Dan Gilroy Quotes
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.
Gilroy, Dan. "Interview: Nightcrawler Writer/Director Dan Gilroy." Interview by Edward Douglas. ComingSoon.net, 29 Oct. 2014.
New York City police are generally better than most in training. However, by far most murder investigations have at least one police and district attorney error and often many more. The rules, procedures, and protocols are quite complex, and police are often not adequately trained. Most departments are understaffed and the caseload is much too heavy. There is huge political and public pressure on murder cases so police often make mistakes to respond rapidly for the demand for information. The way the laws are written in almost all states, the police officers are not legally responsible when they do make errors even if it results in an innocent person going to jail and the real criminal still being at large. Generally, except in a few cases, the courts will not throw a case out just because police or district attorneys do not follow required procedures, and in some departments there is a good guy vs. bad guy mentality and there is a norm of just getting the bad guys off the streets and not worrying about all the details of investigating alternative possibilities and this results sometimes in illegally hiding these from the defense. Evaluations of this kind are rarely performed, in that most departments see no advantage to uncovering and publicizing the mistakes of the past. This study is also used by many who oppose the death penalty to illustrate the large error possibility with capital cases where execution precludes uncovering the errors and mistakes.
Daniel Christopher Gilroy is an American screenwriter and film director. He is best known for writing and directing Nightcrawler (2014), for which he won Best Screenplay at the 30th Independent Spirit Awards, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 87th Academy Awards. His other screenwriting credits include Freejack (1992), Two for the Money (2005), The Fall (2006), Real Steel (2011), and The Bourne Legacy (2012)—the last in collaboration with his brother Tony Gilroy. His wife, Rene Russo, has also been his frequent collaborator since the two met in 1992 and married later that year.
