This Had Oscar Buzz - 091 – Zodiac

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

2007 was a stacked year for the major names in cinema offering bleak masterpieces and one that got left in the dust was David Fincher’s Zodiac. The film meticulously details the notorious serial killer’s exploits and aftermath with a large ensemble and the obsessive attention to detail that has become synonymous with the auteur. Arriving … Continue reading "091 – Zodiac"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada. I'm from Canada, Water. Oh, yeah. What are you doing at the gun range?

I just want to help. What are you? Some kind of Boy Scout? Eagle Scout. Actually, first class. All I've been thinking... Oh, God Samson. There's no evidence, Robert.

What do you mean there's no evidence? You have him seen with the ciphers, the military boot prints, the bloody knoll. All circumstantial. Why do you need to do this? Because nobody else will. Dave! He made a mistake! Get away from the window.

Paul. Are you okay? No. Why'd you do it? You put your face out there for him to see. Hello? Who is this? Zodiac was my job. It's not yours.

He's still out there, Dave. Killing is his compulsion. It drives him. It's in his blood. Jeez. What? Squirrels. This is the Zodiac speaking.

I've a gun. I can give you a lift to the service station. Toys go around helping people in that. night. I'm not the Zodiac. And if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell you. Hello, this is The Zodiac speaking, and welcome to the

This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that sees a few lawbreakers in the house tonight. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died,

and we are here to perform the autopsy. I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my bow-tied, gun holstered, constantly asking for Animal Crackers co-host, Joe Reed. Hello, I am your hurdy-gurdy man for this evening, this morning, I should say, we record in the morning, but yes. Thank you for comparing me to Mark Ruffalo. God, flattered.

Mark, you know what? I like to dole out compliments and flattery because, as anybody knows, who perhaps follows me on Twitter. I find Mark Ruffalo in this movie to be very handsome. Yeah, he's basically like Peter Falk, right? Like, well, and it's interesting because

if you... Like Peter Falk hair the bodice. He's very sort of like definitional of this California quirky detective. If you read up on anything about this movie or sort of the Zodiac case in general, the character he's playing

Dave Toskey is was the inspiration for Dirty Harry. Slightly, like, the first Dirty Harry movie was about, like, a very Zodiac-type killer, and we actually see a scene in the movie where they go and see Dirty Harry, and it's, like, all pulled from his own sort of experiences. And he was also, like, the style inspo for Steve McQueen in Bullet. So this was, like, a detective who was kind of, like, known as sort of, like, again, very California where like people who are in the news become celebrities even if they're not

in you know roles or professions that would lend themselves to celebrity I think you see that with the Brian Cox character where he's playing this kind of grandiose lawyer who has like jumped the rail to celebrity lawyer and it all feels very correct in terms of like the time and space within this movie was taking place. A movie that gets time and place incredibly correctly in a way that is so entertaining and fascinating to watch. Yes, absolutely. The first seconds of the movie, it's one of the things that Fincher does so very well,

even when he's doing something contemporary, where it's like he knows the environment and, like, sets you in it so well because the detail. are so specific. Like, this is late 60s, early 70s for the most of the movie. Yes. In San Francisco. And, like, you get the cultural reference. Like, you see the hair poster in the background,

like the dirty hairy stuff, the bullet stuff. Mark Ruffalo gets called Bullet in the movie and doesn't like it. Yes. Like, the building, uh, the, the construction of whatever the pointy building is called in San Francisco. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is so iconic to their

skyline. It's all just so specific in ways that I'm sure we'll keep getting into as this episode goes on. But yes, we are here to talk about David Finchers, Zodiac, which we were trying to do more episodes this month that were readily available on streaming. And this one, without any fanfare, got dropped off of whatever platform it was on after we made that announcement. So if anybody was looking for it and couldn't find it or had to pay for it, I apologize. That is my fault for not being able to find anywhere that said that it was going to drop. A true gotcha that we did not intend, but, uh, yeah, I was trying to sort of like... I was going to say, I was trying to attribute this to some sort of like Zodiac S trait,

where it's just like, it would just like disappear for years on end or whatever, but, uh... The new Zodiac terrorism is the Zodiac is dropping movies from streaming platforms before they're supposed to leave. That's what the Zodiac has graduated. But I, um, we, early on, we had a listener tweet that they're like expecting us to say that this is the best movie that we've ever covered on this podcast. And tell me if you disagree, but I think that is absolutely true. I was actually going to bring this up. I don't think I had seen that tweet, but, uh, I was thinking that as I was watching this, it was just like, oh, this is easily the best. best movie we've ever covered on this podcast, which is no slight to the other movies on this

podcast that we've covered that we've liked. It's just like, this is just one of like the best movies I've ever seen. Like, not to get like too hyperbolic about it, but just like, there are a few movies that I find as deeply satisfying and that I can just sort of like fold myself into, which is weird to say about a movie that is not comforting. Like, this is not a comfort food movie, but I find it so effective at telling its story and sort of like, it's a two and a half hour movie, so it takes its time. And it kind of like wraps you up in this alternating sense of dread, which it has in so many of its scenes. It's so effective at like communicating this dread. But also in this, it's, it's the rare movie that is as good as a sort of like

processy. People use the term shoe leather a lot, which I find is like, you know, a cliche, but like often an effective one. And people really like those kind of stories that get into the nuts and bolts of an investigation of like of professional people trying to figure out a problem. While at the same time, it's also the most like artistically kind of gorgeous. There's so many scenes in this movie. It's just like absolutely stunning. And Fincher clearly is making it's like a procedural art film. And he did the same thing with seven, which is seven's more.

of a concept-y kind of a thing, a more of a high-concepting. More subversive. Seven never really quite feels like it's happening in the real world, whereas, like, obviously Zodiac is very much rooted in reality and the sort of, like, the disappointing. And a lot of actual truthful details, and, like, he's recreating entire crime scenes, like, down to minutia of, like, the physical details of the space. to one thing I want to say before I like piggyback on what you have to say, I actually kind of found this a comforting watch, even though like it's an absolutely terrifying movie. But like there's something that is so immediately absorbing in this movie where it's like you kind of get tunnel vision when you're watching it. Right. So it's like I found it kind of a wonderful distraction in ways that even like the popcorn candy movies that I've watched haven't been. in all of this.

But to your point about the way that this movie is so completely terrifying in a procedural way, I think one of the things that makes it so effective is the fact that all of these, whether it's the actual crime scene scenes where you actually see the murders take place or like the horrifying sequence

where Jake Gyllenhauls in that guy's basement, all of those scenes are so specifically scary in ways that are all very different and seem kind of random from each other. And, like, what is so interesting about that to me is, like, it kind of embodies the way that the zodiac impacted people and the way that it was, like, um, the way the killer themselves kind of stoked fear in the public in that, like, there was a certain randomness to the crimes

and they weren't all similar, or at least the ones that were ascribed to the zodiac, like, again, the pattern changed on it. So I think it's interesting that Fincher can kind of capture that in the movie. Absolutely. Yeah, this is some of Finchers' most intense, most suspenseful scenes. I can pick out like two or three scenes, the, you know, the basement scene you mentioned, and the stabbings on the little like, whatever, Lake Beriasa, which I can never tell if it's like, What is that? What kind of an environment is that? Is that a, like, a little island that they're on?

Because that's a whole thing where it's a man-made lake, right? That was... Yes, something like that. And the space no longer exists there. So, like, that was one that they found a location and then apparently flew in, like, trees so that it could be as specific to the way the crime scene actually was, because that's what Fincher wanted. One thing I want to bring up, and we can maybe talk a little bit about this in the awards. season of or like the awards possibilities for this movie um did you ever see that visual effects real that i've talked to you about the i don't think so because i'm not entirely sure what you're talking about i kind of think that this is a gold standard for like visual effects that is purely environment based because the cab scene one in particular that was all on a set they built that set and then all of the neighborhood stuff

was green screened. Because the neighborhood wouldn't let them film there. Yeah. Right. So there's a whole ton of that, especially in like altering the city of San Francisco throughout the movie. There's a couple shots in it that it's like, okay, this is by this point kind of crunchy. But there's whole sequences in this that you may never realize our VFX. Yeah, VFX, if you hadn't seen this visual text. And Fincher on this movie in particular was obsessed with getting details right.

He, like, there were full, that's why you don't see the first Zodiac killings. You only see it start at the second Zodiac killings because there were no living survivors or eyewitnesses of the first killing. And he only wanted to recreate killings where there were, like, accounts of what happened. he wanted to be that faithful to the sort of accuracy of it. And he wanted to be faithful to the accuracy of the environments and where things took place. And very few things were changed for sort of dramatic purposes.

And the whole thing, the other thing that I was thinking about when you talk about like the look of the film, we talked about Tadpole on this podcast a long time ago. And that was 2002, correct? and so that was one of the early films shot purely on digital but that was when digital like last week we talked about Soderberg with full frontal where it's like they're filming these movies on digital but it looks like absolute garbage that's sort of where I'm going with this we're like yeah where that movie we talked about how terrible the movie looked and I get that like the budgets of like tadpole and Zodiac are like vastly different but even you just look at the how far digital video even

when you look at a movie like collateral, which I grant is a movie a lot of other people like better than I do. And that one was at the time sort of a landmark for digital cinematography. And that was 2004. And you look at just the three years between that and this. Like Zodiac shot on digital with certain scenes on film, whenever you see something in slow-mo, apparently, that is on film. But this is largely digital cinematography. And it looks fucking gorgeous, like absolutely pristine, gorgeous, stunning. The filmmaking is fantastic. You don't ever feel like Fincher is limited in any way by shooting on digital.

And the only thing, really, the only sort of like negative consequence of filming in digital was the stories that had come out about how frustrated Jillen Hall and Robert Tony Jr. were with how many takes. Fincher demanded, and he could demand that many takes because they were on digital. This is when that reputation. begins. Yes. Yeah, where Jillen Hall had that article in the Times, I want to say, where he was pretty frank and candid about

how his difficulties working with Fincher, while ultimately being like complimentary of him as an artist and a visionary, but still was just like we would go through 90 takes and then he would just like randomly delete 10 of them, like the last 10 of them by like pushing a button

on the camera, as you can do with, you know, digital. And he talked about how sort of like demoralizing that was as an actor that you put all this work in. And essentially what he was saying is just like, I'm an actor. I get paid to sort of make choices and go in directions. And what Fincher wants is 90 takes who he gets every possible iteration of what this is. And then he can basically decide what your performance is. And it's this very sort of like fascinating dynamic because I don't think either one of them is entirely wrong. And I think Ruffalo even had a quote later where he was

just like, look, you sign on to a film, you're signing on to this director's vision. Either you surrender yourself to that, or you sort of put yourself in for, you know, all this sort of like frustration and heartache for yourself. And so you can sort of see both sides. And I think at the time, Jillon Hall was kind of, because Jillen Hall was still very young, he was only a couple years removed from Brokeback Mountain, which was kind of a milestone for him. But he was still very much a young actor. And a lot of people sort of like brushed this off about is like, ah, the kid can't handle such an intense director. But I really do feel like I can see both sides of that.

No, I agree. I mean, like, to keep going off of the, like, a million takes David Fincher thing and back to, like, the artistry of, like, what he creates with the level of meticulousness, like, it's interesting that, like, he kind of finally amasses that reputation or it starts to build when digital photography comes out for filming his movies, because, yes, it's like, What was the social network scene that opens the movie? They did how many takes of that? Oh, like a bejillion.

Him at Jesse Eisenberg. Yeah, there's something like over a hundred. And it's like that's kind of what David Fincher is known for with his movies. And it's like, it's interesting for this movie because I think this is probably the only Fincher movie we would ever be able to cover on this podcast. So it's like that's one of the other things that we were saving. I feel like we can at some point do panic room. See, I was going to bring this up later. Panic Room deserves a better reputation than it has.

And certainly than it had at the time, because at the time it was like, Fincher's just doing another violent movie. It's misanthropic and dark. And like, even that has some, like, at the time, what was, like, visual effects, like, audacity. Oh, yeah. I think that movie deserves better, but that was kind of seen just a schlock.

But I think once people saw it, yes, but I do feel like during the production phase of it and during the pre-release phase, people saw a Jody Foster movie directed by David Fincher, who at that point wasn't an Oscar director yet, and I'll sort of get into that as we go along. but was definitely like a name director who because of Seven and Fight Club had this really great reputation and so I think there was an excitement over what Jody Foster could do in that role so I do feel like there was a degree of buzz for that movie Getting David Fincher's name closer to Oscar consideration happened in stages over his career to where it's like

now probably everything that he makes will be in the conversation in some way Like, he's earned that. Like, he got to the point where it's a girl with a dragon tattoo is a major Oscar nominee, probably very close to being a Best Picture nominee. And, like, that movie is about sexual torture and, like, Scandinavian violence. And it's three hours long. There's a thing about that I love thinking about where that generation of turn of the century directors, where it's David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Alexander Payne, David O' Russell, Wes Anderson, that sort of group

that sort of started off as these very kind of, had very sort of like culty, early projects. You're talking about Finch are less culty, although we have like the music video pass, but like Aronovsky does pie and Alexander Payne has like even election, I guess. What was his movie before election? Shit, I can never. Citizen Ruth, really good movie. Lord Derns amazing. David O.

Russell has. flirting with disaster and to some degree spanking the monkey. Wes Anderson with bottle rocket. All of these sort of like very culty directors that slowly, you know, kept making these like masterpieces that for a while there couldn't get arrested with the Oscars. And they were the sort of like younger vanguard of filmmaker. And then each one of them hits that breakthrough point with the Oscars.

Fincher with Social Network, Aronovsky with Black Swan, Payne with Sideways, David O' Russell with the fighter, Wes Anderson, with finally Grand Budapest Hotel. And then from that point, they become, they're like part of the club then. And so I think you look at like David O'Russell, especially, Alexander Payne especially, we're like, they can't make a movie now

without it being a huge Oscar contender. And I think Fincher is largely there. Although Fincher, you know, it sort of like goes back and forth, right? where Fincher can make something that gets, like, Gone Girl, that should get much more attention, but doesn't. So, you know, it can be a little, like, frustrating there about just, like, what do you want from this guy?

Don't you, isn't he basically in line to get an Oscar at some point? Don't we all feel like he was, you know, isn't the general sense that he was robbed for the social network? So you would get the sense that it's going to happen for him at some point. This is why when I was on the Vanity Fair podcast back in the before times when we were predicting the Oscars this year, not knowing what the, still not knowing what the Oscars are going to be this year. But his Mank, the Mankowitz's biopic.

Which you have to imagine is going to be Netflix's big play this year. That was definitely my sense, for sure. Yeah. I mean, they have a good slate this year. They have a new Charlie Kaufman movie. They have some other things, but that's probably what they're going to throw their money behind. because like this narrative for David Fincher has to result in something eventually right even though like there's a certain misanthropic bent to a lot of his movies even like when you really look at Benjamin Button it is a very sober kind of dark right that was Fincher's breakthrough with Oscar our lives amount to and what death is I misspoke I said his breakthrough with social network it was it was Benjamin Button obviously yes right right but see Benjamin Button in this movie are so interestingly tied to me, A, because they're both Paramount

movies, but these are the two movies that are so impacted by the ill health and death of his father, if you ever read interviews with that? I haven't, so please and let him. Not in ways that he says explicitly, more so about Benjamin Button, but like this one, he, like, tells the whole story about his dad when, because he grew up in, in and around where the Zodiac in Marin County, I want to say, right? Yeah. And he has some story about his dad, like, kind of brushing off what the Zodiac was. He's like, some man says that he's going to shoot kids. I do remember hearing the story that he was, like, surprisingly blunt about, like, well, this guy's going to shoot the tires out of a bus, and then he's going to pick off the kids as they're walking out. And he's saying this to, like, this young child, his son. And you can imagine that type of, like, blunt directness influencing Finch's point of view as an entire filmmaker.

while you even see it in Zodiac where like Gyllenhaal kind of like blithely allows his kid to watch this news report where they're talking about this and is kind of like he's still like he eventually like turns the TV off but like after he's done you know listening to this he's not really taking pains to shield his kids and then you see

later on in the movie where he's got them helping him with the investigation so yeah there are shades of that for sure and they're both and their PJs that seems so good and like the one thing I think think about Fincher and like his trajectory, especially compared to those other filmmakers you brought up, is like movies, it all starts with a disaster for David

Fincher, right? Because Alien 3 was seen as this unmitigated disaster. And there's since been a director's cut and that movie's been reevaluated too. But it's like he has to get further and further away from that disaster to really be taken seriously. And even Seven is, you know, it's Oscar nominated and all that, but like maybe that's too. it was too much for Oscar at the time in terms of the grimness to really be taken on like a best picture director level seven was one of those movies that like critics really championed as like should be nominated for Oscar but like it was never a true contender in the top categories in terms of like you know even like Freeman for best actor even though he was coming off of a best actor nomination for Shawshank obviously like the directing was was so important obviously that film came during the big kind of Kevin Spacey supporting actor year where he wins for the usual suspects, but he's also in Outbreak and he's in Seven and all this sort of stuff, yeah. And it's also treated more like a, or at least the public response to it is more like a horror movie than a procedural.

Yes. And even when this movie finally comes out, it is very much at least promoted in the vein of from the director of Seven. So it's like, this is more influenced by all the president's men with those horrifying sequences of the murders that are so scary. Even when they are interviewing Arthur Lee Allen for the first time, I would even include that scene among some of the more terrifying ones because you don't quite know what the energy is in the room. Well, the whole thing, the brilliant thing about the movie, one of the many brilliant things about the movie, is this sense of. of that it is a movie about the terror of not knowing who the killer is and not ever, not ever being able to nail it down. The whole thing about the Zodiac investigation and the Zodiac killer in culture is

they never caught him. Like, you can say, as the movie does, that they were zeroing in on Arthur Leellon, that they had this mountain of very strong circumstantial evidence, but they never got him. He had died of a heart attack before they were able to, to bring him in that one last time. And I think the movie infuses into so many of its scenes that kind of dread of not knowing. The killings at Lake Beriasa, where even, like, right before the guy stabs him, the guy's like, did you really, was that gun even loaded?

Like, that sense of, you have to know. We got it. You know, that's what obsesses Grace Smith. That's what obsesses Paul Avery and sort of like sends him down as like lifetime of like essentially drinking and smoking himself to death. that's what obsesses Toskey. Like, it's, they got a know. They've, even beyond being able to, like, prosecute him, they just have to know the answer to this.

And that not knowing is what creates so much of the suspense of this movie. And the flip side of that coin of you have to know who the killer is, is that the killer's nature itself is random. And the terror of it could happen at any minute, it could be a completely different type of violence. being enacted. It could be in a completely different environment to completely different people. Like, that's the other side of it, right? Like, besides what we as the potential victims

of this killer are experiencing and needing to have that certainty and with that certainty comes a feeling of safety, the other side is like, you have this person on the loose just, like, terrorizing the culture, right? Well, there's that great scene. I have a threat on this

that I don't want to get in. to until we do a 60-second plot description. Well, just, like, just very quickly bouncing off of what you were saying, though, because there's that great scene where, uh, we're following the cab, before the cab driver gets killed, right? Where we're following the cab from this, like, aerial shot, tracking it through these streets, and we're hearing radio sort of like talk shows talking about because at this point, there's a, there's a curfew in the Bay Area, everybody's afraid of the

Zodiac, and people are calling in and being like, you know, uh, well, it's only targeting young kids, young, like, whatever, young people, and this city is lousy with them. They're all over the hate, you know, fuck them, essentially. And this other person's like, hey, we've got nice, clean cut people in the North Bay and don't lump us all in with that. And everybody in the hate is all Satanists anyway. And maybe the killer's a Satanist and all this. But all of that is intended to just be like, people trying to find comfort in this idea of, like, is he killing people like me? Is it killing people like people that I know? Or is there's some safety in this idea of he's not killing, you know, I'm safe, he's killing other

types of people. And I think it's crucial that you see that right before he kills the cab driver because that's the pattern breaker, right? Because it's like these like lovers lane killings or whatever. And then he kills the cab driver and then he kills or tries to kill the single mother with the baby in the car, which is the most terrifying scene. Ione Sky, by the way, uncredited in the movie as the young mother there. Ione Skye, the daughter of Donovan, who sings Hurtie Gertie Man, which is still, it's the song that's played at the beginning and the end of the movie. It's so goddamn scary.

Like the movie, there's so many great things about this movie. I really, I could go on all day. This is going to be like a five-hour podcast of me talking about how much I said. Buckle up, kids. Yeah, I mean, the, maybe we shouldn't go into the, like the mother with her baby Well at some point

you're going to have to make me to a 60 second plot description I don't know I mean yes Yeah let's just go ahead We'll jump into the 60 second plot description Since we're dissecting individual murder scenes already

Joseph Are you ready to fit the two hours And 40 minutes plus of Zodiac Into 60s Yeah why don't you run down The movie stats first and then Yes, of course.

As we mention, the film is directed by David Fincher written by James Vanderbilt. A shout out to our truth episode and his directorial debut. It's based on the

nonfiction book from Robert Graysmith, who is played in the film by Jake Gyllenhaal. We also have Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., a slew of other bit players like Anthony Edwards,

John Carroll Lynch, Brian Cox, who we mentioned, Dermit Mulroney, who maybe gets the most screwed in the movie in terms of screen time and

valuable importance to the plot. Chloe Seveny, Elias Codias, Donald Logue, Philip Baker Hall for like two scenes, and like the meme going around of Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood pointing at the TV

screen, that was me, watching Philip Baker Hall. I love Philip Baker Hall. Cleo Duval in a scene. Maybe everybody in this movie is that name. It's a character actor paradise. It truly is. When Jimmy Simpson shows up at the end, uncredited again, as the older version of that first guy who got shot was...

The best older casting ever, where it's like someone ages, and you got two different actors, and you couldn't get too better actors. Because the first one is the dork from One Tree Hill, and who I've never seen in anything else. I think he was also maybe on Boy Meets World, but that was a little too old for Boy Meets World, so whatever. Anyway. And then it's Jimmy Simpson. Yeah, it's Jimmy Simpson. It's fantastic.

Movie opened wide the first weekend of March in 2007. After being delayed from the previous year, we will get into that. Joseph. Yes. Are you ready for your 60-second plot description? I mean, ready as I'll ever be, yeah. All right. Well, your 60-second plot description of David Fincher's Zodiac starts now. Okay, it's the 4th of July in 1969 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two young lovers are shot in their car on a secluded road by a killer who then calls in the incident to the police and takes credit for that and an urge.

their double homicide in the area. This is followed by a double stabbing of another young couple at Lake Beriesa. The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper begins to receive letters from someone claiming responsibility for the murders, calling himself the zodiac. The letters are accompanied by a cipher, which a bunch of people try and decode. It draws the attention of cartoonist and puzzle dork, Jake Gyllenhaal, who begins following the case closely via his colleague Robert Donny Jr. At the same time, homicide detectives Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards, begin working the case, which ends up going on for like years and years

and they end all sorts of dead ends. Circumstantial evidence piles up like crazy. There's handwriting. There's the killer's birthday. There's the most dangerous game, the short story. More than once, they zero in on Arthur Lee Allen as a suspect. But when you start to think they've got him, the movie ends and we find out Alan had a fatal heart attack before they could bring him in. And the whole thing ends

with the question mark, who was the zodiac? That's time. Does it end with the question, who is the zodiac? because I feel like this movie and Fincher are fairly concluded that it was Arthur Lee Allen. The movie is, but the movie also basically, like, sets you on a path to Wikipedia and sends you down all these, like, rabbit holes. If you watch this movie and don't end up going on Wikipedia and looking anything up, I don't understand you because, like, there's so much where you're just like,

was this thing? Was this the case? And even in the postscript, they talk about how DNA evidence didn't match Arthur Lee Allen. the movie continually is like the handwriting samples do not match. And there's even, not in the postscript of the movie, but if you look it up on Wikipedia, Toski, at some point later, later on, was like, yeah, it didn't end up, the evidence didn't end up indicating Arthur Lee Allen, the actual, like, non-circumstantial evidence.

Because, like, this movie is, it'll drive you crazy how many, it's not quite loose ends, but how many sort of, like, different. fragments of circumstantial evidence that there is. That's what I think is the, that's what takes up pretty much the bulk of the middle of the movie. Once you get past those early murder scenes, and then before you get into the sort of like last half hour where Jill and Hall is like really like down the rabbit hole and he ends up in the basement of the Roger Rabbit guy's house and then ends up encountering Arthur Lee Allen

at an Ace Hardware. Nice product placement there, Ace Hardware. I'm sure they loved that. I guess any port and storm, right? But, like, the middle of the movie is all of this were just, like, they're following the handwriting samples, the scene where they talk to Brian Cox's housekeeper who mentions that the Zodiac had called one time and mentioned that it was his birthday and sort of like figuring out, well, now we've got the killer's birthday. And, you know, who was doing the handwriting on the posters for the most dangerous game at the local repertory theater and all of this stuff? And it's amazing. It's not quite, you're not quite seeing them put together an airtight case because that's the thing. It was never, they were never able to put together an airtight case.

But what it is, is they're following all of these, like, sort of like, different strands down different ends. And one leads them to Clea Duval in the jail interview. And one leads them to, again, that guy's basement. And at one point, what was the Rick suspect's last name, Rick something, that, like, Jillyn Hall was certain who it was? the guy who he thought did the handwriting on the poster. And Clea Duvall is the one that points him towards Arthur Lee Allen. Right, right. Who at that point we had kind of let go of for the last half hour.

And that's why that seems so great is when Clea Duval is like, his name was Lee. And then like your blood sort of like rushes out of your body and you're just like, holy shit. He was right there. And that's like the thing you couldn't place in that scene where it's like you know something is wrong. But you cannot say with certainty what it is that is wrong and scary about that. interrogation. And all of this procedural stuff that you're describing, because it is probably a solid two hours of just procedure and investigation that doesn't lead to a conclusive end, all of it becomes, like, the search for the answer becomes an existential one. Yes. Because

Fincher is so smart about like what it means on just like a personal level to find this not just for these individual characters we're following across different industries but also just for like the societal need to understand to know who this person is that committed all of this but also what Fincher is so smart about is the kind of chaos that ensues with it's like this kind of snowball effect right where it's also reasonable to understand

that all of these murders or all of these allegations or the contact that was made was not made by one person but they weren't necessarily in cahoots right it could be a lot of people claiming that it is the zodiac killer so it's like yes one use of movie is very smart

to like have its own idea of who did it I think but also say it probably probably all wasn't this person, and it was other people either making shit up or, like, the mass hysteria driving, you know, unwell people to think that they are this person or claim. The suspicion sort of like, you know, and takes over everything, too, where you see at different points in the movie, people say, well, I think Paul Avery is really the killer, the Robert Johnny Jr. character. At one point, Dave Toskey is accused of writing one of the Zodiac.

letters as a forgery and there's all this sort of which these sort of like, you know, had to, you know, you've seen certain certain things in movies where you're just like, oh, that had to be true. That detail had to be true because you wouldn't put it in a movie unless it was true. The detail about Toski writing himself, writing fan letters to Armistad Mopin about a character in his column that was based on Toski and his wife played wonderfully by

June Day and Raphael. I'm pretty sure this is her first movie. In fact, I interviewed her one time when she talked about that, and she was just like, what an intense, like, frying pan into the fire thing where your first movie is David Fincher. But she's on the phone with Greysmith, and she's just like, he sent him some fan letters. It was basically him, like, writing fan letters to himself. It was a thing he was sort of amused by. She's like, he's not the Zodiac. But, like, her trying to explain this in such, like, obvious matter-of-fact terms. And I'm just like, that's a wild thing to do. Sometimes you just have to throw your hands up with this movie and be like, it's just fucking perfect, man.

It is. I think to bring it back a little bit to, like, the Fincher and the trajectory of it, this is, I mean, we can debate the panic room a little bit, but, like, Paramount had the plan to have an Oscar campaign for this movie when it was supposed to be in 2006. So it's like, it feels like Fincher was constantly inching towards being a real Oscar player to now. the point where, like, we mentioned, they will all be in that type of consideration unless he goes and makes some type of, like, he goes back and makes seven and knocks it out to the nth degree where it's just, like, too extreme or something. Or he makes, like, a movie with Madonna or something, because he made all of those Madonna music videos, something, anything. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that this to me feels so much like the definitive David, Fincher movie, and I think, except for maybe, like, a few synasts or that, it, it gets overlooked a lot in terms of what is the movie that defines him as a filmmaker.

Yeah. And I think it's this, to me, because of the level of meticulousness, the kind of idea, this, like, modern Hitchcockian idea where it's like, the movie, sure, is a procedural, but does, like, get at something, it does have themes of, like, how we are as a society buried into it, too. I think you're right. I think for me, it's always so impossible to not view Fincher, the sort of, like, essential fincher as a continuum from seven to Fight Club to Zodiac to social network.

But, like, I do get, especially, like, where Zodiac occurs on that timeline, where it's really in the middle, and you really get that sense of, like, it's the, it's the perfect. melding of like that early very stylistic seven fight club sort of sense of fincher almost you know he really had something to prove in those movies he was making the leap from music videos he was bringing a lot of that music video aesthetic to uh movies i remember seven remember the overlap between the seven opening credits and garbages stupid girl video that he i'm pretty sure wait no he didn't direct that i think that might have been sam out there i think I think that's a Romantic video.

It's one of the big music video directors, and I'm going to look this up in a second. But, like, that was such the style at the time, but you could, like, that was very much Finch bringing what was very much in vogue in music video style to something like seven. And I remember, and the opening credits of Fight Club are the same way, where it's the sort of like,

you're racing through these, like, synapses and nerve endings, right? At the beginning of Fight Club. And both of those things I remember being, you know, you're right at the beginning of the movie, and he's basically, like, putting his stamp on this and it's just like, this is the Fincher aesthetic. And I think when you get to Zodiac, you still get the Fincher aesthetic, but it's much more elegant. It's much more, um, not controlled, but I think it's, and again, and the Zodiac subject matter is less kind of like wild than the subject matter in Seven and Fight Club. So it's like it made sense in all of those senses. I don't think

he was going overboard in those earlier movies. But I definitely feel like by the time you get to Zodiac, it's a much more assured Fincher. And he doesn't feel like he's trying to basically like argue for his own existence in this movie, the way he is in those other movies. And I think that then transitions him into Benjamin Button, which is, you know, some people and some people don't, but then, like, social network, gone girl, that kind of, like, you know, later era, Fincher. Your point about the, like, Fight Club Seven Fincher aesthetic, I think it made audiences unprepared for what this movie was, because it was promoted as another serial killer movie from David Fincher, and you're expecting it to be seven. And, like, this is one of Fincher's least successful movies. I think it is his lowest grocer.

Yeah, it was so, so disappointing that this movie didn't make a lot of money. And I think, I mean, like, at the time, it felt like it was being pinned on the length of the movie. But I also think it's just like, it's not at all what people were expecting it to be, like, or at least wide audiences. Like, it never, this movie never had a problem with critics. No, one thing I always find a little interesting about Seven, because Seven comes out in, obviously, the spring of, of 2007, or not seven, Zodiac, Jesus Christ, sorry. The thing about Zodiac is when it comes out in the spring of 2007, one of the movies that I tend to tie it to,

because early 2007 was when I was essentially preparing for my move to New York City. So, like, 2007 for me is very much divided between the movies that I saw before I moved out to the movies that I saw after I got to New York. And one of the movies that I always tie Zodiac to in that era was 300. 300 is a success in that time frame, and 300 is very much style-forward, like, orgy, like, literal in some ways, orgy of sort of aesthetics. It opened the week after Zodiac did. Right. And, like, that was, and to see the sort of, like, disparity between which one's the success and which one is at least a financial failure, sort of dispiriting.

I was never a fan of 300 and, like, increasingly less enchanted with it as sort of time had passed. I was just a bummer to me. At the time, 300 was, like, such an outsized, unexpected hit in a way that, like, it sucked all the air out of the room that other movies, like, just kind of went away. And that was another one. Like, at the moment that that movie opened. But it's very interesting because Zach Snyder then becomes, at that moment. basically what Fincher had been in the mid to late 90s, which was the director who was all about aesthetics.

I think 300 was the movie that allowed you to get that obnoxious moment in the Watchman trailer where it says from, you know, visionary director, Zach Snyder. And everybody sort of just like recoiled at the, you know, using that term visionary. But that's because 300 was like aesthetics of the movie, essentially. So, and I think that's what Fincher was from the aesthetics and testosterone.

Yeah, and I think that's very much what that early Fincher fan base was. And I think Zodiac is a crucial movie to tempering that. I think ultimately, I mean, whatever, I twist my arm and I'll get into a discussion about Fight Club, about how Fight Club is a misinterpreted movie. And the people who do the misinterpreting, do the film. its biggest disservice because it convinces other people who are not like, you know, testosterone edge lords will sort of like blanch at that movie now because they feel like that movie is catering to those people when really that movie is an argument against that and people don't No, it's making fun of those people.

It's a widely misinterpreted movie. I feel the same way about the Dark Night right now. where it's like people don't want to touch the dark night because of the fan base. Nolan is uniquely ill-suited or ill-served by his biggest fans. I think he's one of those directors for sure. And Fincher can be that way.

Yeah. I think less so. I think some of its fight club. I think Benjamin Button broke a lot of that. I think making something like Gone Girl broke a lot of that. Social network too, even. I think basically Zodiac-on,

it's harder for the sort of like Fight Club Edge Lord people to really claim Fincher as much of their own as they want to and it's still kind of like Fincher's obviously still a huge favorite among like film bro people who like whatever I don't tend to use that term as much because it does it unnecessarily kind of like Balkanizes film fans and whatever

just because most of Fincher's fans are male doesn't mean he's bad and doesn't mean there bad, but there is... This is a certain subset of discussion, I would at least say, a way that a group of people discuss movies. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I love him. The thing about

Fincher, though, like, that kind of, I don't want to say nullifies that part of his fan base, but like, that makes it interesting that some people gravitate towards him is that he's actually a really interesting director who is like kind of constantly um unpacking and skewering masculinity because like fight club is the obvious one i think gone girl does it to a certain extent with how

ben afflex character is played but even zodiac like gets a lot of its humor from like kind of you know putting it in the ribs of all of these men in their male behavior because everyone is basically a boy child in this movie yeah to the larger sense where it's like at the end of the day, all of us can, like, try to be composed in public life, but we're all terrified at some point in our life, you know, and that's going to revert us to children. But, like, Mark Ruffalo with the Animal Crackers, Jake Gyllenhaal is constantly referred to as a Boy Scout. Every single time Chloe Seven-Yew walks into frame in this movie is so funny to me because she's, like, she'll just walk into frame and look at Jillen Hall. And,

just like that sense of just like still like there are points in the movie where she's genuinely unfurls him just by existing right and it's like this movie did get some criticism for being so male but i think chloe seven ye is actually employed very well in this movie that it's like yeah it's that very thing where it's just like just her being there dismantles him and david fincher is aware of that and is using that as a commentary she's not depicted as a nagging wife in the way that you would think of in other movies. She's critical of him, but it's not in this kind of like naggy, abrasive way.

She just sort of like, again, she'll like walk into frame, regard him, and then just sort of like walk out. And ultimately, she leaves him and you can see why. I don't think the movie ever really like. Yeah, we don't argue with it. Right, exactly. Yeah. God, this cast in this movie is so well.

deployed. I think, you know, Seven-Yeh, Clea Duval, there are definitely, like, women in this movie who are fantastic, but it is also, like, male character actor Valhalla, where it's, like, from the top where it's just, like, your Brian Cox's, uh, John Carroll Lynch, Philip Baker Hall, the ones who are just, like, the featured character actors, but, like, down to, like, the guy who played Jack's father in Lost, the guy who played the sort of skeezy businessman in don't tell mom the babysitter's dead. James LaGrosse. James LaGrosse at the very end of the movie, Elias Cotillas, like you said.

Donal Logue will show up. And, oh, the dad from American Dreams, who was on How to Get Away with Murder. Oh, the guy who plays Edward Norton's boss in Fight Club, who eventually then went on to be in the Good Wife. It was so good in The Good Wife. The One who came off the best from this movie, I think, is, honestly John Carroll Lynch because John Carroll Lynch is incredible in this movie and like you can kind of see him taking off from being a bit player after this movie to actually getting supporting roles in a lot of like independent movies like even if it's something like private life because

he's Molly Shannon's husband in private life yes like gets several scenes and he's very he goes into Russ and daughters and uh gets the Bialis and the salmon what is it it's like A eighth of a pound, or what's the joke? It's so good. A half of a quarter of a pound. Yeah, half of a quarter of a pound. It's so funny. Also, all the above-line actors, we should say, are all, I think, doing some of their best work that never gets mentioned as some of their best work?

The Jill and Hall, Downey Jr. Ruffalo, triumvirate. I even love that they get the billing where it's like that old 70-style billing. where, yes, where it's like, we have to contractually give prominence, equal prominence to all of them somehow. So we'll just make a triangle of names. It becomes a design challenge, you know what I mean? And like some sort of like, that would be a fascinating like Bravo reality show is like top poster designer.

And it's like, here is your brief, here is the contract, here is whose names has to be where. Here's the with and the and like figure it out. I would watch every episode of that. I don't think it has a with-and, but, like, who would you give the with-and-to-with-and to? I would say with Chloe Seveny and Brian Cox. I was going to say Brian Cox is absolutely your and in this movie, 100%. I think with Chloe Seventy probably makes a lot of sense, absolutely.

Did you, had, if you heard the Jennifer Aniston angle to this, to the casting in this movie? So obviously, Fincher has had at this point made two movies with Brad Pitt and was gearing up to make a third with Benjamin Button. So Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are together at this point in time. Wait, no. Had been together. But you can see where, like,

you can assume that Fincher got to know Jennifer Aniston via this relationship he had with Brad Pitt. Anyway, was talking to Jennifer Aniston about casting Zodiac, and she floated both Jillyn Hall and Mark Ruffalo because she had worked with Jillen Hall on The Good Girl,

and she had worked with Mark Ruffalo on Rumor Has It, which is the one good thing to ever come out of rumor has it is Mark Ruffalo getting cast in Zodiac. Everything really truly does happen for a reason. And also Jennifer Aniston, lynchpin in history. Like, absolutely for sure.

But yeah, they're so fantastic. I did not know that, but that's amazing. I remember at the time being very, very high on the idea of Ruffalo and Downey Jr. should both be supporting actor contenders this year. And the fact that they weren't... And I know Ruffalo is like quasi-lead, but it's very easy to sort of slot Jillen Hall as your lead

and then Ruffalo and Downy Jr. I originally was with Ruffalo being a lead, but I come more to him being supporting, and I think that's, even though he's kind of leading all of his narrative portion of the movie, he's, like, still sharing the screen with a lot of people, whereas the Jillen Hall stuff is just Jake Jillen Hall. And this was still at the point where neither one of them

had ever been nominated for an Oscar, and it was, people were getting sort of like... Well, Jillen Hall had. No, Ruffalo and Downey Jr. is who I'm talking about, though. Donnie Jr. had. No. Oh, right, Chaplin. I always forget Chaplin. But Chaplin happened and then his career takes. So it really does feel like, I think, you know.

There's been several stages of Robert Downey Jr. comebacks and this was the very beginning of one. This comes out the year before Ironman. Well, and the year before Traffic Thunder as well. Like 2008 was the big Downey Jr. finally he's back. And this movie, I think, is a crucial stepping stone to that. And it should be the, in my opinion, like, I think it's his best performance. Like, it's very, the Tony Stark.

thing. I remember when I first saw Iron Man, I was like, this is just like a lesser version or like a popcorn version of everything he's doing in Zodiac and he's doing it so much better in Zodiac. But yeah, like, I think this especially gets forgotten for Robert Downey Jr. and you can see why

because of the monolith that is the MCU that begins the very next year. But I think this I think of the many reasons why I'm bummed that Zodiac was sort of like removed from awards consideration. You mentioned the fact that it was being lined up for an

Oscar run at the end of 2006, largely because of its running time. Paramount wanted him to recut it, but he had final cut. So I think there was a lot of wrangling. It ultimately gets taken out of the 2006 schedule, which is really a bummer because 2006 Oscar race was wide fucking open. And I really do feel like... It absolutely could have cracked 2006. Absolutely could have. And then all of a sudden, I mean, in this movie, the length of this movie had been sort of at issue since it's essentially its inception. James Vanderbilt

reportedly had turned in a 200-page script to Fincher and Fincher then had to cut things out before they even started filming and then Paramount was apparently lays the ground for like what he eventually does with another huge screenplay of the

social network where he's like, no this is this running time of this movie people just need to talk about. And then so it gets released in March. March is, of course, you know, with certain exceptions over the years, but March is not fertile Oscar ground. And because it then drops in March and then doesn't make any money, it's very easily just sort of like brushed aside and they move on to the new year. But I think the acting performances in this movie from Jillen Hall, Ruffalo, Downey Jr., especially, I mean, you can talk about how great Brian Cox and John Carroll Lynch are and all these other people. But like those roles are essentially too small and cameo it. also, you know, to be supporting actor contenders when you've got these big stars and supporting roles. I do think you could consider John Carroll Lynch. I mean, John Carroll Lynch would probably make, he might make my ballot for this, but then again,

you know, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's unrealistic to have expected the Oscars to. For Oscar, sure, sure. Maybe if it was John Carroll Lynch now. The other thing about Jake Gyllenhaal is he's coming off of the Brookback Mountain nomination, yes. But again, he's still viewed as this sort of like vanguard of young Hollywood and 2007 at the Oscars in particular. I think I mentioned this.

What were we talking about recently about 07? Well, we also did Jake Gyllenhaal and O.7 for rendition. But we've also talked Jake Gyllenhaal when we did Love and Other Drugs. But this is at least the first release after his nomination, which like, especially for a younger actor, is going to come with a very show. me attitude, I think. Well, but I remember whatever reason we ended up talking about the 07 best actor race.

But that was a year where the sort of like the youth contingent in Hollywood was given like an across-the-board snub where like Ryan Gosling had been in precursors. He doesn't get nominated for Lars and the Real Girl. Emil Hirsch doesn't get nominated for Into the Woods. That movie kind of gets like snubbed almost across the board.

Except for Hal Holbrook, the Old Man. What did I say, Into the Woods? I do this all the time. Into the Wild. Emil Hirsch could totally be an Into the Woods. Sean Penn's Into the Woods is the thing I maybe. Sean Penn's Into the Woods. Could you imagine Sean Penn trying to do Sondheim, go to jail?

I can't. Is that my hair is yellow as corn in there? That's just all I can think of. It's like Jack Nicholson's screaming into a grave or something. Anyway, into the wild. Emil Hirsch doesn't get nominated. Paul Dano doesn't get nominated for

There Will Be Blood, even though they clearly like flipped shit over There Will Be Blood. I'll never understand nothing happening for Paul Dano for that movie. It's very strange. I know some people think he's bad, but they're wrong. Here's the thing. It's a repulsive character

by its intent, and he does very well with it. He really, really, I think, does a phenomenal job with it, but I think he does it so well that even people who loved there will be blood were just like, oh, God, Eli Sunday. And it's just like

yeah, but like that's what you wanted out of that. And so I just think it's very interesting that like they loved that movie so much but didn't go for that supporting performance. Anyway, what I'm saying is I think Jill and Hall for Zodiac, you could put right

in that lineup of just like, they went for Tommy Lee Jones in the Valley of Ella and they went for Hell Holbrook and into the wild and I don't know

not not exclusively old people obviously but like even Vigo Mortensen what's Vigo Mortensen's thing is that like he's older than you think ladies and gentlemen like Vigo Mortensen

at this point I think is 97 years old and he just looks like four eternally 49 is sort of Vigo Mortensen's vibe but he's been 49 years old since forever.

In 1995. Can we talk about Mark Ruffalo in this movie? Go ahead, because everything that I want to say, you are going to say, but with more lust in your heart. So go for it. He's so handsome. He really is. He truly is. In those bow ties and the patented shoulder holster that, again, Steve McQueen stole for his looking bullet.

like fully the shoulder the gun holster looks like a gay harness um and his little bowtie he was way ahead of like the red carpet fashions at the time truly yeah absolutely like timothy shallame got it from zodiac um i don't know i also think that this for me is mark ruffalo's best performance i think he is channeling peter falk i think and that's not just like the curly-haired kind of like over it attitude of all like everything that he deals with in this movie but I don't know I think we've talked about this before where it's like a star quality or a watchability that often goes very underrated and I think Mark Ruffalo has it in like just pouring out of his wonderful curly locks in this movie and it should have been rewarded truly and like Yeah, he doesn't get his nomination until the kids are all right a few years after then. I wonder, I mean, like, yes, he would have had, like, a category confusion thing than I think made him not ever really register on anybody's radar. But, like, of the missed opportunities for this movie to be nominated for an Oscar, to me, it is Mark Ruffalo and visual effects. I think it's Mark Ruffalo, it's visual effects.

I think it's Harris Savitas and the cinematography, which is stunning. rest in peace for sure uh that shot i mean so many of them all of those aerial shots though the one over san francisco bay when you see the sign that says port of san francisco the very beginning of the movie where you see the fireworks over the bay um that shot that follows that shot of the fireworks where the tracking shot through the neighborhood when you're looking out the window of the car stunning yeah because it's upsetting yes it is not it's voyeuristic but fully upsetting like you and it ends up being the car that the girl is driving, right? So it's like, you have this displacement of, like, violence could be anywhere.

It's truly lurking anywhere. The shot of the Golden Gate Bridge and the fog from overhead, which I have to imagine is significantly visual effects, but, like, stunning, utterly stunning. Yeah. Even some, like, simpler images that are just shot so well that they're more effective, I think of that basement scene, it really kind of caught me off guard this time when Jake Gyllenhaal's like, I need to go. And then the coded gay man turns off the light and it makes it completely black so that you can't see him. So it's like you don't even see this shadowy figure. It goes to like this pitch black

where he was standing. That scene. And like you don't know if he's going to emerge from it with a gun or a knife or a demon. There are two scenes in the movie that I think are the signature scenes in the movie. One is the Lake Barry Esa Killing, which terrifies me. That one was essentially not parodied, but like recreated almost entirely with John Carol Lynch in American

Horror Story, whatever, freak show with the season with where John Carol Lynch plays the clown, the murdering clown. Essentially, they just recreated that scene shot for shot because they just, you know, thought it was so fantastic, and it is. That upsetting.

The basement scene, though, Charles Fleischer plays the creepy movie theater sort of former manager, I guess, owner, whatever. Charles Fleischer, of course, the voice of Roger Rabbit, from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, essentially a voice actor, but, you know, is also one of those recognizable faces that you've seen him in enough character actor roles, whatever. initially presents in that scene as this sort of like kindly old man, because essentially he's a witness. Graysmith wants him to provide. He had been an acquaintance of this person that Graysmith thinks is the Zodiac, and he apparently had gotten this like canister from him and told not to open it, and did he still have it, yad, yada.

And then at the point where Graysmith is just like, oh, we think this is the guy. because of the handwriting on this poster. And Charles Fleischer just goes like, very matter-of-factly, is just like, he didn't do the handwriting. All of that handwriting is mine. And he says this after Gray-Smith has basically said, we think this handwriting matches the Zodiac.

So he's not going to fess up to, and he fesses up to this at the most matter-of-fact way, and then at that instant, again. And then he's like, let's go in my basement. The blood fully vacates your body. You absolutely just go white as a sheet as a viewer. And then Gillen Hall's like lured down, to the basement. And again, it's this boyishness of Gyllenhaal plays so well into this

because essentially he's like this kid who followed the boogeyman down into the basement. And he's constantly looking for an exit. He's constantly hearing creaking upstairs and like what's going on. It's the most like classic. There's so much of this movie that feels classic to the point where you want to say Hitchcockian, even though that is talk about like overused adjectives and film criticism. But like there are points in this movie where you that's all you can think of because it's just like it's such classic elemental unsettling where it's like it's not even horror it's just like terror right it's it's not this it's not bloody but it's so visceral it's like literally coursing through your veins visceral it's also like the one of the things that makes it so upsetting is like is it somewhat interpretive too because like i read that scene and like we experience it through but it's why watch this movie so many times. We experience it through Jake Gyllenhaal

and that we're terrified, but like this movie inspires you to kind of like pick it apart because it's a movie about picking apart details. And like, I watch that scene now and I'm like, oh, that guy is not related to these killings at all. This is a gay man who thinks he's about to have sex

with Jake Gyllenhaal. That is a fantastic read of that scene. And I don't always think of it that way, but like you're right. It's why he locks the doors because that generation of homosexual man would have done that for safety, and, like, that's what that person thinks is happening. Jake Gyllenhaal is experiencing something totally different, and, like, that just

contributes to the air of suspicion and everything that, like, David Fincher is trying to capture in what was going on in the culture at the time. There are so many scenes in this movie, or at least a handful, where people are being interrogated slash interviewed, whatever, for what they know about the case, and halfway through the discussion, they click onto why they're being asked about this. The Arthur Lee Allen scene, where he clicks on the fact that the most dangerous game is the reason why they're talking to him, because he knows that that was a detail in the Zodiac cipher, and he knows that he had spoken to this one friend of his about that story. And again,

all of this evidence about Arthur Leon, the fact that they, like, talk to his brother and his brother's wife, who are basically just like, yeah, he seems like the kind of person who would kill some people. And they have all this sort of just like, they mentioned the way he spells Christmas

is, with two S's at the end, Christ Mass. And again, that's another piece of the circumstantial evidence that piles up. And I'm gushing about this movie, and I'm sort of, this is why one of the, I'm reticent to do movies that we feel are too good

for Oscar on this movie. This is my whole thing with like not wanting. The movies that are led by like critical appraisal for Oscar versus like were they really campaigned or this was my reticence for widows initially was just sort of like I don't want to turn this

into movies we wish the Oscars would have gone for because it's a slightly different thing. I always use Under the Skin as an example for this. I think Under the Skin is a perfect example for what we're talking about. Under the Skin is a fantastic movie and should have been nominated for everything

Under the Sun. It was never going to be an Oscar title for a billion different reasons. I think Zodiac fits under our umbrella kind of just barely. There was definitely angles to this where like it was there's thwarted ambition

not as rigorously as they could have but like and the expectations for it in 2006 especially yeah all of the screeners that they sent out in 2007 were the directors cut too it wasn't a theatrical version

oh interesting which is like it has like five minutes more to it and it has this fully like oral sequence where it's just like pitch black screen and you get the progression of time through a radio. Oh, right. I remember reading about that. Yeah, and there's a couple other things in there, too, but that's like the big one.

Such a good soundtrack in this movie. Like, we talked about Donovan's hurdy-gurdy man, but wait, now I want to bring up the soundtrack tab on the IMD. Opens with Easy to Be Hard. Yes. Yes. Which Fincher saw as like definitive of what that summer was for him, or at least his memory of it. but, like, it's also perfect because you get the hair reference later when you see the poster in the background, but it's also, like, that's easy to be hard and especially hair too is like vibrancy and like beautiful. That's like one of the big ballads in the show.

And like this version, especially the way it's employed in the movie, is so creepy where it's like you're kind of adjusting to the sound of it, I guess. And also, what's Crystal Blue Persuasion, I think, is deployed really, really fantastic in this movie, Tommy James and the Chondell's song. But there's just, there are times when this movie reminded me of the soundtrack to Moonlight, which doesn't employ it the same way. But it has that sort of 60s, 70s, soul music that feels wallpapery. to stuff of that era. But if you, like, really listen to it, it's, I mean, you've got Marvin Gay here. You've got, as you mentioned, Three Dog Night.

There's, I think, at some point, I think I heard a Johnny Mathis thing. Like, there's so much, I don't know, it's very recognizable music, but not necessarily like earworms of the era. Or it's very much not a Forrest Gump approach, which is interesting because Forrest Gubb also had a Three Dog Night song and their soundtrack, but like it's different. Well, it's also music that feels like it is interpretable differently in different contexts too, just like that basic scene that I mentioned, where it's like easy to be hard is like this romantic ballad.

So it's like you play it in a, like, Fourth of July scene in a different movie and it has a completely different feel than what David Fincher is capturing here. where it's like some of these songs have like an air of danger to them the way that they're contextualized in the movie or like it seems like they might be you know horny songs but then they could be violent songs at the same time you know totally uh i just i sometimes get embarrassed about gushing about a movie like this but like truly i the other thing that i think is interesting and not surprising but definitely like notable is if you look at its awards tab on i DB, you get a lot of instances where it ends up on a best of the decade list from an organization that didn't put it on its best of 2007 list, which makes perfect sense because this is absolutely a movie whose reputation has only grown and grown and grown in the ensuing years, where at the time, you might have seen critics be like, you know, what was a really great movie this year and overlooked was Zodiac? And then by the end of that decade, only three years later. People are just like, nope, top 10 of the decade, maybe top five of the decade,

one of the best movies that we've got of this century. Like, all of those things are true, but it was a movie that took a little bit for people to sort of get that drumbeat rolling. It definitely was not a movie that was able to attain that sense by the end of 2007. Yeah, and I think, I mean, some of that was there, but it's more in the critical masses, like I've mentioned this movie with like Cinn-S, but this. is more, for lack of a better word, the, like, highfalutin type of critical community was ready to embrace

this movie that early. But, like, the general populace, not so much. Yeah. It is still surprising. What was the Oscar adapted screenplay lineup? Because it got a writer's guild nomination.

Yeah. And he was nominated for the scriptor, which also nominates the original. Oscar, the thing about the adapted screen play category was this was one of those years where the best picture category was very, very heavily adapted. So no country for old men wins that year. Joel and Ethan Cohen get the Oscar for adapting the Cormac McCarthy novel. There will be blood, obviously based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil. That is a nominee. Atonement, Christopher Hampton screenplay based on the Ian McEwan novel. And then you've got Diving Bell in the Butterfly, which was of course a best

director nominee that was Ronald Harwood who had been nominated or did Harwood win for the pianist? I think he won. I think he did too. And then the fifth nominee, one of my favorites, and when I was so pulling for, even with Zodiac in contention, but it was away

from her, the Sarah Polly nomination for adapting the Alice Monroe short story that became away from her. And I was so, so happy. Obviously, the screenplay categories do not recognize women enough. And this was also the year that three women were nominated in the original screenplay category. Diablo Cody wins for Juno, Nancy

Oliver nominated for Lars and the Real Girl, and our girl, Tamara Jenkins, nominated for the Savages alongside Michael Clayton and Ratatouille. Like, the screenplay nominees that year were legit. Like, it was for as much as, I do think it's interesting that the most precursor attention Zodiac does get is for its screenplay, which I get because, A, it covers a lot of ground and does it very cleverly. And I think that's where you get a lot of that sort of like procedural shoe leather kind of like respect for this movie goes into that screenplay. Also, as we mentioned, I think, during our truth episode, Vanderbilt was kind of the prime mover on this project. He's the one who brought it to Fincher. This screenplay was like existed as an entity long before Fincher

ever signed on. Fincher was reportedly originally gung-ho about making a Black Dahlia movie. And that sort of fell through. That fell apart because of De Palma. Right. De Palma ends up making his black dahlia movie and because he wasn't Fincher wasn't able to make a black dahlia movie he moves on to Zodiac but so I get the the attention paid to Vanderbilt screenplay but like to me this movie

is such an aesthetic movie this is such a director's movie to me that it's funny that there's all that attention precursor wise relatively this movie was ultimately not given enough precursor attention in general but a lot of it that it was was to the screenplay when I think

like God where was Fincher's on all of these best director lineups. And some of it, too, is that I think there's a lot of reasons why this movie didn't ultimately get an Oscar nomination being pushed to March from the previous year, the length of the movie, the box office failure of the movie, or like, relative failure of the movie. But I think 2007 is also a year where all of those things that are true about Zodiac that make it great are true of a lot of other movies that became bigger stories.

by the time that Zodiac was being actively campaigned by Paramount or, like, quietly actively campaigned by Paramount, like, it was kind of a foregone conclusion that the steamroll for the Coens would happen with no country for old men. That's a very, like, gorgeous movie. That was Paramount Vantage, yes. Yes, that was Paramount Vantage and Miramax, which was also true for There Will Be Blood. Right, right. Which is the other big movie where it's like, it's a certain level of male filmmaker.

making a certain type of movie, and a lot of them are also fairly grim. Yeah. So it's like, there's a lot of at least surface similarities. Yeah. Paul Thomas Anderson is also one of those from that sort of fraternity of directors that I had mentioned earlier with Fincher and Aronofsky and Alexander Payne and whatnot. But the thing about Paul Thomas Anderson is he had his sort of like cult's early movie with Hard 8, but truly like from Bogie Nights on, at least that was.

was getting, if that wasn't getting a Best Picture nomination, or a director nomination for Paul Thomas Anderson, it was at least getting acting nominations from the break. Punch drunk love, I believe, got a screenplay nomination? I don't think so.

Okay. Magnolia at the very least gets an acting nomination and a screenplay nomination. So like, by the time we get to, there will be blood, it's a breakthrough for Paul Thomas Anderson and that it's finally Best Picture nominee, best director nominee, but it's not

like if they went from like totally ignoring him to you know, him breaking through. Yeah. Anyway. Punch or glove, not nominated for any Oscars. Okay. So maybe we could talk about eventually. Yeah.

But yeah, I think the thing the thing about Fincher and the Oscars this year is like I look at and I get why Julian Schnabel was a nominee for Driving Bell on the Butterfly, but like isn't Fincher for Zer Zodiac a much better lone director nominee this year, like, isn't, for a lot of reasons, not just because we love the movie, but just like for a lot of reasons that, you know, it very easily could have been. It's not like the diving bell and the butterfly was driven by this like great acting performance that was nominated. It's not like the pianist or something like that, right? Where. I mean, Matthew Almorick was probably sixth or seventh place in Best Actor. You think so. That's interesting.

I think that, I mean, I definitely think he was. somewhere in, like, five to ten, especially considering how well that movie turned out. Wasn't it also Max von Seedow was considered for that movie? Was he? I thought so. Interesting. Have we played the Best Picture Extended to Ten game with 2007 yet? I think we have because I remember having this debate regarding Ratatouille.

Oh, yeah, I do kind of think of that. All right, we won't do it again. So it's a lot of factors that, like, prevented Zodiac from happening. It was so easy to kind of be overlooked, but it was so consistently overlooked that it is kind of shocking. Yeah, it is. It's definitely kind of shocking. But, as I said, the years have been kind to Zodiac. I don't think we are, you know, going to be in too many arguments when we say that this movie is, you know, the best

movie that we've covered, and one of the greats, I think the culture, at least film culture, has really come around to it. And rightly so. Yeah. I mean, like I said, David Venture has several masterpieces, but, like, this is the

David Fincher movie, to me. Yeah, I mean, especially because it kind of, like, what we consider about David Fincher, what's definitive about him, it kind of all gels around this time, the number of takes, the digital photography, the, like, just, yeah. Yeah. I love this movie. Can we actually take it back because we didn't really unpack the beach scene? Sure. Let's do. Just to, like,

get, I know listeners will want us to, like, talk about that movie. It's so upsetting for so many different ways, and the scene keeps, like, changing as it goes. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so upsetting. It's kind of funny at some point. Yes. Which is. really upsetting. Yes, right at the point where, because it seems for a second, like the killer doesn't know how to proceed once he's got the gun on them and the guy throws his wallet and throws the keys. And it's just sort of like, no reaction.

And it's just like, you can almost see him just like, all right, what do I do now? Like, where do I proceed in this? And the suspense is terrifying, but it's also, you're right, there's this, like, dark kind of comedy to it. It also- Which feels very definitive to, like, the finessex. your brand of comedy. It's like the same type of thing where in Dragon Tattoo

Enya starts playing in a torture scene and you don't know if you're supposed to laugh, but really you're supposed to laugh. It also employs one of my favorite scenes of horror slash terror, which is the killer

this is why it follows as one of my favorite horror movies. The killer is approaching from a distance and you see you as the viewer of the movie. And sometimes, in this case, the character sees it as well. The woman at least sees him coming. But you see him at a distance and you know that

this is a killer and he's just approaching steadily and there's nothing you as a viewer can do to stop it. You can just see like his head and torso over the like wheat grass or whatever that is. And that there's the shot where you can't tell whether you see him or not. Where you can't tell whether

he's, is he at the tree? Is he behind the tree? Can you see part of him peeking out behind the tree? She seems like She can't seem to see him, but you are constantly trying to place him in the frame. And that stress of trying to do that is, oh, God, those are just my absolute favorite scenes in movies, where you as the viewer are responsible for scanning the screen, and you have to find this, whatever is malevolent in this frame before it jumps out at you or just like, it's, I love it. I love it so much.

It's a very, like, trigger response. That's one of the reasons why that shot is so brilliant because it's so perfectly out of your mind when you like see something out of the corner of your eye and you get that like impulse, that jolt impulse. It really does like put you in those victims like headspace from the beginning of the scene

and then it is so slow and drawn out and like you're kind of like giggling to yourself. And then while this whole scene he's had a gun on them and you think it's going to be gun violence and he ties them up And then you get the closest shot in this whole scene because it's kind of shot at, like, it's like medium shots and like not full close-ups. You get the barrel of the gun so that you can see that it was loaded very close to the camera. And you think that everything's over, but then it stays in these like extreme close-ups and it's a knife.

Yes. It's so intense. and it pulls the rug out from under you in so many different ways. I remember the first time I saw it in the theater, people left. Oh, wow. Well, it's so, um, it's, I also don't think there's any score in that scene. I could be mistaken, but I don't think there is. And so you hear the knife sounds as just this blunt sort of like, the folly work in that is commendable because it's so sickening.

It's so incredibly, just, it's not. Over the top, it's very, very, like, subtle, but, oh, so effective. And just, like, it's awful. The way they scream feels more, like, medical than horror movie. It's, uh-huh. If the other scene I want to bring up is, going to be touched on it earlier, but the scene in the car with Ione Sky as the mother of the little baby. And it's the scene in the movie that most reminds me of,

of seven, not the part where they're in the car, but after he says, God, and it sends chills every single time, and I know what's coming when he says, before I kill you, I'm going to throw your baby out the window. And up to that point, she, we know he's the killer,

because we've watched a movie called Zodiac when we've seen two of these killings already. She doesn't until they pass the gas station. And then you see it dawn on her, but then for him to just sort of, so matter-of-factly, say, before I kill you, I'm going to throw your baby the window. And then we sort of fade out and we fade back and it's that the semi has pulled over and

the other motorist comes out of the car. And it reminded me of those scenes in seven where they're coming to the murder scene after the fact. And or that scene where like the guy's in interrogation and starts screaming because he can't deal. Oh yeah. The, um, the lust killing. The guy with strapped. Oh, God. Right. And so, and that where, like, Ioni Sky is just screaming, and you don't know what she's screaming about. And you, you are expecting that, like, something horrible has happened to the baby. And ultimately, the baby ends up being okay. It's like the one sort of, like, mercy in this movie of the fact that the baby is fine. But she had to hide the baby in case he came back.

And it's just like, you're still, as a viewer, you're trying to put it together in your head of, like, how did she get out of that car? But, like, that ultimately becomes less important than this sort of, like, the people sort of, like, coming upon her after the fact and seeing this ultimate terror in her eyes and her voice, and she can't handle. You don't know if she's crazy. What a terrifying situation that just was. It's a really interestingly subtly gendered scene, too, because, like, us in a modern

society, we're, like, watching the scene and we're like, oh, my God, that would have It's absolutely terrifying to be a woman and have, like, no resources to get help for yourself. And this man offers to help you, what do you do? Because, like, of course, the idea, you can see it in Ione Sky's performance, too, that it's like, maybe there's the idea of danger. Like, maybe I should or shouldn't do this. What are my choices? Right.

And then when you have the aftermath scene, there's a man standing at a truck that's already gotten there, but the second car to pullover is a woman. And she's the one that comes. and helps her. Yep. So David Fincher's just so smart with small things like that that other filmmakers wouldn't think about.

But I also think because you have that weird fade out, because to my understanding, that woman, like, blacked out basically during this. So it's like, it's one of the more effectively upsetting uses of David Fincher saying,

okay, well, we are going to shoot what we have like police documentation for and like be as detailed to that as possible yeah oh god such a good movie it's so I like listeners I know I know I'm like geeking out

apologies for this movie dropping off of Netflix unceremoniously I looked it up I swear when and it was not on those lists but if you haven't seen this movie guys like hole up for the three hours. Run, don't walk, yeah. Watch the damn movie. It's absolutely worth it.

It's so, so fantastic. Should we maybe, okay, so let's talk a little bit about 2006, because when we're talking about these, we've done them a few times, and it feels like it used to happen way more often to movies that we were, like, predicting for Oscars, and then they get pushed off to the next calendar year,

and a lot of those, movies. I'm thinking of like Freedom Land where Julian Moore absolutely was like in the best actors talk before it got pushed. Yeah. Oh, please no. That movie's a garbage. I know, but it's so perfect for our purposes. And it's actually, there's a lot of angles to Freedom Land that I think would be interesting to talk about. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But like that, that used to be way more of a thing than it is now, right? Like you don't really see these movies getting shuttled off. It's almost like they're probably it's probably more of a financial thing because studios are like preparing the money that they're going to spend for a campaign even if a movie ultimately doesn't have like what it

takes it's probably a financial decision that it's going to hurt them more to push a movie i also i also wonder if it's a product of studios seem to be much more forward planning with their schedules and you're looking you're probably looking at studios that are well like next year's awards budget is already kind of allocated. We've already got our, you know, the movies. Yeah, in the decade after, Zodiac, that's definitely true. Yeah. So it's like you're talking about, you know, we're not talking about an indie shingle even,

that like you can sense where like maybe something like Fox Searchlight is going to play it by ear and maybe something will emerge from the festivals and whatnot. But like Paramount is just going to be like, well, we know what's coming next year. And we know where our budget is going to go. and I think, like, more and more, you know, obviously this is part and parcel of the franchise craze, right? Where, like, all the big studios now with their franchises, they're, you know, I get the email from Universal every year where it's just like, here's Universal's slate, and they're literally blocked out for the next five years. And it's just like, wow, okay, yeah. And even at the time, like, in the 90s, 2000s, when it was more common to have.

have like Oscar predicted movies suddenly pushed into the next year. There was like a stigma that it's, if it gets pushed to February, March, like Zodiac was that it's like, oh, maybe the movie's not that good. Because even like Titanic was expected to bomb because they pushed it back six months twice. Yes. Yeah. So it's like it, you do kind of a mass or reputation before people even see the movie. Another interesting, like, release calendar thing about Zodiac is this also played Cannes after it opened in the U.S., which, like, used to be a thing, but I'm curious when they started actually saying, you have to be a world premiere to be in the competition, because this played in competition with the eventual best picture winner. Do you think it would have come from that, from Cannes? Or do you think that comes from studios?

I'm pretty sure it's can says to be a competition movie, you have to be a world premiere. Though that's not true because Pain and Glory last year it opened in Spain. Maybe you're right that it is just a strategy thing. I wonder if it's maybe just a thing where it's just like awards campaigns have become much more regimented and you have a rollout and you're not going to deviate from that rollout. You see less studio pictures in the competition it can. But, yeah, and ultimately with Zodiac, you can chalk that up to, you know, they ultimately were shuffling the calendar on this movie up until the end.

And, yeah. Uh-huh. Sigh. Perhaps the movie, though, I don't think its can response was all that great. I know that the French press did not care for the movie. You kind of wonder a little bit if, like, it's, world premiere had been at this major world festival if even like the US press could have pushed it a little bit more for consideration just because of having what having a launch

like that can do for a movie yeah yeah it's definitely part of me feels like you know god damn it why couldn't people have gotten on board with this movie on an earlier time frame but i also wonder if the rejection of it and the snubbing of it helped contribute to how quickly people came around on it as this sort of, you know, Finchers unheralded masterpiece. There was a minute there with for whatever rights issues it had on home release where it wasn't that available. So once it became available again,

it kind of allows for a sense of rediscovery for a movie. Like it's kind of primed for that. Yeah. I don't know. That's true. That's sort of, you know, that scarcity of, and it certainly plays right into the wheelhouse of the kind of the Fincher fans, right? There's, you know, the collectors, the, if something is a rarity, they're going to go out and find it, that kind of a thing. What is your favorite fincher? We should probably answer this question for our listeners. I mean, God, there's... I mean, I'm pretty clear that this is mine, even though, like, there is stiff competition.

but, like, this is the one for me. For years, I probably would have said Fight Club, and it's not like I like Fight Club less. Sometimes they get a little weary of fighting the Fight Club argument with people. Sometimes they get a little weary of having to, like, make the case for why that movie isn't what people think it is. So I sometimes just prefer to, like, not talk about it as much as I used to. But Fight Club was a very, very, not exactly pivotal movie.

for me. I was already like a big old Oscar nerd and movie nerd by the time that movie came about. But like, I was in college. My roommates were all straight guys. We all went and saw this movie together. And they, I think, appreciated it on one level. And I appreciated it on like multiple levels because my... Brad Pittsfupa. Well, I was going to say my great X-Men superpower was that he was gay and no one knew it. So I could see and I could see. colors they couldn't see. So, um,

you saw that movie and Smellivision. I sure fucking did. Did I not? Um, Fight Club will always have a special place in my heart. But I think it's Zodiac. I think Zodiac is my favorite with like a special also honorable mention to seven, which I think is also like practically a perfect movie. Perfect movie.

Yeah. I would make the case for Gone Girl being in the top three. I think that's, there's a. I think it's David Fincher's Mike Nichols movie I think every director makes their Mike Nichols movie. That's a great, God, that's a great point.

God, I have, I'm the hard eyes emoji for you right now for making that comparison. God damn it. But it is, I think there's a certain sense. I mean, like that movie is still probably too recent for reassessment, but I think there was a certain sense of that movie, aside from

it being not as rewarded by Oscar as it should have been and very well could have been. I believe that's a movie where it's sixth place in a couple categories. I think it's tainted by this kind of schlocky

novel sense or like this kind we've talked about this before where it's like the novels that are like sold in every target in America and everybody reads like they get discounted a little bit in like our current society where I don't think people realize how deep that

movie is and how deep it goes and how funny it is. It's David Fincher's most outright comedy he's ever made. The disrespect shown to Reese Witherspoon in 2014 by the Oscars, and I know she was nominated, but it will not go forgotten by me. The fact that both Gone Girl and Wild, both of the movies she produced, were relegated to actress categories, which you know, and I know we both revere those categories, but we also know that too many movies are relegated to actress categories in a way

that feels like, let the ladies have their fun, we're going to nominate the boy movies for Best Picture, when the reality is both Wild and Gone Girl, far more deserved to be in that top ten than any other movie basically nominated that year. Gone Girl is like

the female Zodiac in that Zodiac where like you could nominate two, maybe even three, support. awarding male performances, I think you could nominate two, maybe three female performances in Gone Girl. Kerry comes incredible. Kim Dickens is absolutely incredible. Casey Wilson, screaming, uh, what, what you do to your wife, Nick?

Amazing. Um, Casey, now we've managed to, uh, mention both Casey Wilson and June, Diane Raphael in the David Fincher episode, truly we have, uh, brought. gay culture to David Fincher, finally. One pop quiz, what do you think is the shortest David Fincher movie without looking? Seven. It is not, but it comes close.

Is it Alien 3? No, Alien 3 is kind of long. Is it Alien 3? Alien 3 is his second shortest by only two minutes. Okay. So you've managed to get... Oh, it's got to be social network then. It's social network.

It's not. Social network is a clean two hours. his shortest film So now you've mentioned His second, third, and fourth shortest films So truly you are painting the corner His shortest film is Panic Room. Yeah

Panic Room at 112 minutes Panic Room's great You've mentioned You managed to mention the only four movies That are two hours or shorter Everything else is longer than two hours. Now that you've mentioned this though I want to rank the Finchers

Because he hasn't made that Many of it will take too long But all right So I think I go Zodiac 1 7, 2 Fight Club is number 3 Gone Girl is number 4 Panic Room is number 5

Social Network 6 Um Now I have to figure out where I put the game versus Dragon Tattoo seven and eight are the game and dragon tattoo in some order Benjamin Button I think the game is probably the I mean

there's definitely going to be the thing about Fincher stance is there's definitely going to be people in our mentions being like the game is great we love you guys the game is easily the least for me I think the game and dragon tattoo are flawed in if not similar ways than like two similar degrees

the game is I think a solid movie but like it doesn't There's not as much that's memorable about it as his other movies or as distinct. I think that the ending to it is so anti-fincher to me. We're also forgetting Alien 3, by the way. I think Alien 3 is not that great of a movie. For as much as like there are some iconic moments. He had ideas that he wanted to do.

And it's still in the DNA of that movie. but, like, that's probably the lowest-ranked Fincher movie for me. Also, I probably, after my top, so my top four, Zodiac 7, Fight Club, Gone Girl, then I think it's the trailer to Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, the trailer to the social network, and the trailer to Zodiac before we get into everything else. Okay, the level of David Fincher's incredible sense of publicity and marketing, Remember the finger quotes bootleg dragon tattoo red band trailer that never played in theaters, but the bootleg that went everywhere on YouTube and wasn't taken down was in a theater.

So he like had somebody, you can't tell me this isn't what happened. Because like, of course he did it. Because like even the dragon tattoo DVDs that were sold were like they looked like bootleg DVDs. Which was the one with the Zeppelin song? That, it was the red band. That was the red band. Well, they used it in the movie. Right.

But yes, he promoted that movie to basically be a bootleg. Yeah. Including the home release that the studio had to issue a statement that's like, no, this is what the DVD looks like. Yeah. But yeah, that trailer, somebody shot it on a camera in a theater, but the red band never played in theater. That's wild. I mean, red bands very rarely do play in theaters, but yeah, that's... Red band trailers, before the age of YouTube, red band trailers were like mythical beasts

that, like, if you ever saw one, you needed to, like, mark down the day and the time, because that was so rare. Even showgirls had a green band trailer. Yeah? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then YouTube made, you know, it increasingly safe for red band trailers. But, uh, yeah. Oh, God.

Such a good filmography. My Fincher ranking, to make it clear, the only statement that the statement that the only one that I don't think is good is Alien 3, even though it has a lot to recommend for it, I would say Zodiac 7, Gone Girl, Social Network, then Fight Club, then Benjamin Button, then Panic Room, then Dragon Tattoo. than the game. I like Dragon Tattoo a lot. I think it has a lot of first act issues where it's like you can see how this movie they had a hard time getting it to the running length that it already has.

The problem for me with Dragon Tattoo, I think, is it has absolutely no rewatch draw for me. I never really feel like I want to see that movie again. Not in the way that just like... Oh, the last hour of that movie, though. I probably should. see it again. And it's not like there's anything in the movie that I find so distasteful or like unpleasant that I never would want to like, that it would run out

of the room if it started playing again. But I don't ever feel like, you know what I want to watch today is the girl with a dragon tattoo, is David Fincher's girl with a dragon tattoo. I think I respect it as I respect pretty much all of his movies. But I, whereas like... It feels like an artifact, right? Like the world was obsessed with the millennium trilogy for a hot minute and like they got david fincher on a movie and it's clearly because of the runy mara presence you find you you sort of see it as an offshoot of the social network and that like she was in the one scene in social network and he was so you know enamored of her that he cast her as the lead in this and you're right the book makes it very very

much of the time um but whereas like if i'm watching television or like flipping through like the HBO channels, and I see the opening credits to Panic Room, I know what I'm doing for the next two hours. I'm watching Panic Room. I, you know, Gone Girl the same way. And it's just like, I don't think the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo has that draw.

So I haven't been able to do what I do with a lot of my favorite Fincher movies is watch them again and again and have sort of like new and evolving appreciations for them, which is what I've been able to do with, obviously, Zodiac, with Gone Girl, with Panic Room, with seven, you know.

that kind of thing. What are your final notes for Zodiac, and then we can move into the IMDB game? I feel like we've really hit everything. We mentioned Jun Jy and Raphael. We mentioned all the character actors, the overhead shot of the Golden Gate, the sort of the turn-of-the-century directors

and everything like that. I think we've covered everything. It's just such a good movie. What about you? Was there anything? Such a good movie. Anything for your notes? I mean, all of that, all we've said, I think it is a, even though you are absolutely right,

that Hitchcock comparisons are like so overused, but like there's a depth to Hitchcock too that I think that goes beyond whatever, there's like a human depth element and like that he is always getting at something perverse in our culture that I think is very true about Fincher and here too. And I feel like this is the one where we don't necessarily talk. about that. But I was really struck watching it this time just that it's kind of about a culture of paranoia and a culture that's

traumatized by random violence. And it felt more like a post-9-11 movie than I'd ever considered before in the way that it feels like it's a little bit talking about how we lived at that time and the constant

fear of living under terrorism and trying to solve you know a problem that felt unsolvable um was osama bin Laden dead at this point i don't it's certainly not while we were filming or while they were filming um i was just really struck by that um yeah kind of in an interesting way that i will continue to no bin Laden didn't bin Laden didn't get killed to the obama administration and this was all pre yeah yeah yeah yeah um the other thing that i think is striking is there's five years that go between the release of panic room and the

release of Zodiac and obviously a lot of that is because there's you know the production of zodiac took a whole lot of time but then if you go from the five years from Zodiac going forward he makes three movies he makes the curious case of Benjamin button social network girl with a dragon tattoo on arguably his most successful run when you talk about uh both box office cultural impact Oscars like all three of them are um I didn't know the dragon tattoo the gross wasn't what they wanted it to be because of the worldwide phenomenon of it all and you know it basically

stunted this idea of like oh it's going to be a trilogy because there are books and whatever whatever they got that editing Oscar and they deserved it and Rooney got her first acting nomination like it was definitely definitely a success so I think it's interesting that I think that the gap between Panic Room and Zodiac

I think built up this anticipation for what's the next Fincher movie going to be. And then that after Zodiac happened, he had such a big mainstream breakthrough, or at least like mainstream Hollywood breakthrough, I think is significant. Yeah. It's going to be interesting this fall when Mank theoretically opens and Netflix. I'm sure Netflix is going to throw so much money behind that movie

because they know, they want directors of a certain stature and as we have seen those are the ones that they throw their money behind because it's been six years since Gone Girl and granted we've had Mind Hunter but Mind Hunter by the way so good like if you

you know you're you're longing for a taste of Fincher it really gives it to you there's a lot of Zodiac actually in Mind Hunter that Zodiac is easily the movie of Finchers that Mind Hunter most you know brings to the

forefront and, like, obviously for, you know, story reasons, but also just stylistically. Oh, so good. So good. So good. We love Zodiac. We're both in agreement. The best movie we've ever covered. Yes, 100%. Fantastic. Would you like to move in to the IMDB game? I sure would. All right. Why don't you explain what the IMDB game is? Oh, yes, I should, actually. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other. with an actor or actress to try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television or voiceover work, we mentioned that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue.

And if that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. Chris, let's do it. All right. Would you like to give her guess first? Why don't I give first? All right, what do you have for me? I can never tell whenever I make that decision, I always try and and think of, like, have I been, like, do I give or guess first, like, more often?

Am I imbalanced in any way? And I can never remember literally from week to week what I choose. So it's very, very possible that I always choose the same one and think I'm mixing it up. And I don't know, fascinating. Listeners, tell me more about that. All right, I am going to give to you. I sort of went through, obviously, Fincher has worked with so many actors and actresses over the years. A lot of them we had already done in the IMDB game.

and I wanted to pick out a new one. I picked out someone who has really only essentially played a very small part in one Fincher movie, but I would love to see her do more. She was a small part in Gone Girl. I am, of course, speaking of Missy Pyle. Oh, I love Missy Pyle. This is going to be hard. Yeah.

Well, I'll just say Gone, Girl. No, not Gone Girl. You've got to be kidding me. Um, there's a million people credited to Gone Girl. Is there any TV? No, no TV. Okay. I'm trying to think of what even her TV,

her big TV credit would be. She's done like bits and stuff. Oh, for sure. She's been in like everything. Uh, okay. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Correct. Violet Beauregard's. in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Okay. Once again, Tim Burton comes through. She's in Ma. Can I guess Ma? I would have absolutely guessed Ma. That is not correct. Damn. Quick anecdote about Ma.

So my friends and I have our annual, now, at least recently annual Palm Springs trip right around Oscar time. We did that again this year, and we managed to. hook up their Roku so we could watch Ma. One of us had rented Ma. So we watched Ma. Half of the room had seen it and half of the room had not. And so the part in Ma

and fast forward about 35 seconds if you haven't seen Ma. I think we've done a lot to spoil Ma on this podcast. But it's the big spoiler in Ma' as far as I'm concerned. It's the part that most benefits from you not knowing what's going to happen. So like, fast forward in a minute. And it's not the dog blood transfusion that doesn't happen? No, but

that's amazing um no it's the part where ma runs over missy pile with the van and then turns on the radio in september and she turns on to september so half of us have seen the movie so we know what's coming so of course i like pull out my phone and start just like i'm only recording the screen i don't i hate that when like you record people in anticipation of something you're going to see it's just like so i'm just like recording the screen but like you can hear the audio from the room and uh ma runs her down and in the split second between Ma running her down and the radio turning on,

you can hear somebody in the room just go, Mercedes, because her character's name is Mercedes, and then she turns on the radio, and the entire room fucking flips out, and it's just like screaming and, it's that sort of, it's that meme where it's just like brackets, homosexual screaming,

and it's like, that's what's happening in that moment. It's so good. It's so much fun. I love that movie. That and then Parasite, one best picture the next day, and then nothing good ever happened ever, ever again. That was it. That was the end of it. Anyway.

Thank you for stalling so that I could not think of any other Missy Pyle movie. Two strikes, though, so you get years. You get years. So now your years are in 1999, 2004, and 2011. Okay. 99. 99 is a beloved movie that I would say. say, it's a cult movie that a lot of people have seen. I'll say that. It's appreciation feels very cult. But it was like... That sounds like office space? No. She's not an office space.

Okay. It's a little more culty than office space. All right. Well, the office space cult has, thankfully, kind of died. It has, kind of, you're right. The 2004 movie is a more mainstream comedy. Okay. And the 2011 movie is an awards movie. Is 2004 along came Polly? No. Remember she's in that.

This is the toughest you've given me in a long time. I know, I know. Is it bringing down the house? She's been bringing down the house. It's not bringing down the house. Um, all right, let's see. How are we going to do this? Like, Dodgeball is a very mainstream comedy. I gave it to you. Jesus Christ. I'm so stupid. Oh, Dodgeball! I hate that that happened. Wait, is 99 Josie and the Pussy Cats? I feel like that's not the right year.

No. I hate that I did that so much. I almost want to do this whole thing over again. God damn it. We would have to cut out all the mott. I know. No, we're not going to do it. No, we're not going to do it. We're just going to live with my failure. And we're going to live with my shame. How about this? How about this? How about this? I, with the person I give you, I will give you one of them. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's fine. We're going to, again, we're going to live with my shame and failure. For the record, your person is a little bit easier than mine. Okay, we got to get through Missy Pyle, though. Missy Pyle. I do want to say, so wait. Dodgeball is very funny still to me to this day. Justin Long is so funny in that movie. And I really do kind of love Missy Pyle, who's basically in that movie as a sight gag, because she can make, she can look so severe. That's the problem with Lucy Pyle is I feel like she's always a sight gag in a lot of these movies. One of the two remaining movies is also very kind of that. Okay.

Is it the 99 movie that is a cult but not really a cult? Yes. Okay, 99. 99 is talked about all the time. Yes. I have to be able to get 99. He said it's a comedy. Literally one of our very recent guests was tweeting about this movie.

like yesterday or the day before. I mean, we haven't had that many guests recently, so I'm guessing that it's Griffin. Uh-huh. I didn't see said tweets, but I'm trying to think of a movie Griffin would like... What of the stars... I'm going to guess because you're saying...

Go ahead. What's a... What of the stars of this movie was the star of an early Fincher movie? Hmm. It's not going to be. be Brad Pitt. If it's a comedy, it's not going to be Morgan. Well, it could be Morgan Freeman. Wait. It's Sigourney Weaver. It's Galaxy Quest. It's Sigourne Weaver's Galaxy Quest. Yes.

Very well done. Missy Piles in makeup in that movie, right? Yeah. She's again, she's basically in that movie because she looks very, like, intense and severe as an alien. Okay, so 2011. It could be anything. I forget what her particular role in this movie is, but I always remember that she's in it. Okay. It is again... I'm guessing it's another comedy, obviously. Yes.

It's a comedy, but it's like... It's a highfalutin comedy. Aha. Is it like a Woody Allen movie? No. Again, an awards movie. it's 2000 the help she's not in the help

is she in the help she's not in the help that's fully conceivable that she would be in the help though it's conceivable but she's not it's an awards movie yes 2011 yes what were okay not the iron lady no not money oh my god oh my god I have largely blocked this movie out of my memory but it's the artist it's the artist she is in the artist the artist has like

penelope anne miller uh-huh oh the cast in that movie is like goes deep but yes i forget almost all of it i think she's another actress who's whatever yes uh sorry i screwed up missy pile i love you sorry i bombed that yeah all right anyway well interesting for you for you I have something a little bit easier, a much easier, I would say. I did not torture you this week. I again went with a David Fincher performer. We've been talking in this movie about performers who were not nominated and should

have been. I gave you one who was nominated and I think still should have been. I gave you Rooney Mara. Oh, okay. Is Girl with the Dragon Tattoo one of them? Yes. The titular girl with the titular dragon tattoo. Okay.

Is social network one of them? Social network is one of them. Okay. Rooney, Rooney, Rooney. I'm going to not guess Carol for the moment because I have a feeling that that, as it did in many instances, got the old snubola from IMDB. but where else would Rooney show up? Oh, well, we talked about this movie very recently, but side effects. Yes, side effects.

All right. No wrong guesses. What's our number four for Rooney? It's not going to be a ghost story. It's probably not Ain't Them Body Saints. Um... Rooney, Rooney, Rooney. Obviously, no television, and I laugh at the idea that she, that voice work would be among.

Can you imagine a character voiced by Rooney Mara in an animated movie? There is a Rooney Mara voice performance in a movie that you love. Really? Yeah, she's the villain in Kubo in the two strings. You're right. Holy shit. And she's so good in it. God, I'll eat my words on that.

God, you're so right. Yeah. Self-owned. Yeah, for real. Okay. All right. You're missing just one. You don't have any wrong.

I don't have any wrong, which means I don't want to burn anything because I want to go for this perfect score. All right. What other shit? It's not her Friday the 13th movie, or Nightmare and Elm Street movie, that she disparaged publicly. To her credit, she is bad in that movie. and she was discrediting it because she was bad in it. I've never seen it.

Casting Haley, a Jackie Earl Haley in it, and so recent after little children, and I'm like, oh, are you leaning into the child molester angle of this movie? No, thank you. Like, that's, I love that that's like, oh, we're going to focus on that. We're going to, what did you say? We'll cast a previous pedophile.

I said, well, Watchman didn't really work out for him, unfortunately. No, unfortunately. Post-Oscar now. Visionary directors, X. Snyder. Okay, wait. Rooney Mara. Rudy Mara. Not Mary Magdalene.

Movie that doesn't exist. Doesn't, truly doesn't exist. That was one I predicted for Oscars. Talk about this at Oscar bus. We could totally do that movie. We'd be one of the five people that have seen it. All right, I'm just going to guess Carol. You just got a perfect score?

Woo-hoo! I don't know why you would think Carol wouldn't show up there. I just have a person. a mystic toad about that. She got an Oscar nomination for it, though. She did. She sure did. It's true. She did. She's second build.

She should have won. She's so good in that. She's so good in that. All right. Hello, perfect score. Love it. Hello, perfect score. Congratulations.

Once again, my apologies to Missy Pyle. That is our episode. If you want more, this had Oscar Buzz. You can check out the Tumblr at thisheadoscarbuzz.tumbler.com. Please also follow us on Twitter at had underscore Oscar underscore buzz. Joe, if our listeners have already been following us on Twitter, they'll be knowing that starting next week, we have another miniseries. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. We finally, we announced it on Twitter. Everybody seems to be down for it. We are doing a Naomi Watts

miniseries. We're going to talk about four of her movies. We had, truly we were spoiled for choice. There was a lot of different avenues for Naomi. We could have gone down. We kind of wrangled with these for a while. But we settled on La Divorce, the Merchant Ivory movie. that she made with Kate Hudson. We get to talk about Kate Hudson. So excited. The Painted Vale, the movie she made with Edward Norton, and her then-husband, Leav Schreiber?

I think that's where they met. Were they just sort of shacked up by then? Anyway, those two movies, Diana, which buckle up. I've never seen it. I'm so excited for Diana. And her SAG-nominated performance in St. Vincent, which the bafflement already is settling in. I still, still, still.

Cannot wait. Cannot wait. Yes, anyway. The only element that I am excited to revisit about that movie, besides my Lieber hair, I think we might have mentioned last week that we were doing the miniseries, but I don't think we mentioned what movies we're doing. So if you guys want to catch up on Naomi Watts, those are the four movies we're doing. Feel free to catch up on any of the other movies that she's doing.

done. We love Naomi. I think she's going to be a really exciting performer to talk about in our context. We've got some great guests lined up for some of these episodes. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a good time. It is going to be a good time. Once again, follow us on Twitter at Had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz for more of that. Joe, where can listeners find more of you?

Sure. I'm on Twitter dealing with these times at Joe Reed. Reed is spelled R.E.I.D. I endeavor to get back on track with letterboxed as soon as my constitution allows me to. That is also letterboxed at Joe Reed, R-E-I-D. And I am also on Twitter having a little munch-munch with my animal crackers and my bow tie at Krispy File. That is F-E-I-L. Also on Letterbox under the same name. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mievius for their technical guidance.

Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever else you get your podcast. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast visibility. So pass us those Animal Crackers in terms of reviews, won't you? That's all for this week, but we hope you'll be back for next week for more Buzz and Naomi Watts. Woo! Just then when I heard a good man come singing songs of love. Then when I heard a good man Come singing songs

Al-a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-da-ha-ha-ha-ha-a-ha-da-ha-ha-a-ha-da-ha-ha-a-a-old and-gurdy-gully-ha-ha-ha-ha-a-a-a-holea-a-a-ha-ha-a-a-a-ha-old is signa. Thank you.