nightcrawler<\/em>, Lou becomes so attuned to the rhythm of crime that he starts to beat the emergency services to crime scenes, Gilroy drawing here on Weegee\u2019s seemingly sixth-sense ability to get to incidents before anyone else (that is said to be how he earned his moniker, a phonetic derivative of \u201couija\u201d). The two men appear to share even the most specific of habits: in one scene, Lou abruptly gets out of his car to upload fresh footage onto the laptop he keeps in the trunk of his Dodge Challenger, giving a modern update to the myth that Weegee kept a makeshift darkroom in the back of his Chevrolet (this legend was perpetuated by <strong><em>The Public Eye<\/em><\/strong>, Howard Franklin\u2019s 1992 thriller loosely based on Weegee).<\/p>\n<p>It would be doing Weegee a disservice to neglect their differences, though. For one, while eccentric, by no accounts was Weegee a sociopath like\u00a0<i>Nightcrawler<\/i>\u2019s antihero. Lou\u2019s work also lacks the artistic sensibility that makes his forerunner\u2019s so enduring \u2014 Weegee\u2019s photo-book <strong><em>Naked City<\/em><\/strong> has <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.co.uk\/books\/edition\/Weegee_and_Naked_City\/MagwDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=0\">never been out of print<\/a> since it was published in 1945 \u2014 and he always opts to move in for the sensational shot rather than pull out for the poetic, as <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.getty.edu\/art\/collection\/objects\/36579\/weegee-arthur-fellig-simply-add-boiling-water-american-negative-december-19-1943-print-about-1950\/\">Weegee did<\/a>. And while Weegee did stretch the truth in some of his photos, rearranging a hat here and there or staging non-crime scene shots like \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/the-critic\">The Critic<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.getty.edu\/art\/collection\/objects\/36566\/weegee-arthur-fellig-heat-spell-children-sleeping-on-the-fire-escape-the-lower-east-side-american-may-23-1941\/\">Heat Spell<\/a>,\u201d he is never reported to have gone to the unscrupulous lengths Lou does to get his money shot.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Weegee\u2019s, Lou\u2019s work consciously hews to one very specific narrative: \u201curban crime creeping into the suburbs,\u201d as Nina puts it. Where Weegee might surreptitiously inject some compassion into his tabloid assignments \u2014 shooting sensitive images of the city\u2019s marginalized, like its <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icp.org\/browse\/archive\/objects\/man-arrested-for-cross-dressing-new-york-0\">LGBTQ residents<\/a>, for example \u2014 Lou\u2019s seedy shots of bullet-ridden white bodies in affluent neighborhoods are single-minded about what they suggest. In short, while Weegee\u2019s images could upend assumptions about his subjects and, in doing so, tell a truth about the city he worked in, Lou\u2019s never can because they exist purely to serve the racist agenda of broadcasts like those of KWLA-6.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-364181\" src=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/dr-strangelove.jpeg\" alt=\"Dr Strangelove\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/dr-strangelove.jpeg 800w, https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/dr-strangelove-768x432.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Although most famous for the work he produced in his home city, Weegee\u2019s influence extended out west to Lou\u2019s, too. Gilroy first came to know of Weegee through his smash-hit photo-book <em>Naked City<\/em>, the title of which was optioned by producer Mark Hellinger for <strong>Jules Dassin<\/strong>\u2019s 1948 classic film <strong><em>The Naked City<\/em><\/strong>. Based on a short story written by screenwriter <strong>Malvin Wald<\/strong>, Dassin\u2019s steadily-paced procedural doesn\u2019t share either the sensationalist bent of Weegee\u2019s tabloid work or his struck-by-lightening visual style.<\/p>\n<p>There is a less obvious parallel between the two, however. In portraying the police investigation of a model\u2019s murder, <em>The Naked City<\/em> features <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/n2NO9ttDlH0?t=2070\">several shots<\/a> of eager readers peering at tabloid front pages about the killing, as well as crowds of intrigued bystanders lingering outside crime scenes. As <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books\/about\/Flash_The_Making_of_Weegee_the_Famous.html?id=QvgxDwAAQBAJ&amp;redir_esc=y\">biographer Christopher Bonanos<\/a> points out, Weegee himself even makes an appearance in the first of these shots (he is most likely the cigar-smoking photographer who crosses paths with the police <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/n2NO9ttDlH0?t=540\">in this scene<\/a>). Just as do both Weegee\u2019s work and <em>Nightcrawler<\/em>, <em>The Naked City<\/em> interrogates our base voyeuristic impulse and lays bare its sustaining effect on tabloid journalism.<\/p>\n<p>Weegee\u2019s cameo in <em>The Naked City <\/em>came as a result of Hellinger hiring him to shoot production stills for the film. He performed a similar function on the set of <strong>Stanley Kubrick<\/strong>\u2019s <strong><em>Dr. Strangelove<\/em><\/strong>, although again, he left a mark on the film that went beyond that which he was hired for. Kubrick, who had been a press photographer in a previous life (he actually covered <em>The Naked City<\/em>\u2018s production <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.widewalls.ch\/magazine\/stanley-kubrick-photography-mcny\">for <em>Look<\/em> magazine<\/a>), was an admirer of Weegee\u2019s and brought him onto the set as a visual consultant and stills photographer. Weegee shot Kubrick and the cast at work in his characteristic noir style and even captured rare <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www2.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/news-bfi\/features\/rare-images-dr-strangelove-custard-pie-fight\">visual evidence<\/a> of the movie\u2019s canned ending: the infamous pie fight scene.<\/p>\n<p>A <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0yWn_8SUWtg\">1964 appearance<\/a> by<strong> Peter Sellers<\/strong> on <em>The Steve Allen Show<\/em> reveals Weegee\u2019s influence on the film in another way, this time unwitting. Sellers describes feeling \u201cstuck\u201d when it came to devising the speaking style for the German Doctor, the third character he plays in the film (after the English Captain and the American President). As he tells it, he found his answer in Weegee, whose distinctive voice Sellers had heard much of on set while filming his other parts. Weegee had a peculiarly strangled-sounding, Kermit-esque speaking style (you can hear him talk to Sellers <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/icphoto\/weegee-and-peter-sellers-2\">here<\/a>), which Sellers combined with a German accent to produce the Doctor\u2019s idiosyncratic voice, embedding a part of Weegee right into the heart of the film.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike <em>The Naked City<\/em>, Weegee never parlayed his presence on<em> Dr. Strangelove\u2019s <\/em>set into a cameo. His inadvertent impact on Sellers, however, extended his influence far beyond that of a split-second appearance and earned him a noteworthy place in Kubrick\u2019s satire forever. Though he may not have been around to play that kind of role in <em>Nightcrawler<\/em>\u2018s production, the influence he exerted over Gilroy\u2019s film reaches even deeper, proving that, over half a century later, the power and relevancy of Weegee and his work are still booming.\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/weegee-the-man-who-inspired-nightcrawler\/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=weegee-the-man-who-inspired-nightcrawler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#The Man Who Inspired &#8216;Nightcrawler&#8217; (and Other Movies)&#8221; \u201cIf it bleeds, it leads.\u201d That\u2019s the newsroom mantra introducing Nightcrawler protagonist\u00a0Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) to the cutthroat world of \u201cstringing,\u201d in which freelance videographers prowl LA\u2019s streets in search of grisly footage to sell to news stations. The phrase is a neat summation of the lurid&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":202912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Jake-Gyllenhaal-Nightcrawler.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[23156,97882,5378,97883,43784,67820],"class_list":["post-202911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-dan-gilroy","tag-dr-strangelove","tag-history","tag-jules-dassin","tag-nightcrawler","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}