From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. So my guest, writer-turn-director, Dan Gilbert,

I think has done an interesting job in sort of making movies about ambition.

If we look at Free Jack and a movie, I think it was a big influence on the last season of East Bound and Down, Two for the Money.

Yeah, gambling, yeah, the whole, yeah, definitely.

A show I love.

But the last season where Kenny becomes the host on the show. On the tout, yeah, it becomes the sports tout, yeah.

Yeah, and what Dan's newest script, and first as director, is Nightcrawler.

Thanks for what you're being here, first of all.

I'm so excited to be here.

But that's the thing I'm going to ask you about.

You look at Two for the Money, and this movie, they're really about sort of unchecked ambition and the way that

people react to that kind of ambition when it walks into a room right we know I

there are personal films both of them I wrote both of those on spec meaning

I wasn't paid to write either one of them so when you're writing on spec you're

writing things theoretically that have some personal meaning to you and yes two for

the money I was very caught up I'm'm a gambler. I like to gamble on

sports. And I'm intrigued with the energy of people who pursue something that ultimately you can

never gain, which is being in profit through a lifetime of gambling. And so I'm interested in,

I'm interested in diagnostic, mental, emotional problems. I study them. I guess as a writer,

I'm intrigued with how the

human brain works. And in terms of the gambling aspect, the driven quality of the lead character

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