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The Rewatchables ·

Zodiac

year 2007decade 00sdirector David Finchergenre Crimegenre Thrillergenre Drama
host Sean Fennesseyhost Chris Ryanhost Andy Greenwald
All 11 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 17:11

The Arthur Lee Allen interrogation

The category is framed as hard for this film, so the nominees mix lighter and darker scenes: the cold open first murder, called one of the crowning achievements of Fincher's career; the credit sequence that sets up the world with economy and panache, and the trolley of mail carrying the first Zodiac letter into the Chronicle as one of the only set pieces outside the murders; the Graysmith-Avery bar scene with the Aqua Velva; the Napa murder; the 'This is the Zodiac speaking' call with Melvin; the talk-show sequence; and the 'I am not the Zodiac' interrogation.

One vote and one honorable mention are offered: the honorable mention is the late scene where Graysmith lays out that Darlene Farron (as transcribed) worked at the Vallejo House of Pancakes less than fifty yards door to door from Arthur Lee Allen's mother's basement on Fresno Street, the only real 'we solved it' moment apart from the questioning of Allen; that interrogation in a factory break room, with Allen volunteering that the bloody knives in his car came from a chicken he killed for dinner and the three detectives silently registering his watch, is called spectacular and put at the top of that list.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 56:11

"You owe me another lamp"

Nominees are read with no winner declared: Toski (as transcribed) picking up the phone with 'you owe me another lamp'; the Avery-Graysmith exchange where 'I love to read' and 'I enjoy books' draw 'those are the same two things'; Avery's 'hey bullet' taunt about whether Toski will ever catch the guy; Avery's speech that more people die in the East Bay commute every three months than this idiot ever killed, who offed a few citizens, wrote a few letters and faded into a footnote; 'Jesus Herald Christ on rubber crutches, Bobby'; and the exchange about the thing Avery doesn't like that starts with an L, looming.

The film

Zodiac (2007)

Directed by David Fincher · Crime / Thriller

157 minutes

IMDbLetterboxdJustWatch
Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Jake Gyllenhaal Robert Graysmith
Mark Ruffalo Inspector Dave Toschi
Robert Downey Jr. Paul Avery
Anthony Edwards Inspector Bill Armstrong
Brian Cox Melvin Belli
Charles Fleischer Bob Vaughn
Zach Grenier Mel Nicolai
Philip Baker Hall Sherwood Morrill
Elias Koteas Sergeant Jack Mulanax
James LeGros Detective George Bawart
Donal Logue Captain Ken Narlow
John Carroll Lynch Arthur Leigh Allen
Dermot Mulroney Captain Marty Lee
Chloë Sevigny Melanie Graysmith
John Terry Charles Thieriot
June Diane Raphael Carol Toschi
Ciara Moriarty Darlene Ferrin
Adam Goldberg Duffy Jennings
Tom Verica Jim Dunbar
Lee Norris Mike Mageau
Jimmi Simpson Older Mike Mageau
Joel Bissonnette Inspector Kracke
John Getz Templeton Peck
John Mahon Captain Gillette
Matt Winston John Allen
Jules Bruff Catherine Allen
John Ennis Terry Pascoe
Patrick Scott Lewis Bryan Hartnell
Pell James Cecelia Shepard
Clea DuVall Linda del Buono
Zachary Sauers Aaron Graysmith
Micah Sauers David Graysmith
Candy Clark Carol Fisher
Paul Schulze Sandy Panzarella
John Hemphill Donald Cheney
Ed Setrakian Al Hyman
Bob Stephenson Zodiac 3
John Lacy Zodiac 4

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

17:11

Most Rewatchable Scene

The Arthur Lee Allen interrogation; the Graysmith-Avery bar scene

The Arthur Lee Allen interrogation; the Graysmith-Avery bar scene

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:11Read transcript
  • The category is framed as hard for this film, so the nominees mix lighter and darker scenes: the cold open first murder, called one of the crowning achievements of Fincher's career; the credit sequence that sets up the world with economy and panache, and the trolley of mail carrying the first Zodiac letter into the Chronicle as one of the only set pieces outside the murders; the Graysmith-Avery bar scene with the Aqua Velva; the Napa murder; the 'This is the Zodiac speaking' call with Melvin; the talk-show sequence; and the 'I am not the Zodiac' interrogation.
  • One vote and one honorable mention are offered: the honorable mention is the late scene where Graysmith lays out that Darlene Farron (as transcribed) worked at the Vallejo House of Pancakes less than fifty yards door to door from Arthur Lee Allen's mother's basement on Fresno Street, the only real 'we solved it' moment apart from the questioning of Allen; that interrogation in a factory break room, with Allen volunteering that the bloody knives in his car came from a chicken he killed for dinner and the three detectives silently registering his watch, is called spectacular and put at the top of that list.
  • The Napa lake murder is named the least rewatchable and maybe the best scene in the film: expertly done, horrifying in a slow-burning way, one of the most unsettling murder scenes, with the killer slipping behind a tree before you really see him approach; it is likened to the bear-suit figure in The Shining as an incongruous presence where sunny tourist-area safety is assumed, and the film is called a protracted tease with very little violence that hits harder when it comes.
  • The projectionist's-house scene near the end, when Graysmith goes down into the basement and the man pulls the chain to turn off the light before Graysmith scurries out, is called the scariest and most horror-movie moment of the film, almost Wes Craven; it arrives when the film seems to have let the audience go, and Graysmith then gets home to find his family gone.
  • Interrogation is stated as a pick; the final stated pick is the Graysmith-Avery bar scene, because the character interactions elevate the film beyond a phenomenal procedural: the exchange about Graysmith having just guessed that another message would come and the Aqua Velva, Graysmith on the line of being in on the joke and happy to be included, and the newspapermen cutting out at three o'clock to drink and smoke at Morty's, which rings true to a host whose father worked in newspapers.
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23:40

What’s Aged the Best?

The film's TV-like procedural breadth and its comfort with an ambiguous ending; Jake Gyllenhaal's transition into a s...

The film's TV-like procedural breadth and its comfort with an ambiguous ending; Jake Gyllenhaal's transition into a serious actor beginning here; the obsessive period details and insert shots

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:23:40Read transcript
  • For a film that feels timeless, the television quality and procedural feel is named first: it belongs with the 2007 films such as Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood that are unnaturally comfortable with ambiguity, There Will Be Blood ending on 'I'm finished' with nothing finished, Michael Clayton with a Graduate-style slow dissipation of triumph in a vehicle, No Country for Old Men likewise, and this one ending basically on a coin toss, leaving the audience with the characters' own lack of satisfaction despite the coda; that handling of expectation has aged incredibly well.
  • Sociocultural reasons are offered for that mood: the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, international quagmire, uncertainty about what it means to be an American and the second term of a complicated presidency, so the art of such times runs to downers, ambiguity and unhappy endings, and it is not unusual that a writer like Cormac McCarthy became a national figure then. — Sean Fennessey
  • The transition of Jake Gyllenhaal into a great American actor is said to start here. — Sean Fennessey
  • The Gyllenhaal thread continues: apart from Prince of Persia a couple of years later, basically every film he has taken since Zodiac is complicated and masochistic in some way, perhaps learned from being put through the Fincher machine; this is also the film where the myth of Fincher's endless takes is born, reportedly needing 80 tries at a scene of Paul and Graysmith talking in a bar.
  • Fincher is read as an expert at psychological warfare who needed every character wrung out, Graysmith in particular drained of all interest except his goal, and so made the actor do the same thing over and over; Graysmith has a teacher figure throughout, Avery or Toshi (as transcribed), whose affirmation he seeks, and they always tell him it doesn't matter or that he didn't get it.
  • One host does not like the Gyllenhaal performance much and finds it not exceptional in an otherwise exceptional film, too earnest and a much bigger swing than the subtle gradations of Ruffalo and Downey, with an Eagle Scout at one point and a maniac at another and an unconvincing transition; another calls the performance the wild card, like Groff in Mindhunter, and reads Fincher breaking a performer of habits as the character is broken of his previous existence as the kind of meta-level game Fincher would want to play.
  • Graysmith's arc is not a typical descent into madness: he is not a family man who loses everything, his son is the only person he can communicate with, and the Zodiac rather than Chloe Sevigny's character is the love of his life; the relationship is handled with care at first, since she finds the cartoonist at a gun range an interesting quirk but has boundaries, yet hers is the one character a host is not fond of, and it is called a Fincher problem, the woman as reality nagging the hero without ever stopping the story, like Rooney Mara in Social Network pointing things out and then getting out of the way so Facebook can start.
  • The details, specifically the insert shots, are another pick: a Vimeo compilation collects them, the magnifying glasses, frayed authentic 70s stationery with a different handwriting style on every page, Ampex tape recorders and local TV equipment, much of it added digitally when the real thing was unavailable; the obsessive detail is a big reason to rewatch, noticing a watch or a hat each time.
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32:11

What’s Aged the Worst?

That a $65 million studio film this uncommercial got made at all; its complete shutout from the 2007 Oscar nominations

That a $65 million studio film this uncommercial got made at all; its complete shutout from the 2007 Oscar nominations

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:32:11Read transcript
  • Asked whether the emotionally unsatisfying ending has aged worst, the answer is that the ending is gutsy: it leaves you feeling Arthur Lee Allen is the Zodiac, which drew criticism in 2007 because that is not the commonly held belief, but the film deserves credit for saying who James Vanderbilt and Fincher think it was; the making of the film was Fincher, Vanderbilt and others investigating the crime from Graysmith's text, with Graysmith involved and doing press runs with Gyllenhaal, and Fincher, who grew up in Marin County, has called the Zodiac the ultimate boogeyman of his childhood.
  • On whether it is a personal film: Fincher is said to have a perverted sense of the personal, so anything sick and any compulsion to solve things is personal to him; his anecdote about the school threat, a police escort for his bus home and his father knowing yet not picking the children up is reflected later in the film's line to a father who works from home.
  • Fincher's rumored next project, World War Z II, is seen as the kind of thing artists of his stature now do to remain artists of his stature, though he started with Alien 3 and has always interacted with the mainstream; it is nice to have this oddball film in the middle of his catalog, about the frustrations of an obsessive creative mind, the madness of chasing something you care about and the inability to predict success, with a cartoonist who ends up at a gun range as an analogy for wanting to make movies and working in Hollywood.
  • The two things that aged worst have nothing to do with quality: that this film, a $65 million movie supposedly made as an Oscar movie, got made at all, and that it was not nominated for a single Oscar in a historic year full of downer films, when No Country won Best Picture.
  • Recording around Thanksgiving while Ridley Scott is reshooting a swath of All the Money in the World to replace a major performance five weeks before release, a thought experiment puts Scott in the editing room on Zodiac for the 2006 Oscar push: he would have cut it around one of the three main characters and made the date, where Fincher's obsessiveness is why it came out in 2007 and not 2006.
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40:24

Apex Mountain

Robert Downey Jr. (Fincher: greatest accomplishment but not his best movie, 130)

Robert Downey Jr. (Fincher: greatest accomplishment but not his best movie, 130)

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:40:24Read transcript
  • For Gyllenhaal this is definitely not Apex Mountain; Enemy is offered, an incredible performance even though twin movies are usually bad and that one is triply complex, and Prisoners, with Detective Loki a series of choices; the things disliked in his early performances have become something he steered into, he works hard and made himself a better and more interesting actor, going from hiding the seams to embracing them, with this film perhaps the bridge.
  • A joke nominates Source Code; otherwise everything after this is found better: Stronger, which came and went this year, is a really difficult performance in a familiar story that did not get the praise it was due, and he is consistently excellent now, so despite the affectations this is a great turning point.
  • The case that this is Downey's Apex Mountain: people who know him only as a global superstar and brand in the last decade don't know the golden child who couldn't get it done, spoken of in hushed tones as the most talented actor of his generation yet undone by demons and addictions until a turning point around 2004 to 2006; Fincher caught him off Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, another one high on the list, and this film marries the electric comet-in-the-sky quality with a gravity that was sluiced away as he became more of a comic-book figure; Good Night and Good Luck was solid and controlled, but nothing around this suggested he could put together so mannered a performance.
  • Downey's 80s run is called underrated, with Less Than Zero and The Pickup Artist, and his late-90s slide read as a tragedy because he had been consistently fascinating when used correctly, as in Soap Dish (as transcribed) and Wonder Boys, a film ready to be rediscovered; weighing the larger success arc, this fits perfectly as Apex Mountain for one host, with the global franchise-head apex coming a year later.
  • Ruffalo is the biggest takeaway of the rewatch and perfectly cast: the Dave Toski (as transcribed) myth, the real cop who was Bullitt and partly the basis of Dirty Harry and perhaps the most recreated real-life cop ever, is played far more subtly than in the other Zodiac films, with the voice and accent right on, the floppy bow tie, pants and trench coat, and a softness that is a radical choice for a superstar murder police who literally asks about due process and is shown to be a grunt doing phone work.
  • The vulnerable moment when Toski (as transcribed) is accused of writing the last Zodiac letter and gets a call at his house from Graysmith is loved: his wife, played by June Diane Raphael, is outraged on the phone, and Ruffalo delicately takes the phone from her, hangs it up and walks away without a word, jazz playing, in a bathrobe; but it is not his Apex Mountain, since You Can Count On Me is hard to top as where many first saw him.
  • Collateral is still a thing for some among Ruffalo's cop performances; he was recommended to Fincher by Jennifer Aniston, who had liked him in Rumor Has It, the quasi-sequel to The Graduate, and Fincher liked him in Collateral.
  • Asked whether this is Fincher's Apex Mountain, the answer is that it is his greatest accomplishment but not his best movie: Fight Club and Seven are iconic and stitched into people's lives, The Social Network is his best and the one liked most, but Zodiac clearly took the most to achieve, is his most personal and therefore most interesting film, though it will never be as beloved.
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47:18

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Brian Cox; Elias Koteas; John Carroll Lynch

Brian Cox; Elias Koteas; John Carroll Lynch

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:18Read transcript
  • Before the nominees, a moment in the credits is called possibly the best in the film: after Gyllenhaal, Ruffalo and Downey, the names Brian Cox, John Carol Lynch, Elias Codius, Dermot Malroney and Donal Loge (as transcribed) appear, a that-guy all-star team; Malroney as Captain Marty Lee is loved and Cox as Melvin Belli really makes the most of his moment.
  • More favorites: Philip Baker Hall as Sherwood, the handwriting specialist who starts drinking a little; Clea Duvall, with a great heat-check scene; John Goetz (as transcribed), from Blood Simple, as the Chronicle editor; and Anthony Edwards, fantastic and unexpected.
  • One pick gives the award specifically to Cox, with the Melvin Belli phone-call clip played, 'Is there something I can call you that's a little less ominous?', for making the most of his few moments, the television interview, the sincere attempt to offer the caller a lifeline, and the way he physically takes the incredible screaming sound.
  • Jimmy Simpson (as transcribed), who plays the shooting victim at the start and returns at the end, prompts a detail: the character is Mike Mageau, and when the name is reported over the Vallejo PD wire it is said aloud in the newsroom as 'Mayhew', so the film intentionally misleads in a way that was probably true to how it was said, an obsessive Fincherism; James LeGroix (as transcribed) is good and weird, and Zach Granier (as transcribed), the boss in Fight Club, runs the Vallejo police department.
  • A second pick is Elias Codius (as transcribed) as Detective Mullinax (as transcribed), a great real name: a that-guy who can shoot when given the ball, known to the hosts' generation as Casey from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a guy who looks like a cop and rarely gets a stage this large, and a great serial killer in Fallen with Denzel Washington, directed by Gregory Hoblitz (as transcribed).
  • Asked directly for a winner, a third pick is John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Lee Allen, with the 'Nobody calls me Arthur' clip: the role basically made the second half of his career, he directed the last film starring Harry Dean Stan (as transcribed) this year, and he is a well-known theater actor remembered as Norm in bed with Francis McNormand (as transcribed) at the end of Fargo.
  • Asked whether the film still works with a huge star like Anthony Hopkins as Arthur, the answer is not as well: it has to be a face whose physical presence unsettles because you feel you could have seen him without knowing why, since viewers bring previous films into the room and would read a famous actor as an important part; the misdirect succeeds because the only place to remember Lynch is Fargo, where Norm is a completely different, friendly disposition.
  • Later, the Ioni Sky (as transcribed) roadside scene is called another Dion Waiters performance and the hardest scene for one host to watch.
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56:11

Who Won the Movie?

Robert Downey Jr.; Mark Ruffalo; David Fincher

Robert Downey Jr.; Mark Ruffalo; David Fincher

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:56:11Read transcript
  • The field is framed as basically Downey, Fincher and Gyllenhaal, though Sean's case for Ruffalo is called pretty convincing; a hedge is offered as suitable for a film that gives no easy answer, and artistically Fincher is expected to be remembered for this as his most interesting film to date.
  • The case for Downey: he comes into the film and leaves two-thirds of the way through with perhaps one last glimpse, gets no hero moment or coda where filmmakers less concerned with ambiguity would have given him one, goes from liking a tipple or two to being taken over by it, and still has the majority of the quoted lines; the award is given to Downey.
  • A dissent is less mesmerized by the Downey performance and goes with Ruffalo, pointing to how the case degraded the people involved, Avery a hotshot at the top and clutching an oxygen tank by the end, and to the scene where Graysmith reintroduces himself to Inspector Toski (as transcribed) after they met at the movie premiere and gets, after a beat, 'I'm sure it was magical', a very dry, unimpressed cop moment.
  • Ruffalo never has the 50-home-run seasons of a Downey and never goes for it, which is the hallmark of what makes him mesmerizing and rewards rewatching; Downey's shtick has to some degree aged badly when seen through the filter of Tony Stark, The Judge and Due Date, though there is more gravity and weight here, so recency bias may make it harder for some to slide into the performance.
  • Fincher is also named as the winner, for the level of scholarship and depth of understanding of the world on display: despite scenes feeling samey, the narrative geography always locates you relative to the paper; his films are read as wars between filmmaker and actor, less successful when the actors gave up, and it is fascinating to watch him do battle with Affleck in Gone Girl or Eisenberg in Social Network, with Downey and Eisenberg seeming born for these films; Gyllenhaal is paraphrased as saying Downey has fifty ideas in a scene where most actors have five, so take 88 has a new idea just like take three, the 'Jesus Christ on crutches' line was probably improvised, and without Downey the film would be a little flat.
  • A joke names Kevin Feige as one more big winner for getting to see two-sevenths of the Avengers on screen together, so the film invents modern television, the MCU and, thanks to Chloe Sevigny, Bloodline.
Podcast choices
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Robert Downey Jr.
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Mark Ruffalo
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