The Rewatchables - ‘Zodiac’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey pick up a shift at the SF Chronicle as they revisit David Fincher’s mystery-thriller ‘Zodiac’ starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, ...and Robert Downey Jr. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:13 The rewatchables is brought to by the Ringer podcast Network. This is our first podcast that we were running not only on Spotify as a video, but on Netflix as well. That's Sean Fennacy. He hosts the big picture. Yes. That's Chris Ryan, who's on the big picture sometimes as well. And on the watch, you're still doing that, right? I still crank it out.
Starting point is 00:01:35 Yeah. And we've been doing the rewatchables. Wait, what's the watch? The watch. It's a TV culture pod, right? What? It's a Landman podcast? It's more of the culture pod.
Starting point is 00:01:43 Wow, first I'm hearing of this. Yeah. We have other pods on the network. We have other podcasts. Exciting. We have been circled this one for a long time because we already did it. This podcast goes. You've been circling it for a long time.
Starting point is 00:01:56 Well, I wasn't on the original one. We've been doing this podcast since 2017. it has evolved. We've added all these different categories. This is a movie that's on Netflix, so we're going to try to do some movies to start out that we're on Netflix. And this is one we wanted to redo over and over again.
Starting point is 00:02:10 I did with you guys, my top 50 most rewatchable movies of the 21st century. And I had a copy paste accident and somehow cut Zodiac out accidentally, which you reminded me of at the end. I flipped out. Proof of life was in there. But turned out that was a 2000 movie,
Starting point is 00:02:28 not eligible. So I moved Zodiac. Buitaryantly into that spot, but we were making up the Zodiac and the Zodiac killer. Somewhere David Fischer is like, it's all been worth it. I made it on the Bill's list
Starting point is 00:02:38 finally. Well, he's a Netflix guy too, right? So maybe he's watching. Anyway, Zodiac is next. 2007, top 10 movies, Spider-Man 3. Box office.
Starting point is 00:03:04 Not your favorites. No, box office. Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Transformers, Pirates 2 Harry Potter 3 I am legend Born 2
Starting point is 00:03:16 National Treasure 2 Alvin and the Chipmunks and 300 That was our top 10 box office It's pretty rough Here's what also came out in 2007 There will be blood Yep
Starting point is 00:03:28 No country for old men Zodiac Michael Clayton Juno American gangster Super Bad Knocked up Charlie Wilson's War 310 to Yuma
Starting point is 00:03:36 Gone Baby Gone Eastern Promises Assassination of Jesse James. By the coward Robert Ford. He often doesn't get mentioned in the title. I was sorry, Robert Ford. And out of all of those, Zodiac was the slowest burn. I saw it in the
Starting point is 00:03:50 theater, I was like, I thought this was going to be more like seven. It's slow, it's methodical. And somewhere over the last 10 years, this movie wrote me in, so why? Like, wrote me in as a real hardcore rewatchable. Can I very quickly answer why I think it could have been a little bit
Starting point is 00:04:08 different and might have roped us in quicker before I do that. Go. The movie was supposed to come out in 2006, and it was too long, according to the studio, and they had to cut it down. And so it went from being
Starting point is 00:04:19 a December awards player to a February 28th movie. And that's a little disgust aspect of this movie that I think might have changed its slow burn nature. Obviously, the movie itself is a slow burn.
Starting point is 00:04:32 You're meant to revisit, reimagined, to be kind of unsatisfied at the end of it. Yeah. Anytime we talk about a serial killer movie, on the show or elsewhere, it's all about the hunt for the killer. Seven is so satisfying
Starting point is 00:04:44 because we get that great resolution. It's devastating, but it's... Tough for Brad Pitt, but it's satisfying for everybody else. We at least find out what happened. The whole point of this movie is the unknowability of evil, the unsolvability of these stories.
Starting point is 00:04:58 We're probably going to spend an hour here trying to solve this case. No, we're actually going to solve it. Spoiler. Sierra and I found out the killer. That's coming at the end. But, you know, the ingenious idea of the movie is it's not dirty Harry.
Starting point is 00:05:11 You can't just solve it. And so it allows you to kind of accept that unknowability and then focus more on how the movie is made, what's interesting about the people. It's not just the case, but the world at that time, the cities that he's interested in. And then we can understand it too
Starting point is 00:05:27 is this beautiful personal story about David Fincher's adolescence. Yeah. I think it's almost unknowable on the first watch. You know, I mean, when you spend time with this movie, especially like as we get ready for a rewatchable.
Starting point is 00:05:40 We watch a movie usually a couple times during this week. And I found myself noticing things in the back of frames, gestures that people make little hints
Starting point is 00:05:52 of what's about to happen three scenes later that I never would have gotten in a movie theater in 2007 on the first watch. It's like a demanding, really like almost an endurance test of a film
Starting point is 00:06:04 because you're constantly having to pay attention to every single thing on 100% of the screen. It's not just like, here's an actor, nothing else is in focus. They say something very, very clearly, and then it winds up happening. It's like so much information, visual and expository that you're trying to keep track of. So it's almost made to be studied rather than just like, oh, that was a good five-clocker, and now I'm going home. The other piece of it, it's kind of a
Starting point is 00:06:30 good hang, which we talk about with rewatchables. You can also throw it on and just have it on and half watch it because the music and everything and there's always like every 20 minutes, there's another really good scene. Usually when we do these, by the time we finish the recording, my big thing is I go home and I close the tabs on all the things I've been reading about the movie and then I don't watch the movie again for like five years. I kind of want to watch Zodiac tonight. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:55 I know exactly what you mean. I've seen it twice now in the last three days and I watched it with the commentary. And right before I got here, I was like, I needed another watch. I'm not ready. you guys talk about it and then I want to go home and think about what you said and watch it again. Right, right. Well, that was, there was a Fincher quote about this.
Starting point is 00:07:13 What was this quote that a movie isn't done, it's abandoned? I have it in my notes somewhere. I'll find the exact quote, but he was basically like, I never finished making Zodiac. I just had to stop making it to make another movie. Is that how you feel about trade value?
Starting point is 00:07:27 That's how I feel about this rewatchable. We're never going to be finished. This is part two. Maybe we'll do part three. You guys have been reheating. Yeah, I wasn't on the first one. Yeah. And it's interesting.
Starting point is 00:07:38 One of the reasons I wasn't on the first one was I wasn't totally there yet with the movie as a rewatchable. And it must have happened over COVID. But this movie all of a sudden was on more, at least in the ways we watched stuff. And then it was on the streamers lot. It was on Netflix a lot. It was just like, oh, I'll throw this on. And the music's good in the beginning and you just get sucked in.
Starting point is 00:07:59 It's stature has really grown in the last 10 years. I mean, Chris and I have done like 15 podcasts. about Fincher at this point. We wrote a column about David Fincher together like 20 years ago. We've been kind of like studying him through our friendship. And is it safe to say this is your favorite? Because this has been my favorite for about 10 years. It is. Yes.
Starting point is 00:08:18 So. Really? Yeah. And I was thinking about it last night and thinking about just, I mean, I don't, there's probably 500,000 words of just Chris and I texting each other about David Fincher. Yeah. But it did dawn on me while watching this movie that Chris's dad was a newspaper man and my dad was a police detective.
Starting point is 00:08:35 And this is a movie about a newspaper man and a police detective trying to figure something out. Wow, the symbolism of you guys. Well, I mean, I think it's also that you're exactly right. And it's also you can tell that this is a movie that's incredibly personal to Fincher and also shaped what a diabolical, perverted, cynical worldview he has because he watched this demon rise out of the night in the Bay Area and never get caught. And he was just like, that's what life is.
Starting point is 00:09:03 You're driving on a fucking road one. night and the guy starts flashing you from behind and you pull over to get help and then he tries to throw you out of a car. I mean, it's like, that's real life. And that was kind of like, I think of all the directors sometimes, I think Venture has it the most right, you know,
Starting point is 00:09:19 even though that's the hardest thing to accept. Producer Craig Horlebeck is with us as well. He joins us for every rewatchable. Craig, if somebody's flashing their lights at you and telling you to pull over because there's something wrong with your tire, keep going. It's one of the lessons of this movie. One of our biggest nitpicks watching last night.
Starting point is 00:09:35 We were watching and we were like, who was ever going to pull over if somebody's just honking and flashing their lights at you on the freeway? Why would you ever pull over? And it's a creepy man by himself. I think this, the late 60s, early 70s
Starting point is 00:09:47 was the most trusting time we've ever had in America. This was, these were half of the shows back then where hitchhackers getting kidnapped and Syracos just running a mock. People showing up at sorority houses just going to town.
Starting point is 00:09:59 I think that there was the possibility of good Samaritanship back then. Now, like, we just ignore each other. People just don't talk to each other. Like being neighborly is increasingly not a thing in this country. Back then, if you needed help, in theory, a stranger would help you. Like my wife told me today that California is passing some law that you can ask for a drink lid for a drink when you're at a bar and they have to give it to you.
Starting point is 00:10:24 Are you serious? Yeah. That's where we are in 2026. In 1971, pull over. There's something wrong with your tire. Oh, I'm going to fix it for you. Okay. Sounds great.
Starting point is 00:10:34 That's really funny. 2007, there will be blood, no country for old men's Zodiac. Just those three. We always romanticized, especially on this pot, about like, oh, my God, 75. That's our 75. It is. Yeah. I didn't feel this way in the moment in 07.
Starting point is 00:10:53 Maybe I was just more cynical about culture and movies and TV and everything. But, like, there will be blood took me, I would say, five, six years to really understand. And I think getting older was a piece of. of that. Not there will be blood, no country for old men. There will be blood was one of those. Like, that was amazing. I don't know if I ever watched it again. It's like, why am I watching this again? And then you watch it five times. And then Zodiac was a slow burn, too. It's interesting because I think Michael Clayton felt like it was on the level with those in the moment. And I don't think it is at this point.
Starting point is 00:11:23 I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. But it does seem like it has not. I disagree. You disagree? You disagree personally or you disagree like big picture? Yeah, but not big picture. Do you think it's regarded in the same class as blood and... It's a very different kind of movie. It's just those other three movies are really maximalist movies, and it's a much more like kind of restrained character study.
Starting point is 00:11:47 But I do think that it is probably the number one movie that people point to when they try to explain how devastated they are about what's happened to Hollywood over the last 15 years, about why can't we have that anymore? Yeah. All four of them, though, it's not just that it feels like our 75. they all feel like 70s movies. Yeah. And Michael Clayton just feels like a very familiar character study from 1970s. And for Fincher and Gilroy explicitly, we're like, I'm trying to make a 70s movie.
Starting point is 00:12:17 Like, that's the playbook I'm following here. You know what else helps with those three? The directors. Yep. You Fincher and the cones and you have PTA, obviously. But then some of the other movies that came out that, you know, Superbad knocked up, the combo of that. that was really when the comedy era
Starting point is 00:12:35 like those are two of the better done comedies that we've had and you go all the way through American Gangster you can be based on the box office list that you just rattled off like you can look at you can feel the transition fully taking place right like I always mark Spider-Man in 2002 as like the shift and the success of that movie
Starting point is 00:12:54 and the fact that the third Spider-Man movie happens within five years and then you know we're pretty much in this ceaseless run for 20 years. I was looking at the sequels and box office Moji and it's like out of the first 30 movies from box office gross. It felt like 18 of them were sequels. And what, Dark Night and Iron Man are the next year?
Starting point is 00:13:11 Yeah, yeah. Right. Zodiac's first weekend. The film was outgrossed by Wildhugs. Wildhogs beat it. Shout out to Mike Tolan. Wildhogs, rewatchables, when? Wildhogs crushed it.
Starting point is 00:13:26 I didn't mind that movie when I watched it. How many Tim Allen movies have been on the rewatchables? Zero. That's kind of surprising. San Claus classic. And then second week 300 blew it out. And the movie didn't do that well. Like barely made back its money.
Starting point is 00:13:41 But I think as in the physical media air, it'll be fine. We'll do it'll do okay. It's doing it's doing great now. I mean, I think what you said before is right. It's like it's just kind of fun to have on, even though it's about the most depraved thing in recent history. I mean, it's such an awful story. And it has two of the most disturbing murder scenes of any kind of non-horror movie.
Starting point is 00:14:02 combined with the basement scene at the end, which is one of the creepiest scenes, I think, ever filmed. And one of the most disturbing interrogation, criminal interview scenes. I have a theory about this, too, about the movie's sustainability, which is that, you know, it's shot on digital. And most movies that are shot on digital,
Starting point is 00:14:19 we kind of complain about and say that they don't look right, that they look kind of off or otherworldly, or there's too much clarity somehow. It doesn't have the grain of film. But because Fincher is so good at shooting digitally, it looks like the highest level version of mostly what we look at now. So like it feels familiar. It feels like watching streaming TV.
Starting point is 00:14:40 But it's so well made and so clear and so specific that it's not like looking at an artifact in a museum. It still feels modern even though it's set in the 1970s. And I think to younger audiences too, it's a movie that kind of makes more sense than just popping Chinatown in. Want to do 4K transfer an hour later? It's a really unusual 4K transfer Just because it's like it was a movie that is shot digitally Basically in 1080 so it shouldn't look good And then you pop the disc in and you're like
Starting point is 00:15:08 They spend a fuck ton of time improving it It looks better on 4K now than it did in movie theaters I can't think of very many examples It's right up at the edge of this looks too good Yeah It looks so good that they use One of the things about this movie is he uses I think a different actor for each kill scene
Starting point is 00:15:24 Yes Mm-hmm And you the transfer is so good that you can actually tell their different actor but I think you're supposed to be able to yes like I think it's supposed to lead
Starting point is 00:15:36 to the ambiguity of like who was this guy was there more than one it definitely wasn't the short guy in the basement can rule him out he's too short is that Bob Bon
Starting point is 00:15:44 no our guy from the movie poster guy yeah our guy from Welcome Back Cotter no I mean Bob wasn't the guy's name Bob Vaughn yeah I wrote down things I like about Zodiac
Starting point is 00:15:54 and why I think it has the power that it does meticulously researched and executed. So the big three for this is all the president's man in this and spotlight. I think are weirdly similar movies, even though they're completely different about a completely different thing
Starting point is 00:16:10 and the style of them is different. But they're both like people trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle and newspapers are prominently involved and what is this? How do we figure this out? Right. And we love all those movies. We've done all of them on rewatchables.
Starting point is 00:16:25 I had spotlight in the most, rewatchable. Which I think stunned people, but I watch it all the time because I love the process of it. What number was that? Do you remember?
Starting point is 00:16:32 It was like in the, I'm going to say the teens. Higher or lower than Proof of Life? It was higher. So wait, is Zodiac going right into the Proof-Life slot
Starting point is 00:16:42 or is it actually higher? Okay. You say meticulously research. It's worth mentioning that David Fincher and James Vanderbilt, the screenwriter, re-interviewed all the living witnesses,
Starting point is 00:16:53 cops, newspaper people that they could find who were involved. with this case and basically redid the police work and used police reports as like a baseline for their Well they spent 18 months on it
Starting point is 00:17:06 That's what I'm saying Yeah I mean that's like I don't think anyone Would ever do that again Well I'm gonna do that for Book of Basketball Book of Basketball too I'm gonna get Isaiah Thomas I'm gonna be like hold on Wait
Starting point is 00:17:18 What's the secret? Are you adapting Book of Basketball For a narrative feature film? It ends with a serial killer Did you know they spent 18 months doing this? No, but that makes sense. It's also very fincher to do that. I mean, every take is 60 takes.
Starting point is 00:17:33 Panic Room 02. Five years go by between movies. And he was supposed to do this Black Dalia project that he wanted. It's interesting in the research. He envisioned it as this like movie miniseries, this five-part thing. He's basically circling Mind Hunter for about 15 years. So I guess that would have been HBO? One of the only places that could have gone.
Starting point is 00:17:54 I mean, Netflix didn't even exist back then. Is there HBO or Showtime? Where else would he even go? He pushing into digital and him pushing into streaming. Like he's a couple years ahead of everybody for a while there. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:03 So anyway, that's one. It's a two-part movie where it's like the first half of the movie is basically Zodiac. He's killing people. How do we figure that? And then the second part is all about the impact that all those murders had
Starting point is 00:18:18 on all of these characters that were in there. And I like how there's a clear shift when it says four years later. We're now in a different movie, but it's the same movie episode. But I like how they just shift. It's a horror movie that's not a horror movie. It's super scary, but it's not saw.
Starting point is 00:18:34 It's not Halloween 2. Reporting procedural, only unlike in Spotland and all the President's Men, they never solve it. And then the big one, which I think is the easiest point to make about this, but it's this movie about fucking crazy obsession. Only in this case,
Starting point is 00:18:54 what happens if you're obsessed with something, and you never get an answer, which is how CR feels about Joel Embed. You don't feel, you have the answer at this point? No, because Joe Al-N-Bid will go out and he'll torch the rockets. And then CR's like, maybe this case isn't closed. I've been chasing the wrong guy. Joel and B is Rick Marshall.
Starting point is 00:19:15 Yeah. So, I don't know, anything else other than that stuff? I mean, the acting's superior. And then it's one of the best filmmakers the last 30 years. Yeah, it's also like, you know, he's just got a roster of people that he's been working with forever, you know, like Ren Klyse, the sound designer, and Donald Graham Burt, the production designer.
Starting point is 00:19:33 He just has this coterie of genius artisans who all know exactly how to work with him. And so he always gets what he wants. You might not always like what he gives you, and he's, you know, the last few movies have been much more divisive for him. But I think that this is kind of him going to phase two and getting like, basically entering one of the most impressive
Starting point is 00:19:55 sequences of movie making that we've seen in the century. And the movie itself, like the obsessiveness thing is just what resonates with me the most because I'm one of those people. Like, all three of us are just like we're rabbit hole people. Like, we just get super into the stuff that we care about. We can't get outside of it sometimes. We can't see past it. And we, like, do lose the force for the trees, but sometimes the trees are worth spending time on,
Starting point is 00:20:18 you know? And I really love that aspect of it. And I also am getting, like, I'm starting to really realize, the intention of the movie, the older I get. The first time I saw it, I was like, oh, Arthur Leigh Allen, that's the answer. Cool. This is like a very convincing way of explaining this movie to me. And then over time, you realize it's Arthur Lee Allen to these guys.
Starting point is 00:20:39 But that's not enough. And not being enough actually makes it interesting to spend more time thinking about. So it's like, it's pretty profound. Don't you think that's why we end up in the basement? Among other places, yeah. I think there's a lot of zodiacs. It's definitely Arthur Leanne. Wait, is it?
Starting point is 00:20:53 Yeah. The scary thing about the, moniker is that it could just stand in for evil and that there's evil in the one of the two basements in California and there's evil out in the highway and there's evil with this guy who likes going skin diving. You know what I mean? Like there are different like basically physical representations of what this thing, the zodiac is. Now, I don't know if Fincher saw it as like a symbolic kind of, you know, more allegorical piece. I think he was very much doing it as a piece of journalism. But to Sean's point about the obsession, I think the thing that jumps.
Starting point is 00:21:25 off the screen, especially after you watch it a few times. In the making of documentary that comes with the 4K, but you can also watch it on YouTube. I think the prop master or the set designer talks about how when they were doing the San Francisco Chronicle building. That was cool. They basically have recreated this newsroom
Starting point is 00:21:43 inside of a post office in Los Angeles to shoot in. And they went to the Chronicle, and then they had to go to a library in Michigan that had all the old micro-fichees for 1969 San Francisco. Chronicle Chronicle newspapers. And they were like, we reprinted them
Starting point is 00:21:59 on authentic newspaper so that they were just around in the newsroom. And I was like, I don't know that. That could have just been a pile of New York Times is from last week if you wanted to.
Starting point is 00:22:12 But I feel like the actors knew. And I feel like the people who were like working on the movie really did feel like they built this monument that and it jumps off the screen somehow. And maybe it helps to know it. But you know what? mean, like you can feel the extra 10%
Starting point is 00:22:27 that went into this movie. That's why one of the reasons I like almost famous so much. Like every single aspect of it, he's like, this has to be perfect. That's a 71 telecaster. This is what this hotel in LA looked like in 1971, and this is what the ashtray looked like. But two movies made by guys reflecting on when they were 13 years old.
Starting point is 00:22:45 I mean, that's really a big part of it too. Like when we were thinking about, you mean, you were describing Fincher being obsessed by the Zodiac and he describes him as kind of like his boogeyman. I literally was like, that's kind of what Larry bird was for you. You know what I mean? It's like, he is like, he is legitimately, not in a scary way, but he is like a figure from your past when you were young who looms large. And like these people, these things, they imprint on you and then you just kind of spend your whole life thinking about them.
Starting point is 00:23:10 But I would have loved nothing more than a zodiac like Syracill or running through Massachusetts in New England. Well, I would have, as a little kid, I would have been the most fascinating thing happening in my life. And I mean, it completely explains his filmography. Like, look at all the crazy depraved shit that he's into because of the way that he gets fascinated by this stuff. Yeah, we watch seven. My son is banging out all these 90s and 2000s movies and we watched seven
Starting point is 00:23:34 the other night. And you just forget with some of these twists at the end. He's like, that's not going to be Gwyneth Poutreau's head in the box, is it? And I'm like, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:23:49 We'll see. But yeah, it's fun to relive some of this stuff through people. Zodiac is one that like he didn't want to watch that one with me. He's like, I'm finchered out. You'd watch 7 and Fight Club. It's like, I've had enough of Fincher. I'm like, well, you'll circle back. It's a different
Starting point is 00:24:05 energy too. You might want to be a little bit older. It's, well, it's also, these Fincher movies are invasive. Yeah. Even Panic Room, which is a relatively simple movie. That's not that's not a double feature movie. He's manipulating us. Yeah. Well, you love Mindhunter is your favorite TV show probably of all
Starting point is 00:24:23 time of the last 15 years. Definitely one of the best shows of the 21st century, I would say that. And it's got some umbilical cord to this. Yeah. I think that you can see in, um, I think that the, the Lee interrogation is essentially like a blueprint for a lot of what happens in Mind Hunter, where they're going to these sort of notorious killers and being like, what can we learn from you to help us to profile and to help us catch people in the future?
Starting point is 00:24:49 And like it equally large, you know, there's a bunch of stuff in Northern California and Mind Hunter, but it's, you know, it's, you know, it's equally about obsession. John David Carroll. John Carroll Lynch. John Carroll Lynch, whatever his name is. John Carroll. So that scene in particular, which I'm sure we'll spend time on,
Starting point is 00:25:05 yeah. Is one of the most electrifying people talking to each other scenes? I can ever remember in a movie theater. Yes. In the movie theater, I was vibrating during this scene. Now, it ultimately is not as impactful as you think it's going to be. Because also it's like an hour and a half in the movie. You're like, wow, we're getting near the end.
Starting point is 00:25:25 They found him. I didn't know anything about the Zodiac. I was not like a serial killer kid growing up. I didn't really follow this stuff. And the fact that the movie is just like, okay, that happened. And now we've got an hour or more of movie. And the next hour is just like, well, we don't really know. It's just really crazy choice.
Starting point is 00:25:40 That's an amazing choice. For somebody like Ben who's like, okay, I watched seven. I watched seven. And it's about these two cops who learn to work together to bring down this mastermind. So he's like, oh, what's the next sin? Yeah. Exactly. And it's like, but it's David.
Starting point is 00:25:55 you know, it's the Kevin Spacey's sin that takes down David because it's like he goes, he covets his wife. It's like, I get it, I get it. With this, it's like, they catch him, and then because an eccentric handwriting expert disagrees with them, the Zodiac killer is free. Even though his brother and his sister law are like, he's the Zodiac.
Starting point is 00:26:18 Yeah, the same glove size, same shoes. But it's like it runs even deeper if you even believe in that idea, because it's like, they did catch him for pedophilia, and he was in prison for years. So he was off the street. And the letters stopped. And the letter stopped.
Starting point is 00:26:33 And then it takes them years to even figure it out. The murders both stopped. Yeah. I mean, there's just like, it's all, it's not just about obsession. It's also about information overload and getting lost in the information. And you can see by the end of the movie
Starting point is 00:26:44 that Toski has just gotten lost. Yeah. That he has just, because there's been so much. That's because fucking armistid mopping came and did a drive-by on it, man. Yeah, that was a tough one. We'll get into that. You know, that scene you talk about when they interrogated him, how great that was.
Starting point is 00:26:57 And it's probably my most rewatchable scene because it's so much fun to watch. And the three actors kind of sizing him up and the faces Ruffalo makes in that scene where he's just, he's trying to stay deadpan. But you can see he's like, when he's like, I suppose you'll want to know about the bloody knives in my trunk. And they're just like, he's like, that's a nice watch. May I see it? May I see it? You know? Yeah. He sits down and he crosses his legs.
Starting point is 00:27:25 And what's that guy's name, Elias Coteus? Yeah. And he just sees the boot and he's like, yeah, does one of those. But there's like 10 of those. One of the things with Fincher that, you know, he's such a stylistic, awesome director, right? And you think of him like how things look.
Starting point is 00:27:41 So he's a music video guy. He's so good at people talking. And I don't know if it's because he makes them do 800 takes for every scene. But he has some of the best dialogue scenes we've had the central. He definitely talks a lot in the commentary for this movie about making sure that the human behavior is right, making sure that it feels appropriate to how people would act. But I think he also does stylistic stuff to your point in that scene in particular where he doesn't do a lot of singles directly down the barrel of the camera in the whole movie. Except in that scene. In that scene, you see every single person looking right into the camera.
Starting point is 00:28:16 It's the only time we get the killer's POV. Right. Because they're staring at him. our guy Michael Mann is good at this too Like when we did Thief Our favorite scene was the diner scene Sure Where it's just two people talking for a while
Starting point is 00:28:30 Now Michael Bad had probably not as good as dialogue As the Fincher movies were I don't think Michael Mann could have done the first social network scene That would not have been in his movie Yeah yes right I mean like look like Fincher at this period Is moving into like this new phase where he's on digital And his whole thing is
Starting point is 00:28:48 He hates sincerity. And he hates earnestness in performance. So basically, like, there are two... I want to talk a lot about, like, David Fincher and, you know, running a gulag while he's shooting this thing. And, like, it's one of my favorite elements of talking about this movie.
Starting point is 00:29:04 This is the movie, too, where that myth started. Yes, because of Dillon Hall. Yeah. And... But basically, he's like... There's two things. A, I want them to, like, push past the point where they're, like, acting to achieve a single take that is the... right take. Like, he's like, let's actually work.
Starting point is 00:29:23 Let's actually find something interesting. And second of all, the actors on his screen, as Mark Ruffalo said, is like, they're 10% of the screen. He's also looking at the way light hits a glass in the background. And if you watch some of those newspaper, the newsroom scenes, just try, go watch one of those online and watch the people walking around in the background. It looks like real life. It's not three people going, cantalobre, rhubar, blah, blah, blah, do each other.
Starting point is 00:29:49 It's people actually doing jobs in the background. And apparently Fincher would be like, yeah, man, like she would not be going to that office because she works for this guy, so she has to go to that office. Like that level of understanding of like 100 yards. I mean, Fincher might be the Zodiac girl. You know, he obviously kind of relates in some ways
Starting point is 00:30:09 to the methodologies of these crazy people. The actual Fincher quote was, films aren't finished, they're abandoned. So you mentioned the run he goes on here. Is this? Benjamin Button, which randomly I watched last night. He used that immediately after this. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:26 I would have cut the lady in the bed hospital, old Kate Blanchett. I just would have cut every scene with that. It would have been my note. If Dave was coming to me, like, hey, what should I do, Simmons? Maybe he should come over for a pot and you're just like, here's some notes for you, Dave. Start with Young Button.
Starting point is 00:30:41 He'd probably enjoy that. Turn his mic off, just let it all talk. So it would be like the top 55. Yeah. Top 50. problems with your movies. You can redo the top 50 pod with him too.
Starting point is 00:30:53 You don't agree with me? Cut her out. So you like limitless. That is probably my least favorite David Fincher movie. Mine too. It is a really interesting.
Starting point is 00:31:03 A technical marvel and a fascinating idea. And you can see him trying to like get his arms around sincerity. I feel like I wonder whether or not like he was like spent from Zodiac and was like
Starting point is 00:31:14 I can do all the like surface level like technical brilliance of this but there's not. It's a whimsical fantasy romance. Maybe there's not like a full idea in there. I don't know. It's a really fun swing and miss.
Starting point is 00:31:26 It's also the only like proper literary adaptation that he did. Like obviously Fight Club was a novel, but like a kind of more classical old school movie. And like he had circled a number of movies like that for years, including like 20,000 leagues under the sea. And it's kind of the closest he got to make like making a John Houston movie. But the thing I was going to say about that is that he's not a writer-director. And like, unlike most of the people that I lionize,
Starting point is 00:31:51 they're all like otters, they're writer-directors. He is, like, going script to script. And he has his writers who he likes. But, you know, the James Vanderbilt script, that was just, like, Disney optioned the Greysmith book, and then it fell out of ownership. And he wrote it on spec. And then Vanderbilt wrote it on spec
Starting point is 00:32:08 because he loved the story and loved the book. And then somehow they sold it. And he just kind of came onto the project for hire. And that makes him very different. Like, it makes him very different from, I think, a lot of the way that we think about the great filmmakers the last 30 years. So this movie,
Starting point is 00:32:24 Zodiac, Button a year later, social network, and then... Dragon Tattoo Gone Girl. Dragon Tattoo Gone Girl. And that's all in like, what, six years? Yeah, seven years through Gone Girl, right?
Starting point is 00:32:37 Yeah. That's an amazing run. And to me, all of those movies, maybe with the exception of Button, get better every time you watch them. Yes. I recently re-watched Dragon Tattoo, and I was like,
Starting point is 00:32:47 this is absolutely awesome. the cast Is this a 22 person cast Like 22 people deep Like it's nuts This is the cast they designed Dionne Waiters for Jake Jillenhall coming off Broke back at a nice point in his career
Starting point is 00:33:03 Donnie Darko was like 02 And Jarhead Yeah and so it was kind of like Hey this guy he might be something And this was an important movie for him And he's the star of the movie Ruffalo Who was now in that zone of like
Starting point is 00:33:16 I'm going to do a weird rom-com that sucks. I might do a decent rom-com. I'll be in this weird indie movie. Then I'll be in an awesome movie. Then I'll be in another weird movie. Then I'll be in another awesome movie. He was just all over the map. But he'd been collateral a couple years earlier. This movie. And it's just every few years he had to have another good one. I love him in this movie.
Starting point is 00:33:35 Really important Downey movie? This was like right at the start of the comeback. It's almost down and out there in the mid-2000s. It's Kiss Kiss Kiss, Bing Bang and then this, right? Kiss Kiss Kiss Kiss, Bang. is like three years earlier. I think he had been like, Kiss Kiss Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was like, now I can be insured again. Yeah. Right. And then he does... Bang Bang This and then Iron Man the next year. That was it. Anthony Edwards,
Starting point is 00:33:55 one of the most successful TV actors of all time. Secret sauce of this movie. For sure. Logan Roy. Brian Cox. Brian Cox. Yeah. Charles Fleischer, we mentioned, who the old people can remember
Starting point is 00:34:09 from Welcome Back Cotter was also Roger Rabbit, one of those guys. Yeah. He was the head of Arc. He was Arcane. head of Maroon Studios. You guys remember that from Roger Rabbit? I don't. No? Maroon cartoons.
Starting point is 00:34:21 You guys remember that? Sean was attracted to Jessica Rabbit. I mean, Redhead. She was my Zodiac killer. Zach Gronier? Yeah. One of those guys?
Starting point is 00:34:31 Yeah. Might remember him from Philadelphia? Yeah. He was kind of the one who came around and had Andy's back a little bit. He felt bad. Oh, yeah. He's the Justice Department guy.
Starting point is 00:34:40 Yeah. He was in Fight Club. He's Ed Norton's Boston Fight Club. Philip Baker Hall? sure would. I love hard, sharp bees and butter in my ass. That's just what I like.
Starting point is 00:34:52 It is funny when he's like pruning his bushes when Jeline all comes and sees him, I'm kind of like, I kind of think he's going to say. It's like, Jake, everything's going to video. It's a simple man. Elias Cateas. Little James LaGroose,
Starting point is 00:35:11 just a tiny, just a whiff. A little dash at the end. Yeah. A little dash of Donald Logue. Yeah, Logue. John Carroll Lynch. James Leroy has one of my favorite lines in the movie where he's like, good for him.
Starting point is 00:35:22 But he's like, yeah, that guy's going to go catch the Zodiac. John Carroll Lynch, fresh off Fargo. Yeah. This was kind of the peak for him. He was Mr. Gunderson, right? Dermit Mulroney, not sure why he's in this movie. And Chloe Seveny. Fincher said...
Starting point is 00:35:37 What are Sean's idols? Chloe Seventy, we'll talk about momentarily. Maybe the hottest she's ever looked. Dermyn Mowroner says he was just like, just one of my favorite guys doesn't really have anything to do in this movie. I don't know why he did it. We put him in a fat suit. I thought it was funny.
Starting point is 00:35:51 He has like a very glaringly pot belly. They never worked together before. It's like, why is Dermal... Dermal Rudy was kind of a movie star. Yeah. And he's in four scenes and he's like, interesting. Don't get him. He's like, what do you want to do?
Starting point is 00:36:03 Okay. Take a night off. Where does this rank for Jalenhall performances for you? It's the last in a very important era, but it was not my favorite. favorite era. It's the wide-eyed innocent weirdo era. Yes. Which is like how he got launched with Doni Darko. Is prisoners before this? It's after.
Starting point is 00:36:23 Okay. And so right after this stretch, this was going to be what's the most 2007 movie, 2007 aspect of this movie for me. One of them was immediately after this, end of watch, prisoners and enemies enemy comes. And then he's like, we're off. Like, I'm a fucking weirdo
Starting point is 00:36:39 in every movie. My eyes are bulging out of my head. I do something strange. I just blown a line of cocaine directly into my cortex and I have insane energy no matter what. And he still holds that to this day with like ambulance and roadhouse and everything else he's been doing. This is the last
Starting point is 00:36:55 time it was like, he's sweet. Is there something wrong with him? You know, like that's kind of the energy that he's given. Ten years later, we're like, there is something wrong with him. We got to do prisoners just for Jill and Hall being like, why you shopping for kids' clothes? Detective Loki.
Starting point is 00:37:12 Yeah. It was funny doing a podcast in person with him, which I did probably like seven, eight years ago. Was that for the Boston Marathon movie? Yeah. When we had our old offices, totally normal guy.
Starting point is 00:37:24 Yeah. I kept waiting him to be super weird, and he just wasn't. Yeah, I met him. He was totally normal. But in every movie, he's like, you want to go do heroin? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:33 It seems insane. Downy is just playing all. It's like Downey karaoke in this movie. He's playing all the hits. I want to get like a little patron saint necklace of Downy in this movie and wear it all the time. Aqua Velva. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:45 Downey's in his own movie that I also would have watched. If there was like a Paul Avery, there's this fleeting three seconds when Jelen Hall's character is walking home from work and he peeks into that bar. Morty's, yeah. And all the people from this paper are just getting bombed.
Starting point is 00:38:02 That was newspapers in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. You finish work. There was some dive bar. Like at the Boston Herald, it was J.J. Foley's. Everybody would go to Foley's after. Yeah, there was a bar across the street from the inquirer that...
Starting point is 00:38:14 It was like a prerequisite. Allegedly had a phone line directly to the copy desk so the copy desk could call the bar to ask questions. Every city has them. And it was just like, I could have spent another 20 minutes with those guys just talking about like fucking Dr. Jay.
Starting point is 00:38:29 Is Dr. Jay coming? One of my favorite cuts in the movie is late in the movie after when Avery is like really kind of bedraggled and they cut to him and he's sitting in the bar and he's got the oxygen tank in the bar with him. Right. He's so shot. And then Ruffalo He left it all on the floor, man.
Starting point is 00:38:45 What do you want for him? Ruffalo, so he's in, you can count on me. That was like his arrival movie. That's 2000. And he kind of had, this could be the next one vibes for a while. I don't think it 100% happened for him
Starting point is 00:38:59 the way maybe we might have thought when we were buying his tops cards. You say that and I know what you mean, but he's also the Hulk and he was just in task. I mean, like I feel like he's had like a really solid career. But not. You wouldn't... I think he's a little too idiosyncratic to be...
Starting point is 00:39:16 I don't know. Who are you thinking of? Chris Pratt? Like, I mean... I've never been able to get a handle on what his career preference was. Because he just made a couple... How much you pay in me? I'll take it.
Starting point is 00:39:30 But then he was also like, I really care about the craft. I'm just in it. And it's like, which are you? Which one... Are you the craft guy or you the paycheck guy? I mean, he's both. He's like... Well, I think that's the problem.
Starting point is 00:39:41 I'm 13 going on 30. I'm now you see me. I'm, you know, I'm in poor things. I'm in Shutter Island. Like, I work with the greatest filmmakers of all time. I've also made six Marvel movies. I kind of respect it. Like, what, you know what we really learned about him?
Starting point is 00:40:01 They knew! They knew and you cut him loose! This is a good... This is the pepper to that salt. This is, like, him. just being like, finish the book. Like, he has some great lines and some great turns and like,
Starting point is 00:40:18 Toski could be like, you could really put a lot more mustard on this one. And he doesn't. He keeps him really like, kind of grounded in the movie. Because the guy he's playing was a pretty legendary 70s detective because he's tied in with dirty hairy and all this stuff. Yeah, he's a pretty well-known guy.
Starting point is 00:40:35 Yeah. I think this is my second favorite Ruffalo performance. After you can count on me. You can count on me as the best. Yeah, I think that's the best he's ever been in a movie. And you can count on me he seems like a real person. You know, he seems like somebody you've met. And there's like something very tangible about kind of like the mistakes that he's making.
Starting point is 00:40:53 And he has become like a little bit more of a caricature-ish kind of actor. But he's very entertaining. Like the spotlight thing is very memorable. But like is it good acting? Like it's not particularly good. But it's appropriate for the movie. I feel this way in the Marvel movies where I'm like, is Mark Ruffalo just like doing bits?
Starting point is 00:41:11 Like, what is this? Yeah. But he's obviously capable of a lot. The Toski role is like a real performance where he's changing his voice, changes his posture. Fincher talks about all the stuff he brought to it where like Toski at the time he learned was really having trouble with ulcers. So when he walks into the diner and he gets half of the BLT from Armstrong,
Starting point is 00:41:30 he takes the tomato off because it would bother his stomach. He starts popping tums during the movie. You know, he's taking an acid because he's having stomach problems. They don't explain any of that stuff. but he as like a very serious actor he's like I'm going to spend time with this guy research him and make choices I don't always feel like he does that
Starting point is 00:41:46 but when he does do it he's pretty much elite it's a very calculated cultivated manicured performance I really like it it's very very very under control did you watch task? I didn't yeah he's I mean like if you if you want to see late period
Starting point is 00:42:01 Ruffalo absolutely cooking he didn't watch task because he watched poor things seven times just cranking it out some good stuff no with Bagonia Hang it out some couple of begonias. Like it. Directors commentary. Didn't see that.
Starting point is 00:42:13 Your ghost directors. Didn't see that. Did he do one for that? I don't know. You don't know. Jelen Hall, Downey, Ruffalo. Your favorite of those three, Craig, in this. Ruffalo.
Starting point is 00:42:23 I think, Ruffalo's great. I think he's been the least corrupted by Marvel in my mind. I almost think part of it is because he never had to physically transform like the rest of these guys in the Marvel movies. You just become action figures. Where's a tennis balls and becomes the whole thing.
Starting point is 00:42:36 And Ruffalo has always looked and seemed like a normal person. and I think it's why he's just a floor razor in every movie. I love Ruffalo. Robert Downey, I think going back now, I had never seen Zodiac until yet last night. The RDJ stick, the Iron Man stick, is like fully cooking in this movie. And it is a little weird to kind of play with that.
Starting point is 00:42:56 It's still enjoyable, and I think he's very good in it, but it's hard not to be like, I'm kind of watching Tony Stark here a little bit. I felt that set that way a little bit, too. But in the moment, I'm sure you were like, oh, my God. No, because the movie needed it. It needed a weirdo. He is like that.
Starting point is 00:43:09 in Chaplin. You know, like, he is like that in every movie. Like, that was his thing. This is his thing. This is, like, what he does. He's definitely in that and back to school with Rodney Dangerfield. I don't know what he's going for in that movie. He is. I mean, he's always kind of that, like, yammering, sarcastic, smarter than everybody guy.
Starting point is 00:43:24 That's his screen persona, right? And it just so happens that he, at like 48 years old, managed to turn it into the biggest thing that happened in movies in the 21st century. Right. We're going to take a break. And then there's an Oscars discussion we need to have. and we're going to talk about the actual zodiac color and what we think happened.
Starting point is 00:43:42 This episode is brought to by Pure Michigan. In Grand Rapids, every moment feels like a scene worth replaying, every riverside stroll, every slow afternoon sipping small batch brews, every guitar riff drifting out of the city's brand new amphitheater. This is a place where everything feels cinematic. Like you've stepped into a highlight reel
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Starting point is 00:44:38 value with McValue, only McDonald's. Bada-ba-p-p-pah. Limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. 2007 Oscars, March 2008. This movie just gets
Starting point is 00:44:53 shut out. Zero. Doesn't make best picture. I was shocked by this. Zero. No best director. If you were doing the big picture back then, would you just have quit? Well, it came out in late February. And back then, that was a problem. Now,
Starting point is 00:45:09 everything everywhere once came out in March Sinners came out in April. It's no longer a problem. They've changed the calendar. But if you put your movie out in February, you're telling the world in 2007. Don't worry about this. You don't have to vote for this. Best picture. No country wins. Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, there will be blood. If we're doing that again, it's just cracking the list.
Starting point is 00:45:29 I don't know who gets bumped. Juno would go out. Juneau would go out. Chino had a moment, though, in 07. It was a huge movie. People got really excited about it. Sure. There were new actors. People got fired up about. It was a Jason Reibon. Yeah, I like it. I think it's a good movie.
Starting point is 00:45:42 I like it. I think it gets bumped by saying. I really like Atonement. I mean, personally. Directors was Cohn's one. Julian Schnabel? Schnabel. Schnabel?
Starting point is 00:45:53 The diving bell and the butterfly? Yeah. You seen that one? Top here. Yeah. Jason Raymond, Tony Gilroy, and Paul Thomas Anderson. I didn't forget. Gilroy got nominated.
Starting point is 00:46:03 Best actor, which I think Jake would have been eligible for. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. guy named Daniel DeL one for a movie called I think we're going to keep that where it is Yeah, that's a good one Clooney
Starting point is 00:46:16 It's a good win Tommy Lee Jones in the valley of Ila Ala I remember I can't remember honestly It's been a minute It's a biblical reference
Starting point is 00:46:26 Vigo Morgensen Yeah For Easterer promises Johnny Depp and Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber What the fuck were we doing there Jesus Christ
Starting point is 00:46:37 We were really in thrall to Big Depp at this time. Jake could have taken that spot. Big Depp and Big Burton. You seen that, Sweeney Todd? No. Have you seen it staged? I saw it on Broadway.
Starting point is 00:46:49 Did you really? Yeah, I saw it in the as a play. It was cool. Do you remember who was in the league? I saw it in Boston. I saw it with my dad. Okay. That's what it was.
Starting point is 00:46:55 Interesting. I mean, also a movie about a serial killer. I might have seen a little too young. I was like, what's going on? They're eating these people? Is Barbara's a demon? That's the problem. It wasn't seeing Halloween when you were like,
Starting point is 00:47:06 so here's. Coming up next. Top five demon barbers. Best actor in a supporting world. This is when it gets tough. Bardem wins for no country. Fine. I support it.
Starting point is 00:47:16 Casey Affleck and Jesse James. Yep. Pretty good. Really good. Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War. He's really good in that movie. I can't kill him on that.
Starting point is 00:47:27 He owns the movie. Hal Holbrook and Into the Wild, that feels like an old guy getting reored by the Oscars. It is a good performance, but it is exactly what you just described. And then Wilkinson, for Michael Clayton, who's good.
Starting point is 00:47:38 Yes. Ruffalo probably takes that a whole brook spot, I'm guessing. Right? Ruffalo over Downey. You tell me. It's Downey for me, but it's also a personal...
Starting point is 00:47:50 He's also playing my kind of music in this movie. Let's go with either. I think one of those guys has to be in there. I think in a just world, it's the kind of thing where we just saw
Starting point is 00:48:01 two actresses get into supporting from sentimental value. Like, why would you not just play both guys? in from Zodiac, you know. This was actually the worst of all of these best writing adapted screenplay. No country wins.
Starting point is 00:48:14 Atonement away from her, diving bell in the butterfly, and there will be blood. Zodiac, I guess, which they spent four years on in the screenplays, I just don't understand that one at all. But this speaks to how the movie was regarded
Starting point is 00:48:31 in 2007, which was not. I think Fincher was considered such a commercial director and most of what he was doing because he came out of music videos was oriented around success and seven being such a surprise hit after
Starting point is 00:48:46 recovering from the Alien 3 issue that this movie being a commercial failure I think was really held against it around all this stuff. You an Alien 3 guys here? I like the look of it but I think it's got a lot of it. I mean he had a terrible time making it
Starting point is 00:49:02 I think there was a lot of recutting and rewriting and stuff. All right so we mentioned this movie was adapted from Zodiac 1986 and Zodiac unmasked in 2002 and they spent all this time interviewing witnesses, suspects
Starting point is 00:49:18 or family members of suspects, the surviving victims, they interviewed mares and Fincher said so much time had passed, memories are affected the different telling of the stories would change perception so whenever we had doubt, we went with the police reports. Ruffalo's character basically says that in the movie
Starting point is 00:49:34 when he's telling Graysmith to basically you got to give this up. He's like, too much time has passed. People can't remember shit anymore. So I feel like Fincher slid that in there. It's almost like the philosophy of the movie, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:49 It's like if you don't spring on it now, we're in trouble. Vanderbilt, the writer, pitched the story as, what if Gary Trudeau woke up one morning and tried tried to solve the son of Sam? Interesting. They didn't want to glamorize the killer. Fincher said quote, that would have turned the story
Starting point is 00:50:05 into a first person shooter video game. We didn't want to make the sort of movie that Syracowers would want to own. I like that. If you're not, if you're like a future possible serial killer, you're not watching this like, Arthur Lee, I want to be this dude. This guy's really cool.
Starting point is 00:50:24 Amazing things that I found about when reading about the actual zodiac killer is that there's a couple of unconfirmed zodiac letters where he's like chiming in on movies. He's just given takes and he's like, Exorcist, really good satire. And like,
Starting point is 00:50:39 there's even one that they're not sure it's from him, but he's like, bad land, like he hates badlands. It glorifies murderers. So there was a bunch of unconfirmed material
Starting point is 00:50:50 and it just could have been some wacko writing. But it was like, this guy like just shooting from the hip, Roger Ebert's stuff. We got to get the Zodiac Killer's top five most rewatchable movies.
Starting point is 00:50:59 Yeah. Podcast. Seriously. Can he, can he, you bounce back on your list, you know? He's weighing in on Rick Perry in the 75 Warriors. I believe in these guys.
Starting point is 00:51:09 Is he into the Devil Wars Prado? Where does he land on that one? Oh, he probably would love that. Zodiac time line. So they don't have the first attack in the movie for a very specific reason, though. Explain. But they don't have any living witnesses.
Starting point is 00:51:22 And they said they were like, we're not going to start with something where we can't. The ones that they depict are ones that they had living witnesses to be able to corroborate some of the details about. Yeah, it also allows the movie to be both introduce a kill at the very top, but also be in media res for the rest of the people around it. So, like, the newspaper and the cops get to be like,
Starting point is 00:51:44 we know there's an issue. Like something is building here as opposed to starting all the way of the beginning. So when you watched this for the first time last night, did you think the murders at the beginning of the movie were the first murders, or did it make sense as they explained it that there was a murder before it? I assume they were the first murders, just watching it. Yeah, so I think it's a little bit of a flaw in the movie. movie. I don't think they made it clear enough. Riverside
Starting point is 00:52:03 is the first murders? Yeah. Okay. But Fincher says that he's not totally convinced that Riverside is Zodiac. That there is like, that's part of the genius of the movie, right? Is that there's so many incidents in which people are claiming credit as Zodiac
Starting point is 00:52:19 for doing them. But Zodiac is, whether he's smart or crazy or however you want to describe it, we don't really even know what he's responsible for. I got to be honest, it was much more, it was easier to try and, like, read about the Kennedy assassination than it is to read about the Zodiac killer. Because the Zodiac, it just has so many, like, different, like, perspectives and permutations. And, like, this could have been him. And there's five guys over here who think it's him.
Starting point is 00:52:46 And this guy, it's, I think just the fact that it took place over so many years, over so much mileage, so many miles. Like, it's just much more complicated to wrap your head around. So Lovers Lane, that one that starts the movie, that's July 69. That's Darlene Ferran, right? And the guy Mike Mujo survives, we've seen at the end of the movie. One month later, Zodiac letter to the San Francisco Chronicle with the coded messages. And then September kills the two law students on the water bank. Lake Barry, yes.
Starting point is 00:53:19 I can read. It kills the one, kills the girl. And the other guy survives. Yeah. I can recreate some of the screams later if you want to tell me. privately? I'll do my quint jaws impersonation just for that.
Starting point is 00:53:32 Save them for when taken comes back from his Achilles. Gray Smith makes the dangerous animal of them all connection to the most dangerous game 1932. Sean, you have that on 4K?
Starting point is 00:53:47 I have the Eureka edition of it on Blu-ray. Yeah, 1932. Quality film. Joel McCray, right? What was going on in this movie? The villainist Count Zeroff hunting live human prey? You never read this story?
Starting point is 00:53:59 This was like a... This was given to us in seventh grade English class. I remember the story. I don't understand why they made it a movie in 1932. And then they made it again with Ice-T, right? Yes, that movie is it called trespass? No, isn't that just called the Most Dangerous Game? Or Game?
Starting point is 00:54:16 I feel like they make this movie every 10 years. Didn't they do the what was the COVID year? The hunt. It's like, let's hunt humans. What is that Ice-T movie? It's not called trespass. I thought it was called Dangerous Game. Is it called Dangerous Game?
Starting point is 00:54:28 Anyway, the original movie Surviving the game. Surviving the game. There you go. That's right. It's only like 80 minutes. You can feel that they're stretching out a short story. But it's a pretty good movie for the 30s.
Starting point is 00:54:41 Then we get the cab driver shot and killed. Zodiac mails the bloodstained shirt to The Chronicle. Yeah. Taunting letter. He's talking a lot of smack. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of the Anthony Edwards of serial killers.
Starting point is 00:54:52 He's staring at the bench. Yeah. Little Dylan Brooks in there. someone claimed to be Zodiac starts fucking with this lawyer Melvin Belly on a talk show ends up but it's not really him.
Starting point is 00:55:08 Then our guy Roger Avery, played by Downey, finds this 1966 Riverside murder that he thinks is tied to it that the police missed. Then they interview Arthur Leigh Allen in 71. They noticed the Zodiac watch.
Starting point is 00:55:22 So he's the Zodiac watch. He's got same gloves, same glove size. He's got the boots. he's kind of moved around in the general vicinity of where these murders were. We don't find out to the end of the movie that he lived near the first victim.
Starting point is 00:55:36 Yes, because he, right. Also has a trailer full of fucking weird shit, including a wooden dildo. And there's 19 other things that seem suspicious, but the handwriting expert just kills it. He's like, nah, nah, it's not him. Well, it's really hard to watch it
Starting point is 00:55:52 and just understand the difference between circumstantial and hard evidence, you know, and like the idea of like coincidence versus like incrimination. There's just a dramatic thing where they just can't get a warrant to search his trailer before he cleans out his trailer and moves.
Starting point is 00:56:05 I mean, that's the most important thing that happens in this entire case. If they're able to search him and if they had approached this differently, we might not have a movie or even a case. It might just be totally different. C.R., how would you compare this to Pablo Torres' aspiration investigation?
Starting point is 00:56:21 A lot of circumstantial evidence, but can't find the smoking gun. and Balmer versus Arthur Leigh Allen. They kind of have a similar vibe. Yeah, similar vibes. Balmer and Ben-Hu. Pablo's spinning out a little bit like the Greysmith thing. I'm not the CEO of aspiration, and I wouldn't tell you if I was.
Starting point is 00:56:42 Oh, you're talking about why we planted those trees. Well, I can explain that. Kauai Leonard was paid properly under the cap rules. Then stuff stops. Not so coincidentally, Arthur Leigham is in jail for the second time for molesting people. Yeah. Another red flag. Definitely.
Starting point is 00:57:02 Adding that to his draft combine file, multiple molestations. Jesus Christ. By 1976, Graysmith is just losing his mind, announces he's writing a book, starts getting the heavy breathing phone calls. Because guess who's out of jail? Arthur Leigh Allen. And he figures out he lived close to the first victim, figures out the birthday thing, which they somehow fucked up where he mentioned I'm going to kill somebody today, it's my birthday, and
Starting point is 00:57:29 all the circumstantial evidence but by the way, it's ambidextrous. We forgot to mention that part. And then eight years later, after Graceman's book has come out, Mike Mijot, somehow they have not asked to look at
Starting point is 00:57:45 Arthur Leown photo for 12 years here. They're like, what about this guy? He's like, yeah, that's him. 8 out of 10. Pretty good, yeah. And then Arthur Leown dies of a heart attack, and that's basically the case against Arthur Leon. Yeah. Part of the genius of the movie is the way it portrays bureaucratic disorder.
Starting point is 00:58:02 The fact that there's so many police departments and police officers and detectives. And no internet. And no, right, no centralizing force, really. The fact that the FBI is not as involved in this case as it would be in 2025 is kind of fascinating. Yeah. Like, Mine Hunter in part is about the kind of development of forces to account for these kinds of crimes. And that doesn't exist here in the same way.
Starting point is 00:58:24 And so you've just kind of got all of these local precincts and districts, some from major cities, some from much smaller towns in California. And all these rules where they couldn't really cross the line. What Graysmith's project is that he tells Avery about on the houseboat. He's like, I was just thinking if we could just write everything down and if we could just basically like organize all the facts of the case that it might jog something loose. But we take it for granted that there would be this database that has all that information. You know what I mean? It's like, it's the same thing with hospitals where you're like, they used to just have, you know, the charting by hand.
Starting point is 00:59:00 And it would be like sometimes if somebody screwed something up, that would be a huge deal. It's the same thing for police work back then where it was just like, one guy has a telefax, the other doesn't. One person took good notes. The other didn't. You know, like one guy's pissed at that other jurisdiction. In fact, Fincher says that the movie exists and that the entire investigation kind of operated in the way that it did was because Armstrong,
Starting point is 00:59:23 Anthony Edwards' character took such good news. That there was so much detail and information that they could even just pull from for the movie, let alone for the investigation itself. And if you don't have that raw material, you can't solve crimes. You can't do your job the way that you're supposed to. It's really interesting because, like,
Starting point is 00:59:40 we think of that shit is really boring. And I remember for years hearing from my dad about, like, the kind of drudgery that comes with police work. But when you're trying to solve a major crime that is national news, you need to put all that information somewhere. Well, that's why all three of those movies we mentioned earlier, spotlight all the president's been in this movie,
Starting point is 00:59:58 the drudgery you can feel. It's like, fuck, all right, we go through these files. Yeah, it's boring. All the president's been has that famous scene when they're in the library, and it's just like, the crane goes up, and they're just like, all right, guess we got to go through these. That's like, you own basketball reference, you know?
Starting point is 01:00:12 It's like, this isn't going to do itself. I got to get all this data. I got to find out what this guy's nickname is. Arthur Lee Allen, other stuff with him, taught high school students when he was a teacher how to use letter symbols and then decode them. That was on the record. An incredible swimmer.
Starting point is 01:00:29 And then found with a bloody knife the same night as the bluff murderers, which he said was used to kill a chicken that day. For dinner. Yeah, normal. And then, again, multiple pedophilia stuff. And lived in a trailer full of squirrels and weird shit. And he checked every box except for this one hand or anything.
Starting point is 01:00:50 So there was this other thing. This happened in December. So last month, an amateur sleuth, self-taught cryptography expert named Alex Weber in West Virginia, who said one of the reasons he was able to pull this is because he has autism that makes him fixate on things until he can figure out what happened. And he used all these AI programs, and he claimed that he figured out the Zodiac thing. And a lot of it came down to the 13 letter names with the mysterious symbols. He put it through. It came back, $71 million.
Starting point is 01:01:25 Then it came back. And he kept narrowing the number down until he could narrow it down to 14 and landed on this name Marvin Meryl, who was an alias assumed by Marvin Margolis, who was investigated for the Black Dally murder, who was 21 at the time. And had all of the same stuff the Zodiac killer would have done. It was a Navy medic, was good at, like, just doing it. quick amputations and shit like that was really bitter about how the Navy thing happened and then a year before his death
Starting point is 01:01:55 did this drawing of somebody named Elizabeth that looked like the Black Dahlia and this guy Alex Babers like this guy did both. These were the two great unsolved murders of the 20th century or serial killer or whatever
Starting point is 01:02:11 and this guy's saying I've solved it. It's actually like the demon of like the devil of California. Yeah. The only thing that I always stumble on whenever I hear that that kind of insinuation that the Black Dahlia killer and the Zodiac killer were one and the same is like, that's a great distance to travel to commit these crimes and where the person is living and how they're doing that. And you hear this over and over again, it's like so somebody had like a 14-hour round
Starting point is 01:02:37 trip visit to Marin to go murder a 19-year-old, you know? But is the implication that he was in Southern California up to the Riverside Killings and then moved up to the I mean, you could do that stuff back then. Now you can't. Like the guy who, what was the guy in North Dakota or wherever that was recently who randomly killed the, randomly killed like the four people in that dorm. In Idaho. And he was studying criminal law or something creepy.
Starting point is 01:03:06 But he came, he drove and then he drove back to where he was thinking he would, but then didn't realize his cell phone was being tracked. These guys always forget about this cell phone. Yeah. Craig, what are some of the mistakes you make as you kill people around Southern California? down the coast. I've had to stop. It sucks. Yeah. I mean, you know. You also, you do have, you have a legacy in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Northern California. We know that about you. Serial killer hotbeds. Yeah. I didn't realize, I didn't realize Fincher was from North Bay,
Starting point is 01:03:32 from Marin. You didn't realize this was a sting operation and we've identified you as a serial killer. This is a captain friend. Yeah. The real friend, the real guy was not super far from where I grew. Yeah. The reason I don't think the Bayber theory is true because I don't think somebody would shut that off for 20 years. Yes. Yeah, I agree. I think once you're going, you're going. There was also somebody, there was like a University of Maryland. I'm trying to remember who is it like response, but there's something called like case breakers.
Starting point is 01:03:58 That's like a bunch of ex-FBI, Justice Department, people. And, you know, like they basically tried to solve cold cases. Yeah. And they named someone, it was this guy Greg Post, but he was like, he made, that was almost like sounded like really true detectivey where he had like a criminal posse. and would like indoctrinate people into this crew and they would like maraud
Starting point is 01:04:21 Northern California but Well that's another theory with this. I think there was some DNA with Sherry Bates that they were linking to him or something I can't remember yeah. Well that one of the other theories is that this was multiple people. Yes.
Starting point is 01:04:32 That's the one I think I described to. I think I do too. The film kind of taps into that a little bit with the basement guy and could people have been working together? The creepy thing about Bob Vaughan in the basement scene is the idea that there is a connection
Starting point is 01:04:46 between these different people who wrote the posters. Yes. But that they all knew each other and that they were all kind of like on the same frequency. I'm such an Occam's Razor person with this stuff though and we talked about this when we did JFK on the show, right? Where you guys were like, I'm ready to spend four hours
Starting point is 01:05:01 trying to figure out where all the pinboard lines meet. Yeah. And to me, like we didn't go far enough. And we can read JFK as soon as you want because I'll love to watch it again. But in the movie and based on anything that I've read, it feels very clear to me that Arthur Lee Allen killed Darlene. That's the one thing that I'm like, this makes too much sense.
Starting point is 01:05:21 And Mike Mijon kind of knew who it was. Yes, right? He identifies him, the distance between them, the preexisting relationship, the way in which the murder is happening because of the information that he had around that. So that's one thing that you can kind of put your arms around and say, this makes a lot of sense. It's everything else, the information splatter, the variation in the crime style, that is just a little bit harder to make sense.
Starting point is 01:05:44 He might have gotten help, yeah. $70 million budget made $85 million. Barely made even. A little bad for Fincher. It was like, wait, we give you a lot of money for this. That was worldwide, too. In the U.S. made like $35 million. He got it all back.
Starting point is 01:05:58 I mean, like, he just goes on this run now. He turned out fine. 157-minute runtime. We have a new category in 2026. The Craig Century Club. Craig feels like every movie should be 100 minutes. Craig, this was a minus 57. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:06:13 What are your thoughts? What's the ideal runtime? I understand that this movie is supposed to feel like this long, painful process, and it needs to be long. It can't be 100 minutes. I'm willing to admit that. I think you could have probably cut 15 minutes. MGM was going to make this movie,
Starting point is 01:06:28 and they had a hard rule that said two hours and 15 minutes max, and then they ended up taking it to Paramount. There is, I think, a section in the middle where it's kind of Ruffalo just running into dead ends for a while. That starts to feel slow. It's like the first, the Robert Denny Jr., first 50 minutes is great. The Jillenhall stuff really picks up and flies. at the end. I do think there is a
Starting point is 01:06:48 15-minute chunk in the middle that could probably be cut, to be honest. Directors cut, it's longer. And they add a two-minute kind of interstitial when it does the four years later. He cut something about basically all the music over the four years and basically finchering it up.
Starting point is 01:07:04 And some news, like, reports of like, oh, and this is happening. The screen goes to black. I would have put that in. I feel like that part of the movie is pretty clumsy where it's clearly edited. He almost seems pissed off. It's like, fine. Here's your four years later graphic. Fuck you.
Starting point is 01:07:18 I just spent four months making this two-minute montage of four years of movies. Well, there's rumors of a three-hour and ten-minute cut that was submitted to the studio that they, that I haven't seen. That's not. I mean, they did a really nice 4K, and there's a director's cut on the Blu-ray with like, that has the extra Avery and a little bit of stuff. Not a lot. It's all like 40 seconds or something like that. Sean, I said on the another 48 hours rewatchable. a couple days ago.
Starting point is 01:07:48 That is my number one release the cut. So there's 25 minutes extra. And apparently another 40 minutes, and it's a totally different movie. Did they reveal who the Zodiac Killer is in that film? They don't do that. And there's no sign that that cut is even exists in a warehouse. We got to find out from Walter.
Starting point is 01:08:05 Paramount butchoochered it at the last minute. They decided it needed to be 95 minutes. But there was all this ice man stuff in it. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But that's what's your number one release the cut? The Snyder cut. No.
Starting point is 01:08:18 I don't know. Most of the cuts are out there, right? Like the legendary ones, like Kingdom of Heaven and Blade Runner and all that stuff's been made available to us, right? Yeah. We were doing this for another 48. I couldn't really think of another one besides.
Starting point is 01:08:31 The other one I came up with was eyes wide shut, released the Kubrick right before he died cut. The interview, there was an interview with the editor of that film that came out when the Blu-ray, when the 4K was released at the end of last year, and he said the version that is on, On the Criterion disc is the version that Kubrick wanted out.
Starting point is 01:08:49 That has not been edited. And then when the camera pans back, you can see the gun being pointed at him as he says it. Yeah. By the Illuminati. I mean, it's possible that there's another version of that movie. Cooper tried to tell us what happened. He's dead. Watch party is another category for us where we decide what is the best setting for a watch or a rewatch.
Starting point is 01:09:08 This is a true solo one for me. This is a CR solo? Yeah, this is like everybody. Clear a shirt, no pants. What are you doing? The tube and, yeah. This is my wife went to New York for the weekend. I'm Porky Biggin' it all day for this one.
Starting point is 01:09:27 The Tubein. Oh, my God. Roger Ebert, our guy. Yeah. Every rewatchable is we read the Roger Ebert review. Four stars. He said Zodiac is the all the president's men of serial killer movies. Signed me up with Woodward and Bernstein, played by a cop and a cartoonist.
Starting point is 01:09:46 then he says Fincher is an elegant stylist on top of everything else. Here he is. He finds the right place in style for a story about persistence in the face of evil. Raj, you like this. Check a lot of boxes, characters, plot. Story. I can always count on, Raj, except when you can't. I do think that it's kind of weird to try to have a conversation about evil
Starting point is 01:10:09 and the idea of evil, but it comes up over and over again in all these Fincher movies. And he's like, definitely thinks it's a little funny. Oh, yeah. But also is completely terrorized by it. And the idea that, like, these people died, you know? Like, it's not a joke. Yeah. And yet there is this real sense of black humor in the movie
Starting point is 01:10:29 and a real acceptance of not knowing, never knowing what really happened. I think his way of showing, his way of showing empathy and sensitivity to the victims is by not making their deaths seductive and not making their death seductive. and not making their deaths. He doesn't romanticize them at all. Well, so he has seven guys, the fucking craziest person, probably who's ever killed anyone in a movie. But it's like, ooh, this guy would have won Jeopardy.
Starting point is 01:10:56 You know what I mean? You have the game, which is the craziest prank anyone's pulled on a family member. Such a mean spirit movie. That movie's nuts. You have Fight Club, which is just one of the kind of secretly most vicious Ben was watching the other day. I was like, I forgot how fucking crazy this movie.
Starting point is 01:11:14 Chaos at your fingertips in that movie. Panic Room, which is basically these three burglars just going as far as you could possibly go to torture. What if we tortured a single mom and her 12-year-old? Yeah. Then you have this movie. Then he kind of cools off a little bit. Gone girl's pretty perverted. Then it goes back to Gone Girl.
Starting point is 01:11:34 Dragon Tattoo is crazy. Some of the torture scenes in Dragon Tattoo were so vicious. I was saying like Benjamin Button he cools off. Yeah. Comes back with Social Network. the biggest sociopath he's ever done a movie about Mark Zuckerberg, Dragon Tattoo, and then Gone Girl. So for the most part, he's really fascinated by what makes somebody kind of break.
Starting point is 01:11:55 And what encourages them to do things that we know are not in polite society or bad? Yeah. Are wrong. My favorite Fincher quote is still people are fundamentally perverts, and I find that interesting. It's paraphrasing. Yeah. But you guys have 500,000 text words.
Starting point is 01:12:11 back and forth about Finch movies. A couple of perverts. It would have been funny if during this whole run, he just made one random sports movie, like Glory Road. It's like, I'm going back to the 1960s, the first all black starting five. Guys getting corrupted by like a betting ring
Starting point is 01:12:26 and shooting steroids the entire time. You'd watch it, though. It'd be meticulously crafted. Honestly, I'd watch anything Fincher did. Me too. Yeah. I just think there's a style to his stuff that you know immediately.
Starting point is 01:12:36 It's like when we always talk about writers when you can cover the byline and know who the writer is. Like, Fincher, you know. All right, most bewatchable scene. The lover's lane murder is fucking creepy. I don't like flashlights as a murder scene gimmick really freak me out. Just putting the flashlight on top of the gun.
Starting point is 01:12:56 When they do this, it never goes well. The hurdy-gurdy man, though, is just an amazing. I love all the Vallejo stuff at the beginning to just like that. The fireworks. That static tracking shot of the suburbs and the fireworks and stuff. It's a really, really good first six minutes. Like, it's, you're just, you're in. Puts you right in the place at that time.
Starting point is 01:13:16 And also, if you think about it through the eyes of Fincher, it's like him just like rebuilding his childhood. I want to just mention, Gray Smith, reading the decoded letter with Roger watching along. We get a little back and forth with them. In the Chronicle. Paul. You keep saying Roger.
Starting point is 01:13:32 I said Roger. Yeah, because Roger Avery from Pulp Fiction. Thank you for correcting me. Paul. Why did I keep saying Roger? Because we know who Roger Avery is. Screenwriter. Paul Avery.
Starting point is 01:13:42 Yeah. Paul Avery is the journalist. Thank you, Chris. I knew I was going to have name messups in this. You got a lot on your minds. You're trying to find the Zodiac murder. And then when they,
Starting point is 01:13:55 we find out he gave himself the name, I am the Zodiac. The Bluff Murder. Do you have a version of that? When did you say I am the Boston sports guy? Well, that was when there was a Boston movie guy. Were you sending coded messages? Is that what happened?
Starting point is 01:14:10 Is that what it was? This is Boston movie guy doing reviews. You probably hated, you were probably reading them age 12 being like, this guy sucks. On micro-fish? Like, how was like getting access to them? A-L-L-L-Ditchity Boston movie guy. Boston movie guy. So I was like, I'll be Boston sports guy.
Starting point is 01:14:24 And then maybe me and the movie guy can, no? We might have tried a cross-promotion thing. It didn't work out that great. Huh. Interesting. The Bluff Murder. In the running for most unsettling murder scene ever. I don't know what
Starting point is 01:14:40 there's no music you don't know it's coming all of a sudden you see the knife and then just people getting stabbed and screaming
Starting point is 01:14:45 it's awful such a tough rewatch because you're just like dude look up you know because his girlfriend is like hey there's a guy
Starting point is 01:14:53 watching us and he's just like it's a free country it's fine apparently it was accurate to how that actually happened where is it Brian Hartnell
Starting point is 01:15:00 the guy who's stabbed but survives was tried to disarm the guy you know tried to be kind of casual and comfortable
Starting point is 01:15:08 so to kind of keep him at peace so he wouldn't attack him. But he's wearing an all-black jumpsuit and a hood. And the necklace. And just, it looks like the living embodiment of murder. Yeah. I think murders in peaceful locations are creepier too. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 01:15:25 They're like this nice, idyllic place. Yeah. And broad daylight. That's the other thing about that murder is everybody's alone. And it seems like it should be the most beautiful experience you could possibly have with someone you care about. Denny Theeves, Benny Hanna Award, would you go scene stealing location
Starting point is 01:15:42 for the buff or somewhere else? I'd probably go in Morty's, the bar. But I like the diner at the end. Diner at the end. There's some great diners in this movie. Yeah. Next, we watch the scene. Logan Royd does a live TV show
Starting point is 01:15:55 with Fake Zodiac. Sam, I need to get back to the Piers family today. Are you in or are you out? Melbourne Belli is such a beautiful 70s figure. We don't have people like that anymore. Or it's like that guy was a famous lawyer who would just show up on TV all the time. Some Melvin Belli knowledge,
Starting point is 01:16:14 he was the one who suggested to the Rolling Stones that they moved the venue to Altamont. That's right. We might want that one back. He's in Gemi Shelter. He's literally portraying Gimmie Shelter. He's literally portrayed in a lot of things. You stop it with that gas chamber shit, Sam.
Starting point is 01:16:30 I need to know. In or out! Well, fuck off! I can't watch Brian Coxon anything after succession. I literally can't. I just wait for him to become Logan, Not even Hannibal Lecter? No.
Starting point is 01:16:41 No. Logan Murray ruined him for me. Okay. In a good way. He is also the voice of McDonald's. I think about that when he does that too. Him going ba-da-p-pah-ba-ba. That's the craziest thing that's ever happened.
Starting point is 01:16:52 I think he's actually done a lot of VEO stuff, and I'm just like, damn, this guy must just be like, the direct deposit. He loves money. Eat this filet of fish, you fuck off. The Ione's sky car ride scene. I just have holy fucking shit written. down for this.
Starting point is 01:17:09 This is a great rewatch because she's so stupid. First of all, she has her kid. It's like, what are you doing? Why are you pulling over? And then he's like, I fixed it. She's like, oh, thank you. And then the terror of realizing he didn't fix it. And then they do kind of the, it's almost like a no country for old men jump cut ahead
Starting point is 01:17:27 of time when you think something horrible has happened. Yes, when she's screaming on the side of the road. She's screaming, throw the baby out. Baby was fine. Just walking with a limp, I guess. I'm going to throw your baby out the window. Yeah. Please don't do that anymore.
Starting point is 01:17:44 I just wrote down for the next thing, Downey and Jake just cooking. And it starts with that. Does it bother you when people call you Shorty? Does it bother you and people call you retard? And then he goes to Downey and it's like, people call me retard? It's like, no.
Starting point is 01:17:58 He's like, do people call me names? Yeah. The laugh line when Shorty hits him with that, though, is really, really funny. Yeah. And it keeps going. they end up with the Halloween card, the gun range. I just like when they're hanging out.
Starting point is 01:18:11 You've been around the block a couple of times. What do you think Shorty's comp package was? Coffee guy in the Chronicle newsroom? I think he's doing fine. I'm going to say... Do some shoe shine in? Like, what is... Does that he get 5% bumps every year or what?
Starting point is 01:18:23 I'm going to say that probably a checkered history for him in his 20s. Sure. Might have spent some time. He might have been incarcerated for a couple of years there, so he's happy to be working. I just love that towards the end of the movie when Downey is getting, basically, fired and he's like Shorty, let's go for one. Shorty's like, yeah, sure. He's like, Shorty, you're fucking working here, man. But there's a scene between
Starting point is 01:18:45 Avery and Greysmith before that where they go to the bar together, the Aqua Velves scene where they're getting to know each other. Coated. Which is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. And there's a great moment when Avery's like asking Gray Smith about himself and he's like, what do you like to do? And he's like, uh, I love to read. I enjoy books.
Starting point is 01:19:02 And Avery's like, those are the same thing. That's the same thing. And he's like, we could no longer ignore this drink. Yeah, the whole scene where he's just like, you wouldn't make fun of it if you try it.
Starting point is 01:19:13 And they cut to an hour later, Avery's drinking them in the bar. And he's just doing bumps while Gray Smith is like, look at my codebreaker book. They're so good together.
Starting point is 01:19:22 Interrogating Arthur at work, we talked about this scene. Oh yeah, that's... I think this is my most rewatchable scene. That's it. I love this scene. Searching Lee's place.
Starting point is 01:19:33 Hmm, the squirrels. Squirrels. The wooden dildo is the fucking gross thing you could probably added to this movie? Yep. I like searching.
Starting point is 01:19:44 Can we get a search warrant? We can? Oh, we got one. And then we go in and whatever the place is of the person is the bad guy. It's just way more disturbing and awful than you would ever imagine.
Starting point is 01:19:54 Buffalo Bill is still number one most disturbing place. I think if you're going to, we could build a small Mount Rush more of disturbing places that get searched. It's definitely Arthur Lee's trailer, Buffalo Bill's
Starting point is 01:20:06 basement. the house and the drug dealer house and Gone Baby Gone with all the newspaper on the windows. Something in seven. There's a couple different seven locations. Yeah, there's, I mean, the David Desmondelchin house in prisoners, right?
Starting point is 01:20:21 Oh, that's great. That's a top five right there. And he opens the suitcase and it's got the snakes in it. That's fucking incredible. Second prisoners reference. Yeah. Interesting. Kind of lurking now.
Starting point is 01:20:30 Circling, yeah. The basement scene. Rick didn't draw any posters. I do the posters myself. Jill and how it's like, that's, this is the one scene for me. When I saw the movie,
Starting point is 01:20:46 I was like, this is one of the most scared I felt in a movie in my entire life, seeing in the movie theater. And now it doesn't work as much. It doesn't hit us hard. I think I have, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:20:55 I feel, it's, I've seen it too many times. It's the only part of the movie I feel that way about it. Because you feel like it's totally different or because you, it's like,
Starting point is 01:21:03 it feels like so. He's trying to scare you and I know. He's doing like movie stuff. Yeah. In that scene where he's trying to make you uneasy. The whole movie makes you uneasy because of what really happened. I think the worst nightmare you could have as somebody is willingly going into somebody's basement and then realizing you might not get out.
Starting point is 01:21:19 Yeah. Right. That's upsetting. Yeah. And it's the way he shoots it, like, he starts backing up. He's like, okay, I'm going to get going. And the guy just turns the lights off and he's in the dark. And it's like, all right, what's happening?
Starting point is 01:21:31 I mean, yeah. Also, like, hearing the footsteps on the top, what was going on there? I think it's illustrative of Graysmith, the character in the film, finally confronting the stuff that Chloe 70's character was so worried about. Yeah. Where she's just like, you're putting yourself out there, going on television, you're writing about him. Well, and you're so obsessed, this guy's like, let's just go back to my house.
Starting point is 01:21:53 He's like, sure. Yeah, exactly. He brings his baby at the middle of the night to meet with Toski. Also, they get in the house, closes the door, and the guy locks it from the inside and takes the key. And at that point, Grace Smith should have been like, wait, what's going on? Yeah. He's so trusting.
Starting point is 01:22:10 But that's kind of what I mean about the way that the movie's made, where when you're watching the movie for the first time, you're like, this is getting really, really uncomfortable. But then when you watch it with a little bit of distance, you're like, they showed us the key locking, you know, to make you uncomfortable. But it's pretty subtle, though. It still is really effective. It's also this weird 50, 50.
Starting point is 01:22:26 I mean, we could talk about this later in the pod, but, like, that point in the movie, you're experiencing the case the way, I think Fincher wants like you to think Gray Smith's experiencing and it's so manic and it's so like all of a sudden
Starting point is 01:22:42 it's like everything is about Rick Marshall and you're like wait what like what happened with It's a good point and who is Rick Marshall
Starting point is 01:22:47 yeah we don't even know who we're talking about weird random anonymous phone call and now all of a sudden we've got a new suspect yeah Jake goes to Ruffalo's house
Starting point is 01:22:57 because he figured out the birthday thing yeah I think this is one of the things I miss about the 70s and 80s is you could just show up
Starting point is 01:23:05 at somebody's house and it wasn't completely insane. You want to test that out and have no, I don't think you can do it anymore. You're just like, I'm just knocking on your door. Like, C.R. Did you see it over time and Bits back? C.R. It beats back. You have to get out of bed. Your wife goes, I'll make some
Starting point is 01:23:20 Folgers. Of the three of us, I think he would like that the least. I don't want to be. I don't want to be disturbed. But not any more than that. I don't like when people come over. And yet. Jake, last thing, Jake goes to see at the hardware store,
Starting point is 01:23:38 which I think also gets the Fortune 3 clap award for most giffable moment. The stare down. Yeah. I think, I think, what's the John Carroll Lynch? John Carroll Lynch, yeah.
Starting point is 01:23:50 Great face changes in this movie by him. Yeah. Because he has like a nice face, right? Where he's like, hey, can I help you? But then it drops into the evil face. It's a really hard thing to do, and he does it very subtly.
Starting point is 01:24:04 He's a really talented actor. He mentioned that he's in Fargo, where he's just kind of pure warmth, right? He's just supporting March throughout that whole movie. He's in Sorry Baby, this movie that came out this year, where he has a very similar thing where he's really empathetic to Ava Victor in the movie in one scene. But in this movie, he seems like he could be the most deranged person
Starting point is 01:24:21 in the history of America. So what do you have from us through Watch? Can I just throw one that you didn't mention? Yes. Which is... Is it with Roger Avery? It's Toski and Armstrong doing the crime scene for the Taxi Cab murder. Taxi cab.
Starting point is 01:24:35 That's the first animal. Crackers moment, and it's also just, it's just Fincher making a mini cop movie in the middle of this movie where it's like, they shot that in L.A. and used Bay Area digital backdrops to, like, recreate the San Francisco Street. But it's got all the like, yeah, but you're not dumb
Starting point is 01:24:54 because you waited for him to park the car. You know, like all the recreation and the forensic stuff and the pathology stuff is so awesome. And then that last shot of Toski gets out of the cabin you kind of walks right up to the camera and then the David Shire music is really hitting. It's just awesome, awesome. But it's the interrogation.
Starting point is 01:25:12 I have two more that we didn't talk about. One is the first time that Graysmith meets with Toski. He's like, I can't allow you to help, but go talk to Narlo, N-A-R-L-O-W. And then the second one is my single favorite scene in the movie other than the interrogation, which is door-to-door, that final breakfast meeting between Dave and Graysmith.
Starting point is 01:25:33 With the salt pepper shakers. Yeah, and he says, Darlene worked at the House of Pancakes in Vallejo. I walked it. That scene, while watching the movie the first time, when it felt like they were explaining to you, this movie knows who the Zodiac Killer is. Like, it is so convincing because of the conviction that Jelen Hall has,
Starting point is 01:25:52 and the way that Toski reacts where he's like, I was right, we were right. And then he just leaves. He's like, thanks for breakfast, puts money on the table, walks out, it's over. And then you do get the Jimmy Simpson moment after that. but like it gives you this sense of satisfaction, but then the movie doesn't let you have the satisfaction at its conclusion.
Starting point is 01:26:08 Sure. With the title cards, like... Well, I guess you have to decide whether or not you find Grey Smith and Arthur Lee in the hardware store is satisfying. Right, right. What did you have for most rewatchable seeing it first time? Interview, the interrogation with Lee and the watch thing and the shoe, it felt the most like usual suspect where you're sitting there picking up on things,
Starting point is 01:26:31 watching people piece things together. Yeah, it's a great scene. May I see it? May I see it? You already did the what's the most 2007 thing about this movie, which is wide-eyed crazy Jake Hillenaw. When we go backwards of movies, it's almost like we have to do,
Starting point is 01:26:43 what's the most 1970s thing about this movie? And I think it's Folgers Coffee. Because it was really that was the only coffee forever. We did have it in the 80s because I remember it in my house. Yeah, it was 80s right until something shifted. I don't really know what, but it was basically, I don't even know, Was there another coffee?
Starting point is 01:27:04 I think Fulgers Crystals was cooking in the 90s too, right? But then for some reason, I mean, Starbucks really. And Starbucks killed the Seattle Supersonics and Folgers. But would you put Fulgers? Were people putting Fulgers in like a Mr. coffee or were they putting boiling water in it? It was old school. Because there's instant coffee, you just pour the hot water and mix it.
Starting point is 01:27:20 My mom might have been the first person I knew that anyone knew who had like a nice coffee machine. My mom loved coffee. Still loves coffee. But we always had like a nice coffee machine in the 80s, and she really cared about grinding it? Like, when's the last time you had? I can't even imagine.
Starting point is 01:27:37 Maybe like an Airbnb or something. What it tastes like. Yeah. Bad. Um, I would also say for a 70s thing about the movie, just coordinating investigations between cities. Sure.
Starting point is 01:27:47 It just would be different now. Okay. Can I give you one other 2007 thing? Yeah. I do think it's a really interesting example of, uh, Gen X art and like Gen X kind of looking back at their childhood. And not to get. too high-minded about it, but it's like right before Obama.
Starting point is 01:28:06 It's right before this kind of like shift culturally. Sean's cooking. Kind of like reckoning with the end of the summer of love and what the 70s could have been and then how they turned out so toxic and dangerous. And it felt very chaotic to live in that time. This kind of desperation to have like a little bit more peace culturally. Like I'm reaching a little bit, but the movie does feel like him kind of reckoning with some of those feelings.
Starting point is 01:28:27 I like it. I add a hottest take that I think I just should say a little bit about here, which is that I think that if you want to you know, we talk about what would be a good double feature. A good triple feature would be Zodiac, Boogie Nights, and once upon a time in Hollywood. Because it's these three filmmakers
Starting point is 01:28:43 doing basically memoirs but they don't put themselves as the central character. They tell a story about something that was like happening at their childhood that shaped through the world. I'd throw almost famous in too. Yeah, totally. Yeah, almost famous.
Starting point is 01:28:57 All four of them. Totally. That was good. I felt like I was watching Embede back somebody down in the foul. line there. Sean was cooking. Is this before, after you tried to injure Mitchell Robinson?
Starting point is 01:29:09 Wow, I love giving this award out. The Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot. I mean, the takes thing is always the funniest thing about researching a Fincher movie.
Starting point is 01:29:22 It's hilarious how much the actors hate it. Jillon Hall said, quote, you get a take, five takes, 10 takes, some places, 90 takes. There's a stopping point. There's a point at which you go, That's what we have to work with.
Starting point is 01:29:34 But we would reshoot things. And there comes a point when I would say, well, what do I do? Where's the risk? Downey said, I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garret him, and I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I'm a perfect person to work for him
Starting point is 01:29:49 because I understand gulags. And then Ruffalo said, he makes Michael Mann look like he's working on a McDonald's hamburger line during rush hour. Fincher's response, if an actor is going to let the role come to them, They can't resent the fact that I'm willing to wait as long as that takes. You know, the first day of production in San Francisco,
Starting point is 01:30:08 we shot 56 takes of Mark and Jake, and it's the 56 take that's in the movie. Yes. I think that one of the reasons why this was breaking their brains is that this is, like, among the first times, probably any of them are shooting digitally. And there would be scenes where they'd be on take 22, and Fincher would be, like, delete the first 20 takes.
Starting point is 01:30:31 from the memory chip. And these guys would just be like, what are you talking about? Like, what are we doing? But I think he gets among the three best performances these guys have ever gotten, given. And there are different actors, like Chloe Seven-Yeh talks about this.
Starting point is 01:30:48 Ben Affleck has talked about this where he's just like, I like it. I like that he, he's like, I want to work, I want to do takes. I don't think we're going for the right thing. We're trying different things. And he's also making sure that the back extra and the glass on the desk
Starting point is 01:31:03 are all where they need to be. I think if we were all actors, Sean would like it because he would really appreciate the craftsmanship. I like whatever it takes, David. Chris would secretly bitch about it, but be a good soldier. And I'd be the one like, this fucking guy!
Starting point is 01:31:17 This motherfucker up than 35 takes! Asshole! I think that's right. I really like systems. He's a systems guy. I think there's also something... He talked about shooting that door-to-door sequence at the end.
Starting point is 01:31:31 And they filmed it, and they looked at it, and they were like, this isn't right. And Jillon Hall is not the expert in this scene. He's the guy who has to know more than Toski. He's the guy who has to have all the information and is explaining it. And they went back and reshot it. And he explained how when they reshot it, Jillen Hall brought his dad, who was a filmmaker,
Starting point is 01:31:50 and that his dad's presence psychologically made him do it better, and then didn't explain that. And he is one of those filmmakers who, He's not purposefully torturing actors, but he does think about their psychology and how they work. And I do think that sometimes he gets that reputation because he's like, this is how I can get the best out of you. Well, who's the number one guy who did this, Kubrick?
Starting point is 01:32:15 And he basically, like, Shelly DeValle had a nervous breakdown of the shunning. And Kubrick, I mean, like, there's, like, legendary, just, like, open a door 74 times, you know, like... Right. There's an amazing moment in the behind-the-scenes or the making of Doc for Zodiac where Jill and all's walking through the chronic Uncle Newsroom, and he's taking a bite of a donut. And Fincher's like, cut.
Starting point is 01:32:35 And, like, you know, Jillinall's kind of laughing because he's eating a donut. And Fincher's laughing, and he's like, yeah, I want you to eat, like, take a bigger bite. And Jillenhal's like, oh, of course you do. And Fincher's like, yeah, no, go back, go back and eat a bigger bite of it. Another really funny one in one of the docs where it's a very quick moment, but they're interviewing Gillenhall during the making of a scene. And he's like, yeah, I'm like really good at insert shots. Right, David?
Starting point is 01:33:01 Like, I'm really good at inserts. And David's like, yeah, yeah, you are. It's the masters that are not very good. You know, like the main shot of you acting. You're not good at that? He literally says that to him while they're making the movie. Jesus. And he's giving him shit, but he's giving him shit in like a truthful way.
Starting point is 01:33:16 Yeah. It's tough. He can be tough. Well, I was going to say this later, but one thing I noticed when I watch adventure movies is when people are eating, it's like Anthony Edwards is eating a turkey club at one point. And there's another part where Ruffalo is eating a burger. Yes.
Starting point is 01:33:30 And it's hard not to think, like, I wonder if he had to eat, like, so Ruffalo? He takes a real bite with that burger. Yeah, like, if he made him do 58 takes of that, did he just have to make himself throw up? I have never seen a man grip a hamburger the way Ruffalo does. I know, he's holding it, right? Because I don't think he wanted to eat it.
Starting point is 01:33:45 He's probably like, I'm going to fucking throw up. I don't know if they put, like, a Boka burger in there or whatever. We didn't have his great impossible meats back in 2007. We're going to take a break, and then we're going to do what stage the best. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the final. with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses.
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Starting point is 01:34:21 and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. Before we do what stage the best, new category, this is a 220, 2006er. The Dennis Peck relationship test named after Richard Gehrin Internal Affairs,
Starting point is 01:34:38 who you just wanted to keep away from everybody's relationship. Graysmith and Chloe 70's character, I'm going to say Dennis Peck could have broken this one pretty quickly. I think some Dennis Peck out there seems like he did. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:51 I think somebody, I think she got Dennis Pecked. The funniest thing about it is, from the moment they meet, he's giving you every single sign to run the other way. You should not get invested in this guy. I like, I like the line that she has
Starting point is 01:35:04 where she's like, this was just a first date that went on for a couple years or that never ended. Yes. Because like, that happens sometimes. It's like, you date for a while and then all, oh, wait, we're living together. That was weird. Honestly, I blame her. Like, you saw, he showed you
Starting point is 01:35:19 all of his cards on date one. This guy's a fucking weirdo. This is because you're just like, I never told you, baby. I always said I'd be watching 12 hours of football every Sunday. I do. You knew when you signed up with me.
Starting point is 01:35:31 Yeah, you knew how much of basketball I watch. The movie doesn't explain it, but just through her performance, you can tell she's just a woman who is like, I'm ready to settle down. I'm ready to find somebody and just have a family. She's on a blind date with the guy. Yeah. Yeah. She's just such a fox in this movie. Her and the glasses and the long hair.
Starting point is 01:35:45 Oh my God. Want to start what's age your best with her? She's got such a great sense of humor like 7. You does because there's an interview with her. She's just like, well, I think they wanted to make Jillen Hall less hot. So Fincher made me dress really frumpy. Yeah. So it's supposed to seem like very like normal.
Starting point is 01:36:01 And Graysmith is a cartoonist, right? He's not a cool guy, but it's undeniable. Both of them are beautiful. Another what stage is the best is just true crime the last two decades. That was my number one. Not just true crime, but the obsession with it. This movie is ahead of the game with that. And then podcast come, documentaries come.
Starting point is 01:36:19 Netflix. I watched the three-part Zodiac thing they did last year. This week I missed it when it was out. I don't know how I missed it. This is the Zodiac speaking, right? Yeah. As usual, with those three-part, they did. partners probably could have been just, you know, an hour 25, dragged it out a little bit, but it was interesting.
Starting point is 01:36:33 There's some, there's a couple of, there's one really good one on the Blu-ray that is, that I think is also called this is the Zodiac speaking, but is an hour and 40 minutes and features interviews with all of the major, major figures who are still alive. Do you think Zodiac would have been a good nickname for somebody in basketball? Like, Vantheon Edwards was just his nickname was Zodiac. What would you done it? What if it was for Zedronis-Logoscus? And we were just like, ah, big Zodiac. The post-killer. Is that better football or basketball?
Starting point is 01:36:59 The drop step killer. Basketball. Basketball. Although back in, you know, back in like the Steve Atwater days, it would be great if a free safety was nicknamed Zodiac because he just like kills in discrimination. I thought you were going to say a quarterback that throws a lot of hospital balls. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:37:15 Two is the studio. You can't decode his hospital passes. Late 60s, early 70s, San Francisco. Just seeing that in a movie's age of the best. Like post hippie, fall of the hate kind of like. I had this later, but there's something about the city back then that really kicked everybody else's ass.
Starting point is 01:37:37 About San Francisco. You've done this before. When we went to San Francisco like six or seven years ago, you were like, this place is the best. I think other cities caught up. Yeah. Like when you see a place like Boston now, Boston is much nicer and more spread out,
Starting point is 01:37:51 has more things going than it didn't. This is kind of like you saying that the Celtics are doing what the Pacers did even better than the Pacers. Boston built up. San Francisco never had to build up. San Francisco is like, look how fucking cool this is. This is an unusual place. Alcatraz is over there.
Starting point is 01:38:04 Lots of character. We have hills. We have trolleys. Like, it's just, you know, it's the best movie location of any city. It's not even close. There's also,
Starting point is 01:38:12 I mean, obviously it's the cinematography and the music in this movie, but there's something about his version of San Francisco just feels haunted. It seems like it's night, 75% of this movie.
Starting point is 01:38:25 And it is also like a little bit of a California thing. where you're just like, man, there could just be something behind that fence over there. There's just, there could be something up that hill over there. And it's a weird state too, because like you do have like, for as much as there's L.A. and San Francisco, there is like super rural parts and like trailer parks. And like that's a big part of this movie is the kind of like disconnected various styles of small towns that comprise most of Northern California. I mean, Northern California is not San Francisco in the Bay.
Starting point is 01:38:55 It's like it's a lot of different kinds of small cities and towns that. that are like... Santa Rosa. Or lower middle class and have these small police precincts and the fact that the movie spends a lot of time in those places I think makes it different too.
Starting point is 01:39:08 There's three movie locations that I think you just instinctively know where you are as you're watching a movie. And I think San Francisco is one of them. New York, obviously. And then I think L.A. is the other one if it's certain parts. Otherwise, like Boston,
Starting point is 01:39:24 they have to show Fenway. You know, Chicago. They have to show the white. a lot shot of the cities. For the most part, cities can be downtown L.A. Pretty amorphous. I guess Vegas and New Orleans
Starting point is 01:39:34 could technically count. Yeah. But San Francisco, you always know you're in San Francisco in this movies. I like the San Francisco building thing, which I know is a big film nerd that he shows the time lapse.
Starting point is 01:39:46 The transcontinental, yeah, yeah. The transcontinental is another what's age of best. What do you have for what's age of Sierre? All of Downey. Transamerica, sorry, Transamerica. Downey's mutterings to Jillon Hall,
Starting point is 01:39:56 especially his art criticism, but like sweet mother of Christ, what are you drawing? And Jesus Harold Christ on rubber crutches, Bobby, what are you doing? You're doing that thing, that thing I don't like that starts with now. Like, all of their banter and stuff
Starting point is 01:40:09 kind of culminating at Morty's. I also just, on these repeated viewings, like the way that the film changes tonally when the protagonist, the movie switches from Toski to... The four years later... And the way it feels different, the way the investigation is not as ordered...
Starting point is 01:40:28 and documented and it feels way more like a solo album. Like he's got nobody helping him the way that Toski had Armstrong and everybody else. And it's just an incredible shift in the movie. There's two other things that I really like about it that still resonate. One is just the general premise of the movie, which is like the unsolvability of mundane tragedy. Like we have a lot of examples of this over history where you'll never really know what happened,
Starting point is 01:40:51 even if somebody got convicted of a crime. Then the other thing is, Graysmith represents this idea that I think most people I know, are experiencing right now, which is using external problems in the world to kind of divert yourself away from what's going on at home, what's happening in your career, like who you really are in the world,
Starting point is 01:41:11 and just kind of getting locked in on stuff that isn't about you and doesn't really matter to you, but using it as a portal. You just describe the internet for the last 10 years. And that's really what we've all kind of become, we've become kind of trapped by that idea. And this, even just doing the podcast for this movie, I'm not a very big Reddit person,
Starting point is 01:41:29 but I was on fucking Zodiac Reddit for like an hour just reading about Donald Cheney and who that person is and how he figures into this story. And it's like Gray Smith is kind of the original poster in a lot of ways. You know, like he really does kind of represent
Starting point is 01:41:45 a lot of what the kind of attitudes of people who live online now. And he's always an outsider. So he's like even at the Chronicle, he's doing cartoons. He's like kind of lurking at those meetings. He's probably not supposed to be in. And then when he becomes like the primary investigator,
Starting point is 01:41:59 like nobody takes him seriously because they're like, you're not a cop, you're not a, you're not a journalist, like, what are you doing? I have Downey's comeback as a what's age the best and what it means in the context of his career, this movie, and the Iron Man. That's a really good one, yeah. The Fincher catalog,
Starting point is 01:42:15 and just what this movie means, I think, his age the best. I don't want to say he needed it, but he kind of needs it when you think, like, holy shit. Like, I think ultimately you're talking about a director they can make 20 movies, 30, whatever, but there's usually like, five to eight that people are going to...
Starting point is 01:42:31 It's interesting to think about what his personal passion projects are. Like, it's definitely Zodiac and Mank. I wonder what else he... One for two. Love Mank. But Zodiac and Mank are both clearly about his dad. I mean, you know, they're just... They're obsessions of his dad.
Starting point is 01:42:47 He talks about his dad a bunch on the commentary. And, you know, his dad was just in this milieu at the time. And, you know, like all people, he's kind of haunted by the positives and the negatives of that experience. I had a Paul Every's water place which I want to give
Starting point is 01:43:04 the Amanda Dobbins Award for Best Piece of Real Estate. I don't know how much that place cost but I thought his place was fucking cool. But it's in whatever that was. Is it supposed to be in Sacramento?
Starting point is 01:43:14 I don't know where it was but I thought it was cool. Yeah. That seems like a great place to end up if you're an alcoholic who's given a pulmonary emphysema. What's the commute? Is he living in like Marin?
Starting point is 01:43:24 Like where is he living? That could have been like Alameda or something. I'm not really sure. I liked it. Okay. He's just going to smoke Sigs there and fucking drink until he does. He makes that reference to the, there's more people die in the commute in the East Bay than this guy, this crazy guy's ever killed. And he like points out the window as if.
Starting point is 01:43:38 So then he maybe is in Alameda or Oakland or something. Maybe he said to the East Bay. I had the Chronicles office and how they recreated it. Ebert made a good point about there's a couple scenes where it's just empty or pretty empty. And that really is what it's like to work for a newspaper. Like you go in the morning, there's like five people there. My dad would sometimes take me by the Inquirer on Sundays. And it was always like, this place is like.
Starting point is 01:43:58 like Disneyland. Yeah, it's like a movie set. And it's always that there's nobody there in the morning and everybody starts showing up around 4 o'clock when deadline time starts to come around. The soundtrack is effective. Includes Three Dog Night, Donovan. Soul Sacrifice by Santana.
Starting point is 01:44:14 Really good. Crystal blue persuasion. And then we get, as we move into the late 70s, it turns into a little yacht rock. Well, Steeley Dan. Sorry, Donald Fagan. Baja Skaggs. Jerry Rafferty.
Starting point is 01:44:26 start sneaking him in. No crisper cross. So Downey cruising to the Sean Penn, I brought my own pack award for excellence and on-screen smoking. I mean, it's really about as good as it's... I think he's smoking filterless, so that's like another level.
Starting point is 01:44:47 You know, you mean... He's doing where he has the no hands. He's talking. The cigarettes coming this way. He's puffing from it and then blowing out of his knee. and nose and still just keeping the scene.
Starting point is 01:45:00 It's incredible stuff. I spent five years trying to perfect that. I think that... Effortless. Also, my favorite lighting of a cigarette in this movie is when he's reading the letter from the Zodiac and he's like, and then I will...
Starting point is 01:45:12 You were driving around on your motor sickles and he's just like clicks his lighter and bites a cigarette and doesn't miss a line. Yeah. There's a couple of like, the cigarette is halfway into his mouth like scenes where I'm just like, this guy is born to do it.
Starting point is 01:45:26 You know? I felt like I was in like an art seminar. You know, it was like, it was learning about, you know, Degah. If we did Mount Rushmore and De Niro's got to be in there, obviously. Hmm. I think Downey might be one of the four. The runner up in this movie is clear of all.
Starting point is 01:45:44 Great smoking scene. Yes. Great smoking scenes. They do a good job of really making her seem like she's seen a few things in her day. Yes. She did do a couple of paintings. That's one of her skills as an actor. There's been some.
Starting point is 01:45:55 Yeah. Yeah. Great Shack Order Award, what do you have, CR? Jesus. This is tough. How long you got? You can go, opening city fireworks. It's pretty cool.
Starting point is 01:46:05 There's too many choices. There's a couple of like the just the digitally recreated moments, the fireworks, the overhead shot of the taxi cab, etc. I have one that's kind of subtle, but I have just seen pictures of them shooting it where Fincher is kind of like right close to them while they're acting or right when they're about to shoot it. and it's the Jillen Hall 70 in the phone booth outside of the restaurant and the way it's lit and the way it looks and it's kind of romantic and it's just a personal favorite of fun. I love that she's in the phone booth with them, which makes no sense.
Starting point is 01:46:38 She has that great line. It's raining. Is this some weird ploy for you to make me go home with you? Yeah. She's like, I'll get the food to go. We should mention Great Shot Gordo Award is the most cinematic shot. I guess I have to ID some of these awards. Named for...
Starting point is 01:46:50 Named after Gordon Willis. Yes. Our guy Gordo... I just have like three that are all connected. One is the shot of the Zodiac Killer coming over the hill in Lake Beriasa. Then the cut to is it Harnell's, Hartnell's face, the way that it holds on his face while he's being stabbed. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 01:47:10 And then immediately cutting to the woman's torso when she's being stabbed, which is the most upsetting thing in the movie, is when you see the knife going into her body. And then the choice that they made there, which in most movies now, if you did it, you'd be able to tell and it would be terrible. but all the blood that you see when she's being stabbed is all digital. And the reason that they did that is because they didn't want to have to redo costumes every time they did a take.
Starting point is 01:47:35 So if they did 50 takes of that sequence, every time the blood could be digitally recreated. Just like Little's filmmaking stuff there where maybe that had been done before, but I don't think so. And he's kind of at the forefront of this technology. And you would never for a second when you're watching the movie be like, oh, that's fake blood. It looks good enough and it's moving fast enough that he's doing the job. Also on the director's comedy commentary Fincher's like she was a champ. She was like, we did this like 60 times. Yeah. Jesus.
Starting point is 01:48:01 Never complained. Amazing Golden Gate Bridge shot. There's an aerial looking down that looks like an Apple screen. Kind of like like a vertigo. Yeah. Yeah. Even just that first push in on the city and he talks about rebuilding the Embarcadero freeway, which doesn't exist anymore because it fell apart during the 89 earthquake.
Starting point is 01:48:17 So he's like, just the idea of rebuilding this freeway that I grew up with was interesting to me. He fucking brought trees. He choppered. trees into the Lake Beresa scene. Oh yeah, to recreate the book. Because the trees had changed since the time it had gone. Some producers like, David, what if we don't have the
Starting point is 01:48:33 trees? Like, get the fuck out of here! You're off the set! Kate Cuddy Pursuit a Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop. I have inner city blues. I thought hurdy-gurdy when it kicks in, when he starts shooting them. I think that's the most memorable. The song's in the background and then it gets loud.
Starting point is 01:48:49 Yeah. I have, I really like Bernadette in the bar. That one's great. The top song. He also does a little bit of a Scorsese Thelma Schumacher thing where he
Starting point is 01:48:58 starts it midway through and it's just the vocal pops in and then it's a little bit of like a DJ thing.
Starting point is 01:49:06 It's really good. New award. Mm. Excited, Craig? Yeah. The David Fincher Award for wow, this director
Starting point is 01:49:16 may have been a fucking lunatic. It goes to David Fincher for this tidbit. He digitally added hair to the close-ups of Jake Gyllenhaal's nickels as he draws or holds letters because Fincher felt Jillenhal's hands were, quote, too hairless and pretty. He digitally added hair to his knuckles.
Starting point is 01:49:40 He's looking for accuracy. What a fucking maniac. I love it. Anyway, that's the first time we got to hand that a word out. Congrats to David. We have the Sean Fennessee Award for stealth homage that gives every movie neared a criteria orgasm. Okay. So there's obviously a couple of, you know,
Starting point is 01:49:55 clear ones we've talked about already. Most Dangerous Game, all the President's Men, that's like the blueprint for the movie. My favorite tiny little homage is when they're interviewing the kids, one of the kids who's being interrogated by the police officers,
Starting point is 01:50:10 when they ask him, what did he look like? They say he looked normal. And that is a direct reference to Bong Joon's Memories of Murder, which is in the 2003 serial killer movie where someone says that about the killer in the movie, memories of murder,
Starting point is 01:50:24 which is hugely influenced by 7, and Fincher and Bong Joon Ho are in this, like, career long back and forth. Zodiac is a total masterpiece. He's like, Bong Joon Ho is like my greatest in-theater experience is seeing the social network. These two guys are kind of fascinated with each other. I've never seen them talk to each other before. I don't like how Fincher has this many allies.
Starting point is 01:50:45 Like, now he's with Tarantino. I like when directors hate each other. Well, he's like homies with Steven Soderberg, too. Yeah, I like feet. We need to go back to feeds. I like when all the... We go back to Paul Schrader just lighting everybody up
Starting point is 01:50:57 and calling them sellouts. You don't want it to be bird magic. You don't want LeBron and Steph being friends. No, I don't want everybody in the dream team with their arms on each other. Watching rough cuts. Oh, I love that. The movie was a masterpiece.
Starting point is 01:51:08 Let's do, Craig, you do a flex. I'll move... Can I throw one criteria orgasm in there? Yeah, too. I thought of it was when Graysmith gets the first breather call and he picks it up, and it's like on Greysmith.
Starting point is 01:51:22 And then it pans. to the right and closed seven years in the background. And it goes, it's a little Rosemary's baby where it's like Ruth Gordon on the phone and you're kind of like looking over there. Like I kind of like that. Good one. Flex, Craig, go ahead.
Starting point is 01:51:35 A lot of options. I want to get one out of the way quickly. Is there a porn parody for this movie? Yes, there is. It's called the Zodiac Killer starring John Holmes. What? Yes.
Starting point is 01:51:48 Let's fire it up. Let's watch it together. Did you read? What were the details? Was he a killer? or was he the cop? He must have been the cop. He was the cop.
Starting point is 01:51:55 Okay. And the Zodiac killer kills and then has sex with women and then... Wait, after the killer? He has sex with them and then kills them and then John Holmes is on the hunt.
Starting point is 01:52:07 Wow. I wonder, was he Johnny Watt in this? It was... 63 minutes, so it does pass the Century Court. Imagine if it was three hours. Oh, my God. 63 minutes. I mean, like, could have gone longer.
Starting point is 01:52:20 I prefer the porn barring. The world edge. It's not in 4K. Does not look as good as Vince. It's a real film job. Did you download it on your work computer? No, we kept that on the personal device. I didn't know John Holmes was in the Zodiac podcast.
Starting point is 01:52:32 It's exciting. Great. The other one I'll do is the Vincent Chase Award for Are We Sure This Character was good at his job? I'm going right at Zodiac. Lower kill rate than Drake May's completion percentage. The double murders at the top of this movie, he can't kill either guy. He can't finish the job.
Starting point is 01:52:48 He lets both guys live. Crazy. He wore a watch that said, Zodiac. Yeah. Kind of a miss there. Slipped up, revealed his birthday
Starting point is 01:52:56 over the phone, claimed to be a lefty wore the watch on the wrong wrist. Yes. Wore a giant name tag that said Lee at the hardware shop. It's kind of the Bob Coosy of serial killers.
Starting point is 01:53:06 He would be great if he had his name tag said Zodiac at the Ace Hardware. This guy was winning MVP's but he couldn't dribble with his half hand. My name's zodiac. Can I help you find something?
Starting point is 01:53:16 That's a great one. You got a painting job coming up? Like, come on. The Butch's girlfriend Award for the weak link of the film I don't I think this film's great it was hard to come up with a weak link
Starting point is 01:53:28 I don't personally understand the Avery trip to Riverside where he's like an anonymous tip has told me to go to river I mean it works out but that part of the movie while awesome is also a little confusing
Starting point is 01:53:45 it felt like they needed an extra downy scene almost it's just like I suppose it's also like this is where Avery is kind of leaving the tracks and is starting to like chase shadows a little bit. But that's where he I have a tiny one which
Starting point is 01:54:00 is it's fine if you don't show the first Zodiac double murder because they were very like we only if we didn't know what happened and both people are dead we can't show it. But I still think they should have figured out how to mention it in some way. For people like Craig who don't know the story
Starting point is 01:54:15 that there was the murder before the murder and I don't think they do a good enough job of explaining that. It's like very subtle and the dialogue, it assumes the viewer already knows, but I don't, as the movie ages over time, I think I just think they should have figured out a better way to do that. I don't know if
Starting point is 01:54:31 what I'm going to say is a picking mitt or an unanswerable question or what's, you know, uh, kind of more fits this category, but specifically the Donald Cheney character who, the guy who gives
Starting point is 01:54:47 the performance is totally fun, but the guy who gives all this information about Arthur Lee Allen. He's like, oh yeah, And then he said this and said that. Yes, he said this about the kids bopping off the school bus and taking them out. And he had all this specific detail that makes Toski think that and Armstrong think that it's him. You know, there are a lot of interviews with this guy. He's in all the documentaries in the wider world of the Zodiac. There's a lot of suspicion about his involvement in this story and whether or not he was more involved or whether or not he's making things up.
Starting point is 01:55:17 Right. Was this on the Don Cheney Reddit? It's all over the Zodiac Reddit. I mean, there's a ton of people who are like, this guy is not credible at all. There's a lot of interviews with him. And so to the point that Craig is making, even about the movie where he's like, all of this shit that just seems so circumstantial that points directly at the guy that makes him seem like a bad serial killer is effectively backed by everything that Donald Cheney has provided. Yes. And it makes you, to me.
Starting point is 01:55:43 Sierra's having a great time. Well, you're totally right. I just, Sierra was just like, like, beaming. And this also happens like 11 times in the Zodiac. case where there's like, this guy is the preeminent expert, it turns out he's a con artist, or it turns out like he makes his living by going to conventions and peddling theories about stuff like that. Is that who John Holmes played or no?
Starting point is 01:56:03 Was he somebody else? Maybe somebody else. Or even all the Toskey stuff about the letters to Armist and Moppin and then whether or not he wrote the Zodiac letter and stuff like that, which is like, I've proven to be untrue, I think, but for the most... That's a good weakling. They could have at least aroused some suspicion with us. Fincher says that he finds that guy.
Starting point is 01:56:21 credible. And the reason that he's portrayed in the movie that way is because he doesn't feel the way that a lot of people have looked closely at the story. It's like, it's like very, like this is kind of like
Starting point is 01:56:29 what Pelicanos and David Simon did when we own the city where they're like, we have decided that this person's version of this is like accurate. It's at least worth portraying sincerely. Right. And that choice kind of shifts
Starting point is 01:56:40 the movie in a direction that makes you feel strongly about it. What's age the worst? I mentioned another earlier, him cutting the two-minute blackout montage of hit songs, signaling the past, of time from Joni Mitchell to Donna Summer,
Starting point is 01:56:54 replaced it for runtime with four years later. I just, that's a bad decision. Yeah. That's like when they cut out my favorite Boogie Nights deleted scene of the second Avian awards when they show all the reactions of everybody. And they're like, yeah, we don't need it. I'm surprised to learn that's your favorite deleted scene.
Starting point is 01:57:10 That's my favorite deleted scene. What do you think my favorite? What did you think it was? It was a very memorable scene with Roller Girl, Luis Guzman. That was another great scene. So I had for what stage to worst, there's that scene when Jack and Downey
Starting point is 01:57:23 are at the bar we mentioned earlier just decoding Zodiac shit. I wrote down I'm five minutes light on these two together. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:57:32 That would have been my note as the studio. Like any more Downey and Jillenhall just being weird together scenes? Because put another one in. There is another one deleted.
Starting point is 01:57:41 I don't know if you want to say it's age the best or the worst because it's both but they weren't real friends and like Avery and Graysmith were not friends. Right.
Starting point is 01:57:49 So that that is almost the most movie-ish thing about the movie, and it is by far the most entertaining thing. Yeah. That's their based on a true story part. I definitely would have taken 10 more scenes of the two of them going to a fucking Giants game, you know, and be like, oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:58:05 You know, smoking in this. Come see the worst. Clifford Wray's back. That would have been good. I asked that for what stage the worst. Anthony Edwards with a wig on always throws me off. He's just like such like a proven bald guy that any time I see him with hearing a movie, I'm like, come on.
Starting point is 01:58:23 Just have him be bald. He's bald. We know he's bald. He's owned the baldness. I think it was probably accurate to Armstrong. No, I know they had to do. Any other what stage is the worst? No, I had the four-year gap. It's the most abrupt, weird. You have to be like, okay, I got it
Starting point is 01:58:39 in my head. I'm making that jump that Avery is washed out, that Grey Smith is kind of still on this by himself. Okay. Any for you or not? Just my certainty that it was Arthur Lee Allen for like 10 years after I saw the movie. And now the idea that we're just like, the thing that is haunting the guys in this movie
Starting point is 01:58:57 is now what haunts the culture of finding the Zodiac Killer, which is just like... In this podcast. There's more info every day. You know, you talked about the special, you know, the expert who was like, this guy's autistic and it was him because of this. Like, that stuff's never going to stop because it's a cold case. Just wait until AI just fully gets its talons into it, you know? Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:59:16 Another category we don't get to give out much. The Rose from Titanic Award for Character Who's Sneaky Suck. close 70s character No What are you talking about I would say she's actually quite reasonable She's pretty cool man She knows what she's getting into
Starting point is 01:59:30 Connor get the fuck out after the first date Why are you you're gonna settle down With this fucking lunatic And I thought you were like I'm raising kids with this guy And then she's mad at him It's like I don't know what you're doing Your whole life revolves around this
Starting point is 01:59:43 He fucking told you in the first date That he was crazy Yeah You're like blindsided about this That would be kind of cool If Eileen was like You sure do watch a lot of movies Yeah.
Starting point is 01:59:53 What's the deal All these 4K blueries, Sean? Was there a number? They're like, what are we doing? She's like, Sean, what are we doing? Are we going to dinner? It's like, I got to watch. I got to do some Spielberg research.
Starting point is 02:00:05 She's like, oh, I'm taking the kids. I'm going to moms. Are you guys surprised this movie resonates with me? I just, it really bothers me that she signs up for this and then takes it personally. A lot of relationships where like the thing that makes sense for the first three to nine months of it does not make sense. 18 months or two years in.
Starting point is 02:00:23 Okay, but in this case, it was the first two hours. Yes. They don't even finish dinner on their first date. He's in a fucking phone booth and then she ends up sleeping on his couch. He's waiting for a call from his pulmonary emphysema. She says it's the most exciting date I've ever had.
Starting point is 02:00:37 It's like, yeah. I mean, she's the only female character of note in the film. I mean, there's just not, there's no June, Diane Raphael being like, I'm going to make the full jersey. But she's also just playing the wife, you know, like there's not really any, there are no women in this world, like in the world of you know, police departments at this time and newspapers,
Starting point is 02:00:54 like they were secretaries, you know, and that's part of the reason why the movie is that way. And I think you could make the case that that her character is like, it's basically an active comment on this world at that time by saying, like, this woman has infinite patience for her insane cartoonist husband. Yeah. Who can't make time to take care of his children
Starting point is 02:01:11 because he's trying to solve a crime. It's really an advertisement for dating services that I don't think we're around here. Yeah, yeah. This is... Probably needed a few more. Yeah. Thank you, Raya. Do I have a flex?
Starting point is 02:01:21 You can take one right now. I just had the Rick Dalton Award. What is it? For the greatest fucking acting I've ever seen, it's Downey on the Houseboat. Being like, somebody should write a book. About what?
Starting point is 02:01:36 He's also doing the David DuCubney and Larry Sanders. Am I going to see your balls hanging out here in this scene? Yes, there's a lot of thigh. Is it like, ah. It's an epic amount of thigh. The whole houseboat scene is just unbelievable. I love the houseboat. The Pong going on in the background.
Starting point is 02:01:50 the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take a word I kind of did a little bit of the the PTAQT thing but I will also say that I think the thrill the dark thrill of the Zodiac
Starting point is 02:02:07 were to happen today would be ruined by everybody trying to figure out who he voted for you know there would be no like oh this is cool watch out of don't go out at night because it would just be like
Starting point is 02:02:21 that motherfucker's a Bernie bro you know like it would just be it would suck. It would probably be more like this guy did Jan 6. Yeah, exactly. Do you have a hottest take? I do.
Starting point is 02:02:31 This is the greatest American crime film ever made and it's the only crime film that really portrays what it's like to try to solve a crime. And no other movie is really interested in that
Starting point is 02:02:40 because that's not very cinematic. Who's second? Got in 60 seconds, probably. Deathies. Like, I love heat, right? That's a great movie. I love Manhunter. the work of Michael Mann.
Starting point is 02:02:55 All of those movies are about the psychology and obsession that is portrayed in this movie, but they're not really about, like, solving the crimes or even doing the crimes in the same way. And this was a real story, too. Do you think that it's because it's more of an act of journalism than it is an act of crime solving? It helps. Yeah. It helps. And I think the truth is that I made that point about our dads because they're kind of similar jobs.
Starting point is 02:03:16 You know, they require a very similar kind of ethic. You have to be kind of shrewd. You have to be comfortable digging really deep into things. you've got to be comfortable being bored by the work that you do sometimes. There's a reason that there's connectivity between these guys at this time in history because they have a very similar approach to the world. My hottest take, Craig kind of stepped on it earlier, but in a way maybe he doesn't realize.
Starting point is 02:03:39 I'm actually going the episode way. I think Zodiac was the goat. Now, maybe he didn't finish a couple murders. The goat serial killer of all time. Never caught. So good, he might have also been the Black Dalli of Killers. which was another one who wasn't caught. Drove detectives and journalists fucking crazy.
Starting point is 02:03:58 Created a world that led to books and movies and is still going on Reddit. Amidextrous? Swimmer? Yeah. Yeah. It's like James Hardin with a handbook. Great nickname?
Starting point is 02:04:09 Nobody, what serial killer has ever given themselves a better nickname than Zodian? You like that more than Son of Sam? Best, oh, easily. Best gimmick. Son of Sam was just fucking wacko. He was talking to his dog. Yeah, Zodiac very measured.
Starting point is 02:04:20 Yeah. Zodiac had his shit together. And I just think he had just a phenomenal run And the fact that nobody has been able to solve this Is unbelievable So I think if you're talking goats Or you're talking Mount Rushmore or whatever With zero killers
Starting point is 02:04:37 Yeah, getting away with it is number one You know, it is Not only getting away with it But then leaving this whole universe behind Of theories And it's basically the JFK assassination for a serial killer I had no idea We've solved all the other ones
Starting point is 02:04:50 How thriving the community was they're still doing incredible work online every day. You can't, when you Google it, so many things come up. You don't even know, like, which one to click on. Yeah. There's like subredits to the subredits.
Starting point is 02:05:03 55 years old. Yeah. Like, we don't even... By the way, we're not any closer to figuring out who did it. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, it's a crazy one.
Starting point is 02:05:12 But I think Craig made a good point. Like, finish the job. Well, you're going kind of the Bill Russell case here. Like, for his time, what he did. Oh, you think Zodiac just played against plumbers? You know what I mean? Yeah, sure. Yeah, like they're in the pre-internet, pre-departments being able to coordinate investigations.
Starting point is 02:05:28 Yeah, these police departments didn't have fax machines. Right. Not exactly. It is fair. Playing the Houston defense. Do you have like the LeBron of serial killers? They all get caught. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:05:42 What's the age the worst is serial killers. Yeah. Right. Serial killing has aged the worst. Can't do it. Well, I think it's just too hard. DNA. Have you tried?
Starting point is 02:05:50 Cameras. No, I just think I don't. I don't think we're going to see another one, honestly. Yeah. I think it's too hard. There's a camera. Every house has a ring camera now. There was a story about there might have been a Houston serial killer because they found all these bodies.
Starting point is 02:06:01 They don't know. Yeah. They don't know what happened. I don't believe that one. I think we have too much technology now. And he might have coasted off other kills that he took credit for. Which I would argue is clever. It completely threw them off the scent in the investigation.
Starting point is 02:06:17 It got, you know, like, Mullen Axis is like, I like this guy. And you're like, well, what does that guy have to do with any of any of? other kill. And he's like, yeah, but I have evidence that shows that he's connected to this one. So it creates this distortion effect around the investigation. It's really smart. It doesn't mean the Zodiac is like a brain genius, but he clearly did things with a level
Starting point is 02:06:34 of manipulation that does distinguish him from other serial killers. Ultimately, the great serial killers have a calling card. Like Dahmer's like, I just like eating people. Like this is an all end game for me. Eating other humans, that's my thing. I love it. Whenever you do this, you make it sound
Starting point is 02:06:52 like he looked into the camera and said those words. We're the wet bandits. Like Ted Bundy's like, I just love the ladies. And there's a dark side to it. I love the ladies. Zodiac was like, actually like being in the mix. Here are my thoughts. He was like the first podcast.
Starting point is 02:07:10 Do you know what's interesting too? Here my thoughts on the Dirty Harry movie. Right, exactly. And then there's also... He liked the attention of what he was doing. Even things that weren't Zodiac like the call to Melvin Belly, which is a guy in an Indian movie. a mental institution making the phone call,
Starting point is 02:07:26 it goes towards the Zodiac's legacy. It's like Steve Kerr building off of Mark Jackson's work, you know? All that hard work that Mark did. Who drafted Draymond, you know? Casting what ifs. Mark was playing Monta Ellis over Steph Curry. It is true. He was saving him.
Starting point is 02:07:46 Casting what ifs. Gary Oldman was supposed to play Melvin Bollai. But physically, they decided it couldn't work. So they got Logan Roy instead. Ironically, he did go on to play Churchill, who was way fatter than Gary Oldman, and won an Academy Award for it. Jelenhall was the first choice for Greysmith from Fincher,
Starting point is 02:08:05 but if he had said no, they had Orlando Bloom lined up. You know the story, right, of who it was who tipped Fincher off to the two leads of this movie. It was Aniston. His best pal, Jennifer Aniston, who said, I really liked working with Jake Gyllenhaal in The Good Girl, and Mark Ruffalo in, what's the rom-com that they were in together?
Starting point is 02:08:28 Just like heaven or something? No, rumor has it. Rumor has it. Was it from rumor? Rumor has it? Yeah. And then he's like, you like, you like, you play the Chloe 70-Roll? She's like, no, thanks.
Starting point is 02:08:36 Yeah. No, thanks. I got a rom-com to do. Fincher wanted Brad Pitt as Avery before settling a down. Basically, would have been floored in tru-a-mance as a journalist. Yeah, it would have been a little distracting. Can we talk it out? Sure.
Starting point is 02:08:53 Has anyone who looks like Brad Pitt ever been a journalist? Brad Pitt really good at playing down. True, true. Is this like Snatch era Brad Pitt? No, this is... After that. Mid-2000s, I've settled down with Angelina and we're adopting kids every nine months.
Starting point is 02:09:07 Like Troy and Mr. Mrs. Smith. Yeah. Post Mr. Ms. Smith pre-Bentjohn. Yeah. Pre-Bendmane Moneyball. I mean, he's in assassination of Jesse James this year. If he's just doing Floyd from true romance in this movie, I'm not necessary.
Starting point is 02:09:20 I'm willing to entertain it. The thing is that Downey brings the fast-talking energy that a guy, a smart aleck journalist would have. Yes. And I think you need that. And Pitt doesn't really do that. Right. He plays dumb really well.
Starting point is 02:09:32 He plays low-key or burnt-out really well. And he's always clever as Rusty in the Oceans movies, but not fast. He's a little bit more stoner, whereas Downey has a little bit more uppers. Yeah. Best that guy award. We're saying John Carroll Lynch not eligible. Probably not. For us.
Starting point is 02:09:51 Do you know who that was, Craig? Recognize him, don't know his name. I grab two guys from the editorial meeting, which is John Gets and John Terry, the editor-in-chief and the publisher of the Chronicle. I think John Gets is John Gets. I feel like he's been in too many things. John Terry's a good one.
Starting point is 02:10:07 John Terry is really good. Charles Fleischer, who's the guy in the basement. Yep. He's pretty much that guy. I have two big ones. One of the cops was the priest from the Sopranos who was trying to get it on with Carmel, but not really.
Starting point is 02:10:20 Yes. Getting drunk with him. Father, what was his name? Father? I can't remember. The night, when he goes on the college tour with Meadow, near home getting drunk, and it seems like something's going to happen.
Starting point is 02:10:32 He throws up that guy, he's in this. And then one of the cops in the scene you liked when they go to location, Skippy from kicking and screaming. Yeah. Who was also Colin the drug dealer in Beverly Hills, 9-0-2-1-0, who had that great run 10 years later, ends up in Zodiac.
Starting point is 02:10:50 But I think that's a good that guy. That's a great that guy. I think he's on like Chicago Fire now or one of those. Okay, the problem with doing 500 episodes of this show is that... You know, oh, the people? But just to every normal human being, Zach Reneer, Philip Baker Hall, Elias, Coteas, James LaGro, Donald Logue, John Carroll Lynch, John Terry, June, Diane, Raphael, Adam Goldberg.
Starting point is 02:11:10 These people are that guys. Yeah. They are the definitive that guys of their era. But he's not letting me have John Gets. Right. Like, you know, if you can't have John Gets, then, like, Part of why the movie is so good is that Fincher has the best taste for supporting players.
Starting point is 02:11:24 The graduated that guys. Yes. The priest from the Sopranos, I don't know what that guy's name is. The Dion Wader's Award for Biggest Heat Check in the movie. John Carroll Lynch eligible. I think he's in two and a half scenes. Basement guy.
Starting point is 02:11:40 Charles Fleischer, yeah. Charles Fleischer, one scene. I'm Charles Fleischer and Clay Duvall. Clay Duval, to me, is the pinnacle of this category because she has one scene. Yes. And the camera, like, doesn't move off of her. By the originalist document, he is right, I had Cox.
Starting point is 02:11:56 He's in two full scenes. And has, like, one of the most, like, let me put a little bit of seasoning on this. It was like, wow. Like, when he gets out of the cab, like, you know, like all the helicopters are swirling. But Clay Duvall is pretty high up there. Low-key nomination, Melvin Belli's housekeeper. When she drops the cookies off.
Starting point is 02:12:16 She's like, I spoke to him. She's really good in that scene. Yeah, she was good. Was that important? Recasting Couch Director or City. Can we talk Anthony Edwards for one second? Mm-hmm. Can I tempt you with a little Michael Keaton?
Starting point is 02:12:33 Too big for that role. Yeah, so you'll enjoy this. If you have not listened to the commentary, I highly recommend you do because Fincher is constantly using sports references. And he uses the phrase moving without the ball a lot. and what kind of actors do that. And he described Anthony Edwards as the assist, that he is the living embodiment of the assist.
Starting point is 02:12:58 And if you watch him work in movies, even when he's the star, he's making other people seem better. And that was his role on ER in the center of that show. That became George Clooney and Juliana Margulies and Eric LaSalle and all the people who were on that show at that time. And in this movie, he's kind of the most important detective. Toski is not the most important detective.
Starting point is 02:13:19 He's the guy who's getting more information, who's getting more stuff down, who's driving the action more, who kind of incites more moments. You just don't feel it because of the way that Anthony Edwards acts. And also, Fincher said that his kids went to school together, and that's why he's in the movie.
Starting point is 02:13:32 He's like, I knew him from getting from our kids going to school together. Among the saddest moments in the entire movie is when Armstrong's like, you keep the car. Because you're just like, fuck, it broke him. You know, like, and you're just like, the whole time you're wondering, and he's kind of getting more tired
Starting point is 02:13:45 and exasperated by it. But when he leaves the movie, there's like a certain, quality of goodness that leaves the movie. It's like, it's been destroyed by this case. It's really good. Keaton has the Dermott Meruny role? Sure.
Starting point is 02:14:00 He's trying to work him in here somewhere. He did that in the other guys, right? Yeah. It would be a good thing could just get Special Agent Ray Nicolette. My other note is, I just don't know why John Slattery is not in this movie, and I don't know who's going to play. John Terry is kind of playing John Slattery, right? John Slattery is just added.
Starting point is 02:14:18 Slattery was in Charlie Wilson's war yelling at Philips Seymour Hall. maybe that's why he was in it. Sean, you have... It's not finished for four years. It feels like that could be on like the rewatchable's 2028 list, Charlie Wilson's war.
Starting point is 02:14:30 There's like six perfect scenes in that movie. I really think Julia is great in that movie. Yeah. The weak link is Hank's. Misscast. It just happened a few times. Yeah. You have a flex category.
Starting point is 02:14:43 I got two really quick ones. One of which we've talked about a lot, but is worth noting given the intelligence of this category, the Tom Sysmore action is the Juice Award Best To-to-to-to-moment for a non-star, which is clearly John Carroll Lynch
Starting point is 02:14:57 up against Mark Ruffalo and winning that scene. Like him being the most mesmerizing person in that scene opposite, you know, three really well-known actors, but really Ruffalo coming into his own. And then the Dan Campbell scale for, holy shit, are they really going for it right now
Starting point is 02:15:12 is the basement scene. Yeah. Where you're like, oh my God. Are you making Halloween now? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And... That's good.
Starting point is 02:15:19 like I said at the time, when it came out, I felt like we were going to another level of the movie. Half As Center Research. We mentioned a lot of those stuff already. They used a lot of the photos to try to figure out what stuff looked like back then, how many VW bugs should be in there. The cars are really good in this movie
Starting point is 02:15:40 and how they change over the decade. We talked about the digital Thompson Viper film stream camera, which was the first one movie like this. So there was a This guy Ray Cantrell made a Zodiac killer movie Probably not the one with John Holmes In 1972 They made this movie to try to catch Zodiac in the theater
Starting point is 02:16:00 Did you follow this story? Yeah this just did this just get put out by Eureka or something like that It's been around for a couple years So they make like this bad Zodiac movie And the guy funds it Because he was friends with one of the people Either got murdered or almost murdered And they show it in San Francisco
Starting point is 02:16:18 for like two weeks and they're hiding in some part of the theater like in this freezer that barely had enough oxygen scouting all the people that come in and then they claim
Starting point is 02:16:28 at one point they feel like the Zodiac came in and they talked to them in the bathroom but weren't able to like keep them and it's this whole like weird it's almost like a movie within the movie
Starting point is 02:16:37 that probably would be bad that's kind of like snake eyes or they're like set up this whole sting inside of a huge event yeah yeah yeah Robert Downey Jr's four straw trick that he does with the three straws picking the fourth, 26 takes. To get it right or he made him do it 26 times.
Starting point is 02:16:57 He showed Fincher, asked to perform it, and then they kept doing it. You mentioned the blood thing. This is a great Mark Ruffalo quote. I'll never forget when they were negotiating my deal for Zodiac. The studio negotiator literally said to my manager, look, we don't give a shit about Mark Ruffalo. We don't even want Mark Ruffalo in this movie.
Starting point is 02:17:15 So you're going to take what we're offering or forget it. That was his memory of how we got the part. Yeah, that's why you hired Rich Paul. That's right. And then Robert Grace Smith's cocktail. It's vodka, gin, lemon lime, and blue caracow. Yeah. I've never been a big...
Starting point is 02:17:33 That just feels like the vomit special. That's just a Long Island iced tea dyed blue, basically. Yeah, that's like I'm throwing up tomorrow. I don't even drink blue Gatorade. This episode is brought to by the Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo. that's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game and grabbing a coffee,
Starting point is 02:17:56 it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me, the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo, be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms of play. Apex Mountain, Fincher. Do we need to explain Apex Mountain now that we're on Netflix? Go ahead. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:18:18 Climmercial category. How would you describe it? 425 movies in. Apex Mountain, when somebody was at the peak of their powers career-wise, had the most use they're ever going to have in their career. Was this the moment for that? That's technically Apex Mountain, even though we've argued about it. I think it is for Fincher.
Starting point is 02:18:39 I do not. I think it's social network for Fincher. But don't you think this is a product of social network? No, because it's before. But isn't... Oh, this is before sociality. I'm sorry what you're saying. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:18:51 I... This movie comes after a five-year break off of a successful but modest movie in panic room. And this movie did not do well at the box office. Yeah. And was not... It was really well reviewed, but was not considered a masterpiece in its time.
Starting point is 02:19:06 He needed social network to have his, like, okay, this guy is also a commercial box office guy. And social network was another for hire job. Yeah. You know, that was... the script from a well-known screenwriter. I would do creatively, and I know that this is not going, but I think creatively, this is like him.
Starting point is 02:19:22 No, you could go creative Fincher as an apex mountain category. I think this is him just, like, combining some of the deep artistry of his early work and, like, with the brave new world of the digital photography that he's working with and obviously has a personal connection to this material in a way that sometimes it doesn't always feel like he does. I think he is a re-apex candidate, because I think Fight Club is his first Apex Mound. because he uses the success of those two movies. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:19:49 And he basically makes a movie about how the only way to fix capitalism is to destroy it. Early 90s Bulls version of the apex. And then I think there's never been a higher moment for him than Gone Girl, where he's like, I can take an airport novel and make it a $500 million movie. Right. And nobody else can do this. And then he's like, and next up, a Netflix series that CR is going to love the most. It's true.
Starting point is 02:20:14 Zero Killer Movies. Yes. Silence. That's a tough one. Does that count as a serial killer movie, though? Yeah. He's got a nickname. He's moving around.
Starting point is 02:20:28 He's doing his thing. Yeah, you're right. How's that not a serial killer? No, you're right. You think this is better than Manhunter? Yeah. It's a different movie. It's a totally different movie.
Starting point is 02:20:38 C.R.'s right. It's silence. True crime movies Fantasy made the case earlier. Yes. Downy, no. Ruffalo, no. Ruffalo as a detective in a movie, Apex Mountain. This collateral or...
Starting point is 02:20:54 Task, the TV show. Yeah. I think it's this. He's really... He's not in collateral very much. I love his look in Colorado. Me too. My favorite Ruffalo.
Starting point is 02:21:06 Yeah, it's fucking great. And then Pete Berg running through the way. Him and Pete Burke, that's a separate movie I wanted. I told you that when I talked to him for TASC, I basically did Chris Farley on him. Remember that time? Remember in collateral when you had the goat? and he was like, yeah, and I was like, that was awesome. Jillenhall,
Starting point is 02:21:29 it's kind of arguable because he broke back then this, except the movie didn't do that well, so I don't think this can be his Apex Mountain. Probably later, right? I think his best performance is maybe still Nightcrawler, but... That's a really good movie. His Apex, he does...
Starting point is 02:21:49 Doesn't he do Prince of Persia right before this? boo. Because that movie stinks, obviously, but that was when he was, like, trying to become... He's going to get ripped. Maybe when we're in that End of Watch era when he starts doing...
Starting point is 02:22:00 That's right after this. Prince of Persia, 2010. Yeah. Prince of Prisaged. So maybe it's this because this allows him to kind of springboard into that. The end of watch,
Starting point is 02:22:07 Prisoner era, where he's like, I'm now an established, you can put me on a poster in different movies and people will probably go. Yeah, probably. San Francisco movies no.
Starting point is 02:22:19 What is? 48 hours? I would say bullet. It's probably the one from the 70s. Dirty Harry. Both of which are basically based on this story. Chloe 70? Nope.
Starting point is 02:22:33 Last days of disco? Yeah. We did that on the rewatchables. This is a good one. Fincher villains. I'll give you as nominees, John Doe and 7, Mark Zuckerberg and Social Network,
Starting point is 02:22:46 or Arthur Leigh Allen in this movie. unless you want to count Sean Penn in the game. I'd probably go John Doe. Definitely not Jared Lido with the... With Panic Room? Yeah. The Nepo Thief? I think it's John Doe.
Starting point is 02:23:03 When we watched Seven last week, that scene when he's in the car with Brad Pitt and he's pushing Brad Pitt and trying to make him mad and say, and Brad Pitt finally said, and you're a fucking T-shirt! We were just like, holy shit. Spacey's amazing in that movie. He is.
Starting point is 02:23:18 I guess it's just two different versions of villainy, right? The Zuckerberg thing is like, the portrayal of Zuckerberg is... We should have known. He's trying to... Fincher's trying to tell us. So acid, man. Like, so acid, the way that he sees him
Starting point is 02:23:33 as this, like, sad, pathetic ambition monster. Zuckerberg didn't totally realize it. Remember when Jesse Asperg hosted SNL, Zuckerberg's like, yeah, I'll make a cameo. Like, he doesn't realize. He didn't get it. San Francisco Chronicle both in...
Starting point is 02:23:48 real life and then in a movie. I felt like this was... They were right at the center. They were in the epicenter, everything. Yeah. You know what's interesting about all of his villains, by the way, is he doesn't psychologize any of them. He doesn't say, oh, well, like, this happened to me,
Starting point is 02:24:01 and so I'm like this, and I do this. Zuckerberg, John Doe, Arthur Lee Allen. It's not like, oh, well, the way he was his upbringing or he witnessed a traumatic event. He's not interested in that. For the most part, for a certain period, like, nobody talked like that. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:24:15 They just did things, yeah. John Carroll Lynch movies This or Fargo This. John Carroll Lynch right now. Sure. Shout out to JCL. He's doing great.
Starting point is 02:24:28 It's a great actor. Shout out to Jokha. Dodvin music. Jokha, a little close to Jokai. I think it's a Aquarius and Goodfellas. Oh, see, I love the ending of To Die For with Season of the Witch.
Starting point is 02:24:44 You know, the season of the witch, Nino dropped in to die for us pretty good. Donovan, secret movie soundtrack, or getting absolutely dunked on and don't look back the Bob Dylan documentary? Because it's Donovan when Tommy beats up Billy Bats, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 02:24:57 Yeah. That's the answer. Also, the father of Ione's Sky. That's right. CRE Apex Mountain for Wooded Dildos? Yeah, I would imagine. I mean, I can't think of any other examples. It's probably the porn parody, I would say.
Starting point is 02:25:14 They still sell those? have them or no? You have to go to a specialty store. It's a craftsman item. I feel like there's a real splinter issue there that we got to examine. Not if you get the right kind of lacker. Yeah, I see.
Starting point is 02:25:24 Yeah. You really, it's a good crash. It's a shit. Yeah. And then you can kind of get that that grease on it. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:25:32 Apex Mountain for actual Fincher movies. What do you mean? Is this the best Fincher movie? Oh, well, I see, this is why I get confused what Apex Mountain is. I just threw that in as a bonus category. I think this is the best fincher movie. Yes.
Starting point is 02:25:45 I do too It's my favorite I mean what is best You know like Watching seven to this day is still just really fun You know it's just really entertaining And it still glides We've done it
Starting point is 02:25:55 I would re-seven tomorrow I thought Tarantino made a really good case When he was talking about his like best movies Of the century or whatever And he was talking about how he didn't love Zodiac The first time And every time he watches it He's just stunned by how amazing it is
Starting point is 02:26:08 And each time it gets better Yeah Which I think is a really rare place For a movie to get to Where it's like It's the 11th time I've watched Holy shit. Mank and the Killer do not have strong reputations.
Starting point is 02:26:22 I would encourage people to revisit them again and look at them and try to give them the same attitude that you were willing to give to Zodiac, to Gone Girl, to Social Network, because they are so rewarding. I think people don't like those stories as much, and I understand that. And some people just watch movies for stories. But if you like to watch movies to understand how a movie is made and what the filmmaker is thinking, there's so much cool shit in both of those movies. Yes.
Starting point is 02:26:44 I agree. at least with one of those two movies. Cruiser, Hanks. Hanks is Greysmith. It's funny, I thought Cruz is Greysmith. I think Cruz as Toskey, I would be interested in. I could see Hanks as Tosky. Well, we have to pick.
Starting point is 02:27:03 Cruiser Hanks. You pick Hanks? Yeah. I'm picking Cruz. I think it's fun to have Cruz in this movie. I do, too. Okay. I think it's Cruz.
Starting point is 02:27:11 I like Hanks as Toskey, Cruiser's Graysmith. Hank says Toskey's good, but then we lose Ruffalo. Yeah. What about like 1980s? 48 cocktail era cruise as Jillen Hall's character. Yeah, that works. That works. Yeah, good thing this is completely made up.
Starting point is 02:27:30 We don't really have to choose. He keeps stats, you know, against analytics. Cruz is like, so when he runs out of the guy's house after he's in the basement, what if my car was parked two streets away and I really had to sprint in full speed with the puddles? I think that I will say that Cruz having done eyes wide, shut would be used to doing
Starting point is 02:27:53 a hundred takes of something. Yeah. I love it, man. Dave keeps telling me to do stuff. I don't know if Hanks has ever done that. I don't know if he's ever had somebody who's like, we're doing it again, we're doing it again. I don't know.
Starting point is 02:28:06 He worked with Stan the Man. I mean, Hank's hasn't. Cruz did. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So Hanks were, didn't they all hate Frank Darabot?
Starting point is 02:28:14 Didn't he do this? Oh. Was he a big take guy? Freeman still mad at him for some reason. Is that true? It's like Freeman, you're in one of the most iconic movies of the last 40 years. Can't complain. I mean, that set him up for life.
Starting point is 02:28:27 Scorsese or Spielberg? I have either. No, that's not an answer. Okay, so two things. Scorsese has never made a procedural. This is not what he does. Yes. He's not interested in this aspect of the world.
Starting point is 02:28:44 He's interested in how people move through the world. You know what he is interested in? The Rolling Stones at 1969, 1970s, San Francisco. And guys doing bumps and bars. I think it just becomes an Altamont, San Francisco. I think it's only set in two years. I don't think he cares what happens after. It would just fundamentally be a different movie.
Starting point is 02:29:01 The same way that, like, you can tell the James Vanderbilt's script, which I'm sure was very good on First Pass, Fincher changed a lot. Yeah. You know, like, he brought a lot to that. And so, yeah, if Scorsese comes in and he's like, I want to do my version of this, and it's, you know, post Altamont, we're rocking and rolling through this murder time. I mean, he made Summer of Sam, right? Like, he made a movie like this, but he didn't make it about the killer.
Starting point is 02:29:20 He made it about what was happening to people around this time. So my answer is Spielberg. I have Scorsese just because I'd want to see the movie. I would just be worried that the Spielberg version of this turns out like the post, which isn't a bad movie, but it's just a little bit more like, we just got to work hard to find this guy. I don't think Spielberg's dark enough for this movie. This movie's dark.
Starting point is 02:29:43 Maybe. Best hang, worst hang. Paul Avery clearly best hang. Best Bar Knight, yeah. I think Zodiac, I'm going to go Worstang. Want to come back to my house? Want to come back to my trailer and watch the Warriors game? By far.
Starting point is 02:29:58 Hold on. Let me put the squirrels away. I laid out a day for us. A little bit of skin diving. Then we're going to cook up some squirrel. I got a bunch of nudie mags. Well, in the Zodiac documentary that was on Netflix in 24, they interviewed these two kids that he had befriended the family.
Starting point is 02:30:15 And at one point, he takes them for a trip. And they end up, both of them don't remember two days. he drug them because I think he needed an alibi and also might have probably molested one of the kids but it was during one of the one of the crimes that he committed where he brought the kids with him on location or so they said. But there's another
Starting point is 02:30:33 this is another murder that is not a part of the Zodiac investigation that they talk about where they say he basically like went down to a beach yeah and may have killed someone on a beach and then like a shot into a group of teenagers or something and then like a day later there was a murder and they were like we were just there yesterday and I was asleep
Starting point is 02:30:49 in the car and also I don't remember the last two days. Yeah. Zodiac, worst hang. Picking Nitz. Why is the cartoonist and high-level editorial meetings when they're reading the Zodiac letter, which is probably the most important thing
Starting point is 02:31:02 in the city that's happening? Fincher said he's like, I don't think Avery is in these meetings either. It's just we needed it for the movie to get everybody's sort of connected to the letters. Getting the information at the same time. Ione Sky's character falling for the Your Wheel Looks Loose Trick. Come on, honey. You got a kid in the car.
Starting point is 02:31:18 Fincher says he definitively does not think that that was the Zodiac. The Kathleen John story is not the Zodiac. It's just another crazy person on the side of the road. What does he say to her? Like, they don't need much help when I'm done with them or something. God damn it. What are their nitpicks you have?
Starting point is 02:31:32 The only thing I had, Sean mentioned it earlier, but Toski being like, I can't help you, but if I were to help you, I'd tell you to call Ken Narlow. It's just like, help or don't help. But, like, we don't have to make this into the Ridler, you know? Yeah. It'd be funny if NBA trades worked like that.
Starting point is 02:31:50 We got to trade LeBron. Shit's falling apart. And St. Proust is like, I can't help you. But if I were to help you, call Orlando. They can help. I have a sort of related picking knit
Starting point is 02:32:05 just about the insanity of being a police detective where three detectives are in a room. They're talking to the guy they're almost certain as the Zodiac Killer. He's wearing, to Craig's point, a Zodiac watch. Yeah. And they can't get him.
Starting point is 02:32:20 And then Toski's like, I'm going to keep working on this case on and off for the next seven years. I am the sole proprietor of the investigation. But like, he, I don't believe that Toski accepted the handwriting thing. And so what was he actually doing thinking about the case? Well, he makes the point later. He's like there's been 200 murders in the last four years. Those are other families that want answers. So I think they just got too spread out, would be my guess.
Starting point is 02:32:47 I have another one. I saw this on one of the Reddit things. I'm stealing it. Which normally doesn't happen in rewatchables, but we were all reading so much Reddit when the Zodiac thing I stumbled across this one. So apologies to him taking this from.
Starting point is 02:33:05 Chloe on the first date orders Penteau la vodka, but asks to substitute a cream sauce? Yeah. That's fucking stupid. Penneal vodka is a cream sauce. I don't know how it was made. Can you say I don't want vodka?
Starting point is 02:33:16 Can you make it cream sauce? instead. So the real picking knit, and again, this comes from the director's commentary, didn't exist yet. Did not exist until the 1980s. Penaella vodka
Starting point is 02:33:25 with the cream sauce was a recipe that was popularized in the 1980s. So what does Fincher say? Like, this is actually a fake order? He's like, we fucked up. Fincher who recreates the
Starting point is 02:33:37 San Francisco Chronicle office. That is a cream sauce. Can I go back to Apex Mountain and knock this down a couple of pegs then? If I was on a date and somebody ordered Penny Alavavica, but then wanted to substitute it for cream sauce, I gotta make a call right back, but I'm out.
Starting point is 02:33:53 Sorry. Hey, this girl I'm here with has a head injury and I can't date her. I have a small picking net on behalf of my mother-in-law who was there watching the movie with us last night. When Melanie and Grey Smith are arguing about how Gray Smith is kind of starting to gain notoriety in the paper, he goes,
Starting point is 02:34:09 ah, well, no one's, he's not going to read Herb Kane. And my mother-in-law shouts out, everybody read Herb Cain. And then we found out that the Zodiac did read Herb Kane. Yeah. Oh, wow. He actually mentions
Starting point is 02:34:20 Herb Kane in a letter, right? Yeah. It's a good one. Oversight by Graceman. Wow. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, All Blackcastor, Untouchable,
Starting point is 02:34:28 became Prestige TV. They did mine. Hunter, yeah. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the florist, Buffalo Bill, Doris Burke,
Starting point is 02:34:38 or someone else here? If Fergie wrote one of the Zodiac letters, you better keep your kids off that school bus, or I'll take them out, the Zodiac way. I'll shoot out the front tire and then pick the kiddies off and they come bouncing out.
Starting point is 02:34:55 You're going to do this for me. I don't know what that voice is, but it's sort of... I love it. It's become Bono crossed with Burger the Flores. I thought for sure you were going to do Doris. DB? Yeah. Mr. Zodiac. Mr. Prozodiac, we see the patience with all your symbols. I'm trying to decipher your game, Mr. Zodiac. And I cannot. Just one Oscar who gets it, Fincher. Yeah. Probably in answerable questions. I have two good ones.
Starting point is 02:35:26 Do you guys have any? Who's the Zodiac? I have the same thing down here. In these movies or TV shows, why don't cops realize that the serial killers always start with somebody they know? This seems to be the big revelation with 20 minutes to go in the movie. Silence of LAM. He knew her.
Starting point is 02:35:46 He knew what he covets. It's like, yeah, no fucking kidding. This is every murder. stuff with Darlene and Mike kind of being like, we know who this is. It's so creepy in the beginning. Just go back and interview everybody in their life. The recognition of
Starting point is 02:36:00 I, okay, so this is kind of, this is related to that. I wanted to ask you both initially if there was ever anything that was not related to the work that you do, that you would have been willing to kind of throw your life away to explore the way that Graysmith did.
Starting point is 02:36:16 For CR, it's Edie Falco and Coblin. I'm not sure if that requires a life's work. It might be a life's fascination. Do I have an obsession that I would take so far that I would get rid of... Well, it depends on like...
Starting point is 02:36:27 But it can't be like... Related to the Sixers or prestige television. No, but... You know what I mean? That's the problem with what we do is that we get to bring the passions into our professions.
Starting point is 02:36:37 It's the best part about what we do. But like, what would be something... Like the MCL? But okay, so my follow... The MCL. If you guys... Just learning about the ligament.
Starting point is 02:36:49 What's up with you? Come on. You know? I don't know. I didn't like how the Sixers looked last night. I'm officially threatened. So did you specifically ever seriously consider criminology? No.
Starting point is 02:37:01 Forensic science. No. Serial killer investigation. No. I would do that. I told you guys, I would do these deep dives with, like, all the president's men, then I'm just like throwing myself in a water gate for three weeks in 1991. But I would always get bored and move out the next thing.
Starting point is 02:37:15 But for what? But I don't just for that weird thing that we have. Right. but he's doing this just for fun too. Is the zodiac? Robert Chris Smith. No, but at some point he starts seeing dollar science. He's like, I can turn this.
Starting point is 02:37:27 You think that's what it was? I think at some point. I think he was obsessed with it, but then was also like, wait, I can make money from this. Wonder if Melanie wishes she hung out? I have a really important unanswerable. Was there an easier job ever
Starting point is 02:37:41 than 1970s handwriting expert? What were your qualifications? It's what made somebody better than somebody else? Basically, this guy just brings out a magnifying glass and he's like, and a big glass of whiskey. But you can't tell it, like, can you tell it? No, too different.
Starting point is 02:38:01 A K with three strokes or two. Like, would you be able to do this? This guy's fucking bombed with a giant Sherlock Holmes thing. And it's deciding burger cases. Who the fuck is this guy? Described as a giant Sherlock Holmes thing. Yeah. He's like, oh.
Starting point is 02:38:17 Hold on, let me get my monocle. I'll really be able to tell this. I'm going to zag on this. I got a very specific real war. real world reason for that. Woke up early this morning and get ready to come over here to do the pod. My daughter Alice is awake
Starting point is 02:38:29 and she's sitting at what we call the messy table where she draws and colors and stuff and she's learning how to write. She's got her notebook open. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I get out of bed at 7 o'clock in the morning. She's already awake sitting at this table by herself drawing in a notebook.
Starting point is 02:38:43 I was worried you were going to say zodiac symbols. Well, her drawing does somewhat recall some of the zodiac cryptography, but you can already see at four and a half that she has like patterns with the way that she draws letters. She has a style. There is like
Starting point is 02:39:01 a kind of perverse art to individual handwriting. I've never spent any time studying it. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but just watching her develop like literally learning from nothing to I can draw A, I can draw L, I can draw I, you can kind of see. Now this guy,
Starting point is 02:39:17 Philip Baker Hall, he might have been a full-blown alcoholic for all you know. He's like, could a killer be ambidextrous? No. Not my 30 years. I've never seen it. Sean's story reminds me of when I was first learning how to draw. And like in kindergarten,
Starting point is 02:39:30 one of the first things I kind of learned how to replicate were ninjas. I realized how to draw ninjas. And in kindergarten, I did like basically a mural of death of ninjas killing each other. And they had to have me talk to like a child. You're like the kid and insidious. But it was just because it was the first thing. Like an older kid was like,
Starting point is 02:39:50 if you ever want to draw a ninja, this is how you do it. There's like three triangles and a guy of like blood splurting out of his bed. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? The I am not Paul Avery button. That was a good one.
Starting point is 02:40:06 Yeah. I like that. Houseboat. To your point? It's not really memorabilia. Oh, allow it. I'm going with the not want, the wooden dildo.
Starting point is 02:40:17 Okay. That just seems like an awful artifact. Like imagine that behind Sean's head right now. What's that? It's the wooden dildo from Zodiac. Maybe don't put it there. Maybe I can digitally insert it
Starting point is 02:40:29 like Fincherwood. Probably like one of the original letters or all of the original letter recreations that they did for the Zodiac things would be a cool thing to happen. Oh, one of the actual letters
Starting point is 02:40:42 that were written. His whole scrapbook of all the newspaper and the murders. That would be cool. Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi Award for best or worst
Starting point is 02:40:50 life lesson. It's really a throwaway line in this movie, but it's not finished until you type it up. It's a really good life lesson. Which is basically movies aren't finished. They're abandoned. Yeah. I had,
Starting point is 02:41:04 don't ever give up figuring out a murder investigation, even if it costs you your family and your sanity because it might lead to a David Fincher movie. Just keep going. Keep pushing. Fincher might be waiting for you. He loves obsession. Just keep going.
Starting point is 02:41:21 Did you have a life lesson? He can't top that. Best double feature? All the present is, ma'am. Dirty Harry. I had Dirty Harry. I want to go, after this movie, I need a change of pacer. I'd go Dirty Harry first, then I would do this.
Starting point is 02:41:38 Yes. Dirty Harry is the exciting version of this story that is solved. Zodiac is the real version of this story that is unsolvable. It is, I never really fully realized that until I was doing the research, how much Dirty Harry kind of informed. isn't it Scorpio and Dirty Harry? Yeah, yeah, like how they kind of just ripped off Zodiac and made Dirty Harry with Quinny's Slith. It's also such a different, you know,
Starting point is 02:42:05 there was just so much more local media back then. So the idea that Toski would be like this character in the newspapers and be a character based on him in the tales from the city columns and that bullet and Dirty Harry would have like his gun style and stuff like that. So I was watching some interviews with Toski. and Ruffalo's performance doesn't really sound like him.
Starting point is 02:42:27 You know, Ruffalo does that, like, what did you say? What do you mean by that? Like that kind of whispery, kind of chattery style. And Toski talks more like a lot of cops that I knew growing up, which were just like,
Starting point is 02:42:39 kind of like, what do you mean, buddy? Come on over here. You know, like, kind of like Metropolis detective guy. And it sounds like what Ruffalo is doing is like,
Starting point is 02:42:49 I haven't had my coffee yet, Dirty Harry. Like, he kind of is doing, the Clint Eastwood voice. They're like, well, do you punk in his voice? So it's this weird thing where like those movies are in such harmony together that even in the performance of Toski and he met Toski, like spent time with him for the role,
Starting point is 02:43:07 but he's not trying to do an impression of him. It's really interesting. It's interesting also that they're police officers, but we never see him actually in an action scene or anything. Yeah, sure. We never see him like... The most cop thing he does is the taxi cab crime scene. We never see him like, wait, who's that?
Starting point is 02:43:23 Like, do a chasing, holding the gun up. Yeah. I don't think he ever holds a gun in the movie. No, he has a holster, but it's... Yeah. He's got that easy access holster. Who won the movie? Fincher. Agreed.
Starting point is 02:43:35 Right? Pretty easily Fincher. Yes. Okay. I mean, did the Zodiac Killer win the movie? Because he got away? Well, because his myth is burnished by this film. I think it's notable how much this movie is still on.
Starting point is 02:43:54 Like, I feel like it's... I know it's leaving Netflix maybe at the end of January. And I'm sure it'll come back. But it feels like people continue to consume this, which was ironically one of my cases with Limitless when we did the 50 most rewatchable. I looked at where Limitless was just streaming right now on that Just Watch app.
Starting point is 02:44:14 And it was on like Amazon Paramount. Like it's literally everywhere because there's a reason people keep clicking on this. Yep. I never, when I saw a Zodiac in 07, and I never thought that would be the destiny of this movie as a rewatchable in your life movie. I think usually what we would call a rewatchable
Starting point is 02:44:30 is something that's like 90 minutes to two hours that has like recognizable peaks and valleys that you can be like, oh, I want to stay for this or I can leave for that. And with Zodiac, it's almost more like prestige television where you could watch this in 40-minute bursts if you wanted to. There are little breaks here to like, you know, with the fade out, you can step away if you want to
Starting point is 02:44:53 and start it again the next day. So I wonder whether or not some of its success is its relationship to what would become Mind Hunter and the way that Fincher want to tell this kind of story. There's something else related to it too that I kind of meant to say at the beginning of the conversation is it's hard to do most rewatchable scene for the movie because the scenes are so short.
Starting point is 02:45:10 There are not a lot of scenes where you're like, oh, it was here for 10 minutes. The cutting style of this movie reminds me a little bit of Oppenheimer and later period Nolan, where it's like really dense, important scenes. that are like 30 seconds long. Yes. It feels like
Starting point is 02:45:26 elaborate montage, the whole movie. It's a, it's a funky movie, you know, like, it's not like, at the point you just made about how Ruffalo's never running with a gun, like that's obviously
Starting point is 02:45:36 a very intentional choice, but it's so different from almost any other movie of its kind. Do we ever see Downey typing? Yeah. We just hit the desk. Call him a latent homosexual.
Starting point is 02:45:46 Right, right, right. All right, Craig, what's your take? You never saw this movie? Never saw this movie. I would argue, I know you said you like to watch this
Starting point is 02:45:52 with no pants on alone. I think this is a decent family watch. I think it's a generational connector. Because I was texting my dad as I watched it. I watched it with Liz's parents. And there's a lot of like, they described to us how things worked back in the day. We were asking questions,
Starting point is 02:46:07 but it was made no seven, so there's modern filmmaking to it. I'm more familiar with Fincher films than my parents or her parents, and yet they knew everything about living in California in like the 70s and 80s. So actually, and it's not really as gory
Starting point is 02:46:19 as I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Even the deaths, like you said earlier, they're not sensationalized or romantic at all. No. They're a little tame, at least to what I'm used to and what I expected coming into a Fincher film.
Starting point is 02:46:30 Yeah. I think it's why, like you said you were a little bit lukewarm when you first saw it. I feel like you do kind of back into this movie because you go in expecting something completely different. And then now, I mean, even hearing you guys talk, I'm like, this really, it felt like creepy all the president's men. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:46:44 And you end up respecting that. And it's a movie you really want to dig into. You have to turn your phone upside down. And after the movie was over, we talked about it for 30 minutes. And it's almost a puzzle that is not meant to be solved. Family movies, Zodiac. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:46:57 It kind of is, I think. It brings the fam together. Because it's not really a puzzle. I mean, half the time I didn't know what was going on. We kind of discussed how all these names and all these connections were pretty blurry. And we had trouble with that and we realized this is more just about the detectives. The turn when it goes to Greysmith and the way that they leap to Marshall is like, you have to really be dialed in on like pieces of paper that they've got or like quick conversations that they have. So since I want to see it again soon,
Starting point is 02:47:22 you think I should show it to Alice tonight? What do you think we should do? Not the John Holmes film. Maybe this one. Got it. Yeah. But this is totally a movie. Craig's asking his mother-in-law,
Starting point is 02:47:31 what's the wooden dildos back then? Did they really have those? Well, one thing I texted my dad, who was a police officer, I was like, there's a moment where they go up to this thing that literally says police telephone on the street. Yeah, that's awesome. And they opened it up and there was a phone in there.
Starting point is 02:47:43 I've never seen that before in my life. Did he say that those were... He's like, oh, yeah, those were a thing. He's like, right when I started, they basically disappeared when people got cell phones. Yeah. But yeah. Never seen those before.
Starting point is 02:47:53 But this movie was great. So huge thumbs up. Big thumbs up. And it's like a, it's something you need to revisit. Like I already want to go back and now watch this again. All right.
Starting point is 02:47:59 So we had another 48 hours. He liked that one. Just one of the guys was bad. So now we've, now we've rallied back. I got the rare, like, panicked text from Craig about just one of the guys on like a Friday afternoon
Starting point is 02:48:11 where he was like, hey man, just like level with me. What's going on with this one? That's it for the first rewatchables on Netflix. Sadly, these aren't going to be on YouTube anymore, but happily they're going to be on Netflix. I think we blasted past the running time of the film. We did that.
Starting point is 02:48:25 We did that. So if you have Netflix, you can click on the watch list thing for all of our podcasts, but especially this one's once a week. So anytime we do a new one, it'll just pop up on the thing. And we're going to try to do Netflix movies over the course of the next two months at least.
Starting point is 02:48:41 So follow me on Twitter because I will tell you what's coming or my podcast, Bill Simmons podcast. What's coming next? Let you know. I don't know what the order is, but I know we're circling wild things pretty hard. Ace Ventora, which we've never done. That's on there.
Starting point is 02:48:58 And then... Two formative films. The recastaway is looming. But is it going to be a solo recastaway? It will not be a solo, because I did castaway by myself during COVID, which I still feel like was my 81-point game. Those are your Apex Mountain. Kobe has his 81-point game. I have solo castaway during COVID.
Starting point is 02:49:17 Yeah. But we need to redo that one at some point. But we have a lot of good ones. There might be a Michael Mann movie doing live in Los Angeles. Wow. Next one. But that's it for rewashes. The Keep live?
Starting point is 02:49:28 It's Black Hat, actually. Yeah, we're going to explain it. And then Big Picture, which is also going to be on Netflix. And then a lot of rumors about live right after the Oscars. So some rumors. Could happen. Yeah. Where is it going to be taking place?
Starting point is 02:49:42 Am I going to be inside of the Dolby Theater? Literally might be here. Which will I be on stage receiving an Oscars? live potting. I was very upset about Joel Edgerton. I get it. It was a loaded category.
Starting point is 02:49:53 It just hurt my feelings. You just can't be surprised. Quiet performance. That was my number one that I was like, were you happy about F1 getting best pick? They put the one popcorn movie in, right?
Starting point is 02:50:03 Yeah. So that beat, what, Avatar? I thought weapons would have been the choice because it was a little bit more critically acclaimed. But it made sense to me. Yeah, even if it was sacrificial. I'm glad people came around on my side on weapons. Who's people?
Starting point is 02:50:17 the category. I don't think that's what happened. I think people, I think I started it. You think because it wasn't nominated for best picture that everyone decided weapons isn't good? I think you also got Jesse Buckley nominated.
Starting point is 02:50:25 Here's the thing. Once I talked about it Hammett a little bit, I think that really helped their campaign. Nice job. Good job. Did you get the check from Focus Features for pushing Hamnet
Starting point is 02:50:34 the way that you did? I would actually give you back. I was one of the first ones who said, wow, she was really great in that movie. I'll give you back a month of my salary if you get Jesse Buckley on your pod. Oh my God.
Starting point is 02:50:43 I would love her. Yeah. She's amazing. She's great. She's a great actress. Great job. Meskow was tough, too, for supporting. What about Meskul?
Starting point is 02:50:52 And Meskul. I call Meskow. It's like he plays second base for the angel of Moscow. Luis Moscal? He just signed with the Rangers. Yeah, the Padres right field? Did you see Paul Meskow? Big Red Sox fan?
Starting point is 02:51:04 Is he really actually that? What? Paul Meskul's a big Red Sox fan? He's from England. He got obsessed with the Red Sox. He said in an interview. It's so lame. What was your first? number one snub? I didn't hear your pod yet.
Starting point is 02:51:20 What was my number one snub? It was just an accident. I mean, it was just an accident, I think, was a movie that people thought was going to go there, but I didn't predict that. No other choice? I never thought it would get it. It's tough because it's like predictions versus movies that I liked. You know, I don't know if there was like a massive overlook. Are you surprised? I mean, Chase Infinity maybe for one battle after another was probably the one that most people thought was going to happen. Loaded category. Plennings?
Starting point is 02:51:42 Loaded category, but also I thought just category fraud. she was supporting. I mean, Plemons was great in Bologna. Did you watch Bologna? I did. Okay. It's too bad.
Starting point is 02:51:56 What do you think? There's certain movies that just aren't my kind of movie. You're not a Yorgos guy. Me neither. I am 100% not. And you're out on Yorgos too. I do not like Urogos movies.
Starting point is 02:52:07 I am in the, I appreciate, I appreciate your ghost exists. You guys like, you're like horny for each other right now. No, it's not that. No. It's just, it's funny. It exists. We're on three hour and six minutes.
Starting point is 02:52:18 Is it because he tends to center women in his films? Is that the issue? I just... No, it's not. No, okay. It's not. Stop my cup of tea. Got it.
Starting point is 02:52:27 Not my cup of tea. So when Emma Stone's character and poor things kind of realized her agency as a woman... Do you like your ghost movies? I do. Yeah. I had him on the big picture for Begonia, which I thought was a cool movie. Not like the best movie of the year, but I thought it was cool. CR, great to see you as always.
Starting point is 02:52:45 Great to see you, man. Sean Fantasy. Great to see you as always. Thanks, Bill, you too. Thanks to Gahau. Thanks to Craig, thanks to Eduardo as well. We will see you next week on the rewatchments.

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