The Rewatchables - ‘Zodiac’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
Episode Date: January 26, 2026The 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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
Not your favorites.
No, box office.
Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3,
Transformers,
Pirates 2
Harry Potter 3
I am legend
Born 2
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
No country for old men
Zodiac
Michael Clayton
Juno American gangster
Super Bad
Knocked up
Charlie Wilson's War
310 to Yuma
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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?
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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%
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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?
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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,
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
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,
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?
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,
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
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
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.
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,
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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,
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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?
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,
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.
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.
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?
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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2007 Oscars,
March 2008. This movie just gets
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,
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
Vigo Morgensen
Yeah
For Easterer promises
Johnny Depp
and Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber
What the fuck were we doing there
Jesus Christ
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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,
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,
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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,
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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?
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.
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
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
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
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
the guy who's
stabbed but survives
was tried to disarm
the guy
you know
tried to be kind of
casual
and comfortable
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hmm, the squirrels.
Squirrels.
The wooden dildo is
the fucking gross
thing you could
probably added to this movie?
Yep.
I like searching.
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.
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
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?
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.
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,
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.
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,
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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,
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.
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,
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,
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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,
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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,
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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,
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
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,
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
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...
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,
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,
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,
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
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,
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,
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...
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.
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
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
starts it
midway through
and it's just
the vocal pops in
and then
it's a little bit
of like a DJ
thing.
It's really good.
New award.
Mm.
Excited, Craig?
Yeah.
The David Fincher
Award for wow,
this director
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.
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,
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,
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,
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He lets both guys live.
Crazy.
He wore a watch that said,
Zodiac.
Yeah.
Kind of a miss there.
Slipped up,
revealed his birthday
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.
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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
are at the bar
we mentioned earlier
just decoding
Zodiac shit.
I wrote down
I'm five minutes
light on these two together.
Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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?
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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,
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.
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,
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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Apex Mountain, Fincher.
Do we need to explain Apex Mountain now that we're on Netflix?
Go ahead.
Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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,
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...
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...
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,
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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...
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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,
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
Herb Kane in a letter, right?
Yeah.
It's a good one.
Oversight by Graceman.
Wow.
Sequel, prequel,
prestige TV,
All Blackcastor, Untouchable,
became Prestige TV.
They did mine.
Hunter, yeah.
Is this movie better
with Wayne Jenkins,
Fergie the florist,
Buffalo Bill,
Doris Burke,
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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,
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,
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,
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.
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.
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
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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,
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.
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,
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,
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,
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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,
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
