The Hunger Games

Before the premiere of Nightcrawler at TIFF this Friday, Jake has spoken to the Bible of the entertainment industry,  Variety, about the movie and about the journey of becoming Lou Bloom, "a fast-talking sleazeball who chases ambulances to catch footage of accident victims on his camcorder. Like Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” he’s a self-starter who will do anything to succeed."

As OMG has seen over the years there has been a new direction for Jake, and the new narrative is that he made a "professional U-turn",  leaving "behind popcorn movies like “Prince of Persia” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” and decided he wanted to work only with directors who pushed him out of his comfort zone".
Tom Ortenberg, CEO of Open Road Films comment that “one of the interesting things about these roles that Jake has taken is that they are darker, but still commercial”.

Nightcrawler fits right into this new imaging,  the dark thriller of the seedy world of after dark journalism in LA found Jake taking on Lou Bloom and dropping the pounds to do so.   When interviewed on the red carpet last year while promoting Prisoners Jake mentioned he dropped about 20 lbs to but this year it's 30.  (Who knew those last 10 were that easy! Just change the 2 to the 3, thanks Jake!)

 Whatever the number Jake did whatever it took  to make himself capture the lean hunger. “I would try to eat as few calories as possible,” he says. “I knew if I was hungry that I was in the right spot. Physically, it showed itself, but chemically and mentally, I think it was even a more fascinating journey. It became a struggle for me.”

On some nights, he wouldn’t eat at all, or he’d only nibble on small pieces of meat, crackers or kale salad."  Jake  "would run 15 miles from his house to the set in the evenings to stay lanky. The inspiration for the fast-talking character came from the animal world. “There was a general sense that he was a coyote, I just wanted to live that way.”

 What is even more interest is that during this Nightcrawler process,  Austin tweeted he found his spirit animal too.  

I found my spirit animal. - 27 August 2013

Wonder how a leopard and coyote would work.  Maybe it would be call a pack. A brood, a bunch, a gaggle.

It could work with the semantics that Jake plays in his interviews.

In a comment about Jake returning to his indie roots with his latest roles, "even if it means taking smaller paychecks."  “I don’t have my own family right now, I have an opportunity to make those choices.”  (Yet he does have his own family, the one pops up in interviews, is said to have relocated for, the family that he chooses to talk about - his mom and his sister's.  You don't think Jake wouldn't play the difference of  "family of my own" and "own family" )

Jake goes on to speak more about creating the creepy photojournalist, working with writer/director Gilroy and his off screen wife Rene Russo and his current work with Antoine Fuqua on Southpaw. 

You can read the whole interview at Variety