Dan Gilroy Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

Every film you're commissioned to write is all about an arc; usually, the arc is that the world creates a change in the character, usually for the better. To not have an arc, the messages and ideas in the film became more prominent.

I have a strong desire to communicate what I feel about the world. That's exciting to me.

'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.

I reached a point where I'd watched enough directors do the job that I felt I understood it. And it's not that I'm a slow learner and it took me this long; I also was enjoying writing, and I still enjoy writing - I get tremendous satisfaction out of the writing end of it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 had written a script called 'Freed,' which I had wanted to direct.

I think a first-time director always has to convince a lot of people that they're ready to do it.

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.

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.

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.

Has Werner Herzog ever said anything that wasn't true? What a brilliant fountain of wisdom. Everything he touches I'm just fascinated by.

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.

The friends we have, these are choices that - unlike family, which we have no choice in, and I love my family, thank God - we've given ourselves, to some degree.

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.

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.

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.