A colleague emerged from the Toronto International Film Festival highly annoyed that Jake Gyllenhaal’s creepy sang-froid performance in Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler” was not generating a whole lot of awards buzz.

Oh what a difference three months makes. Last week, Mr. Gyllenhall learned that the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives out the Golden Globes, nominated him for best actor.

To prepare for the film, which was partly inspired by the street photographer Weegee and tracks an accident-scene videographer named Lou Bloom, Mr. Gyllenhaal lost some 30 pounds from everywhere except his eyes, which bulge like a pop-eyed cartoon character’s.

The Bagger finally got the chance to see “Nightcrawler” in October with a group of so-called “tastemakers” at the Crosby Street Hotel. Afterward, there was a dimly lit wine-cheese-prosciutto-meet-Mr.-Gyllenhaal affair, at which the Bagger was advised that she really ought to meet Jake. This meant being shepherded by a publicist to a seven-deep multidirectional receiving line that had grown around Mr. Gyllenhaal, whispers between two publicists, semi-awkward chitchat and a good bit of waiting.

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While Mr. Gilroy was not in attendance, happily his brother, Tony Gilroy, whose screenwriting credits include the Bourne films and “Michael Clayton,” was, and he chatted while the Bagger waited in line. Learning that the Bagger was newly tasked with filling rather big shoes – namely David Carr’s beat-up oxfords and Melena Ryzik’s hip pumps – Tony Gilroy did a refreshingly un-Hollywood thing: He peppered the Bagger with questions about how she planned to do the job (“planned?”), and fondly recalled his own brushes with Mr. Carr.

Then the Gyllenhaal window opened, and the Bagger was shoehorned in for a four-minute chat, which involved discussion about how much Lou Bloom was an amalgamation of our cynical, thrill-seeking, jaded culture, and our complicity in voyeuristic, invasive news. “I think we all have some Lou Bloom in us,” Mr. Gyllenhaal said. “Obviously I do, because I played him.”

At this point the Bagger, who a) has a brain that tends to short-circuit around 10 p.m., and b) didn’t have a notebook handy – after all this was a receiving line not an interview – found herself fixating on Mr. Gyllenhaal’s tantalizing eau de parfum. He seemed to have marinated himself in something highly Ayurvedic, a scent the Bagger recalls catching whiff of on another high-octane actor before (but who?), and that possibly involved bergamot.

The takeaway? Mr. Gyllenhaal indeed put in a great performance. And his perfumer deserves a raise.