Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Hellou

Aka... Getting to know Lou

In an piece in the NY Times we are finding out more about Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler.

Louis Bloom was based on the real life independent journalists who cover the dark side of the night in LA,  but Lou has a touch of New York to him.  Gilroy told the times  that "he had become fascinated years ago with Arthur Fellig, the New York news photographer, known as Weegee, who in the mid-20th century perfected the art of chasing emergency calls in pursuit of stark and timely images."

Gilroy went on to say that Fellig's LA contemporaries would  "range nightly through hundreds of square miles in the Los Angeles area, shooting video for television outlets."

"Howard Raishbrook, whose RMG News was once featured on the reality television show “Stringers: LA,” is one of those; and he eventually became Mr. Gilroy’s guide and technical adviser."

 Gilroy told the paper that he chose not to judge Lou but  treat him "like a creature in “an animal documentary, where animals are struggling in the wilderness to survive.”

Some of the descriptions of Lou include, intense, driven, off-kiltered, odd, hungry even feral,  for many the word sociopath might come to mind. But not to Jake.

“People could call him a sociopath, but I wouldn’t at all. I would call it the birth of an artist. It’s poetry to him.”

That poetry is how Lou "works his way into the heart of television news and crime journalism with little worry about the rights and wrongs of his hunt."

 “If you see me, you’re having the worst day of your life.” 

Nightcrawler premieres this Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

3 comments:

prairiegirl said...

Wow. I have to say that we have many visitors here at my work. We've had a huge amount of visitors for oh I don't know, quite awhile now. But I have made acquaintance with a few from the Netherlands and Germany and now I just met a young man from Spain!!! He is part of a crew here from Spain, so he is a long, long way from home. Some of them have been here for several months. I asked him what he missed the most and he apologized for his broken English but I told him he was doing just fine.
Can you imagine being away from your home country for so long? So, so fascinating to meet and talk to people from so far away. It is such an honor to have so many here from all parts of the world - it is history being made here and it's such a wonderful thing to be a part of. Even though it is killing at times, lol. Ugh. I hope I survive this 4th quarter.

Anyway, he was here in the lunch room and so I was curious as I've seen many people with that business name on the back of their high-vis vest and decided to be nosy, lol. And now I know his name. Very friendly fellow although he looked at me a little strange at times like he couldn't believe I was talking to him. Hey, I'm nosy. lol

Methodical Muser said...

PR machinations:

Also, a few of the first things my professors told our Journalism class are:

If a news story reports an “anonymous source,” it's 99% made up.

Celebrity gossip stories are mostly agreed and planned between their PR and the newspaper/magazine.

To ask yourself, “Why are they reporting this, and why now? What’s the reason behind this news story? Cui bono? Who benefits?”


Anonymous sources and Who benefits

Methodical Muser said...


No protests for girlfriend/wife abusers, murderers, dog killers, illegal possession of firearms, drug dealing, et al., but sign an openly gay athlete onto an NFL team practice squad and now we have a protest about "Family Values."

Anti-Gay Group to Protest Michael Sam on Sunday