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.
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.
The only casting what-if with any internet leftovers is Melvin Belli: Gary Oldman was supposed to play the role, and Fincher passed because he lacked the girth to play Belli, which lands oddly now that Oldman is playing Winston Churchill in all his girth in Darkest Hour; the hosts ask why a director who can add blood splatter could not add a few pounds, doubt anyone cares whether Belli weighed 250 or 175, and joke that human body fat is as sacred to Fincher as oak trees.
A side question asks whether Andrew Garfield, a little more of a boy scout, would have been a better Graysmith had the film been made five years later; Eisenberg is floated and rejected, and Gyllenhaal is called alarmingly handsome despite the wide-eyed look, as is Garfield.
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, and the only place to remember Lynch is Fargo, where Norm is a completely different, friendly disposition.
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.
Oak trees were helicoptered in for the Lake Berryessa murder scene; all the gore was added with CGI because repeated takes made fake blood impractical; the film was shot digitally apart from the opening sequence; James Ellroy called the three lead performances inadequate yet the film great; Downey left jars of urine on set to protest the long hours
When the crew arrived to shoot the lake murder scene in Napa the oak trees were no longer there, so Fincher had oak trees flown in by helicopter and temporarily planted with water to keep them alive for the shot; the hosts joke about the trees flying commercial to Santa Rosa next to Groot.
Fincher used CGI for everything gory because with so many takes fake blood would have meant wiping down the set each time, so for the taxicab murder he could shoot a hundred takes of Mark Ruffalo unlocking a door and add the blood splatter later; the opening sequence was shot on film and the rest digitally, edited on an Avid rig, and much of the tangible period feel the hosts admire is actually post-production.
James Elroy (as transcribed), whose Black Dahlia Fincher was going to direct before Brian De Palma did, is quoted finding it most interesting that Gyllenhaal, Downey and Ruffalo are miserable in the film, three inadequate and unconvincing performances he does not believe a word of, and that it is still a great movie; the hosts observe he is in harmony with Andy Greenwald.
An earlier research aside on Fincher's methods: Downey reportedly left jars of urine around the set to protest the long hours and decided to give Fincher what he wanted because he understands gulags; Gyllenhaal is quoted on takes running from five to ninety plus reshoots that left him asking where the risk was; Fincher's reply was that he is not interested in earnestness, the thing he hates most in acting, and that about fifteen takes gets actors out of it.
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
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 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.
Casting what-ifs are knocked out fast because the movie cannot be imagined with anyone else; Harvey Dent is called secretly very good casting because the part needed someone who thought he was a big deal but actually was not, which is perfect for Aaron Eckhart, a shot another host, who loves Eckhart, pushes back on with a joke about a Gulf Coast condo built on Eckhart stock.
Actors who expressed interest or auditioned for Harvey Dent: Josh Lucas, not heard from much since Glory Road; Liev Schreiber, judged a little too dark and stormy for a Dent who has to start as a golden boy, though he could have been a good Two Face; Mark Ruffalo, rejected as way too cerebral and neurotic; and Matt Damon, which prompts the question of why Damon just wants to be in a Christopher Nolan movie.
Young, Courage Under Fire-era Matt Damon would have made a great Robin.
Christopher Nolan is quoted as never really having considered anyone but Heath Ledger for the Joker, which is dismissed as what they say after the fact; actors rumored for the role were Paul Bettany (fine), Steve Carell (no), Robin Williams (maybe in a Tim Burton movie, a little too ghoulish), Adrian Brody (as transcribed; 'I can see it') and Ryan Phillippe, who is said to turn up more than anyone in lists of roles he did not get and to have been in the final three for Captain America with Krasinski and Chris Evans, which usually means great publicist, bad agent.
Ledger's performance is so legendary, arguably the most iconic movie performance of the 21st century, that nobody can be put in the role; an actor rumored for it would be wise to scrub that from the internet.
William Fichtner's bank manager is said to have been offered to Dwight Yoakam, who was busy recording Dwight Meets Buck, prompting the question whether that is a Buck Owens cover record; the hosts love Yoakam as a movie actor, a legend in Panic Room and Wedding Crashers with a quiet malevolence on screen, though he would not have been right for this particular role.
An 11-episode Netflix show is accepted; the Devlin MacGregor plot is more believable now than in 1993. — Bill Simmons
One participant picks Mark Ruffalo as Kimble for his mix of intelligence, innocence and looking aggrieved.
Jon Hamm is proposed, then said to also have been another participant's choice: a believable doctor with a great jaw and big charismatic TV star.
Ruffalo's case is defended with a 'they knew' sequel joke, but he is later dismissed as busy with the Hulk.
The marshal should be Black or a woman to change the dynamic, with Viola Davis suggested; the pairing lands on Hamm and Viola.
Joey Pants could come out of retirement as an older Cosmo.
For a male minority Gerard, someone with a comedian background is suggested, with Chris Rock raised, and Idris Elba is proposed; Elba is questioned on sarcasm but defended via Molly's Game and Luther.
Liam Neeson as an older fugitive would not survive the dam; Brad Pitt would have been a great fugitive in a movie version. — Chris Ryan
A tech-era version would need to handle the internet, which makes it less of a pure ride; Will Smith basically already did it. — Andy Greenwald
Michael Shannon is suggested as Sam Gerard; one participant dislikes him.
The Fugitive should be a binge-watch show; a series could have a different fugitive, director and writer every season.
