Zodiac

To my ears "Zodiac killer" refers to the copycat serial killer who was active in NYC in the early 1990s, so I was a little confused heading into this film about the real Zodiac killer in early 1970s San Francisco. This is a movie that gets all the little things right, tons of great scenes, really deep, solid cast, good all around acting. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't seem to decide which story they were telling. Chronolically, you get two things that are each about 65 percent of a movie -- the first is about the Zodiac investigation and how it hit a dead end around Arthur Leigh Allen. The second is about how Robert Graysmith revived interest in a de facto dead case and uncovered new evidence implicating Allen.

Thematically, it's also two films -- reflected not just in the script, but in inconsistent theme-setting music and direction. One is a dark tale of obsession in which a not-objectively-important mystery that wrecks the lives of everyone who touches it. The other is a tale of triumph, where a scrappy investigator solves the puzzle that stumped the experts. The true story, unfortunately, doesn't quite support either thing. Graysmith sold a lot of copies of his book, so his life was hardly ruined by obsession. But all he compiled was a bunch of circumstantial evidence contradicted by all the physical evidence and nobody was ever arrested.

My take, frankly, is that I wish the filmmakers had thought hard about the intrinsic problems with their true story and just . . . thrown it out and written an original screenplay that stole whatever elements of the Zodiac story they thought needed stealing. Whatever factual accuracy may or may not be present adds nothing of artistic significance to the film and real life just happens to be too messy to tell a good story here.

UPDATE: Let me also observe that it bothered me that the case for Allen's guilt seemed pretty unconvincing. A 30 year-old eyewitness identification has virtually no actual evidentiary value. The circumstantial evidence, by contrast, is compelling. The sort of thing that would make you want to do a fingerprint check -- and it exonerated him. Or some handwriting analysis -- and it exonerated him. Or a DNA test -- and it exonerated him. And it's not like Allen got off thanks to fancy defense lawyering or because the cops didn't look at him. Under the circumstances, if SFPD couldn't come up with a way to railroad the guy, he probably didn't do it.

Comments

"My take, frankly, is that I wish the filmmakers had thought hard about the intrinsic problems with their true story and just . . . thrown it out and written an original screenplay...."

I agree. Expanding your point slightly, I feel exactly that way about almost every Hollywood/high-end indie movie I've seen in the last year-- "How could the director/producer *not have seen the obvious structural problems* with this story at the 'plot outline' stage?" I guess it's harder than it looks, or else maybe they just don't care.

Posted by James Gary | March 19, 2007 3:53 PM

I liked the film quite a bit, precisely because I thought it was nothing but "a dark tale of obsession with a not-objectively-important mystery that wrecks the lives of everyone who touches it." And I think I'm right about that. MY, you see an inconsistency between (i) a story-line about "a scrappy investigator solves the puzzle that stumped the experts" and (ii) the facts that Graysmith *didn't* solve the case in any conclusive way and evidently ended up with a broken family for his efforts. I didn't see any inconsistency, because I didn't see any scrappy investigator who solved the big mystery. Graysmith is presented as another guy who gets obsessesed and whose life gets ruined.

Posted by Scott E. | March 19, 2007 4:04 PM

the HBO approach?

Deadwood and Rome deviate quite a bit, and The Wire and The Sopranos use some real life material but explicitly throw out the based on a true story conceit.

Posted by theCoach | March 19, 2007 4:07 PM

If I'm not mistaken, the original Dirty Harry villain (named "Scorpio") was a variation of the actual Zodiac killer, except he got all sloppy and shit.

As for the Wire, I still hear snippets of dialogue that were taken from David Simon's late 80s book, Homicide.

Posted by norbizness | March 19, 2007 4:35 PM

I think Scott E. gets it exactly right. While I think it gets all the 70's stuff just right, to me this is much more a tale about the unknowable and how we yearn to figure it out (and what that does to us), and/or a story of people who get lost as they try to create something (be it an artist or a serial killer profile or whatever), than it is a story about every specific detail of the Zodiac murders. I mean sure it's about them (or more to the point how people dealt with and responded to them), but historical accuracy doesn't seem essential to me precisely because even now we don't know what the true history was. For example, was that lady with the baby abducted by the actual Zodiac? And Graysmith's (Jake G.'s) moment at the end, and the picture ID by that guy from Loser, seem to me much more about these men needing to create some certain end for something that's affected them so deeply, than it is about really settling just who the Zodiac truly was.

Posted by Scott C. | March 19, 2007 4:41 PM

Zodiac: A Review
By Nate W.

Scene:
Zodiac brainstorming session.

"Hey! Let's make a movie about the Zodiac killer."

"We can't. He was never caught. We don't know who the Zodiac killer is."

"Oh."

"How about we write a movie where Bernie Mac plays someone cantakerous?"

"No, no. Let's stick with this Zodiac thing. Okay. So we can't make a movie about the killer himself, because we don't know who he is or what he's like. How about we make a movie about the investigator of the Zodiac murders?"

"Nope. Can't do that, either. The murders were spread out over several years and numerous counties in California. There were a dozen different organizations investigating it. Not to mention scores of reporters. The movie wouldn't even have a protagonist."

"No protagonist. That's a problem. Well, maybe we can make a movie about the investigation itself. You know, not really about the people, but about the mystery. The clues."

"You want to make a movie about handwriting analysis?"

"Doesn't sound very good, does it?"

"No. Plus, the clues were, well, inconclusive. They led in a bunch of different directions. Most led to dead ends."

"Oh."

"It'd be incredibly frustrating."

"Yeah. Well, what about that? What does striving in vain for years and years to solve a case do to someone? Wait a minute. This could be good. I can see it now. It's got a Moby Dick feel. Ahab driven insane by his obsession with the white whale. Careers ruined. Lives in tatters."

"Except none of the people involved in the case became obsessed with it."

"Really?"

"Well, one of the reporters became a raging alcoholic."

"Driven by his obsession to the bittersweet consolation of the bottle!"

"Except he was a drunk way before the Zodiac murders."

"Oh. . . What about the cops who investigated the case?"

"There were lots of cops. But nothing much bad happened to any of them. There was a pair in San Francisco assigned to the case. I think one of them got bored before the other one and asked to be reassigned. But they both eventually gave up on it."

"That doesn't sound very interesting."

"It isn't. There was a cartoonist who became pretty obsessed with the murders. He eventually wrote a book about it."

"What happened to him?"

"Oh, nothing. He met a girl in the middle of it, got married, had a couple of kids. I think they had to go to a marriage counselor for a little while."

"Wow. This is pretty much the most boring serial killer of all time."

"Yup."

". . . "

". . ."

"I say we pitch it anyway."

THE END.


I WANT MY MONEY BACK.

Posted by Nate W. | March 19, 2007 4:45 PM

I enjoyed the hell out of Zodiac, and the details, for me, were the primary pleasure of this movie. If you want to really, really feel like you're in California in the 70's, a ticket to this movie is as close as you're likely to come. It's impressive to see a filmaker evoke the 70's so powerfully without dressing everybody up in bellbottoms and afros.

My only complaint WAS that Jake Gyllancan'tspellit played Graysmith's not-all-there innocent-obsessive a little over the top... until I read an interview with Graysmith, and that's pretty much exactly how he comes across. Not all there.
Also, the scene at the scary projectionist's house was a little silly.

Norbizness - the movie explicitly refers to the Dirty Harry - Zodiac link. The hero cop attends a premier showing of the movie, and doesn't like what he sees.

Posted by cerebrocrat | March 19, 2007 6:56 PM

Now, I'd maybe like to see it. And, perhaps if the filmmakers had made the environs (70's SF, Northern CA) the strange psychological X factor driving the killings rather than focus on the killer and his pursuers- it could have cohered into a great picture. A la "It's Chinatown, Jake" being the deux ex machina not the people involved.

The odd thing is I know the area well, have worked on a bizarre true-life series of murders script that never came to fruition and am currently writing a fictional serial murder crime novel set in the Bay Area. Re the former- when so many of the facts are unknown- it's incumbent upon the creators to really work extra hard. Maybe they did but as so often happens- too many fingers got into the celluloid.

Posted by Trevor | March 19, 2007 7:33 PM

First things first. Norbizness and Cerebrocrat, the reason that Dirty Harry, both the movie and the character, are mentioned is because the movie "Dirty Harry" is definately based on the Zodiac (the real one, not the phony NY one - although in the movie, Scorpio gets killed and tortured by Clint), and the character Dirty Harry was based on Detective Dave Toschi (on a side note, Bullitt was also based on detective Dave Toschi). It is supposed to be ironic, and it is also a critique of the genre when Toschi says, "what about due process."

Anyway, as someone who lives in Oakland and works in San Francisco, and as someone who read the book and loves true crime, I loved the film.

Posted by adlsad | March 19, 2007 8:28 PM

Right. That's all quite clear from the movie, but I was trying not to divulge too much to people in this thread who hadn't seen it.

Posted by cerebrocrat | March 19, 2007 9:09 PM

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm very familiar with the facts of the case. Scott C -- Yes, the Zodiac DID kidnap that lady and her baby.

Posted by shnooky | March 19, 2007 9:47 PM

Haven't seen the movie yet, but......

the Zodiac killer was a very pivotal event in San Francisco and the Bay Area during it's historical moment. Maybe the film gets into this, but the Bay Area had a very wobbly identity right at that moment. The whole summer of '68 thing had ended, leaving a massive amount of remaining tension (one big problem was that the summer of '68 had deposited a large mass of essentially unemployable people onto a fairly weak and narrow San Francisco economy). It wasn't clear where to go next, politically / culturally . San Francisco's inate conservatism (it's a typical tourist-driven economy: partying on the outside, but internally controlled by a very small clique who own the real estate the tourists utilize) also remained.

Posted by burritoboy | March 19, 2007 10:30 PM

The fact that the conclusion of the film is inconclusive makes Zodiac a sort of post-modern whodunit. The film showed how intelligent people could fool themselves at more than a few times, and the audience is led along nicely with their sleuthing.

BTW, I thought the scene at the projectionist's house was hilarious, precisely because of Graysmith's obsession with just one rather subterranean aspect of the case. That, and the creaking floor which was a great touch.

Zodiac isn't as brilliant as Chinatown (a top ten film of all time, IMO), but as a film that dramatizes an actual case in all its complexity and indeed horror (the killings are straightforwardly yet terrifyingly portrayed), it contributes something original to the genre.

As someone who came of age in the 1970s, it was also fun to go back in time for a couple of hours too... :-)

Posted by David W. | March 19, 2007 10:52 PM

Because of its relatively small size- San Francisco is very vulnerable to counter-cultural takeovers. We all know about the beats, the hippies and the gays, but if I were a Martian neo-colonialist that's where I'd head to.

Also, the nature of rage is different in the Bay Area & Marin Co. as well. It's 3 clicks ahead of everywhere else. I remember when there were roving gangs of psycho parapelegics trying to ram into people on the streets of Berkeley. They just seemed to be everywhere at once.

Posted by Trevor | March 19, 2007 10:59 PM

http://www.zodiackiller.com/Suspects.html

Posted by blah | March 19, 2007 11:00 PM

Thank you, Nate W. "Zodiac" is not only a lousy movie, it's barely a movie at all. The fact that this sort of ill-conceived, faux-verite ("there's no story--just like real life! Don't you get it?!) crap can pass for some sort of postmodern masterpiece just shows how empty and how rife with its own pretentious, lazy-ass cliches the current "indie" film has become. Downey and Ruffalo are excellent and compelling actors, which made their scenes at least watchable, despite the fact that their characters were not written as convincing human beings (Downey's a hard-headed, crafty reporter at first, then suddenly becomes an unhinged, self-indulgent, fame-hungry, pathetic drunk when the "plot" requires it--Ruffalo seems completely sane, except for his bizarre expectation that everybody carries animal crackers at all times). Jake Gylenhaal is the "indie" (meaning: less handsome) Tom Cruise: a one-note actor who does his one-note thing with sufficient intensity to convince some moviegoers they can act.

Posted by RP | March 20, 2007 11:27 AM

Wow, you folks are really tough (bitchy?) film critics. You won't be invited to my pre-opening screening [grin].

Posted by JimPortlandOR | March 20, 2007 12:01 PM

The fact that this sort of ill-conceived, faux-verite ("there's no story--just like real life! Don't you get it?!) crap can pass for some sort of postmodern masterpiece just shows how empty and how rife with its own pretentious, lazy-ass cliches the current "indie" film has become.

How weird. Under what set of criteria is Zodiac an "indie" film? In the sense it was a big hollywood production but didn't suck?

Posted by DJ Ninja | March 20, 2007 2:04 PM

"My take, frankly, is that I wish the filmmakers had thought hard about the intrinsic problems with their true story and just . . . thrown it out and written an original screenplay that stole whatever elements of the Zodiac story they thought needed stealing. Whatever factual accuracy may or may not be present adds nothing of artistic significance to the film and real life just happens to be too messy to tell a good story here."

I think you've missed the point here. The very messiness you note is the story here. It's not a story about the Zodiac - it's a story about unrequited obsession.

Fincher may not have made the movie you wanted to see, (after all, every director can't be as "good" as Michael Bay,) but he's made a damn fine movie nonetheless. All the action and all the story happens on the downbeat.

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