Boy Movies #18

Hunting for the Zodiac Killer, feat. Jack Draper

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Letters to the editor

Beloved friend of the newsletter Cassidy reminded me of an important piece of trivia that I neglected to mention in last week’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Gone Girl issue.

John Frankensteiner @JFrankensteiner

"Daniel Craig immediately sat up in his chair and said 'Orinoco Flow.' We didn't know if he was having a stroke. No one knew what he meant. What is Orinoco Flow?" - David Fincher

“We didn't know if he was having a stroke.” I sincerely regret the error and am, as always, thankful for my eagle-eyed readers.

Fincher February: Week 3

It’s like the old saying goes: The only bad thing about Fincher February is that it can’t go on longer. As anyone with access to a calendar knows, February is the shortest month of the year, and Boy Movies is but a weekly publication. David Fincher has, so far, directed eleven feature films, and as of this issue I’ll have only covered five. I feel insecure about this. How can I possibly call what I’m doing a real Fincher analysis without devoting at least eight hundred words to his contempt for Alien 3? Is a deep dive into the DFCU even complete without acknowledging the time I tried to watch Mank only to turn it off twenty minutes in and put on While You Were Sleeping? Does the time constraint mean I was setting myself up for failure when I set out to examine Fincher’s oeuvre in the hopes of unpacking and interrogating his influence on boy movies?

It’s something I discussed with this week’s guest, Jack Draper, real life boy and co-host of the great film podcast, Exiting Through the 2010s. (I had the pleasure of being a guest last year to gab about one of my favorite girl movies, Enough Said.) We ostensibly hopped on Zoom to talk Zodiac, Fincher’s sprawling 2007 thriller about the Zodiac Killer frenzy in 1970s San Francisco, and the men — Jake Gyllenhaal’s Robert Graysmith, Mark Ruffalo’s Dave Toschi, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Paul Avery — who investigated the case. It quickly spun into a mediation on Fincher’s career trajectory and the place he occupies in culture, among other things. To me, Zodiac is a miraculous film, but as something of a bridge between the Fincher of the ‘90s and the Fincher of the 2010s (look, yes, we address the curious case of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), it was the ideal springboard for a larger look at both his catalog and technique.

Below is mine and Jack’s conversation about all of those things. Important to note that mere moments after we ended our Zoom call, Jack messaged me, “Not one mention of Mindhunter¹!!!!! Basically Zodiac if it were made a decade later smh. Men just love problem solving what can I tell ya.”

It looks like the real Zodiac Killer... was friendship

Allison
You are the first boy to guest on Boy Movies. How does that feel?

Jack
It feels good. It feels like I am in the midst of an interrogation.

Allison
Yes. Why would you do this?

Jack
As a male viewer, you have to sort of reorient your brain to be like, “This is saying something greater than what the filmmaker intended, or it isn’t,” and then understand that it’s completely different for the female viewer, or whoever else. I think it’s cool. Thank you very much.

Allison
Thank you for coming to the hot seat. When we were planning this and talking about what movie you would do, you told me you were choosing between Zodiac and Mank. I’d love to know what ultimately made you choose Zodiac.

Jack
I've been addicted to Zodiac as long as I can remember. I think Mank is deeply misunderstood. It's the post Zodiac run that I'm in love with, mostly. The ‘90s, pre Zodiac, I like, but it's really just — I mean, I love those, Fincher’s great.

Allison
You know, we’re celebrating but we’re critiquing. That’s what Fincher February is all about.

Jack
I think time is going to be kind to Mank, but also time was an enemy to it because of the novel Coronavirus. On Exiting, we have an icebreaker where we ask why people chose what they chose and what was the first time that they saw it. With Zodiac, I really can't remember, and I think it sort of answers both — watching for the first time and why I chose it. It’s a thorn in my side, it’s a movie about so much. So many genres are woven in. It's just the complete package to me.

Allison
It’s your Zodiac Killer. I always see people complaining that it's too long, but it could be five hours long and I’d still be rapt. I like the way it becomes a completely different movie in that last hour or so. I’ve also just seen Seven for the first time recently, and I feel like one leads very cleanly into the other, even though they're quite a few years apart. But he does that so well, the obsessive crime hunt thing.

Jack
We’re not breaking new ground by talking about his influence on the crime genre. And clearly, he’s a perfectionist and an obsessive.

Allison
He makes movies about himself. Bailey and I were just talking about this for Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl — there’s a version of him in all of his movies.

Jack
Yes, and Zodiac is a procedural that never gets stale and never feels too shoe leather. It’s so dire. I love the ambiguity. It’s so ahead of its time with our obsession with true crime. I mean, we spent how much time talking about The Staircase? Fincher is so tuned in to America’s perversion towards the mind that they'll never understand. Robert Graysmith will never comprehend Arthur Leigh Allen, but it’s the fact that we want to look at them and study them. It’s so totally well observed.

Allison
This came out in 2007, really before the true crime boom began.

Jack
When you look back at 2007, especially the Oscar race — strangely bleak. It was a weird year. It makes perfect sense why this was completely shut out. You mentioned that thing about the runtime, and I don't think that people were campaigning properly. If things did go right for Zodiac, you could see it easily slotted in in place of something like Juno, in the midst of No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, and Atonement.

Allison
Zodiac fit in, but it didn’t fit in. What do you think about the way it has held up in general? You said this about Mank, but I feel like time is generally very kind to Fincher’s movies. Maybe the girls don’t get it at first, but they might get it later. I know so many young people who stan David Fincher movies. There’s something about his work that might not hit with the people who are making the decisions about awards, but for some reason, they resonate with people like us. 

Jack
I think so, too. Even when things are really connecting, like Social Network, they usually age even better. When it's a blatant “one for them” like Ben Butt—

Allison
Oh, Ben Butt.

Jack
Ben Butt is the weird middle child between Zodiac and The Social Network. We’ve covered all of his 2010s films on the pod, Social Network, Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl, and those three are so immaculately made. I don't think they would look like that or feel like that if it weren't for Zodiac. This is where he really comes into his own after Panic Room. And then you see him go on this run, which is one of the best three-movie runs any director has ever had.

Allison
Zodiac came before his Reznor and Ross era, too. It does sort of still feel like a transitional movie where he was developing what would become his 2010s style. Social Network, Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, there’s something cohesive about all of them. Zodiac is like their dad.

Jack
That makes Ben Butt the mom. She’s doing her own thing. Of course that’s his most awards-y movie.

Allison
I do think it’s important and I think it’s important to his filmography. It’s a girl movie, but Ben Butt is truly its own little thing.

Jack
Is Social Network a boy movie, but is Andrew Garfield an actress?

Allison
Yes and yes. Thank you for asking.

Jack
It’s giving Best Actress nominee.

Allison
What no one is considering is that he didn’t get a Best Supporting Actor nom for that movie, but he also didn’t get a Best Supporting Actress nom.

Jack
Fincher’s been adapting for the majority of his career. He’s done the classic auteur thing where he’s like, “Let me put my own thematic elements into this material that I can relate to.” This one is obviously adapted from Robert Graysmith’s own book, and the 2010s ones are adaptations, and those are all so perfect for him. But Ben Butt is the only adaptation that feels out of line with the rest. Not only is it out of line with his filmography, but as an idea to direct it.

I don't think David Fincher will ever win a Best Directing Oscar. I’m at peace with that, in the same way that I don't think Paul Thomas Anderson will ever win one. They're just so idiosyncratic. They could make something that the Academy will latch on to, even if it is in their own style, but they’re so particular. Not in a cold, detached way — well, maybe Fincher is. He’ll never reach front-runner status. He has this wide acclaim, both commercially and critically, and he’s a student of the industry. He grew up in LA, worked at ILM. His dad, obviously, was Jack Fincher. He remembers when the Vallejo massacre happened and his dad was like, “I need to come get you from school.” He has a vision of what California looked like at this time and perfects all these details so well [for Zodiac], but still is not celebrated in the way that a lackluster period piece would be.

Allison
It feels like a very boy thing to be like, “Why isn’t he appreciated?” Like, he is. He’s okay. Also, I've asked a lot of people about this, but I’m curious about what you think makes him a boy director. The way he needs to be in control of every single detail — that feels very much like something only a man could get away with.

Jack
He wants to be the actor, in a way. I think this is something that Mark Ruffalo said — he wants to choose the performance, not the actor. I don't think anyone's ever articulated directing quite like that. There's that video essay that describes Fincher’s camera as something that follows the eyes of the characters. If the character moves one way, the camera will move with it, even the smallest movements.

He has that famous quote: “I think people are perverts.” There's some truth to that, and it's a sort of truth that he's come to reckon with and really embrace. He's made movies about dealing with your own narcissism, and your own personal relationships becoming your own worst nightmare. Also about how something so great at the start can turn into something so much worse, and you’re the cause of it. But he brings a different flavor to each movie, and it's why he's not always pegged with making the same movie over and over. He’s kind of invisible that way. He makes movies about boys, although I have written down that Chloë Sevingy, June Diane Raphael, and Clea DuVall are all fantastic here.

Allison
To cast Chloë Sevingy in your movie almost makes it a girl movie.

Jack
It’s a performance that's spoken so loudly by just her presence. To know how to use the female characters that are surrounded by men so well, that’s sort of who Fincher has always been.

Allison
Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl notwithstanding, his movies truly always have, like, four women in them. But because of the way he is, he has such a complete handle on who they are, it doesn't feel like they're there is like a mistake. Fight Club’s tougher, but even that — so much of Helena Bonham Carter’s character is based on Edward Norton’s projections of her. A character like the one Chloë Sevingy plays here could have easily become the nagging wife, and she really does not devolve into that type of character at all. I think it gives it its timeless feeling. You’re not looking back on it like, “This shrew.”

Jack
It’s why Fight Club feels a little like a relic.

Allison
I do want to talk about the main three. I think this is one of Jake Gyllenhaal’s best roles. I’m obsessed with that piece of IMDb trivia about David Fincher having to digitally insert hair on his knuckles because he had twink hands. I think of it every time I see his hands in this, which is a lot.

Jack
I was going to say about Jake — he’s so consistent in the 2010s.

Allison
I don’t think you get there without Zodiac. It was the first movie to really let him go fully unhinged, which is something we’ve seen him do a lot since.

Jack
With Jake Gyllenhaal in this movie, he comes off so sheepish and unaware and so lost in the roundtable conferences at the beginning. I love the blue drink. There are so many good details.

Allison
I love Avery’s spiral in contrast with Graysmith’s own spiral, where he keeps his life together in a way Avery does not. Meanwhile, Toschi doesn’t spiral. He’s the guy who gets involved in this thing that is larger than him. 

Jack
Unlike Avery and Graysmith, he can separate work from the personal. As a cop, he can compartmentalize that there's crime everywhere in California. I also just love the Graysmith and Avery friendship, they’re so mismatched. It’s an underrated part of the movie, and they bounce off each other so well. You can tell that they’re kind of each other’s only friends. And you get the idea that the worst nightmare of all, worse than the Zodiac Killer, is being replaced by Adam Goldberg.

Allison
Ba dum tss.

Jack
Thank you. But yeah, Graysmith is in the perfect position to be manipulated into this obsession. He’s young, whip smart.

Allison
He’s slightly on the outskirts of what’s going on, but he’s involved enough in it to have the connections and the information.

Jack
Do you know how Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal got cast in this? Ruffalo was recommended to Fincher by Jennifer Aniston. They were in a movie called Rumor Has It together. Jake Gyllenhaal and Jennifer Aniston were in The Good Girl together. She got them booked.

Allison
Her power. That is the power of a woman. David Fincher was like, “Jen, who should I cast in my movie?” And she was like, “I’ve got two people.” I love thinking about that in the context of this being a boy movie, because they were recommended by the most woman of women.

You made a point when we were talking earlier, which I love — I think that Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., both boy actors, but you think Mark Ruffalo is a girl actor. Can you elaborate on that?

Jack
Mark Ruffalo’s always had this soft-spoken, laid-back, very human and understated tone. When he does reach a level of intensity like a “They knew” in Spotlight, it feels so natural for him to build to this momentum of anger. Here, he plays Toschi as a person who has just gotten caught up in this mess. It’s his movie in the first hour, and it’s Graysmith’s movie in the second hour, and he becomes a background character. I love the way that flip is utilized.

Allison
He transitions so easily into supporting Jake Gyllenhaal as he goes crazy. He’s very much a grounding presence in the movie. I also love him and Anthony Edwards together.

Jack
I love the detail with the animal crackers.

Allison
It’s such a sweet, thoughtful little thing. I was reading about how Anthony Edwards got cast, and Fincher wanted someone who represented decency. You wanted the calmness of him in the midst of this very brutal story. And at the end, he’s the one who gets out. He decides not to do it anymore. That’s its own movie, just the two of them. That would’ve been the more conventional choice, I think.

Jack
Oh, totally. Toschi can compartmentalize the Zodiac spree, but then he realizes that this is really no different from any other case.

Allison
I always think it’s pretty spectacular when anyone can make a movie about journalism look interesting. It’s not. It’s because Fincher’s a good director, but it’s also what you said: It doesn’t work as a story about Toschi, it doesn’t work as a story about Avery or Graysmith, it works as a story about the three of them.

Jack
And Graysmith’s relationship with both of them.

Allison
Exactly, he’s the middle point. Are the three of them ever in a scene together at the same time? I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

Jack
No, I think you’re right. First of all, that would be a nightmare blunt rotation. Avery and Toschi hate each other, which is something I forgot, how much of a nuisance Avery is to Toschi. Graysmith is presenting, at least, legitimate evidence.

Allison
They’re divorced dads and he’s their son going back and forth.

I feel like when I’m talking about the boy movie-girl movie thing, I do run the risk of oversimplifying it all and I try to avoid generalizing things too much. But I do almost think that this movie only works if you have a girl actor balancing out the boy actors. Mark Ruffalo almost verges into Oscar Isaac territory. There’s this softness in the voice, a gentleness about him.

Jack
He almost mellows out even more so in this one. He is the moral conscience, and that character could have been hackneyed. Also, it’s just the effortless chemistry he can have with any scene partner. He’s kind of lost in the weeds, I don’t know if he’s fully out of Marvel now, but he commands this movie so effortlessly. I think he’s a perfect co-lead to the Fincher experience. I’ll even go as far to say he is the Andrew Garfield to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jesse Eisenberg.

Allison
Wow. You’re speaking my language.

Jack
Similar energies. A relationship on the rocks.

Allison
Until you see Eduardo explode at the end of the movie, he really flows through the whole thing. He’s very mild mannered. You could compare Graysmith and Mark Zuckerberg with the ways they’re portrayed in these movies. It’s very much like, “I’m dealing with a genius, but he’s fucking insane.” You have to be the guy who’s reigning in the insane guy. I think that’s a deceptively difficult role to play while also building your own character and having your own development. That’s something Mark Ruffalo and Andrew Garfield do pretty effortlessly. Even though you know that it was not effortless, because David Fincher was making them do, like, one hundred takes per day.

Jack
Of course we should mention the jars of pee that Downey left around the set². It’s crazy. Jake Gyllenhaal has a quote where he was like, “I’m never doing that again. Fincher is not for me.” I wonder if he would take that back now.

You mentioned reigning in the insanity — I wouldn't say they're friends. They're just in a partnership, despite the closeness.

Allison
They're reluctant allies.

Jack
But you have a similar chemistry that you see Eduardo and Mark have.

Allison
One of the things I’m trying to do this month is try to find through lines between Fincher’s movies. I like the way you can see the shapes of details from his older movies in his more recent works.

Jack
And it doesn’t stick out at first. It’s so impressive that it’s so invisible. You can draw that connection between the male search for closure.

Allison
The finality.

Jack
The male search for finality. It’s timeless.

Allison
You guys need answers so bad. You boys. It’s a movie about how all three of them think they can be the one who will finally find out what is going on and I love that none of them ever do. Graysmith gets partial credit, but it’s very much a movie about the male instinct to be like, “I must get the bottom of this, even if it’s completely hopeless. I must be the special boy to figure it out.”

Jack
“I found the Zodiac. I stopped the murders.”

Allison
“I created Facebook.” 

Jack
“I did not kill my wife.”

Do you want to talk about Robert Downey Jr.?

Allison
I would love to talk about Robert Downey Jr. As you know, I am an apologist, I think he’s a wonderful actor. I think he’s amazing in this. I find a new MVP every time I rewatch, and this time it was him. He’s so good at unraveling, and it’s sad that he’s the original poster child for getting sucked into the Marvel machine. All three of these guys have, which is such a fucking bummer. He spirals out of control so well. He has gone down a path that I cannot follow him down, but I was with him for a long time. I stood by him.

Jack
I hope that we see him dig out of this hole. We lost a decade of interesting projects, which is so grim.

Allison
He loves money more than he loves the craft.

Jack
What’s funny is my dad and my uncle revere Robert Downey Jr. He’s one of their favorite actors of their age. He has the Gen X-y punk mentality. A snark that’s so…

Allison
We are not making actors like that anymore. I know that he’s part of the reason we have the very annoying quippy Marvel dialogue, but he did it well. It’s not his fault that it’s turned into a monster beyond his control.

Jack
That’d never been done before. There’d never been an energy like that. Obviously he had a rough patch, but this mid-2000s run is so impressive — A Scanner Darkly, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. He got the Oscar nomination for Tropic Thunder, which is… 

Allison
We love to forget about Tropic Thunder. That movie should not exist.

Jack
That’s a boy movie.

Allison
That’s one of the most boy movies of all time.

Jack
Zodiac catches him at the perfect moment. The one-two punch of this and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was him saying, “I’m back,” and then Iron Man’s the next year.

Allison
He’s a special actor.

Jack
No one else has that presence. Each relationship is so well built with Avery. He’s also kind of a shitty journalist.

Allison
I love the focus on the typewriter when he’s like, “The Zodiac Killer must be a homosexual.” Of course he’s inferring that the killer is gay, and of course that’s the worst thing that he can think of for this guy to be. Not just a murderer! Also gay! He’s not very good, but that even speaks to the way Graysmith worships him. He tells Adam Goldberg, “You know, this desk belonged to an amazing reporter,” and Adam Goldberg’s like, “Yeah, okay.” Robert Downey Jr. has a presence that makes you believe at first that he is worthy of the place that he’s gotten to and then you see the way he decays over a period of years.

Jack
It’s such a hidden relic of that time, too. America was changing, and what we consider alcoholism and self-destruction to look like.

Allison
And there’s of course the meta aspect, which goes without saying.

I need to get your perspective on what it is about Fincher, this iconic boy director, that speaks to you as a boy.

Jack
We touched on the precision, the machinations of it all. Stories about obsessives made by an obsessive are so satisfying to watch. It’s funny to think that so many of us are so aware of the hell that these actors are put through to get the product that we all love, but I think it just adds to the mystique that he has. He’s a nihilist, but also a fatalist. He very much knows where his characters are going, even if he’s not the one writing them.

Allison
Have you ever seen that documentary about the making of The Social Network? I think it was literally exclusively an extra on the DVD. It’s so bizarre that it exists, but they filmed the table reads, which were sectioned out because it would take Fincher and Aaron Sorkin so long to get through one scene. They would do line by line analysis, and they would disagree about what they thought the characters would say and how they were feeling in each moment. Cut to Jesse Eisenberg saying, “I think I said ten words the whole time we were there.” It’s an interesting point in considering Fincher as a non-writer, because he’s not and he’s not trying to be, but he has ideas. “Don’t get it twisted. Even if I didn’t write it, I know what they’re feeling.” He’s that particular.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about Zodiac?

Jack
Who do you think is the Zodiac Killer?

Allison
Oh my god. I, like, don’t know.

Jack
Figure it out. I think it’s multiple people. I think Arthur Leigh Allen is one of them, but there’s holes in everything, which is why this case is impossible. The handwriting stuff and the forensics stuff and the costumes and the media stuff, and America’s response to it all. It almost feels fictionalized, this thing about crime that we just can’t get out of our heads. I think that’s why this movie had such a cultural footprint and such a lasting legacy. We feel so invested, just like Robert Graysmith does… and the movie is made by an insane person.

• The Social Network documentary I mentioned. Maybe a good idea to check out before next week’s issue… idk…

• I reviewed Party Down Season 3 for TV Guide. Show good!!! We are having fun!!!

• I saw Titanic for the first time yesterday (please, I know) and that? Is true cinema. Has anybody ever heard of this movie??????

1. And as of yesterday, it’s officially over. Coincidence???

2. “Pee as a form of protest.”