‘Zodiac’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

>> The rewatchables is brought to by the Ringer podcast network. This is our first podcast that we were running not only on Spotify as a video, but on Netflix as well. That's Sean Fantasy. He has the big picture. That's Chris Ryan, who's on the big picture sometimes as well. And on the watch, you're still doing that right? >> I still crank it out. >> Yeah. And we've been doing the rewatch almost. >> What's the watch? >> The watch. It's a TV culture pod, right? >> What's the landman pod culture pod? >> Wow, first I'm hearing of this. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. We have other pods. >> We do have other podcasts. >> Exciting. >> We have been circling this one for a long time because we already did it. This podcast goes, you've been circling it for a long time. >> Well, it wasn't on the original one. We've been doing this podcast since 2017. It is evolved. We've added all these different categories. This is a movie that's on Netflix, so we're going to try to do some movies to start out that were on Netflix. And this is one we wanted to redo over and over again. I did with you guys, my top 50 most rewatchable movies in the 21st century. And I had a copy-paste accident and somehow cut Zodiac out accidentally, which you reminded me of at the end. I flipped out. Proof of life was in there, but turned out that was a 2000 movie. Not eligible. So I moved Zodiac boyatedly into that spot. But we are making up the Zodiac and the Zodiac killer. >> So we're deep and adventurous. >> I don't really watch most. >> It's all been worth it. >> I made it on the bills list. Finally, the copy-paste. >> Well, he's a Netflix guy too, right? So maybe he's watching. >> Anyway, Zodiac is next. [MUSIC] >> 2007, top 10 movies. Spider-Man 3. >> Box office. Not your favorites. >> No, box office. >> Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Transformers, Pirates 2, Harry Potter 3. I am legend born to National Treasure 2, Alvin in the Chipmunks in 300. That was our top 10 box office. >> It's pretty rough. >> Here's what also came out in 2007. >> Yeah. >> There will be blood. >> Nope. >> No country for old men. Zodiac, Michael Clayton, Juno, American gangster, super bad knocked up. Charlie Wilson's War 310 to Yuma, Gone Baby Gone, Eastern promises, assassination of Jesse James. >> By the coward Robert Ford. >> He obviously can't mention that. >> I'm sorry, Robert Ford. And out of all those, Zodiac was the slowest burn. I saw in the theater. I was like, I thought this could be more like seven. It's slow, it's methodical. And somewhere over the last 10 years, this movie wrote me in so way. Like wrote me in as a real hardcore rewatchable. >> Can I very quickly answer why I think it could have been a little bit different and might have roped us in quicker before I do that. The movie was supposed to come out in 2006 and it was too long, according to the studio. And they had to cut it down. And so it went from being a December awards player to a February 28th movie. And that's a little disgust aspect of this movie that I think might have changed its slow burn nature. Obviously, the movie itself is a slow burn. >> Sure. >> You're meant to revisit, reimagine, to be kind of unsatisfied at the end of it. But anytime we talk about a serial killer movie on the show or elsewhere, it's all about the hunt for the killer. Seven is so satisfying because we get that great resolution. It's devastating. >> It's tough for Brad Pitt, but satisfying everything. >> Released to find out what happened. The whole point of this movie is the unknowability of evil, the unsolvability of these stories. We're probably going to spend an hour here trying to solve this case. We're actually going to solve it. See her and I found out the killer. That's coming at the end. >> But the ingenious idea of the movie is it's not dirty Harry. You can't just solve it. And so it allows you to kind of accept that unknowability and then focus more on how the movie is made, what's interesting about the people. It's not just the case, but the world at that time, the cities that he's interested in. And then we can understand it too. Is this beautiful personal story about David Fincher's adolescence? >> Yeah, I think it's almost unknowable on the first bit watch. I mean, when you spend time with this movie, especially as we get ready for a rewatch, we watch a movie usually a couple of times during this week. And I found myself noticing things in the back of frames, gestures that people make, little hints of what's about to happen three scenes later, that I never would have gotten in a movie theater in 2007 on the first watch. It's like a demanding, really almost an endurance test of a film because you're constantly having to pay attention to every single thing on 100% of the screen. It's not just like, here's an actor, nothing else is in focus. They say something very, very clearly and then it winds up happening. It's like so much information, visual and expository that you're trying to keep track of. So it's almost made to be studied rather than just like, that was a good five o'clocker and now I'm going home. >> The other piece of it, it's kind of a good hang, which we talk about with three watchables. You can also throw it on and just have it on and half watch it because the music and everything and there's always like every 20 minutes, there's another really good scene. >> Usually when we do these, by the time we finish the recording, my big thing is like, go home and I close the tabs on all the things I've been reading about the movie and then I don't watch the movie again for like five years. I kind of want to watch Zodiac today. >> Yeah. >> I know you know exactly what you mean. I've seen it twice now in the last three days and I watched it with the commentary. And right before I got here, I was like, I needed another watch. >> Well, I wanted to do you guys talk about it and then I want to go home and think about what you said and watch it again. >> Right, right. >> Well, that was, there was a Fincher quote about this. What was this quote that a movie isn't done, it's abandoned? >> Yeah, I have it in my notes somewhere. I'll find the exact quote, but it was basically like, I never finished making Zodiac. I just had to stop making it to make another movie. >> Is that how you feel about trade value? >> That's how I feel about this rewatchable. >> This is part two. >> This is part two. Maybe we'll do part three. You guys have been reheating. >> Well, I wasn't on the first one. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, great work. >> And it's interesting. One of the reasons I wasn't on the first one was I wasn't totally there yet with the movie as rewatchable. And it must have happened over COVID. >> And this movie, all of a sudden, was on more, at least in the ways we watched stuff. And then it was on the streamers' lives. That netflix a lot. >> And it was just like, I'll throw this on. And the music's good in the beginning and you just get sucked in. >> Its stature has really grown in the last 10 years. I mean, Chris and I have done like 15 podcasts about Fincher at this point. We wrote a column about David Fincher together like 20 years ago. We've been kind of like studying him through our friendship. And I, is it safe to say this is your favorite? Because this has been my favorite for about 10 years. >> It is, yes. >> So really? >> Yeah. >> And I was thinking about it last night and thinking about just, I mean, I don't, there's probably 500,000 words of just Chris and I texting each other about David Fincher. >> Yeah. >> But it did dawn on me while watching this movie that Chris's dad was a newspaper man and my dad was a police detective. And this has been, there's a movie about a newspaper man and a police detective trying to figure something out. >> Wow. The symbolism of you guys. >> Well, I mean, I think it's also, you're exactly right. And it's also, you can tell that this is a movie that's incredibly personal to Fincher and also shaped what a diabolical perverted cynical worldview he has because he watched this demon rise out of the night in the Bay Area and never get caught. And he was just like, that's what life is. You're driving on a fucking road one night and the guy starts flashing you from behind and you pull over to get help. And then he tries to throw you out of a car. I mean, it's like, that's real life. And that was kind of like, I think of all the directors sometimes. I think Fincher has it the most right, you know, even though that's the hardest thing to accept. >> You sort of Craig Worldbeck is with us as well. He joins us for every watch. Well, Craig, if somebody's flashing their lights at you and telling you to pull over because there's something around with your tire, keep going. It's one of the lessons of this movie. >> One of our biggest nitpicks watching last night, we were watching and we were like, who is ever going to pull over if somebody's just honking and flashing their lights at you on the freeway? Why would you ever look? >> And it's a creepy man by himself. I think this, the late 60s early 70s was the most trusting time we've ever had in America. This was, this is a half of the shows back then where hitchhikers getting kidnapped and Syracalers just running a mock. People showing up at sorority houses just going to town. >> I think that there was the possibility of good Samaritan ship back then. Now like, we just ignore each other. People just don't talk to each other. Being neighborly is increasingly not a thing in this country. Back then, if you needed help in theory, a stranger would help you. >> My wife told me today that California is passing some law that you can ask for a drink lid for a drink when you're at a bar and they have to give it to you. >> Are you serious? >> Yeah. That's where we are in 2026. In 1971, pull over, there's something around your time. Oh, I'm going to fix it for you. Okay, so it's great. >> That's really funny. >> 2007, there will be blood, no country for old men, Zodiac, just those three. We always romanticize, especially on this part, about like, oh my God, 75. >> That's our 75. >> Yes. >> Yeah. I didn't feel this way in the moment in '07. And maybe I was just more cynical about culture and movies and TV and everything. But like, there will be blood took me, I would say, five, six years to really understand. And I think getting older was a piece of that. And that there will be blood, no country for old men. There will be blood was one of those. That was amazing. I don't know if I'll ever watch it again. It's like, why am I watching this again? And then you watch it five times. and then Zodiac was a slow burn too. It's interesting because I think Michael Clayton felt like it was on the level with those in the moment. And I don't think it is at this point. It's 20 years late. - I disagree, but it does seem like it has not. I disagree. I disagree. - You disagree personally or you disagree like - I disagree personally, but not big picture. - Do you think it's regarded in the same class as - I do not. - Blood and - It's a very different kind of movie. It's just that those other three movies are really maximalist movies and it's a much more like kind of restrained character study. But I do think that it is probably the number one movie that people point to when they try to explain how devastated they are about what's happened to Hollywood over the last 15 years about why can't we have that anymore? All four of them though. It's not just that it feels like our 75, they all feel like 70s movies. - Yeah. - And Michael Clayton just feels like a very familiar character study from the 1970s. And for Fincher and Gilroy explicitly we're like, I'm trying to make a 70s movie. Like those, that's the playbook I'm following here. - You know what else helps with those three? The directors. You Fincher and the Cones and you have a PTA obviously. But then some of the other movies that came out that you know, super bad knocked up the combo that that was really when the comedy era. Like those are two of the better done comedies that we've had and you go all the way through. - I think you can. - You can be based on the box office list that you just rattled off. Like you can look at, you can feel the transition fully taking place, right? Like I always mark Spider-Man in 2002 as well as the shift and the success of that movie. And the fact that the third Spider-Man movie happens within five years. And then you know, we're pretty much in this ceaseless run. - I was looking at the sequels and box office Mojo. And it's like out of the first 30 movies from box office gross. It felt like 18 of them were sequels. And like Dark Knight and Iron Man are the next year. - Yeah. - Yeah, right. - Zodiacs first weekend. The film was out grossed by Wildhogs. Wildhogs beat it. Shout out to Mike Tollin. - Wildhogs rewatchables when? - Wildhogs crushed it. - I didn't mind that movie when I watched it. - How many Tim Allen movies have been on the rewatch? - Zero. - Zero. - That's kind of surprising, I guess. - And it's classic. - And then a second week, 300 blew it out. And the movie didn't do that well. Like barely made back its money. But I think as in the physical media, it'll be fine. We'll do, it'll do okay. - It's doing great now. I mean, I think what you said before is right. It's like, it's just kind of fun to have on, even though it's about the most depraved thing in recent history. I mean, it's like a awful story. - And it's just two of the most disturbing murder scenes of any kind of non horror movie combined with the basement scene at the end, which is one of the creepiest scenes I think ever filmed. I've one of the most disturbing interrogation criminal interview scenes. - I have a theory about this too about the movie's sustainability, which is that, you know, it's shot on digital. In most movies, the shot on digital, we kind of complain about and say that they don't look right that they look kind of off or otherworldly or there's too much clarity somehow. It doesn't have the grain of film. But because Fincher is so good at shooting digitally, it looks like the highest level version of mostly what we look at now. So like, it feels familiar. It feels like watching streaming TV, but it's so well made and so clear and so specific that it's not like looking at an artifact in a museum. It still feels modern even though it's set in the 1970s. And it like, I think to younger audiences too, it's a movie that kind of makes more sense than just popping Chinatown in. - Wanna do 4K transfer now or later? - It's a really unusual 4K transfer just 'cause it's like, it is a movie that is shot digitally basically in 1080. So it shouldn't look good. And then you pop the disk in and you're like, they spent a fuck ton of time improving it. It looks better on 4K now than it did in movie theaters. I can't think of very many examples of that. - It's right up at the edge of this looks too good. - Yeah. - It looks so good that they use one of the things about this movie is he uses, I think, a different actor for each kill scene. - Yes. - And you, the transfer is so good that you can actually tell their different actors. - But I think you're supposed to be able to. - Yes. - It's supposed to lead to the ambiguity of like, who was this guy? Was there more than one? - It definitely wasn't the short guy in the basement. Can rule him out. He was too short. - Is that Bob Bond? - No. Our guy from a-- - The movie poster guy. - Yeah. - Our guy from, welcome back, Carter. - No, I mean, Bob wasn't the guy's name, Bob Bond. - Yeah, Bob Bond, yeah. - I wrote down things I like about Zodiac and why I think it has the power that it does. Meticulously researched and executed. So there's the big three for this is all the presidents, men in this and spotlight. I think are weirdly similar movies, even though they're completely different, about completely different thing in the style of them. It's different. But they're both like, people trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle and newspapers are prominently involved. And what is this? How do we figure this out, right? And we love all those movies. We've done all of them on rewatchables. I had spotlight in the most rewatchable. - Yeah. - Which I think stunned people. But I watched it all the time 'cause I loved the process of it. - What number was that, do you remember? - It was like in the, I'm gonna say the teens. - Higher or lower than proof of life? - It was higher. - So wait, is Zodiac going right into the proof of life slot or is it actually higher? - Yeah. - Okay. You say meticulously research. It's worth mentioning that David Fincher and James Vanderbilt, the screenwriter, re-interviewed all the living witnesses, cops, newspaper people that they could find who were involved with this case and basically redid the police work and use police reports as like a baseline for their. - Well, they spent 18 months on it. - That's what I'm saying. - Yeah. - I mean, that's like, I don't think anyone would ever do that again. - Well, I'm gonna do this. - This is the book of basketball. (laughing) - Book of basketball too. - I'm gonna get Isaiah Thomas. I'm gonna be like, hold on. - Yeah, I love that. - Wait, what's the secret? - Are you adapting Book of Basketball for a narrative feature film like this? - No, yes. - It ends with a serial killer. Did you know they spent 18 months doing this? - No, but that makes sense. - Yeah, it's also very venture to do that. - Where he takes, he takes. - Panic Room O2. - Five years go by between movies. - And he was supposed to do this Black Dahlia project that he wanted. It's interesting in the research. He envisioned it as this like movie miniseries. - Yeah. - This five part thing. - He's basically circling Mindtunter for about 15 years. - So I guess that would have been HBO. - One of the only places that could have gone. - I mean, Netflix didn't even exist back then. - Yeah, well, this is their HBO or Showtime? Where else would he have even go? - He had him pushing into digital and him pushing into streaming a couple of years ahead of everybody for a while there, yeah. - So anyway, that's one. It's a two part movie where it's like the first half of the movie is basically Zodiac. He's killing people. How do we figure that? And then the second part is all about the impact that all those murders had on all of these characters that were in there. And I like how, there's a clear shift when it's as four years later. We're now in a different movie, but it's the same movie episode. But I like how they just shift. It's a horror movie that's not a horror movie. It's super scary, but it's not, it's not saw. It's not Halloween too. Reporting procedural, only unlike in Spotlight and all the president's men that never saw of it. And then the big one, which I think, you know, is the easiest point to make about this, but it's this movie about fucking crazy obsession. Only in this case, what happens if you're obsessed with something you never get an answer, which is how CR feels about Joelle and Bid. You don't feel you have the answer at this point. You feel like Joelle and Bid will go out and he'll torch the rockets and then CR's like, maybe this case isn't close. I've been chasing the wrong guy. Joelle and Bid is Rick Marshall. Yeah, so I don't know. Anything else other than that stuff? I mean, the acting's superior. And then it's one of the best filmmakers the last 30 years. Yeah, it's also like, you know, he's just got a roster of people that he's been working with forever, you know, like, Ren Clice, the sound designer and Donald Graham, Bert, the production designer. Like he just has this codery of genius artisans who all know exactly how to work with him. And so he always gets what he wants. You might not always like what he gives you. And he's, you know, the last few movies have been much more divisive for him, but I think that this is kind of him going to phase two and getting like basically entering one of the most impressive sequences of moviemaking that we've seen in the century. And the movie itself, like the obsessiveness thing is just what resonates with me the most 'cause I'm one of those people. Like we're all three of us. Or just like we're rabbit hole people. Like we just get super into the stuff that we care about. We can't get outside of it sometimes. We can't see past it. And we like do lose the force for the trees, but sometimes the trees are worth spending time on, you know? And I really love that aspect of it. And I also am getting like, I'm starting to really realize the intention of the movie the older I get. The first time I saw it, I was like, oh Arthur Lee Allen, that's the answer. Cool, this is like a very convincing way of explaining this movie to me. And then over time you realize it's Arthur Lee Allen to these guys, but that's not enough. And it not being enough actually makes it interesting to spend more time thinking about. So it's like it's pretty profound. - Don't you think that's why we end up in the basement? - Among other places, yeah. - I think there's a lot of Zodiacs. - It's definitely Arthur Lee Allen. Wait, is it? - Yeah. - The scary thing about the moniker is that it could just stand in for evil. And that there's evil in one of two basements in California and there's evil out in the highway and there's evil with this guy who likes going skin diving. You know what I mean? Like there are different, like basically physical representations of what this thing, the Zodiac is. now I don't know if Fincher saw it as like a symbolic kind of, you know, more allegorical piece. I think he was very much doing it as a piece of journalism. But to Sean's point about the obsession, I think the thing that jumps off the screen, especially after you watch it a few times, in the making of documentary that comes with the 4K, but you can also watch it on YouTube. I think the prop master or the set designer talks about how when they were doing the San Francisco Chronicle building, that's cool. You know, they basically have recreated this newsroom inside of a post office in Los Angeles to shoot in. And they went to the Chronicle and then they had to go to a library in Michigan that had all the old microfeashes for 1969 San Francisco Chronicle newspapers. And they were like, we reprinted them on authentic newspaper so that they were just around in the news in the newsroom. And I was like, I don't know that. That could have just been a pile of, you know, New York Times is from last week if you wanted to. But I feel like the actors knew. And I feel like the people who were like working on the movie really did feel like they built this monument that, and it jumps off the screen somehow. And maybe it helps to know it. But you know what I mean? Like, you can feel the extra 10% that went into this movie. That's why one of the reasons I like almost famous so much. Like every single aspect of it, he's like, this has to be perfect. That's a 60, that's a 71 telecast one LA looked like in 1971. And this is what the ash tray looked like. But two movies made by guys reflecting on when they were 13 years old. I mean, that's really a big part of it too. Like when we were thinking about it, even you were describing Fincher being obsessed by the zodiac. And he describes him as kind of like his boogie man. Like I literally was like, that's kind of what Larry Bird was for you. He's like, he is legitimately not in a scary way. But he is like, a figure from your past when you were young, who looms large. And like these people, these things, they imprint on you. And then you just kind of spend your whole life thinking about them. Did you know that? But I would have loved nothing more than a zodiac like Syracur or running through Massachusetts in New England. Well, I would have as a little kid, I would have been the most fascinating thing happening in my life. And I mean, it completely explains his filmography. Like look at all the crazy, depraved shit that he's into because of the way that he gets fascinated by this stuff. Yeah, we watch seven. My son is banging out all these 90s and 2000s movies and we watch seven the other night. And you just forget like with some of these twists at the end. He's like, that's not going to be Gwyneth Poucher's head in the box. Is it? And I'm like, I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, it's fun to relive some of this stuff through people. Zodiac is one that like he didn't want to watch that one with me. He's like, I'm finsured out. You'd watch seven in Fight Club is like, I've had enough a fincher. Well, like, well, you'll circle back to different energy too. You might want to be a little bit older. It's well, it's also these fincher movies are invasive. Yeah. There's even panic room, which is a relatively simple movie. That's that's not you know, that's not a double feature movie. He's manipulating us. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you love minehunter as your favorite TV show probably of all time. I mean, it's it's definitely one of the best shows of the 21st century. I would say that. And it's got some a bill code to this. Yeah, I think that you can see in I think that the the Lee interrogation is essentially like a blueprint for a lot of what happens in minehunter where they're going to these sort of notorious killers and being like, what can we learn from you to help us to profile and to help us catch people in the future? And like it equally large, you know, there's a bunch of stuff in Northern California and minehunter. But it's, you know, it's equally about John David Carol. John Carol Lynch. John Carol Lynch. John Carol. So that scene in particular, which I'm sure we'll spend time on. Yeah. Is one of the most electrifying people talking to each other scenes I can ever remember in a movie theater. Yes. In the movie theater, I was vibrating during this scene. Now, it ultimately is not as impactful as you think it's going to be. Cause also it's like, it's like an hour and a half and in the movie, you're like, wow, we're getting near the end. They found him. I didn't know anything about the zodiac. I was not like a serial killer kid growing up. I didn't really follow this stuff. And the fact that the movie is just like, okay, that happened. And now we've got an hour more of movie. And the next hour is just like, well, we don't really know. Well, it's just really crazy choice. That's an amazing choice for somebody like Ben who's like, okay, I watched seven, I watched seven. And it's about these two cops who learn to work together to bring down this line. So he's like, Oh, what's the next sin? Exactly. It's like, but it's David, you know, it's it's the Kevin Spacey's sin that takes down David because it's like, he goes, he covets his wife. It's like, I get it, I get it. But this it's like, they catch him. And then because an eccentric handwriting expert disagrees with them, the zodiac killer is free, right? Even though he's like, he's now the sister, like, he's the zodiac. Yeah, the same glove size, same shoes. It's like a goat runs even deeper if you even believe in that idea because it's like, they did catch him for pedophilia. And he was in prison for years. So he was off the street and the letter stopped. And the letter stopped. And then it takes them years. Yeah, I mean, there's just like, it's all it's not just about obsession. It's also about information overload and getting lost in the information. And you can see by the end of the movie, the Toskey has just gotten lost, you know, that he has just because there's been so much. That's good. Fucking armistice mopping came and did a drive by. That was a tough one. We'll get into that. You know, that scene you talk about when they interrogated him, how great that was. And I, it's probably my most rewatchable scene because it's so much fun to watch. And the three actors kind of sizing him up. And the face is ruffalo makes in that scene where he's just, he's trying to stay deadpan. But when he's like, I suppose you'll want to know about the bloody knives in my trunk. And they're just like, that's a nice watch. You know, he sits down and he crosses his legs. And what's that guy's name? Elias Coteas. Yeah. And he just sees the boot. And he's like, yeah, does one of those. But there's like 10 of those. Well, one of the things with Fincher, that I, you know, he's such a stylistic, awesome director, right? And you think I am like, how things look. So he's a music video guy. He's so good at people talking. And I don't know if it's because he makes them do 800 takes for every scene. But he has some of the best dialogue scenes we've had this century. He talks, he definitely talks a lot in the commentary for this movie about making sure that the human behavior is right, making sure that it feels appropriate to how people would act. But I think he also does stylistic stuff to your point in that scene in particular where he doesn't do a lot of singles directly down the barrel of the camera in the whole movie, except in that scene. In that scene, you see every single person looking right into the camera. It's the only time we get the killer's POV, right? Because they're staring at him. I've got Michael Mann as good at this, too. Like, when we did thief, our favorite scene was the Diner scene where it's just two people talking for a while. Now, Michael Bayard had probably not as good as dialogue as the Fincher movies were. Like, I don't think Michael Mann could have done the first social network scene that would not have been in his movie. Yeah, yes, right. I mean, like, look, like Fincher at this period is moving into like this new phase where he's on digital. And his whole thing is he hates sincerity. Then he hates earnestness in performance. So basically like, there are two, I want to talk a lot about like David Fincher and you know, running a gulag while he's shooting this thing. And like, it's one of my favorite elements of talking about this movie. But this is the movie, too, where that myth started. Yes, because of Downey and Joel. Yeah. And uh, but basically, he's like, there's two things. A, I want them to like push past the point where they're like acting to achieve a single take that is the right take. Like, he's like, let's, let's actually work. Let's actually find something interesting. And second of all, the actors on his screen, as Mark Ruffalo said, is like, they're 10% of the screen. He's also looking at the way light hits the glass in the background. And if you watch some of those newspaper, the newsroom scenes, just try, go, go watch one of those on, on, on, online and watch the people walking around in the background. It looks like real life. It's not three people going, canola, rhubarb, blah, blah, blah, do each other. It's people actually doing jobs in the background. And apparently, Fincher would be like, yeah, man, like she would not be going to that office because she works for this guy. So she has to go to that office. Like that level of understanding of like, I mean, Fincher might be the zodiac. I, you know, he obviously kind of relates in some ways to the religions of these crazy people. The actual Fincher quote was films aren't finished. They're abandoned. Um, so you mentioned the run he goes on here. Is this Benjamin button, which randomly I watched last night? He used that immediately after this. Yeah. I would have cut the lady in the bed, hospital, the old Cape Blanchett, just sort of cut every scene with that. It's about a bit of my note. If Dave was coming to me, like, hey, what should I do, Simmons? Maybe he should come over for a while and you're just like, here's some notes for you. Start with the young bud. We enjoy that. Start with my cough. Just let go. So be like the top 55. Yeah. Top 50 problems. You're going to redo the top 50 pod with them too. You don't agree with me. I see you like limitless. That is probably my least favorite David Fincher movie. Um, wide to it. It is. It's really interesting. A magical marvel. Yeah. And a fascinating idea. And you can see him trying to like get his arms around sincerity. I feel like I wonder whether or not he was like spent. from Zodiac and was like, I can do all the like surface level like technical brilliance of this, but there's not. It's a whimsical fantasy. Maybe there's not like a full idea. And more, I don't know. It's a really fun swing and miss. It's also the only like proper literary adaptation that he did. Like obviously, uh, fight club was a novel, but like a kind of more classical old school movie. And like he had circled a number of movies like that for years, including like 20,000 leagues under the sea. And it's kind of the closest he got to make like making a John Houston movie. Um, but the thing I was going to say about that is that he's not a writer director. And like unlike most of the people that I lie in eyes, they're all like, Oh, tors. They're writer directors. He is like going script to script and he has his writers who he likes. But you know, the James Vanderbilt script, that was just like Disney option to the Grace Smith book. And then it fell out of and then Vanderbilt wrote it on spec because he loved the story. And love the book. And then somehow they sold it and he just kind of came on to the project for hire. And that makes him very different. Like it makes him very different from I think a lot of the way that we think about the great filmmakers the last 30 years. So he, so this movie zodiac button a year later, social network. And then dragon tattoo gone girl dragon tattoo gone girl. And that's all in like what six years. Yes. Seven years through gone girl, right? Yeah. Yeah. And all those to me, all of those movies maybe with the exception of button get better every time you watch them. Yes. I was recently rewatched dragon tattoo and I was like, this is absolutely awesome. The cast. Is this a 22 person cast like 22 people deep? Like it's, it's nuts. This is the cast they designed the on waiters for Jake Chillinghall coming off broke back at a nice point in his career. Donnie Darko was like, oh, too. And jarhead. Yeah. I'm like, Hey, this guy, he might be something and this was an important movie for him. And he's the star of the movie, Ruffalo, who was now in that zone of like, I'm going to do a weird romcom that sucks. I might do a decent romcom. I'll be in this weird indie movie. Then I'll be in an awesome movie. Then I'll be in another weird movie. Then I'll be in another awesome movie like he was just all over the map, but he'd been collateral a couple of years earlier. This movie and it's just every few years he had to have another good one. I love him in this movie. The only important downy movie, this was like right at the start of the comeback, almost down and out there. And the kids bang bang. And that's right. Yeah. Because bang bangs like three years earlier. Yeah. I think he had been like kids. Kids bang bang was like, now I can be insured again. Yeah. Yeah. And then this and then Iron Man, the next year. Yeah. That was it. Anthony Edwards, one of the most successful TV actors of all time, secret sauce of this movie. For sure. Logan Roy. Brian Cox. Brian Cox. Yeah. Charles Fleischer, we mentioned who the old people can remember from hook by Carter was also Roger Rabbit, one of those guys. Yeah. He was the head of arcade. He was Arcane Maroon, head of Maroon Studios. Do you guys remember that from Roger Rabbit? I don't know. Maroon cartoons. Do you guys remember that? Sean was attracted to Jessica Rabbit. I mean, Reddit. She was my zodiac. Yeah. Zach Renier. Yeah. One of those guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the one who came around and had Andy's back a little bit, he's the justice department guy in this. Yeah. He was a, he was in fight club. He's Ed Norton's Boston fight club. Philip Baker Hall. Sure would. I love hard sharp bees and butter in my ass. That's just what I like. It is funny. When he's like pruning his bushes when Jill and all comes and sees him, I've got to like I've got to think he's going to say something nice like Jake and he's going to video, the simple man. Yeah. The last Cateas little James LaGrosse, just a tiny, just a little dash, yeah, little dash it. Donald Logue. Yeah, Logue. John Carol Lynch. James LaGrosse has one of my favorite lines in the movie where he's like, good for him. When he's like, yeah, that guy's going to go catch the zodiac. Not Carol Lynch, fresh off Fargo. Yeah. This is kind of the peak for him. He was a Mr. Gunderson, right? Durmit Mulroney. Not sure ways in this movie. And Chloe Seventy. Fincher said. Durmit Mulroney. Chloe Seventy. We'll talk about momentarily. Maybe the hottest. She's ever looked. Durmit Mulroney. Fincher says he was just like, just one of my favorite guys doesn't really have anything to do in this movie. I don't know why he did it. We put him in a fat suit. I thought it was funny. Okay. He has like a very glaringly pop belly. That is not fair. Never worked together before. It's like, why is Durmit Mulroney was kind of a movie star? Yeah. And he's in four scenes and he's like, interesting. Don't get him. He's like, what do you want to do? Okay. Take a nap. Take a nap. Where does this rank for a Jalenhaw performances for you? It's the last in a very important era, but it is not my favorite era. It's the wide eyed Innocent Weirdo era, which is like how he got launched with the any darkness before this. It's after. Okay. So right after this stretch, this was going to be what's the most 2007 movie, 2007 aspect of this movie. For me, one of them was immediately after this end of watch prisoners and enemies, enemy comes. And then he's like, we're off. Like I am a fucking weirdo in every movie. My eyes are bulging out of my head. I do something strange. I'm just blown a line of cocaine directly into my cortex and I have insane energy, no matter what. And he still holds that to this day with like ambulance and roadhouse and everything else he's been doing. This is the last time it was like, he's sweet. Is there something wrong with him? You know, like that's kind of the energy that he's given. We got it. We're like, there is something wrong with him. We got to do prisoners just for Jalenhaw being like, why, why are you shopping for kids' clothes? Detective Loki. Yeah. It was funny doing a podcast with person with him, which I did probably like 70 years ago. Was that for the Boston Marathon movie? Yeah. When we had our old offices, totally normal guy. Yeah. Yeah. I kept waiting him for to be super weird and he just wasn't. Yeah, I met him. He was, he was totally normal. But in every movie, he's like, you want to go to heroin? Yeah. Just seems insane. Downey is just playing on it. It's like Downey karaoke in this movie. He's playing all the hits. I want to get like a little patron saint necklace of Downey in this movie and wear it all the time. Aquavilleville. Yeah. Downey's in his own movie that I also would have watched. If there was like a Paul Avery, there's this fleeting three seconds when Jill and Hall's character is walking home from work and he peeks into that bar, Morty's there. And all the people from this paper are just getting bombed. That was newspapers in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. Yeah. Like, you finish work. There was some dive bar. Like at the Boston Herald, it was JJ Folies, everybody would go to Folies after that. Yeah. There was a bar across the street from the inquire that was like a prerequisite. Allegedly had a phone line directly to the copy desk so the copy desk could call the bar. Yeah. It's an ask question. Every city has them. Yeah. And it was just like, I could have spent another 20 minutes with those guys just talking about like, fucking Dr. Jay, Dr. Jay Cummins, one of my favorite cuts in the movie is late in the movie after when Avery is like really kind of bedraggled and they cut to him and he's sitting in the barn. He's got the oxygen tank in the bar with him. Right. So John. And then roughly on the floor, man, what do you want from it? Roughly. So he's in. You can count on me. That was like his arrival movie. That's 2000. Mm-hmm. And he kind of had this could be the next one vibes for a while. I don't think it 100% happened for him the way maybe we might have thought would be fine in stops cards. I don't know what you mean, but he's also the Hulk and he was just in task. I mean, like, I feel like he's had like a really solid career, you know? Yeah. You wouldn't think he's a little too idiosyncratic to be, I don't know who you're thinking of. I've never, like, I mean, I've never been able to get a handle on what his career preference was because he just made a couple. How much you paying me? I'll take it. I know. But he was also like, I really care about the craft. I'm just in it. And it's like, which, which are you? Which one? Are you the craft guy? Are you the paycheck guy? I mean, he's both. I mean, that's the prop. Well, I'm 13 going on 30. I'm now you see me. I'm, you know, I'm in poor things, I'm in shutter island. Like, I work with the greatest filmmakers of all time. I've also made six Marvel movies. I kind of respected it. Like, what do you know what we really learned about him? They knew. They knew it. You cut him loose. This is a good, um, this is the pepper to that salt. This is like him just being like, finished the book. Like, he has some great lines and some great turns and like, Toskey could be like, you could really put a lot more mustard on this one. And he doesn't. He keeps him really like kind of grounded because the guy he's playing was a pretty legendary 70s detective because he's tied in with Dirty Harry and all this stuff. Yeah. He's boldly well-known guy. Yeah. I think this is my second favorite Ruffalo performance after you encounter me. The best. Yeah. I think that's the best he's ever been in a movie. And you can count on me. He seems like a real person, you know, he seems like somebody you've met and there's like something very tangible about kind of like the mistakes that he's making. And he has become like a little bit more of a caricaturish kind of actor, but he's very entertaining. Like, the spotlight thing is very memorable, but like, is it is a good acting? Like, it's not particularly good, but it's appropriate for the movie. Um, I feel this way in the Marvel movies where I'm like, is Mark Ruffalo just like doing bits? Like, what is this? Yeah. of a lot. The Toskey role is like a real performance where he's changing his voice, changes his posture, Fincher talks about all the stuff he brought to it where like Toskey at the time he learned was really having trouble with ulcers. So when he walks into the diner and he gets half of the BLT from Armstrong's The Tomato of because it would bother his stomach. He starts popping thumbs during the movie and you know he's taking an acid because he's having stomach problems. They don't explain any of that stuff but he has like a very serious actor. He's like I'm going to spend time with this guy research him and make choices. I don't always feel like he does that but when he does do it he's pretty much elite. It's a very calculated cultivated manicured performance. Yes. I really like it. It's very very very under control. Did you watch task? I didn't. Yeah, he's I mean like if you if you want to see late period ruffle it absolutely cooking. He didn't watch task because he watched poor things seven times. Just cranking it out times. It's good some good stuff. No, it's Bagonia. So I'm going to see a couple of Bagonia's directors commentary. Didn't see your notes. Did he do that? Did he do one for that? I don't know. Joe and Hal Downey Ruffalo your favorite at those three Craig in this. Ruffalo. I think Ruffalo is great. I think he's been the least corrupted by Marvel in my mind. I almost think part of it is because he never had to physically transform like the rest of these guys in the movie. So you just become the action figures like it's balls and becomes the whole and Ruffalo has always looked and seemed like a normal person. And I think it's why he's just a floor razor in every movie. I love Ruffalo. Robert Downey I think going back now I had never seen Zodiac until yet last night. The art the already Jay stick the Iron Man stick is like fully cooking in this movie. Yes. And there's a little weird to kind of play with that. It's still enjoyable. And I think he's very good in it. But it's hard not to be like I'm kind of watching Tony Stark here. I felt the set that way a little bit too. But in the moment, I'm sure you were like. I like it though. No, because the movie needed it. It needed a weirdo. He is like that in chaplain. You know, like he is like that in every movie. Like that was his thing. This is like what he's definitely in that and back to school with Rodney Danger. Totally. I don't know what he's going for that movie. He is. I mean, he's always kind of that like yammering sarcastic smarter than everybody guy. That's his screen persona, right? And it just so happens that he had like 48 years old managed to turn it into the biggest thing that happened to movies in the 21st century. Right. We're going to take a break. And then there's an Oscars discussion we need to have. And we're going to talk about the actual zodiac color and what we think happened. 2007 Oscars March 2008. This movie just gets shut out. Zero doesn't make best picture shocked by this zero. No best director. If you were doing the big picture back then, would you just have quit? Well, it came out in it came out in late February. And back then, that was a problem. Now, everything overall once came out in March, sinners came out in April. It's no longer a problem. They've changed the calendar. But if you put your movie out in February, you're telling the world in 2007. Don't worry about this. You don't have to go for this. Best picture. No country wins. Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, Darryl, be blood. We're doing that again. It's just cracking the list. I don't know who gets bumped up. Juno would go out. Juno would go out. Do you know how to moment though? No seven people. You've got really excited about it. Sure. There were new actors. People got fired up about it. It was Jason Reibon. Yeah, I like it. I think it's a good movie. I like it. I think it gets bumped. I really like atonement. I mean, personally, yeah. Directors was Cohen's one. Julian Schnabel Schnabel. The diving bell and the butterfly. Yeah, you see that one out here. Jason Reibon, Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson. I didn't forgot Gilroy. I got nominated. That's the best actor, which I think Jake would have been eligible for. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Guy named Daniel DeLewis. He takes it from Daniel. I think we're going to keep that where it is. Yeah. That's a good one. Clooney. It's a good win. Tommy Lee Jones in the Valley of Ila. Ila. Ila. I remember. I can't remember honestly. It's been a minute. It's a biblical reference that had to be go more. Yeah. For you know, promises. Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd, the demon barber, what the fuck were we doing there? Jesus Christ. We were really enthralled to have a big death at this time. I Jake could have taken that spot. Depp and Big Burton. Uh-huh. You see in that Sweeney Todd? No. Have you seen it staged? I saw it on that and Broadway or did you? Yeah, I saw it in the as a play. Who was cool? Do you remember who was in the role? I saw it in Boston. I saw it with my dad. Okay. That's what it was. Interesting. Oh, I mean, also a movie about a serial killer. I might have seen a little too young. I was like, what's going on? There are any of these people? The barber's a demon? That's the problem. It wasn't seeing Halloween when you were like, so here's coming up. There's five demon barbers. Best actor in a supporting world. This is when it gets tough. Bardem wins for no country. Fine. I support it. Casey Affleck and Jesse James. Yep. Really good. Really good. Really good. Really good. Seymour Hoffman. Charlie Wilson's war. He's really good in that movie. Incredible. I can't kill him on that one. He owns the movie. How whole-brook and into the wild. That feels like an old guy getting reward by the Oscars. And then it is a good performance, but it is exactly what you just described. And then Wilkinson for Michael Clayton who's good. Yes. Ruffalo probably takes that whole whole-brook spot. I'm guessing. Right? Ruffalo over Downey. You tell me. It's Downey for me, but it's also personal. He's also playing my kind of music in this movie. Let's go with either. I think one of those guys has to be in there. I think in a just world, it's the kind of thing where we just saw two actresses get into supporting from sentimental value. Like, why would you not just put both guys in from Zodiac? This was actually the worst above these best-writing adapted screenplay. No country wins. Atoneman away from her diving bell in the butterfly and there will be blood. Zodiac, I guess, which they spent four years on in the screenplays, I just don't understand that one at all. But this speaks to how the movie was regarded in 2007, which was not. I think Fincher was considered such a commercial director and most of what he was doing because he came out of music videos was oriented around success and seven being such a surprise hit after recovering from the Alien 3 issue. That this movie being a commercial failure, I think, was really held against it around all this stuff. You and Alien 3 guys here? I like the look of it, but I think it's got a lot of, I mean, he had a terrible time making it. I think there was a lot of recutting and rewriting and stuff. All right. So we mentioned this movie was adapted from Zodiac 1986 and Zodiac unmasked in 2002 and they spent all this time interviewing witnesses suspects, our family members suspects, the surviving victims, they interviewed mayors. And Fincher said, "So much time had passed, memories are affected, the different telling of the stories would change perception." So whenever we had doubt, we went with the police reports. Ruffalo's character basically says that in the movie when he's telling grace meant to basically, "You gotta give this up." He's like, "Too much time has passed. People can't remember shit anymore." So I think Fincher slid that in there. It's almost like the philosophy of the movie, right? Yeah. It's like if you don't spring out of now, we're in trouble. Vanderbilt, the writer, pitched the story as, "What if Gary Trudeau woke up one morning and tried to solve the Sun of Sam?" Interesting. They didn't want to glamourize the killer. Fincher said, "That would have turned the story into a first-person shooter video game. We didn't want to make the sort of movie that Syracos would want to own." I like that because you're not, if you're like a future possible Syracolor, you're not watching this like, Arthur Lee, I want to be this dude. This guy's really cool. Amazing things that I've found about when reading about the actual Zodiac killer is that there's a couple of unconfirmed Zodiac letters where he's like chiming in on movies. He's just giving takes and he's like, "Exercist, really good satire." There's even one that they're not sure it's from him, but he's like, Badland, like he hates Badlands. He's such a big glorifies murderers. So there was a bunch of unconfirmed material and I just could have been some wacko writing. But it was like this guy just shooting from the hip rock reaper. He got to get the Zodiac killer's top 5 list for watchable movies. I'm cast, seriously. Can he bounce back on your list, you know? He's weighing in on Rick Perry in the 75 warriors. Do you believe in these guys? See into the Devil Wars Prada where does he land on that one? Oh, he probably would love that. Zodiac timeline. So they don't have the first attack in the movie for a very specific reason though. Explain. But they don't have any living witnesses and they say they were like, "We're not going to start with something where we can't." The ones that they depict are ones that they had living witnesses to be able to like corroborate some of the details about. Yeah, it also allows the movie to be both introduce a kill at the very top, but also be in media res for the rest of the people around it. So like the newspaper and the cops get to be like, "We know there's an issue." Like something is building here as opposed to starting all the way beginning. So when you watched this for the first time last night, did you think the murders at the beginning of the movie were the first murders? Or did it make sense as they explained it that there was a murder before it? I assume they were the first murders, just watching it. Yeah, so I think it's a little bit of a flaw in the movie. I don't think they made it clear enough. And Riverside is the first murders? Yeah. Okay. But Finter says that he's not totally convinced that Riverside is Zodiac. That there is like, that's part of the genius of the movie, right? Yes. Is that there's so many incidents in which people are claiming credit as Zodiac for doing them. but Zodiac is whether he's smart or crazy or however you wanna describe it. We don't really even know what he's responsible for. - I gotta be honest, it was much more easier to try and like read about the Kennedy assassination than it is to read about Zodiac killer because the Zodiac, it just has so many like different like perspectives and permutations and like this could have been him and there's five guys over here who think it's him and then the sky, it's, I think just the fact that it took place over so many years over so much mileage, so many miles like it's just much more complicated to wrap your head around. - So Lovers Lane, that one that starts the movie, that's July 69. - That's Starlean Farron, right? - They get, and the guy Mike Majo survives, we see him at the end of the movie. One month later, Zodiac letter to the San Francisco Chronicle with the coded messages gets, and then September kills the two law students on the, on the water bank. - Lake Barius. - I can, it's the one, kills the girl. - Okay, but in the other guys to arrive, yeah. I can recreate some of the screams later if you want to help me. (laughing) - Like privately? - Well, I can do the, I'll do my quint jaws in personation just for that. - Save them for one team. - That comes back from the Achilles. (laughing) Grace Smith makes the danger of Sanamo, the mall connection to the most dangerous game, 1932. Sean, you have that on 4K? - I have the Eureka edition of it on Blu-ray. Yeah, 1932, quality film. - Counts it. - John McCray, right? - What was going on in this movie? The villainous Count Zeroff hunting live human prey? - You never read this story. This was like a, this was given to us in seventh grade English class. - I remember the story. I don't understand why they made it a movie in 1932. - And then they made it a game with Ice-T, right? - Yes, that game, that movie is called Trust Pass. - No, isn't that just called the most dangerous game? Or game? - I feel like they made this movie every 10 years. Didn't they do the, what was the COVID year? There was the hunt. - The hunt. - It's like, what's hunt humans? - What is that Ice-T movie? - It's not called Trust Pass. I thought it was called Dangerous Game. - Yeah, maybe it's called Dangerous Game. - Anyway, the original movie is surviving the game. - Surviving the game. - That's right. - Is only like 80 minutes. You can feel that they're stretching out a short story. But it's a pretty good movie for the 30s. - Then we get the cab driver shot and killed. Zodiac males the blood stain shirt to the chronicle. - Yep, taunting letter. - It's talking a lot of smack. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Counting Anthony Edwards of serial killers. (laughing) - He's staring at the bench. - Yeah. (laughing) - Little Dylan Brooks in there. (laughing) - Someone claim to be Zodiac starts fucking with this lawyer, Marvin Belley, on a talk show. - Yeah. - It's up, but it's not really him. - Then our guy, Roger Avery, played by Downey, finds this 1966 reverse-eyed murder that he thinks is tied to it, that the police missed. Then they interview Arthur Leon in '71. They noticed the Zodiac watch. So he's the Zodiac watch. He's got same gloves, same glove size. He's got the boots. He's kind of moved around in the general vicinity of where these murders were. - You don't find out to the end of the movie that he lived near the first victim. - Yes, 'cause he, right. - Yeah. - Also has a trailer full of fucking weird shit, including a wooden dildo. And there's 19 other things that seems suspicious, but the handwriting expert just kills it. He's like, nah, nah, that's not him. - Well, it's really hard to watch it and just understand the difference between circumstantial and hard evidence, and the idea of coincidence versus incrimination. - There's just a dramatic thing where they just can't get a warrant to search his trailer before he cleans out his trailer and moves. I mean, that's the most important thing that happens in this entire case. If they're able to search him, and if they had approached this differently, we might not have a movie or even a case. It might just be totally different. - See, how would you compare this to Pablo Torres' aspiration investigation? - A lot of circumstantial evidence, but can't find the smoke you've got. And Paul Mervers is Arthur Lee Allen. - He should address him. - They can have a similar vibe. - Yeah, they do. - Paul Merren and Pablo spinning out a little bit like at the grace of it there. - I'm not the CEO of aspiration, and I wouldn't tell you if I was. - Oh, you're talking about why we planted those trees. Well, I can explain that. - Kauai Leonard was paid properly under the cap rules. Then stuff stops. That's a coincidentally Arthur Lee Allen's a jail for the second time for molesting people. - Yeah. - Another red flag. - Definitely red. - Adding that to his draft combined file. Multiple molestations. (laughing) - By 1976, Grace Smith is just losing his mind and that's his writing book starts getting the heavy breathing phone calls because guess who's out of jail? Arthur Lee Allen. And he figures out he lived close to the first victim. Figures out the birthday thing, which they somehow fucked up where he mentioned I'm gonna kill somebody today. It's my birthday. And all the circumstantial evidence. But by the way, it's Amber Dextrous. We forgot to mention that letter. And then eight years later, after Grace Smith's book has come out, Mike Micheaux. Somehow they have not asked to look at an Arthur Lee Allen photo for 12 years here. They're like, "What about this guy?" He's like, "Yeah, that's him." - Yeah, that's him. - Pretty good, yeah. - And then Arthur Lee Allen dies of a heart attack. And that's basically the case against Arthur Lee Allen. - Yeah. - Part of the genius of the movie is the way at portrays bureaucratic disorder. The fact that there's so many police departments and police officers and detectives. - No internet. - And no centralizing force really. The fact that the FBI is not as involved in this case as it would be in 2025 is kind of fascinating. Like, mine hundred in part is about the kind of development of forces to account for these kinds of crimes. And that doesn't exist here in the same way. And so you've just kind of got all of these local precincts and districts, some from major cities, some from much smaller towns in California. - And all these rules where they couldn't really just think about like one. - Grace Smith's project is that he tells Avery about on the houseboat. He's like, I was just thinking if we could just write everything down. And if we could just basically like organize all the facts of the case that it might jog something loose. But we take it for granted that there would be this database that has all that information. It's like, it's the same thing with hospitals where you're like, they used to just have, the charting by hand and it would be like, sometimes if somebody screwed something up, that would be a huge deal. It's the same thing for police work back then where it was just like, one guy has a telefax, the other doesn't. One person took good notes, the other didn't. You know, like one guy's pissed at that other jurisdiction. And you know. - In fact, Fincher says that the movie exists and that the entire investigation kind of operated in the way that it did was because Armstrong, Anthony Edwards's character, took such goodness that there was so much detail and information that they could even just pull from for the movie, let alone for the investigation itself. And if you don't have that raw material, you can't solve crimes, you can't do your job the way that you're supposed to. It's really interesting 'cause like, we think of that shit as really boring. And I remember for years hearing from my dad about like the kind of drudgery that comes with police work. But when you're trying to solve a major crime that is national news, you need to put all that information somewhere. - Well, that's why all three of those movies we mentioned earlier, spotlight all the presence been in this movie. The drudgery you can feel, it's like fuck. All right, we'll go through these files. - Yeah, it's boring. - All the president's been as that famous scene when they're in the library and it's just like, the crane goes up and they're just like, all right, I guess we gotta go through these. - That's like, you're going basketball reference, you know? - Yeah, this isn't gonna do itself. I gotta get all this data. - I gotta find out what this guy's nickname is. - Arthur Lee Allen, other stuff with him, taught high school students when he was a teacher how to use letter symbols and then decode them. That was on the record. An incredible swimmer. And then found with a bloody knife, the same that as the bluff murderers, which he said was used to kill a chicken that day. - For dinner, yeah, in normal. - And then again, multiple pedophilia stuff. So there was, and lived in a trailer full of squirrels and weird shit and he checked every box except for this one hand or anything. So there was this other thing, this happened in December. So last month, an amateur sleuth, self-taught cryptography expert named Alex Bayber, West Virginia, who said one of the reasons he was able to pull this is 'cause he has autism that makes him fixate on things until he can figure out what happened. And he used all of these AI programs and he claimed that he figured out the zodiac thing. And a lot of it came down to the 13 letter names with the mysterious symbols. He put it through, it came back 71 million. Then it came, and he kept narrowing the number down until he could narrow it down to 14 and landed on this name Marvin Merrill, who was an alias assumed by Marvin Margolis, who was investigated for the Black Dali murder, who was 21 at the time and had all of the same stuff the zodiac killer would have done. Was a Navy medic, was good at like, just doing quick amputations and shit like that, was really bitter about how the Navy thing happened. And then a year before his death, did this drawing of somebody named Elizabeth that looked like the Black Dalia and this guy Alex Bavarian's like, this guy did both. - Yeah. - These were the two great unsolved murders of the 20th century or Syracur or whatever. And this guy's saying, - It's actually, it's actually like the demon of cat, like the devil of California, right? - Yeah. - The only thing that I always, stumble on whenever I hear that kind of insinuation that the Black Dahlia killer and the Zodiac killer were one and the same is like, there's a great distance to travel to commit these crimes and where the person is living and how they're doing that and you hear this over and over again. It's like, so somebody had like a 14 hour round trip visit to Marin to go murder a 19 year old that he was in Southern California up to the Riverside killings and then moved to the bed. I mean, you could do that stuff back then. Now you can't like the guy who, what was the guy in North Dakota or whatever that was recently who killed the randomly killed, like the four people in that in that dorm. And he was studying criminal law or something creepy, but he can't, he drove and then he drove back to where he was thinking he would, but then didn't realize his cell phone was being tracked. These guys always forget about the cell phone. Craig, what are some of the mistakes you make as you kill people around Southern California? Up and down the coast. I've had to stop. It's up. Yeah. You also, you do have, you have legacy in San Diego, Los Angeles and Northern California. We know that a real killer happens. Yeah. I didn't realize this. I didn't realize Fincher was from North Bay, from Marin. You didn't realize this was a sting operation and we've identified you as a serial killer captain. Yeah. Yeah. The world was right outside. I'm super far from where I grew up. Yeah. The reason I don't think the Bamer theory is true because I don't think somebody would shut that off for 20 years. Yes. Yeah. I agree. I think you're, once you're, once you're going, you're going. There was also somebody, there was like a university of Maryland. No, I'm trying to remember who was it like response, but there's something called like case breakers. That's like a bunch of X FBI, justice department, people and, you know, like they basically tried to solve cold cases. Yeah. And they named someone, it was this guy Greg Post, but he was like, he made, that was almost like sound of like really true detective where he had like a criminal posse and would like indoctrinate people into this crew and they would like, Maraud Northern California, but. Well, that's another theory with this. I think there was some DNA with Sherry Bates that they were linking to him or something. I can't remember. Yeah. Well, one of the other theories is that this was multiple people. Yes. That's the one I filmed. I think I described. I think I kind of taps into that a little bit with with the basement guy. And could people have been working together? The creepy thing about Bob Vaughan and the basement scene is the idea that there is a connection between these different people. Yeah. But that they all knew each other and that they were all kind of like on the same frequency. I'm such an Occam's razor person with this stuff though. And we talked about this when we did JFK on the show, right? Where you guys were like, I'm ready to spend four hours trying to figure out where all the pinboard lines meet. Yeah. And to me like we didn't go for. And we can we can read JFK as soon as you want because I'd love to watch it again. But in the movie and based on anything that I've read, it feels very clear to me that Arthur Lee Allen killed Darlene. That's the one thing that I'm like, this makes too much sense. And like the Joe kind of knew who it was. Yes. Right. He he identifies him. Yeah. The distance between them, the preexisting relationship, the way in which the murder is happening because of the information that he had around that. So that's one thing that you can kind of put your arms around and say, this makes a lot of sense. It's everything else. The information splatter, the variation in the crime style that is just a little bit harder to make sense. That he might have gotten help. Yeah. 70 million dollar budget made $85 million. Barely made even bad little bad for Fincher. It was like, wait, we give you a lot of money for this. That was worldwide too. In the US made like 35 million dollar back. I mean, like he just goes on this run now. Yeah. 157 minute runtime. We have a new category in 2026. The Craig Century Club. Craig feels like every movie should be 100 minutes. Craig, this was a minus 57. Yeah. What are your thoughts? What's the ideal runtime? I understand that this movie is supposed to feel like this long painful process and it needs to be long. It can't be 100 minutes. I'm willing to admit that. I think you could have probably cut 15 minutes. MGM was going to make this movie and they had a hard rule that said two hours and 15 minutes max and then I ended up taking it to Paramount. There is a, I think, a section in the middle where it's kind of ruffalo just running into dead ends for a while. That starts to feel slow. It's like the first, the Robert Downey Jr. First 50 minutes is great. The Jill and Hall stuff really picks up and flies at the end. I do think there is, there is a 15 minute chunk in the middle that could probably be cut, to be honest. Directors cut it's longer and they had a two minute kind of interstitial when it does the four years later. He cuts something about basically all the music over the four years and basically fingering it on. And some news like reports of like, oh, and now this is happening. The screen goes to black. I would have put that in. I feel like that part of the movie is pretty clumsy where it's like clearly edited. Yeah. He almost seems pissed off. It's like fine. Here's your four years later graphic. Fuck you. Mother fuckers. I just spent four months making this two minute montage of four years of movies. Well, there's music. There's rumors of a three hour and 10 minute cut that was submitted to the studio that they, that I haven't seen. That's not, I mean, they did the really nice 4k and there's a director's cut on the Blu-ray with like, that has the extra avery and a little bit of stuff. Not a lot. It's all like 40 seconds. There's something like that. Sean, I said on the another 48 hours rewatchables a couple days ago that that is my number one release to cut. So there's 25 minutes extra. And apparently another 40 minutes and it's a totally different movie that they reveal the zodiac killer isn't that they don't they don't do that. And there's no sign that that cut has even existed in a warehouse. We got to find out from Walter. What featured it at the last minute? They decided it needed to be 95 minutes. But there was all this cut 25 minutes out. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. But that's what's your number one release the cut. Snyder cut. No, I don't know. Most of the cuts are out there, right? Like the legendary ones like Kingdom of Heaven and Blade Runner and all that all that stuff's been made available to us, right? I don't know. Yeah, we were doing this for another 40 and I couldn't really think of another one besides the one I the other one I came up with was Eyes Wide Shut release the Kubrick right before he died cut the interview. There wasn't there's an interview with the editor of that film that came out when the Blu-ray when the 4K was released the kind of last year. And he said the version that is on the criterion disc is the version the Kubrick wanted out that that is not been in. And then when the camera pans back, you can see the gun being pointed at him as he says it. Yeah. By the illuminati. Yeah. I mean, it's possible that there's another version of that movie. What happened? He's dead. Watch party is another category for us where we decide what is the best setting for a watch or a rewatch. This is a true solo one for me. This is a CR solo. Yeah, this is like everybody. Clearly, T-shirt, no pants. The training. The tubin. Yeah. This is my wife went to New York for the weekend. I'm porky big in it all day. The tubin. Oh, my God. Brad Jerebert, our guy. Yeah. Every rewatchable. We read the Rod Jerebert review four stars. He said, Zodiac is the all the president's been of serial killer movies. Signed me up with Woodward and Bernstein played by a cop and a cartoonist. Then he says, Fincher is an elegant stylist on top of everything else. Here he is. He finds the right place and style for a story about persistence in the face of evil. Rodge, you like this? Check the letterboxes, characters, plot. Story. I can always count on Rodge, except when you can't. I do think that it's kind of weird to try to have a conversation about evil and the idea of evil, but it comes up over and over again in all these Fincher movies. And he's like, definitely thinks it's a little funny. Oh, yeah. But also is completely terrorized by it and the idea that like these people died, you know, like it's not a joke. And yet there is this real sense of black humor in the movie and a real acceptance of not knowing, never knowing what really happened. I think his way of showing empathy and sensitivity to the victims is by not making their deaths seductive and not making their deaths. He doesn't romanticize them at all. Well, so he has seven guys, the fucking craziest person, probably who's ever killed anyone in a movie. But it's like, oh, this guy would have won Jeopardy. You have the game, which is the craziest prank anyone's pulled on a family member. It's such a mean spirit movie. That movie's nuts. You have Fight Club, which is just one of the kind of secretly most vicious Ben was watching that it has like I forgot how crazy chaos of your fingertips now. Panic Room, which is basically these three burglars just going as far as you could possibly go with torture torture to single mom and her 12 year old. Yeah. And you have this movie and then he kind of cools off a little bit, but so she's gone girls pretty perverted. Yeah. Then it goes back to Gone Girl dragon tattoos. Crazy dragon. Some of the torture scenes and dragon tents who were saying like Benjamin Bunning cools off. Yeah. Comes back with social network. The biggest sociopath he's ever done a movie about Mark Zuckerberg, Dragon Tattoo, and then Gone Girl. So for the most part, he's really fascinated by what makes somebody kind of break. And what what encourages them to do things that we know are not in polite society or bad. Yeah, are wrong. My favorite venture quote is still people are fundamentally perverts and I find that interesting. It's paraphrasing. But yeah. But you guys have 500,000 text, text where it's backed and forth. A couple of perverts. It would have been funny if during this whole run, he just made like one random sports movie like Glory Road. Yeah. I was like, I'm going back to the day when you're six days, the first all black starting five guys getting corrupted by like a betting ring and shooting steroids the entire time. You'd watch it though. It'd be meticulously crafted. I honestly, I would watch anything Fincher did. Me too. I just think there's a style to his stuff that you know immediately. It's like when we always talk about writers when you can cover the byline and you know the writer is like, Fincher, you know, all right, most we watchable scene. The lover's lane murder is fucking creepy. I don't like flash flashlights as a murder scene gimmick really freaked me out. Just putting the flashlight on top of the gun. Just like when they do this, it never goes well. The herty-gurty man though is just an amazing, I love all the play host stuff at the beginning to just like that, the fireworks, that static tracking shot of the suburbs and the fireworks and stuff. It's a really, really good first six minutes like it's you're just you're in. It's you right in the in the place at that time. And also if you think about it through the eyes of Fincher, it's like him just like rebuilding his childhood. I want to just mention Grace Smith reading the decoded letter with Roger watching along. We get a little back and forth with them in the chronicle Paul. You keep saying Roger. You get that Roger. Yeah, Roger. Roger Avery from Paul fiction. Thank you for correct to me. Paul. Why don't you keep saying Roger? Because we know who Roger Avery is. He's the screenwriter, Roger Avery, Paul Avery is the journalist. Thank you, Chris. I knew I was going to have name mess ups in this. You got a lot on your mind. You're trying to find the Joker. And then when they, we find out he gave himself the name, I am the zodiac. The bluff murder. Do you have a version of that? When did you say I am the Boston sports guy? Well, that was when there was a Boston movie guy. Are you sending coded messages? Is that what it was? This is Boston movie guy doing reviews. You probably hated, you probably read to them age 12 being like this guy sucks. On microfeesh. Like how was it getting access to the Boston movie guy? Boston movie guy. So I was like, I'll be Boston sports guy. And it may be me and the movie guy can know, like, we might have, we might have tried a cross promotion. The homework out. That great. Huh. Interesting. The bluff murder. And the running for most unsettling murder scene ever, I don't know what, there's no music. You don't know it's coming. All of a sudden you see the knife and then just people getting stabbed and screaming. It's awful. Such a tough rewatch because you're just like, dude, look up, you know, because his girlfriend is like, Hey, there's a guy watching us and he's just like, ah, it's a free country. It's fine. Apparently it was accurate to how that actually happened. Or is it Brian Hartnell, the guy who's who stabbed but survives was tried to disarm the guy, you know, tried to be kind of casual and comfortable, so to kind of keep him at peace. So he wouldn't attack him. But he's wearing an all black jumpsuit and a hood and then necklace and then and just the valley. It looks like the living embodiment of murder. Yeah. I think murders and peaceful locations are creepier too. Mm-hmm. And they're like this nice, idyllic place. Yeah. Right. That's the other thing about that murder is everybody's alone and it seems like it should be the most beautiful experience you could possibly have with someone you care about. Denathave's Benihana word. Would you go seen stealing location for the buff or somewhere else? I'd probably go mortise the bar, but I like the diner at the end, diner at the end. There's some great diners in this movie. Yeah. That's where you watch what's seen Logan Roy does a live TV show with fake zodiac. Sam, I need to get back to the Pierce family today. Are you in or are you out? Melvin Belai is such a beautiful 70s figure. We don't have people like that anymore. Yeah. Or it's like that guy was a famous lawyer who would just show up on TV all the time. You know, some Melvin Belai knowledge. He was the one who suggested to the Rolling Stones that they moved the venue to Altamont. That's right. We might want that one back. He's in Gimme Shelter. Yeah. He had his hands and a lot of things. You stop it with that gas chain, but shit, Sam, I need to know it all out. Well, fuck off. I can't watch Brian Cox and anything after succession. I literally can't. I just wait for him to become Logan Roy. Not even Hannibal actor. No. No. Logan Roy ruined him for me in a good way. He is also the voice of McDonald's. I think about that when he does that, too. Him going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's the craziest thing. So weird. I think he's actually done like a lot of VO stuff, but I'm just like, damn, this guy must just be like the direct deposit. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me. Eat this filet fish. You'll fuck off. The Ioni Sky car ride scene. I just have holy fucking shit written down for this. This is a great rewatch because she's so stupid. First of all, she has her kid. It's like, what are you doing? Why are you pulling over? And then he's like, I fixed it. Just like, oh, thank you. And then the terror of realizing he didn't fix it. And then they do kind of the, it's almost like a no country for old men jump cut ahead of time when you think something horrible happens when she's screaming on the side of the room. She's screaming to throw the baby out. Baby is fine. Just walk him with the limp, I guess. I'm going to throw your baby out the window. Yeah. That's great. Please don't do that anymore. I just wrote down for the next scene, Downey and Jake just cooking. And it starts with that. Does it bother you when people call you shorty? Does it bother you when people call you retard? And then he goes to Downey. And it's like, people call me retard. It's like, no. Do you know what I'm saying? Do people call me names? Yeah. Do you like retard? No. No. The laugh line when Shorty hits him with that, though, is really, really funny. Yeah. And it keeps going. They end up with the Halloween car, the gun range. I just like when they're hanging out. You've been around the block a couple of times. What do you think Shorty's compact package was? Coffee guy in the Chronicle newsroom. I think he's doing fine. I'm going to say-- Do you shine in? Like, what is-- Did that cut 5% bumps every year or what? Is it the same as probably a checkered history for him in his 20s? Sure. Might have spent some time. That's a trouble. Yeah. But it was a way around to switch blade. Maybe he had been incarcerated for a couple of years there. Yeah. So it's happy to be wearing it. I just love that towards the end of the movie when Downey is getting basically fired. And he's like, Shorty, let's go for one. Shorty's like, yeah, sure. It's like, Shorty, you're fucking working. Yeah. But there's a scene between Avery and Grace Smith before that, where they go to the bar together, the Aqua Velva scene, where they're getting to know each other, which is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. And then there's a great moment when Avery's like asking Grace Smith about himself. And he's like, what do you like to do? And he's like, I love to read. I enjoy books. And Avery's like, those are the same thing. That's the same thing. And he's like, we could no longer ignore this drink. Yeah. The whole scene where he's just like, you wouldn't make fun of it if you tried it. And they cut to an hour later, Avery's drinking them in the bar. It's not important. It's not important. Grace Smith is like, look at my co-breaker book. They're so good together. Interrogating Arthur at work, we talked about this scene. Oh, yeah. That's. I think this is my most rewatchable scene. That's it. I love this scene. Searching Lee's place. Hmm. The squirrels. The squirrels. The wooden dildo is the fucking grossest thing you could have probably added to this movie. Yeah. I like searching. Can we get a search warrant? We can. Oh, we got one. And then we go in and whatever the place is of the person. It's just way worse. Yeah. It's just way more disturbing and awful than you would ever imagine. Buffalo Bill's still number one most disturbed place. I think if you're gonna. We could build a small Mount Rushmore of disturbing places that get searched. It's definitely Arthur Lee's trailer, Buffalo Bill's basement, the house and the drug dealer house and gone baby gone with all the newspaper on the windows. Something in seven. There's a couple different. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's, I mean, the, uh, uh, David Desmeltchen house in, uh, in Prisoners, right? Oh, that's great. That's the top five right there. You know, we're here. In the suit case and it's got the snakes in it. It's fucking incredible. Second Prisoners reference. Yeah. Interesting. Kind of. Circling now. Circling. Yeah. The basement scene. Rick didn't draw any posters. I do the posters. I do the posters. I'm a self. The jailer house, like, that, that's, this is the one scene for me that when I saw the movie, I was like, this is one of the most scared I felt in a movie in, in, in my entire life, seeing it in a movie theater. And now it doesn't, doesn't work as much, doesn't hit us hard. I think I have, I don't, I don't know, I feel, it's, I've seen it too many times. It's the only movie. It's only part of the movie I feel that way. Because you feel like it's totally different or because you, it's like, it feels like so. He's trying to scare you and I know he's doing, like, movie stuff. Yeah. In that scene where he's trying to make you uneasy, the whole movie makes you uneasy because the way it happened. The way it happened. I think the worst nightmare you could have as somebody is, is willingly going into somebody's basement and then realizing you might not get out. Yeah. Right. That's upsetting. Yeah. And it's the way he shoots it, like, he's, he starts backing up, he's like, okay, I'm going to get going. And the guy just turns the lights off and he's in the dark and it's like, all right, what's happening? I mean, yeah. I saw, like, hearing the footsteps on the top, what was going on there? I think it's illustrative of Grace Smith, the character in the film, finally confronting the stuff that Chloe Sevene's character was so worried about. Yeah. Where she's just like, putting yourself out there going on television, you're writing about him. Like, well, and you're so obsessed, this guy's like, let's just go back to my house. It's like, sure. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, he brings his baby at the middle of the night just to meet with Toskey, like, also, they get in the house, closes the door and the guy locks it from the inside and takes the key. And at that point, Grace Smith should be like, wait, what's going on? Yeah. That's kind of what I mean. But that's kind of what I mean about the way that the movie's made where when you're watching the movie for the first time, you're like, this is getting really, really uncomfortable. But then when you watch it with a little bit of distance, you're like, they showed us the key. locking, you know, to make you uncomfortable. But it's still is really effective. - It's also this weird 50/50. I mean, we could talk about this later in the pod, but like, that point in the movie, you're experiencing the case the way, I think Fincher wants you to think Gracemith's experiencing it's so manic and it's so like, all of a sudden, it's like everything is about Rick Marshall and you're like, wait, what happened with? - It's a good point, and who is Rick Marshall? Yeah, we don't even know where we're talking about. You're a random anonymous phone call, and now all of a sudden, we've got a new-- - I have a new suspect, yeah. - Jake goes to Ruffalo's house 'cause he figured out the birthday thing. - Yep. - Mm-hmm. I think this is one of the things I miss about the 70s and 80s is you could just show up at somebody's house and it wasn't completely insane. - You want to test that out and have-- - No, I don't think you can do it anymore. - You're just like, I'm just knocking on you. - I'm the door. - Build a scene who will return and be its back. - See our beets back. - You have to get out of bed, your wife goes, I'll make some folders. - Yeah. - Of the three of us, I think he would like that the least. - I don't want to be disturbed. - But not anymore than that. - I don't like when people come over. - And yet. - Jake, last thing Jake goes to see Lee at the hardware store, which I think also gets the Fortune 3 clap award for most giftable moment, the stare down. - Yeah. - I think, what's the John Carol Lynch? - John Carol Lynch, yeah. - Great face changes in this movie by him. - Yeah. - 'Cause he has like a nice face, right? Where he's like, hey, can I help you? But then it drops into the evil face. That's a really hard thing to do. And he does it very subtly. - He's a really talented actor. You mentioned that he's in Fargo where he's just kind of pure warmth, right? He's just supporting March about that whole movie. He's in, sorry baby, this movie that came out this year, where he has a very similar thing where he's really empathetic to Ava Victor and the movie in one scene. But in this movie, he seems like he could be the most deranged person in the history of America. - So what do you have from us, we watch? Can I just throw a one that you didn't mention? - Yes. - Which is, is it with Roger Avery? - Yeah. It's Toskey and Armstrong doing the crime scene for the Taxi Cab. - Taxi Cab. That's the first animal crackers moment. And it's also just, it's just Fincher making a mini cop movie in the middle of this movie where they shot that in LA and used Bay Area digital backdrops to recreate the San Francisco street. But it's got all the like, yeah, but you're not dumb 'cause you waited for him to park the car. All the recreation and the forensic stuff and the pathology stuff is so awesome. And then that last shot of Toskey gets out of the cabin and he walks right up to the camera. And then the David Shire music is really hitting. It's just awesome, but it's the interrogation. - What do you have? - A lot more that we didn't talk about. One is the first time that Grace Smith meets with Toskey. And he's like, I can't allow you to help, but go talk to NARLO, N-A-R-L-O-W. And then the second one is my single favorite scene in the movie other than the interrogation, which is door to door. That final breakfast meeting between Dave and Grace Smith. - With the software that talks. - Yeah. - And he says, Darlene worked at the House of Pancakes in Vallejo. - I walked it. - That scene, while watching the movie, the first time when it felt like they were explaining to you, this movie knows who the zodiac killer is. Like it is so convincing because of the conviction that Jill and Hall has and the way the Toskey reacts where he's like, I was right, we were right. And then he just leaves. He's like, thanks for breakfast. Puts money on the table, walks out, it's over. And then you do get the Jimmy Simpson moment after that. But like it gives you the sense of satisfaction, but then the movie doesn't let you have the satisfaction at its conclusion with the title cards. Like, I guess you have to decide whether or not you find Grace Smith and Arthur Lee in the hardware store satisfying. - Right, right. - Would you have for most rewatchable seeing it first time? - Interview, the interrogation with Lee and the watch thing and the shoe. It felt the most like usual suspects where you're sitting there picking up on things, watching people do these things together. - Yeah, it's a great scene. - May I see it? - May I see it? - You already did the What's the Most 2007 thing about this movie, which is why I had crazy J Killing Up? When we go backwards to movies, it's almost like we have to do What's the Most 1970s thing about this movie? And I think it's Folger's Coffee. Because it was really, that was the only coffee forever. - We did have it in the A's 'cause I remember it in my house. - Yeah. - It was the 80s, right? - It's my grandmother had it. - Something shifted, I don't really know what, but it was basically, I don't even know, was there another coffee? - I think Folger's crystals was cooking in the '90s too, right? But then it's for some reason, I mean Starbucks, really. - And Starbucks killed the Seattle Super Sonics and Folger's. - Well, would you put Folger's, where people put in Folger's in like a Mr. Coffee or were they put in boiling water in it? - It was an old school life. - 'Cause there's instant coffee, you just pour the hot water in a mission. - My mom might have been the first person, I knew that anyone knew who had like a nice coffee machine. My mom loved coffee, still loves coffee. But we always had like a nice coffee machine in the 80s and she really cared about grinding it. - Like when's the last time you've had, I can't even like an Airbnb or something. - What it tastes like, bad. - I would also say for 70s thing about the movie, just coordinating investigations between cities. - Sure, it just would be different now. - Okay. - Can I give you one other 2007 thing? - Yeah. I do think it's a really interesting example of Gen X art and like Gen X kind of looking back at their childhood and not to get too high-minded about it, but it's like right before Obama, it's right before this kind of like shift culturally, kind of like reckoning with the end of the summer of love and what the 70s could have been and then how they turned out so toxic and dangerous and it felt very chaotic to live in that time. This kind of desperation to have like a little bit more peace culturally. Like I'm reaching a little bit, but the movie does feel like him kind of reckoning with some of those feelings. - No, I like it. - I add a hotest take that I think I just should say a little bit about here, which is that, I think that if you want, you know, we talk about what would be a good double feature, a good triple feature would be Zodiac, Boogie Nights and once upon a time in Hollywood, 'cause it's these three filmmakers doing basically memoirs, but they don't put themselves as the central character. They tell a story about something that was like happening at their childhood that shaped through. - I thought it was famous in two. - Yeah, totally. - Almost famous. Totally. - That was good. I felt like I was watching and be back somebody down on the foul line there, just Shawn was cooking. - Yeah. - Just before after you tried to injure Mitchell Robinson. - Wow, I love giving this award out. The Steven Segal's "Shitting on Himself" award, for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot. I mean, the takes thing is always the funniest thing about research of Fincher movie. It's hilarious how much the actors hate it. Jill and Hall said, quote, "You get to take five takes, 10 takes, some places 90 takes." There's a stopping point. There's a point at which you go, "That's what we have to work with." But we would reshoot things. And there comes a point when I would say, "Well, what do I do? Where's the risk?" Downey said, I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to guard him, and I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I'm a perfect person to work for him because I understand gulags. (laughing) And then Ruffalo said, "He makes Michael Mann look like he's working on a McDonald's hamburger line during rush hour." Fincher's response, if an actor is going to let the world come to them, they can't present the fact that I'm willing to wait as long as that takes. You know, the first day of production in San Francisco, we shot 56 takes of Mark and Jake. And it's the 56 take that's in the movie. Yes. I think that the reason, one of the reasons why this was breaking their brains is that this is like among the first times, probably any of them are shooting digitally. And there would be scenes where they'd be on take 22 and Fincher would be like, "Delete the first 20 takes." It's like from the memory chip. And these guys would just be like, what are you talking about? Like, what are we doing? But I think he gets among the three best performances these guys have ever gotten given. And there are different actors, like Chloe 70 talks about this. Ben Affleck has talked about this, where he's just like, "I like it." I like that he, he's like, "I want to work. I want to do takes." I don't think we're going for the right thing. We're trying different things. And he's also making sure that the background extra and the glass on the desk are all where they need to be. I think if we were all actors, Sean would like it, 'cause he would really appreciate the craftsmanship. I like what every takes, David. Chris would secretly bitch about it, but be a good soldier. And I'd be the one like, this fucking guy, this motherfucker up in 35 takes. Asshole. I think that's right. I really like systems. He's a systems guy. I think there's also something, he talked about shooting that door to door sequence at the end and they filmed it and they looked at it and they were like, "This isn't right." And Jill and Hall is not the expert in this scene. He's the guy who has to know more than Toskey. He's the guy who has to have all the information and is explaining it. And they went back and reshot it. And he explained how when they reshot it, Jill and Hall brought his dad, who was filmmaker, and that his dad's presence psychologically made him do it better. And then didn't explain that. And he is one of those filmmakers who, I don't, he's not purposefully torturing actors, but he does think about their psychology and how they work. And I do think that sometimes he gets that reputation 'cause he's like, this is how I can get the best out of you. - Well, who's the number one guy who did this, Kubrick? - And you think Kubrick's showered a lot and nervous breakdown of the shooting. - Yeah, Kubrick, I mean like they're, [BLANK_AUDIO] like legendary just like open a door 74 times, you know, like, uh, there's an amazing moment in the behind the scenes or the making of Dock for Zodiac where Jill and I was walking through the Chronicle of the newsroom and he's taking a bite of a donut and Fincher's like cut and like, you know, Jill and I was kind of laughing because he's eating a donut and Fincher's laughing and he's like, yeah, I want you to eat like take a bigger bite and Jill and I was like, uh, of course you do like and Fincher's like, yeah, no, go back, go back and eat a bigger bite of it. It's not a really funny one in one of the docs where they it's a very quick moment, but they're they're interviewing Jill and Hall during the making of them of scene and he's like, yeah, I'm like really good at insert shots, right David? Like I'm really good at inserts and David's like, yeah, yeah, you are it's the masters that are not very good, you know, like the main the main shot of you acting you're not good at that. He literally says that while they're making the movie. Jesus. And he's giving him shit, but he's giving him shit in like a truthful way. Yeah, it's it's tough. He can be tough. Well, I was going to say this later, but one thing I noticed when I watch Fincher movies is when people are eating, it's like, Anthony Edwards eating a turkey club at one point and there's another part where Ruffalo is eating a burger. Yeah, it's hard not to think like, I wonder if he had to eat like a Ruffalo 58 burger. He's a real bite of that burger. Yeah, like did like if he made him do 58 takes of that, did he just have to make him so throw up? I have never seen a man grip a hamburger the way he's holding it, right? I don't think he wanted to eat it. He's probably like, he's a fucking troll. I don't know if they put like a bokeh burger in there. We didn't have his great impossible meats back in when we said, we're going to take a break and then we're going to do what sage the best. Before we do what sage the best new category, this is a 220, 2026er. The Dennis Peck relationship test named after Richard Garrett internal affairs, who you just wanted to keep away from everybody's relationship. Grace Smith and Chloe 70's character, I'm going to say Dennis Peck could have broken this one pretty quickly. I think some Dennis Peck out there seems like he did. Yeah. Yeah. I think somebody, I think she got Dennis Peck. The funniest thing about it is from the moment they meet, he's giving you every single sign to run it the way I'd get invested in this guy. I think I like the line that she has where she's like, this was just a first date that went on for a couple of years or that never ended. Yeah. Just like, that happens sometimes. Yeah. Like you date for a while and all, oh my, wait, we're living together. That was weird. You know what I'm saying? Blame her. Like you saw, he showed you all of his cards on date one. This guy's a fucking weirdo. This is because we're just like, I never told you, baby. I always said I'd be watching 12 hours of football every Sunday. I do know when you signed up for me, how much a basketball I watch. The movie doesn't explain it, but just through her performance, you can tell she's just a woman who is like, I'm ready to settle down. I'm ready to find somebody and just have a family. She's on a blind date with her guy. Yeah. She's just such a fox in this movie. Her and the glasses and the long hair. Oh my god. I want to start what's it your best with her? She's got such a great sense of humor like 70 does because there's an interview with her. She's just like, well, I think they wanted to make Jill and Hall less hot. So Fincher made me dress really from me. Yeah. So it's supposed to seem like very like normal. And Grace Smith is a cartoonist, right? He's not a cool guy, but it's undeniable. I'm both of them are beautiful. Another what stage is the best is just true crime the last two decades. That was my number one. Not just true crime, but the obsession with it. This movie is ahead of the game with that. And then podcasts, documentaries come Netflix. I watched the three part zodiac thing they did last year this week. I missed it when it was out. I don't know how I missed it. This is the zodiac speaking, right? Yeah. As usual, with those three partners, probably could have been just, you know, an hour, 25, dragged it out a little bit, but it was interesting. There's a couple of there's one really good one on the blu-ray that is that I think is also called this is the zodiac speaking, but is an hour and 40 minutes and features interviews with all of the major major figures who are still alive. Do you think zodiac could have been a good nickname for somebody in basketball? Like event in Edwards was just his nickname was zodiac. Well, would you done it? What if it was for Zodriness Olgoskis? We were just like somebody with a Zodiac post killer. Yeah, football or basketball. The dropstep killer basketball basketball. Back in, you know, back in like the Steve Atwater days, it would be great if a free safety was nicknamed zodiac. I think you're going to say a quarterback that throws a lot of hospital. Two of us, two of us, two of us. Two of us, the studio killer. Can't decode his hospital pass. Late 60s, early 70s San Francisco, just seeing that in a movie is age to best. Like post hippie, fall of the hate kind of like, I had this later, but there's something about the city back then that really kicked everybody else's ass. About San Francisco. You've done this before. When we went San Francisco, like six or seven, years ago, you were like, this place is the best. I think other cities caught up. Like when you see like a place like Boston now, Boston is much nicer and more spread out. It has more things going than it is. It's kind of like you saying that the seltics are doing with the Pacers. I'm not doing the best thing. But Boston built up San Francisco never had to build up. San Francisco is like, look how fucking cool this is. Yeah. Just an unusual place. Just over there. We have hills, we have trolleys. Like, it's just you. It's the best movie location of any city. It's not even close. There's also, I mean, obviously it's the cinematography and the music in this movie. But there's something about his version of San Francisco just feels haunted. It seems like it's night 75% of this movie. And it is also like a little bit of a California thing where you're just like and there could just be something behind that fence over there. There's just there could be something up that hill over there. And it's a weird state too because like you do have like for as much as there's LA and San Francisco, there is like super rural parts and like trailer parks and like that's a big part of this movie is the kind of like disconnected various styles of small towns that comprise most of northern California. I mean, northern California is not San Francisco in the Bay. It's like, it's a lot of different kinds of small cities and towns that are like Santa Rosa and rural or lower middle class and you know, have these small police precincts. And the fact that the movie spends a lot of time in those places, I think makes it different too. There's two, there's three movie locations that I think you just instinctively know where you are as you're watching a movie. And I think San Francisco is one of them, New York obviously. And then I think LA is the other one if it's certain parts. Otherwise, like Boston, they have to they have to show Fenway, you know, Chicago, they have to show the wide shot of the cities. For the most parts, cities can be downtown LA or Hollywood or Vegas and New Orleans could technically count. Yeah. But San Francisco, you always know you're in San Francisco in this movie. I like the San Francisco building thing, which I know is a big film that that he shows the the time of the transcendental. Yeah, yeah, the Transcontinental is another what's it's best. What do you have for what's it's best here? All of uh, downie. Trans America. Sorry, Trans America. Downies, uh, mutterings to Jill and Hall, especially his art criticism, but like sweet mother of Christ, what are you drawing? And Jesus, her whole Christ on rubber crutches, Bobby, what are you doing? You're doing that thing, that thing I don't like that starts with now. Like all of their banter and stuff kind of culminating at mortis. Uh, I also just on these repeated viewings, like the way that the film changes totally when the protagonist, the movie switches from Toskey to to the four years later, and the way it feels different, the way the investigation is not as, uh, ordered and documented and it feels way more like a solo album. Like he's got nobody helping him. The way that Toskey had Armstrong and everybody else and it's just an incredible shift in the movie. There's two other things that I really like about it that still resonate. One is just the general premise of the movie, which is like the unsolvability of mundane tragedy. Like we have a lot of examples of this over history where you'll never really know what happened, even if somebody got convicted of a crime. Then the other thing is, Grace Smith represents this idea that I think most people I know are experiencing right now, which is using external problems in the world to kind of divert yourself away from what's going on at home, what's happening in your career, like who you really are in the world and just kind of getting locked in on stuff that isn't about you and doesn't really matter to you, but using it as a portal. You just described the internet for the last 10 years. And that's what it, and that's really what we've all kind of become. We become kind of trapped by that idea. And this, even just doing the podcast for this movie, I'm not a very big reddit person. But I was on fucking zodiac reddit for like an hour just reading about Donald Cheney and who that person is and how he figures into this story. And it's like, Grace Smith is kind of the original poster in a lot of ways, you know, like he really does kind of represent a lot of what the kind of attitudes of people who live online now. And he's always an outsider. So he's like even at the Chronicle, he's doing cartoons, he's like kind of lurking at those meetings. He's probably not supposed to be in. And then when he becomes like the primary investigator, like nobody takes him seriously, because they're like, you're not a cop. You're not a, you're not a journalist. Like, what are you doing? I have a downies come back as of which they's the best and what it means in the context of his career, this movie and the Iron Man. That's a really good one. Yeah. The Fincher catalog and just what this movie means. I think his age is the best. I don't want to say he needed it, but he kind of needs it when you think like, holy shit. Like I think ultimately you're talking about a director that can make 20 movies, 30, whatever. But there's usually like five to eight that people are going to think about what his personal passion projects are. Like it's definitely Zodiac and Mank. I wonder what else you want for two. Love Mank. But Zodiac and Mank are both clearly about his dad. I mean, you know, they're just, they're obsessions of his dad. He talks about his dad a bunch on on the commentary and. you know, his dad was just in this milieu at the time and, uh, you know, like all people he's kind of haunted by the positives and the negatives of that experience. I had, uh, Paul Ivory's water place, which I want to give the Amanda Dobbins award for best piece of real estate. I don't know how much that place cost, but I thought I thought his place was fucking cool. But it seems whatever that was supposed to be in Sacramento. I don't know where it was. But I thought it was cool. Yeah. It's like a great place to end up if you're in alcohol, who's going to die of pulmonary emphysema. What's the commute? Is he living in like Marin? Where is he living? And I could have been in like Alameda or something. I'm not really sure. I liked it. Okay. He's just going to smoke six there and fucking drink like that reference to the, there's more people die in the commute in the East Bay than this guy, this crazy guy's ever killed. And he like points out the window as if, so that maybe he is an Alameda or Oakland or something to be some East Bay. I had the Chronicles office and how they recreated it. And he made a good point about, there's a couple scenes where it's just empty or pretty empty. And that really is what it's like to work for a newspaper like you go in in the morning. There's like five people there. My dad would sometimes take me by the enquire on Sundays and it was always like this place is like Disneyland. Yeah. Let's take a movie set. But it's always that there's nobody there in the morning and everybody starts showing up around four o'clock when deadline time starts to come around. The soundtrack is effective includes three dog night, Donovan, Soul Sacrifice by Santana. Really good crystal blue persuasion. And then we get as we move into the late seventies, it turns in a little yacht rock. Well, Staley Dan, sorry, Donald Fagan, Bosch eggs, Jerry Rafferty, just start sneaking them in. No Chris, no Chris for cross. So down he cruising to the Sean Penn, I brought my own pack of word for excellence in on-screen smoking. I mean, it's, it's really about his, I don't think he's, I think he's smoking. Filterless. So that's like another level, you know, you mean he's doing where he has the no hands. He's talking. The cigarettes come in this way. He's puffing from it and then blowing out of his knees and nose and still just keeping the scene. I use incredible stuff. I spent five years trying to perfect that. I think that effortless. The also my favorite lighting of a cigarette in this movie is when he's reading the letter from the zodiac and he's like, and then I will, you were driving around on your motor cycles and he just like clicks his lighter and lights a cigarette and doesn't miss a line. Yeah. There's a couple of like, the cigarette is halfway into his mouth like scenes where I'm just like, this guy is born, born to do it, you know. I feel like I was in like an art seminar, you know, it was like, it was learning about, you know, diga. If we did about Rushmore and Daenerys got to be in there, obviously, I think Downey might be one of the four, I really was impressed is clear to all great smoking scene. Yes. Great smoking scene. They do a good job of really making her seem like she's seen a few things in her day. Yes. We'll just go into a couple of paintings. That's one of her skills as an actor, yeah, it's been some, yeah, yeah. Great Jack order award, which you have to see our Jesus, this is how long you got. You know, opening city fireworks is pretty cool. I know there's too many choices. There's a couple of like the, just the digitally recreated moments, the fireworks, the overhead shot of the taxi cab, et cetera. I have one that's kind of subtle, but I have just seen pictures of them shooting it where Fincher is kind of like right close to them while they're acting or right when they're about to shoot it. And it's the Jill and Hall 70 in the phone booth outside of the restaurant and the way it's lit and the way it looks and it's kind of romantic and it's, it's just, it's a personal favor. There's a couple of these in the phone booth with them, which makes no sense. Yeah. It's just that great line. It's really some weird ploy for you to, for you to make me go home with you. Yeah, yeah. I'll get the food to go. We should mention great shot. Gorda Award is the most cinematic shot. I guess I have to ID some of these words, there's the audience named after Gordon Willis. Yes. I have, I just have like three that are all connected. One is the shot of the zodiac killer coming over the hill in Lake Berriessa, then the cut to, is it a harnel's, harnel's face, the way that it holds on his face while he's being stabbed. Oh my God. And then immediately cutting to the woman's torso when she's being stabbed, which is the most upsetting thing in the movie is when you see the knife going into her body. And then the choice that they made there, which in most movies now, if you did it, you'd be able to tell and it would be terrible. But all the blood that you see when she's being stabbed is all digital. And the reason that they did that is because they didn't want to have to redo costumes every time they did a take. So if they did 50 takes of that sequence, every time the blood could be digitally recreated, just like little filmmaking stuff there, where maybe that had been done before, but I don't think so. And he's kind of at the forefront of this technology. And you would never for a second when you're watching the movie, like, oh, that's fake blood. It looks good enough. Yeah. And it's moving fast enough that he's doing the job. And also on the director's comedy commentary, Fincher's like, she was a champ, she was like, we did this like 60 times and she, she's never complained. Amazing golden gate bridge shot. There's an aerial looking down that looks like an Apple screen. Kind of like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even just that first push in on the city, and he talks about rebuilding the Embarcadero freeway, which doesn't exist anymore, because it fell apart during the 89 earthquake. So he's like, just the idea of rebuilding this freeway that I grew up with was interesting to me. I brought trees. He chopper trees into the Lake Beresa scene because they're, they're trees of change since the time it had gone. Some producers like, David, what if we don't have the trees to get the fuck out of here? You're off the set. Kate Cutty pursued a happiness award for best needle drop. I have a city blues. I thought I'd heard he got it when it kicks in when he starts shooting them. I think that's the most important. That's in the background. And then it gets loud. Yeah. I really like Bernadette in the bar. Yeah. That one's great. The four top song. He also does like a little bit of a Scorsese film, the schoolmaker thing where he starts it midway through, and it's just the vocal pops in. And then it's like a, it's a little bit of like, like a DJ thing. It's really good. New award. Hmm. Excited. Craig. Yeah. The David Fincher award for wow, this director may have been a fucking lunatic. He goes to David Fincher for this tidbit. He digitally added hair to the close ups of Jake Gyllenhaal's Nichols as he draws or holds letters because Fincher felt Gyllenhaal's hands were quote, "too hairless and pretty." Yeah. He digitally added hair to his knuckles. Look at her accuracy. What a fucking man. Yeah. I love it. Anyway, that's the first time we got to hand that award out. Congrats to David. We have the Sean Fennessy award for Stealth homage that gives every movie near a criteria orgasm. Okay. So there's obviously a couple of out, you know, clear ones we've talked about already. Most dangerous game, all the presidents men, that's like the blueprint for the movie. My favorite tiny little homage is when they're interviewing the kids, one of the kids who's being interrogated by the police officers when they ask him what did he look like? They say he looked normal. And that is a direct reference to Bong Junho's Memories of Murder, which is the 2003 serial killer movie where someone says that about the killer in the movie, Memories of Murder, which is a hugely influenced by Seven and Fincher and Bong Junho are in this like career long back and forth. And Bong's like Seven. Zodiac is a total masterpiece. Yes. He's like Bong Junho's like my greatest in theater experience is seeing the social networking. These two guys are kind of fascinated with each other. I've never seen them talk to each other before. I don't like how Fincher has this many allies. Like now he's with Tarantino. I like when directors hate each other. Well, he's like, the homies was Steven Soderberg, too. Yeah, I like feed. We need to go back to feed. I like when all the like, we talk about to Paul Schrader just lighting everybody up and call them. I know. You don't want, you want it to be bird magic. You don't want LeBron and Steph being friends. No. I don't want everybody in the dream team. Everybody's talking to each other. Watching rough cuts. Oh, I love that movie as a masterpiece. Let's do Craig. You do a flex. I'll move. I'll try to reorganize him in there just because I thought of it was when Grace Smith gets the first breather call and he picks it up and it's like on Grace Smith and then it pans to the right and close the background and it goes, it's a little rosemary's baby where it's like Ruth Gordon on the phone and you're kind of like looking over there like I kind of like that. Good one. Flex Craig. Go ahead. A lot of options. I want to get one out of the way quickly. Is there a porn parody for this movie? Yes, there is. It's called the Zodiac Killer, starting John Holmes. What? Yes. Let's fire it up. Let's wash it together. Did you read what were the details? Was he a killer or was he the cop? He must have been the cop. He was the cop. Okay. And the Zodiac Killer kills and then has sex with women and then wait, after the killer, he has sex with the men. Has sex with the men killed. And then John Holmes is on the hunt. I wonder if was he Johnny Watt? That was the 63 minutes. So it does pass the send-in card award. Imagine if it was three hours. Oh my God. 63 minutes. I could have gone live. I prefer for the porn. It's not important. It's not important. It's not like it's good. It's a real film. Did you download it on your work computer? I know. I don't get that on the personal device. I don't know. John Holmes was taking the Zodiac podcast. It's exciting. Great. The other one I'll do is the Vincent Chase award for are we sure this character was good at his job. I'm going right at Zodiac. Lower kill rate than Drake May's completion percentage. Are you the double murders at the top of this movie? He can't kill either guy. He can't finish the job. He likes both guys to live. Crazy. He wore a watch that said Zodiac, kind of a miss there, slipped up, revealed his birthday over the phone, claimed to be a lefty wore the watch on the wrong wrist, wore a giant name tag that said Lee at the hardware shop, it's kind of the Bob Coosie of serial killers. He's named Texas Zodiac at the Ace Hardware, this guy was winning the MVP's, but he couldn't dribble with his hand. How do you, can I help you find something? That's a great job coming up. The Butch's Girlfriend award for the week link of the film, I don't, I think this film's great. It was hard to come up with a week link. I don't personally understand the Avery trip to Riverside where he's like an anonymous tip has told me to go to river. I mean, it works out, but that part of the movie while awesome is also a little confusing. It felt like they needed an extra downey scene of us. It's just like, I suppose it's also like, this is where Avery is kind of leaving the tracks and is starting to like chase shadows a little bit, but that's where, you know, when you do, I have a tiny one, which is, it's fine if you don't show the first Zodiac double murder because they were very like, we only, if we didn't know what happened and both people are dead, we can't show it, but I still think they should have figured out how to mention it in some way. For people like Craig, who don't know the story, that there was the murder before the murder. And I don't think they do a good enough job of explaining that. It's like very subtle in the dialogue. It assumes the viewer already knows, but I don't, as the movie ages over time, I think, I just think they should have figured out a better way to do that. I don't know if what I'm gonna say is a picking mitt or an unanswerable question or what's it, you know, kind of more fits this category, but specifically the Donald Cheney character who, the guy who gives the performance is totally fine, but the guy who gives all this information about Arthur Lee Allen. He's like, oh yeah, and then he said, he said this and said that. He said this about the kids bopping off the school bus and taking them out. And he had all this specific detail that makes Toskey think that, and also think that it's him. You know, there are a lot of interviews with this guy. He's in all the documentaries in the wider world of the Zodiac. There's a lot of suspicion about his involvement in this story and whether or not he was more involved or whether or not he's making things up. Right. So what's on the Donald Cheney reddit? It's all over the Zodiac reddit. I mean, there's a lot of people who are like, this guy is not credible at all. There's a lot of interviews with him. And so to the point that Craig is making even about the movie where he's like, all of this shit that just seems so circumstantial that points directly at the guy that makes him seem like a bad serial killer is effectively backed by everything that Donald Cheney has provided. Yes. And it makes you to me, Sarah is having a great time. Well, you're totally right. I just see I was just like, and it also happens like 11 times in the Zodiac case where there's like, this guy is the preeminent expert. It turns out he's a con artist or it turns out like he makes his living by going to conventions and peddling theories about stuff like that. Or is that who John Holmes played or no? Was he somebody else? Or even all the Toskey stuff about the letters to Armistice Moppin and then whether or not he wrote the Zodiac letter and stuff like that, which is like, I proven to be untrue. I think, but for the most good weakling, they could have at least aroused some suspicion with us. Fincher says that he finds that guy credible. And then the reason that he's portrayed in the movie that way is because he doesn't feel the way that a lot of people look closely in the story. It's like, it's like very like this is kind of like what Pelicanos and David Simon's that would be on the city where they're like, we have decided that this person's version of this is like accurate. Is these worth portraying sincerely, right? And that choice kind of shifts the movie in a direction that makes you feel strongly about it. What's age the worst? I mentioned earlier, him cutting the two-minute blackout montage of hit songs, signaling the passage of time from Joni Mitchell to Donna Summer, replaced it for a runtime with four years later. I just, that's a bad decision. Yeah, that's like when they cut out my favorite boogie nights, the weeded scene of the second A.V.N. awards when they show all the reactions of everybody and they're like, yeah, we don't need it. I'm surprised to learn that's your favorite deleted scene. That's my favorite deleted scene. What do you think my play, what did you think it was? It was a very memorable scene with Rollergirl, Luis Guzmán. Well, that was another great scene. So I had for what stage to worse, there's that scene when Jack and Downey are at the bar we mentioned earlier, just decoding Sodiak shit. I wrote down, I'm five minutes late on these two together. Yeah. That would have been my note as the studio, like any more Downey Gyllenhaal just being weird together scenes because put another one in. There is another one deleted. I don't know if you want to say it's age the best or the worst because it's both, but they weren't real friends. And like, Avery and Grace Smith were not friends. Right. That is almost the most movieish thing about the movie and it is by far the most entertaining movie and I definitely would have taken 10 more scenes of the two of them going to a fucking giant's game, you know, and being like, yeah, you know, smoking in this. Come see the words today, but for Grace back, that would be good. I asked that for what stage to worse. In the Edwards with the Wigano, it throws me off. He's just like such like a proven bald guy that any time I see him with hair in a movie, I'm like, come on. Just have him be bald. He's bald. We know he's bald. He's own the baldness. I think it's probably accurate to Armstrong. No, I know that. Yeah. Any other would say it's the worst. No, I had the four year gap. It's the most abrupt weird. You have to like be like, okay, I got it in my head. I'm making that jump that Avery has washed out that Grace Smith is kind of still on this by himself. Okay. Any for you or no? Just my certainty that it was Arthur Lee Allen for the like 10 years after I saw the movie. And now the idea that we're just like the thing that is haunting the guys in this movie is now what haunts the culture of finding the zodiac killer, which is just like this podcast. There's more info every day. You know, you've talked about the special, you know, the expert who is like this guy's autistic. And it was him because of this. Like that stuff's never going to stop because it's a cold case. Just wait until AI just fully gets its talons into it. You know, yeah. Another category we don't get to give out much. The rose from Titanic award for character who sneaky sucks close 70s character. No, we're talking about. She's actually quite reasonable. She's pretty cool. Man, she knows what she's getting into counter. Get the fuck out after the first day. Why are you you're going to settle down with this fucking lunatic? Okay. I thought you were like, I'm raising kids with this guy. And then she's mad at him. It's like, I don't know what you're doing your whole life for boss. And it's like, he fucking told me in the first eight that he was crazy. Yeah. You're like blindsided. I've got to call it like, if I lean was like, you sure do watch a lot of movies. Yeah. What's to do with all these 4k Blu-Rish on? We get it. It was our number. They're like, what are you trying to do? It's just like, Sean, what are we doing? Are we going to dinner? It's like, I got to watch. So I got to do some Spielberg research. I'm taking the kids. I'm going to mom. Are you guys surprised this movie resonates with me? I just, it really bothers me that she signs up for this and then takes a person. A lot of relationships where like the thing that makes sense for the first three to nine months of it does not make sense 18 months or two years. Okay. But in this case, it was the first two hours. Yes. I don't even finish dinner on their first date. He's in a fucking phone booth and then she ends up sleeping on his couch. Yeah. He's waiting for a call from his pulmonary amp. She's the most exciting date I've ever had. It's like, yeah. I mean, she's the only female character of note in the film. I mean, there's just not, there's, there's no- To put you in Diane Raphael being like, I'm going to make the full jerseys. But she's also just playing the wife, you know? Like, there's not really any, there are no women in this world. Like, in the world of, you know, police departments at this time and newspapers, like, they were secretaries, you know? And that's part of the reason why the movie is that way. And I think you could make the case that that her character is like, it's basically an active comment on this world at that time by saying, like, this woman has infinite patience for her insane cartoonist husband. Yeah. Who can't make time to take care of his children because he's trying to solve a crime. It's really an advertisement for dating services that I don't think we're around here. Yeah. Yeah. This is probably a few more. Yeah. Thank you, Raya. Do I have a flex? You can take one right now. I just had the Rick Dalton award. You would. Is it for the greatest fucking acting I've ever seen? It's downy on the Houseboat being like, somebody should write a book about what he's also doing the David DeCoupley and Larry Singers. Am I going to see your balls hanging out here on the scene? Yes. There's a lot. Yeah. It's an epic amount of that whole, the whole Houseboat scene is just unbelievable on the background. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford had us take a word. I kind of did a little bit of the the the PTA QT thing, but I will also say that I think the thrill, the dark thrill of the zodiac work to happen today would be ruined by everybody trying to figure out who he voted for. You know, there would be no like, oh, this is cool. Watch out, we don't go out at night because it would just be like that. Motherfucker's a Bernie bro, you know, it would just be it would suck. It would probably be more like this guy did Jan 6. Do you have a how to stake? I do. This is the greatest American crime film ever made, and it's the only crime film that really portrays what it's like to try to solve a crime. And no other movie is really interested in that because that's not very cinematic. Who's second? I've gone 60 seconds probably. Like I, I, I, I, I, I. Love heat, right? That's a great movie. I love manhunter. I love the work of Michael man. All of those movies are about the psychology and obsession that is portrayed in this movie, but they're not really about like solving the crimes or even doing the crimes in the same way. And this was a real story too. Do you think that it's because it's more of an act of journalism than it is an act of crime solving? It helps. Yeah. It helps. And I think the truth is is that I made that point about our dads because they're kind of similar jobs. You know, they require a very similar kind of ethic. You have to be kind of shrewd. You have to be comfortable digging really deep into things. You got to be comfortable being bored by the work that you do sometimes. There's a reason that there's connectivity between these guys that this time in history because they have a very similar approach to the world. My high to steak, Craig kind of stepped on it earlier, but in a way, maybe he doesn't realize I'm actually going the absolute. I think Zodiac was the goat. Now, maybe he didn't finish a couple murders. The goat serial killer of all time. Never caught. So good. He might have also been the black valley of killer, which was another one that wasn't caught. Drove detectives and journalists fucking crazy created a world that led to books and movies and is still going on Reddit and Bedextrous. Swimmer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like James Harden with a great nickname. Nobody. What serial killer has ever given themselves a better nickname than Zodiac? You like that more than son of a best. Oh, easily best gimmick son of sandwich, just fucking wacko. He's talking to his dog. Yeah. Zodiac. Very measured. Yeah. He had it all together. And I just think he had just a phenomenal run and the fact that nobody has been able to solve this is unbelievable. So I think if you're talking goats or you're talking Mount Rushmore or whatever, you get away with it is number one, you know, it is not only getting away with it, but then leaving this whole universe behind of theories and it's basically the JFK assassination for a serial killer. I had no idea. We solved all the other ones. How thriving the community was. They're still doing incredible work online every day. Yeah. Yeah. When you Google it, so many things come up. You don't even know like which one to click on. Yeah. This is like this subreddits to the subreddits. 55 years old. Yeah. Like we don't, you don't even, you know, by the way, we're not any closer to figuring out who did it. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, it's a crazy one. But I think Craig made a good point. Like finish the job. Well, you're going kind of the Bill Russell case here like for his time, what he did. Oh, you think Zodiac just played against plumbers. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Like they're in the pre internet pre departments being able to coordinate investigations into the facts machines. Right. Not exactly. It is fair. He's the deep. He has like a little, the little brawn of serial killers. They all get caught. Yeah. What's the worst is serial killers. Yeah. Right. Serial killing has aids the worst. Yeah. Well, I think it's just too hard. DNA to what you might be trying. Cameras. No, I just think I don't think we're going to see another one. Honestly. Yeah. It's too hard. There's a camera every, every house has a ring camera. Yeah. There was a story about there might have been a Houston, Sarah killer because they found all these bodies. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. They don't know what happened. I don't believe that one. I think, I think we have too much technology now. I think any one of posted off other kills that he took credit for, which I would argue is clever because they completely threw them off the scent of the investigation. It got, you know, like Mullen acts as like I like this guy. And you're like, well, what does that guy have to do with any other kill? And he's like, yeah, but I have evidence that shows that he's connected to this one. So it creates this distortion effect around the investigation. Yeah. It's really smart. It doesn't mean the zodiac is like a brain genius, but he he clearly did things with like a level of manipulation that does distinguish him from other serial killers. I mean, ultimately the great serial killers have a calling card like Dahmer's like, I just like eating people like it. This is an old and game should be eating other humans. That's my thing. I love whenever you do this, you make it sound like he looked into the camera. Like Ted Bundy's like, I just love the ladies. Yeah. And there's a dark side to it. But that's the ladies zodiac was like, I actually like being in the mix. Here are my thoughts. But it's like the first podcast. Do you know what's interesting to us? My thoughts on the dirty hairy movie. Exactly. And then there's also the attention of what he was doing. Even things that weren't zodiac like the call to Melvin Belly, which is a guy in an in a mental institution making the phone call. It goes towards the zodiac's legacy. It's like Steve Kerr building off of Mark Jackson's work. You know, yeah. All that hard work that Mark did. Who dressed a dream on you know. Casting what ifs. Mark was playing Montailles over Steph Curry. It is true. He was saving him. Casting what ifs. Gary Oldman was supposed to play Melvin Belly. But physically they decided it couldn't work. So they got Logan Rennstead. Exactly. He did go on to play Churchill, who was way fatter than Gary Oldman and wanted to Academy Award for it. Jon Ha was the first choice for Grace Smith from Fincher. But if he had said, no, they had Orlando Bloom lined up. You know the story of who it was who tipped Fincher off to the two leads of this movie. It was Aniston. His best pal Jennifer Aniston who said I really liked working with Jake Gyllenhaal in the good girl and Mark Ruffalo in what's the romcom that they were in together? Just like heaven or something. No, rumor has it. Was it a rumor? Was it from rumor? Has it. And then he's like, you like them? Why don't you play the close 70 row? Say, no, thanks. Yeah. No, thanks. I got a romcom to do. Fincher wanted Brad Pitt as Avery before settling it down. I mean, basically what it was like for some true advances a journalist. Yeah, we'll be a little distracting. Can we talk it out? Sure. Has anyone who looks like Brad Pitt ever been a journalist? Brad Pitt really good at playing down true true. Is this like snatch era Brad Pitt? No, this is after that two thousands. I've settled down with Angelina and we're adopting kids every time. Troy, Mr. Mrs. Smith. Yeah, post Mr. Mrs. Smith pre Benjamin button. Yeah, pre money ball. I mean, he's in the assassination of Jesse. If he's just doing if he's just doing Floyd from true romance in this movie, I'm not necessary. I'm willing to entertain it. The thing is is that Downey brings the fast talking energy that a guy with a smart Alex journalist would have. Yes. And I think you need that. And Pitt doesn't really do that. Right. He plays dumb really well. He plays low key or burned out really well. And he's he's always clever as rusty in the ocean's movies, but not fast. He's a little bit more. He has a little bit more stoner. Whereas Downey has a little bit more uppers. Yeah. That's that guy word. We're saying John Carol Lynch, not eligible. Probably not for us. Yeah. Do you know who that was, Craig? Recognize him, don't know his name. I grabbed two guys from the editorial meeting, which is John Getz and John Terry, the editor-in-chief and the publisher. I think John gets his John Getz. I feel like he's been into many things. He's John Terry is a good one. John Terry is really good. Charles Fleischer, who's the guy in the basement. Yep. He's pretty much that guy. I have two big ones. One of the cops was the priest from the sopranos who was trying to get it on with Carmella, but not really. Yes. Getting drunk with him. Father. What was his name? Father. I can't remember. Neither night when he goes in the college tour with Meadow. Narrow home getting drunk and he thought and it seems like something's going to happen. He throws that back guy. He's in this. And then one of the cops in the scene, you like the when they go to location. Yeah. Skippy from kicking and screaming. Yeah. Who was also calling the drug dealer in Beverly Hills, Nano 2.0. Who had that great run 10 years later and it's up in Zodiac. But I think that's a good that guy. That's a great that guy. I think he's on like Chicago fire now. One of those. Okay. The problem with doing 500 episodes of this show is that you know, the people, but just to every normal human being, Zach Ranier, Philip Baker Hall, Elias, Coteas, James LaGrow, Donald Logue, John Carolyn, John Terry, June Diane, Raphael, Adam Goldberg. These people are that guys. Yeah. They are the definitive that he does. He's not letting me have John gets right. Like, you know, if you can't have John gets, then like the part of why the movie is so good is that Fincher has the best taste for supporting players that graduated that guy's. Yes. The priest from the sopranos. I don't know. Yeah. The DM Waiters Award for biggest heat check in the movie. John Carol Lynch eligible. He's in two and a half scenes. Basement guy. Charles Flesher. Yeah. Charles Flesher. One scene. Charles Flesher and Clay Duval. Clay Duval means the pinnacle of this category because she has one scene. Yes. And the camera like doesn't move off of her. By the by the originalist document, he is right. I had Cox. He's in two full scenes and has like one of the most like, let me put a little bit of seasoning on this was like, wow. Like when he gets out of the cab, like, you know, and like all the helicopters are swirling. But it's clear Duval's pretty high up there. Low key nomination. Melvin Bella's housekeeper. Oh, she drops the cookies off. She's like, I spoke to him. Yeah. She's really good in that scene. Yeah. She was good. Was that important? Recasting couch director or city. Can we talk Anthony Edwards for one second? Can I can I attempt you with a little Michael Keaton? It's too big for that role. Yeah. So you'll you'll enjoy this. If you have not listened to the commentary, I highly recommend you do because Fincher is constantly using sports references. And it sounds great. He uses the phrase moving without the ball a lot and what kind of of actors do that. And he described Anthony Edwards as the assist, that he is the living embodiment of the assist. And if you watch him work in movies, even when he's the star, he's making other people seem better. And that was his role on E.R. in the center of that show. That became George Clooney and Julianna Margale is an Eric LaSalle, and all the people were on that show at that time. And in this movie, he's kind of the most important detective. Toskey is not the most important detective. He's the guy who's getting more information, who's getting more stuff down, who's driving the action more, who kind of incites more moments. You just don't feel it because of the way that Anthony Edwards acts. And also, Fincher said that his kids went to school together, and that's why he's in the movie. He's like, I knew him from going to our kids going to school together. Among the saddest moments in the entire movie is when Armstrong's like, you keep the car. Because you're just like, fuck it, broken. And you're just like, the whole time you're wondering, and he's kind of getting more tired and exasperated by it. But when he leaves the movie, there's like a certain quality of goodness that leaves the movie. It's like, it's been destroyed by this case. Yeah. It's really good. Keaton has the Dome Thermal Rooney role. Sure. Let's try to work him in here somewhere. He did that in the other guys, right? Yeah. We could just get special agent Ray Nicolette. My other note is, I just don't know why John Slattery is not in this movie, and I don't know who he's going to play. John Terry is kind of playing John Slattery, right? He's like John Slattery is just at that. Slattery was in Charlie Wilson's war, yelling to film "See More Love." Maybe that's why he wasn't. Sean, you have finished four years. It feels like that could be unlike the rewatch most 2020-28 list, Charlie Wilson's war. There's like six, it's kind of, I really think Julie is great in that movie. Yeah. The weak link is Hank's. Miss Cass. She's happened a few times. Yeah. You have a flex category. I got two really quick ones. One of which we've talked about a lot, but it's worth noting, given the intelligence of this category, the Tom Sizemore action is the juice award best toe-to-to-toe moment for a non-star, which is clearly John Carroll Lynch up against Mark Ruffalo and winning that scene, like him being the most mesmerizing person in that scene, opposite three really well-known actors, but really Ruffalo coming into his own, and then the Dan Campbell scale for Holy Shit, are they really going for it right now as the basement scene? Yeah. Where you're like, oh my god. Are you making how we know? Oh my god. Yeah. Oh my god. Oh my god. Like I said at the time when it came out, I felt like we were going to another level of the movie. Half-ass internet research. We mentioned a lot of this stuff already. They used a lot of the photos to try to figure out what stuff looked like back then. How many VW bugs should be in there? The cars are really good in this movie and how they change over the decade. We talked about the digital Thompson Viper film stream camera, which was the first one, movie like this. So there was a, this guy, Ray Cantrell made a Zodiac Killer movie, probably not the one with John Holmes. In 1972, they made this movie to try to catch Zodiac in the theater. Did you follow the story? Yeah. Did you just get put out by Eureka or something like that? It's been around for a couple years. So they make like this bad Zodiac movie and the guy funs it because he was friends with one of the people who either got murdered or almost murdered. And they show it in San Francisco for like two weeks and they're hiding in some part of the theater like in this freezer that barely had enough oxygen, scouting all the people that come in and then they claim at one point they feel like the Zodiac came in and they talked them in the bathroom but weren't able to like keep them. And it's this whole like weird. It's almost like a movie within the movie that probably would be bad. That's kind of like snake eyes. They're like set up this whole sting inside of a huge event. Yeah. Yeah. Robert Downey Jr.'s four-straught trick that he does with the three-straughts picking the four 26 takes. To get it right, he made him do it 26 times. He showed Fincher asked to perform it and then they kept doing it. You mentioned the blood thing. This is a great Mark Ruffalo quote. I'll never forget when they were negotiating my deal for Zodiac. The student negotiator literally said to my manager, look, we don't give a shit about Mark Ruffalo. We don't even want Mark Ruffalo in this movie. So you're going to take what we're offering or forget it. That was his memory of how we got the part. Yeah. That's why you hired Rich Paul. That's right. And then Robert Graysmith's cocktail. It's vodka, gin, lemon lime, and blue caracal. Yeah. I've never been a big, that just feels like the vomit special. That's just a long Island iced tea dyed blue basically. Yeah. That's like I'm throwing up tomorrow. I don't even drink blue gatorade. Hey, Pex Mountain Fincher. Do we need to explain a Pex Mountain? Now they're on Netflix. Go ahead. Yeah. How would you describe it? 425 boobies in Apex Mountain. When somebody was at the peak of their power's career was had the most use they're ever going to have in their career. Was this the moment for that? That's technically Apex Mountain. Even though we've argued that for Fincher. I do not. I think it's social network for Fincher. But don't you think this is a product of social network? No, because it's before. But isn't, this is before social. Yeah, this movie comes after a five year break off of a successful, but modest movie in Panic Room. And this movie did not do well at the box office. And was not, it was really well reviewed, but was not considered a masterpiece in its time. He needed social network to have his like, okay, this guy's also a commercial box office. And social network was another for higher job, you know, that was with a script from a well-known screenwriter. I would creatively. And I know that this is not going, but I think creatively this is like him. No, you could go creative Fincher as an Apex Mountain. I think this is him just like combining some of the deep artistry of his early work and like with the brave new world of the digital photography that he's working with. And obviously as a personal connection to this material in a way that sometimes it doesn't always feel like he does. I think he is a, he is a re Apex candidate because I think Fight Club is his first Apex Mountain because he uses the success of the Jordan Bees. Yeah, and you know, basically makes a movie about how the only way to fix capitalism is to destroy it. Early 90s bulls version of the Apex. And then I think there's never been a higher moment for him than Gone Girl where he's like, I can take an airport novel and make it a $500 million movie. Right. And nobody else can do this. And then he's like, and next up a Netflix series that CR is going to love the most. It's true, serial killer movies. Yes. It's silence. That's a tough one. Does that count as a serial killer movie though? Yeah. He's got a nickname. He's moving around. He's doing his thing. Yeah, you're right. How's that? How's that? How do you think this is better than Man Hunter? Yeah. It's a different. It's a totally different movie. CR is right. It's silence. True crime movies. Fantasy made the case earlier. Yes. Downey. No. Ruffalo. No. Ruffalo as a detective in a movie. Apex Mountain. This collateral or task, the TV show. Yeah. I think it's this. He's really bear. He's not in collateral very much. I love his look in collateral. It's my favorite. Ruffalo. Yeah, it's fucking great. And in Pete Berg. That's another one. Like, him and Pete Berg. That's a separate movie. I want it. I told you that when I talked to him for task, I basically did Chris Farley. Yeah, I was just thinking of that time. Remember in collateral when you had to go to you and he was like, yeah, I was like, that was awesome. Jill and Hall. It's kind of arguable because he's broke back then this except the movie didn't do that well. So I don't think this can be his Apex Mountain probably later, right? I think his best performance is maybe still night crawler, but that's a really good movie. His Apex, he doesn't need to do Prince of Persia right before this. Boo. Because I know he stinks obviously, but that was when he was like trying to become. He's going to get ripped. Maybe in the end or a chair when he starts doing written, that's a 20, 20, 20, 20. So maybe it's this because this allows him to kind of springboard and watch prisoners era where he's like, I'm now an established. You can put me on a poster and different movies and people will probably go. Yeah, probably San Francisco movies know. What is 48 hours? No, it's probably the one from the 70s, 30, 30. Both of which are basically based on this story. Uh, Chloe 70. No. Last days at disco. Yeah, we did that on the rewatchables. This is a good one. Fincher villains. I'll give you as nominees. John Doe and Seven, Mark Zuckerberg and social network or Arthur Leon on this movie. Unless you want to count Sean Penn in the game. I'd probably go John Doe. Definitely that Jared Lito with the with the with the with the panic room. Yeah. Yeah. The nepotheef. I think it's John Doe and we watched Seven last week. That scene when he's in the car with Brad Pitt and he's pushing Brad Pitt and trying to make a man and say Brad Pitt finally steps up. You're a fucking t-shirt. And we were just like holy shit. The space he's amazing in that movie. He is. I, I guess it's just two different versions of villainy, right? Like the Zuckerberg thing is like, the port trail of Zuckerberg is. We should have known he's trying to finish is trying to tell us so acid, man. Like, so acid, the way that he sees him as this, like, sad, pathetic ambition. And Zuckerberg didn't totally realize it. Remember when Jesse Asberk hosted SNL Zuckerberg's like, yeah, I'll make a cameo. Like he doesn't realize he didn't get it. San Francisco Chronicle both in real life and then in a movie. I felt like this was the right at the center, they were the epicenter, everything. Yeah, you know, it's interesting about all his villains. By the way, he doesn't psychologist any of them. He doesn't say, oh, well, like this happened to me. And so I'm like this and I do this. Zuckerberg, John Doe, Arthur Lee Allen. It's not like, oh, well, he was a, his upbringing or he witnessed a traumatic event. He's not interested in that for the most part for a, for a certain period. Like, nobody talked like that. Yeah, yeah. Things did things. Yeah. John Carol Lynch movies, this or Fargo, this John Carol Lynch right now, sure. Shout out to J.C.L. It's doing great. It's a great actor. Shout out to Joker, Donovan Music, Joker, a little closer to Joker. I think it's a, a curious and good fellas. Oh, see, I love the ending of to die for with season of the witch. You know, the season of the witch need to drop the end of die for is pretty. Donovan, secret movie soundtrack for us. Or getting absolutely dunked on and don't look back. The Bob Dylan documentary. Because it's, it's Donovan when Jimmy, when Tommy beats up Billy Bats, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the answer. Also the father of Ioni Skye. That's right. Who, of course, Ciar Apex Mountain for Wooden Dildos. Yeah. I would imagine. I mean, I can't think of any other. They still sell those. It's probably the porn parody, I would say. You still have them right now. Uh, you have to go to a specialty store. It's a craftsman item. There's a real splinter issue there. Yeah. Examine. If you get the right kind of lack of quality. I see. Yeah. You really? It's a buffet down first. Yeah. And then you can kind of get that. It's right. Get that grease on it. Yeah. Apex Mountain for actual fincher movies. What do you mean? Is this the best fincher movie? Oh, well, I see this is why I get to describe it that way. I just do that as a bonus camera. I think this is the best fincher movie. Yes. I do too. It's, it's my, it's my favorite. I mean, what is best? You know, like swatching seven to this day is still just really fun. You know, it's just really entertaining and it's still glides. We did, we've done it. I would re seven tomorrow. I thought Tarantino made a really good case when he was talking about his like best movies of the century or whatever. And he was talking about how he didn't love zodiac the first time. And every time he watches it, he's just stunned by how amazing it is. And each time it gets better. Yeah. Which I think is a really rare place for a movie to get to where it's like. See, 11th time I've watched this. Holy shit. Yeah. Man can the killer. Man can the killer do not have strong reputations. I would encourage people to revisit them again and look at them and try to give them the same attitude that you were willing to give to zodiac to gone girl to social network. Because they are so rewarding. I think people don't like those stories as much and I understand that. And some people just watch movies for stories. But if you like to watch movies to understand how a movie is made and what the filmmaker is thinking. There's so much cool shit in both of those movies. Yeah. I agree. At least with one of those two movies. Alright. Cruiser Hanks. Hanks is Grace Smith. It's funny. I thought Cruz is Grace Smith. I think Cruz is Toskey. I would be interested in. I'd see. I could see Hanks is Toskey. Well, we have to pick. Cruiser Hanks. You pick Hanks? Yeah. I'm picking Cruz. I think it's fun to have Cruz in this movie. I do too. Okay. I think it's Cruz. I like Hanks is Toskey. Cruiser is Grace Smith. Hanks is Toskey is good. But then we lose Ruffalo. Yeah. What about like 1988 cocktail error Cruz. Yeah. Yeah. It works. It works. Yeah. Good thing this is completely made up. We don't really have to choose. Cruiser. I know because he keeps stats. Yeah. It's analytic. Cruiser is like. So when he runs out of the guy's house after he's in the basement. What if my car was parked two streets away. And I really had to sprint. I wonder. I think that I will say that Cruz having done eyes wide shut. I know that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He worked with Stan the man. I mean. Hanks hasn't cruised it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What. So Hanks were thin. They'll hate Frank Daribon. The need to do this. Oh. He was a. for the green mind. - Freeman's still mad at him for some reason. - Is that true? - It's like Freeman. You're one of the most iconic movies of the last 40 years. - Tangent plan. I mean, that's the bad. - Still pissing him up for life. - Yeah. - Scorsese or Spielberg? - I have either. - No, that's not an answer. - Okay, so two things. Scorsese has never made a procedural. This is not what he does. He's not interested in this aspect of the world. He's interested in how people move through the world. - Do you know what he is interested in? - The Rolling Stones in 1969 and 1970s, San Francisco. - And guys doing bumps and bars? - I think it just becomes an ultimate San Francisco. I think it's only set in two years. I don't think he cares what happens after. - It would just fundamentally be a different movie. The same way that like you can tell the James Vanderbilt script, which I'm sure was very good on first pass. Fincher changed a lot. - Yeah. - You know, like he brought a lot to that. And so yeah, if Scorsese comes in and he's like, "I want to do my version of this." And it's, you know, post-Altamont. We're rocking and rolling through this murder time. I mean, he made some of San, right? Like he made a movie like this, but he didn't make it about the killer. He made it about what was happening to people around this time. - So my answer is Spielberg. - I have Scorsese just because I'd want to see the movie. - I would just be worried that the Spielberg version of this turns out like the post, which isn't a bad movie. - But it's just a little bit more like we just got to, we got to work hard to find this guy. - I don't think Spielberg's darker now for this movie. This movie's dark. - Maybe. Best tang, worst tang. Paul Avery, clearly, best tang. - Best bar night, yeah. - I think Zodiac, I'm going to go worst tang. I want to come back to my house. I want to come back to my trailer and watch the Warriors game. - By far, let me put the squirrels away. - I laid out a day for us. A little bit of skin diving. Then we're going to cook up some squirrel. I got a bunch of nudie mags. - Well, in the Zodiac documentary, that was on Netflix in 24. They interviewed these two kids that he had befriended the family. And at one point, he takes them for a trip. And they end up, both of them don't remember two days because he drug them. I think he needed now by, it also might have probably molested one of the kids, but it was during one of the crimes that he committed where he brought the kids with them on location. - But this is another murder that is not a part of the Zodiac investigation that they talk about where they say he basically went down to a beach and may have killed someone on a beach. - Oh, he's still already took a shot into a group of teenagers or something. - And then a day later, there was a murder and they were like, we were just there yesterday. - I don't remember the last two days, yeah. Zodiac, worst thing. Picket nits. Why is the cartoonist in the high level editorial meetings when they're reading the Zodiac letter, which is probably the most important thing in the city. - I don't think Avery is in these meetings either. It's just we needed it for the movie to get everybody sort of connected. - Altogether. Getting the information at the same time. - I only see Sky's character falling for the your wheel looks loose trick. Come on, honey. You got a kid in the car. - Fincher says he definitively does not think that that was the Zodiac. The Kathleen John story is not the Zodiac. It's just another crazy person on the side. - What does he say to her? Like, they don't need much help when I'm done with them or something? God damn it. - What are their nitpicks? Yeah. - The only thing I had Sean mentioned it earlier, but Toskey being like, I can't help you. But if I were to help you, I tell you to call Ken Darlo. It's just like Helper, don't help. But like, we don't have to miss into the riddler, you know? - Yeah. - Be funny if NBA trades work like that. We got a trade LeBron. Shits falling apart. Same price is like, I can't help you. But if I were to help you, call Orlando. - They can help. - I have a sort of related picking knit just about the insanity of being a police detective. Where three detectives are in a room. They're talking to the guy there almost certain as the Zodiac killer. He's wearing to Craig's point as a Zodiac watch. - Yeah. - And they can't get him. And then Toskey's like, I'm going to keep working on this case on and off for the next seven years. I am the sole proprietor of the investigation. But like, he, I don't believe that Toskey accepted the handwriting thing. Like, and so what was he actually doing thinking about the case? - He made the point later. He's like, there's been 200 murders in the last four years. Those are other families that want answers. So I think they, I think they just got too spread out. It would be my guess. I have another one. I saw this on one of the Reddit things. I'm stealing it. Which normally it isn't happening rewatchables, but we were all reading so much Reddit when the Zodiac thing that I stumbled across this one. So apologies to him taking this from Chloe on the first date orders Penny Alavaca, but asked the substitute a cream sauce. - Yeah. - That's fucking stupid. Penny Alavaca is a cream sauce. - I don't know how it was made. - Can you say I don't want vodka? Can you make it cream sauce instead? so the real picking knit, and again, this comes from the director's concert, it did not exist until the 1980s. Panay alavaca with the cream sauce was a recipe that was popularized in the 1980s. So what does Fincher say? Like, this is actually a fake order. Oh, he's like, we fucked up. Fincher who recreates the San Francisco Chronicle office. That is the cream sauce crew. Can I go back to Apex Mountain and knock this down a couple of pegs then? If I was on a date and somebody ordered panay alavaca, but then wanted a substitute for cream sauce, I would have made it. I got to make a cobbler. I backed him out. Sorry. Hey, this girl I'm here with has a head injury. I can't date her. I have a small picking knit on the half of my mother-in-law who was there watching the movie with us last night. When Melanie and Grace Smith are arguing about how Grace Smith is kind of starting to gain notoriety in the paper, he goes, "Ah, well, no one's, he's not going to read Herb Cain." And my mother-in-law shouts out, "Everybody read Herb Cain." And then we found out that the Zobiac did read Herb Cain. Oh, wow. He actually mentions Herb Cain in a letter, right? Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. Oversight by Grace Smith. That's awesome. Yeah. Sequel prequel prestige TBR black cast are untouchable. It became prestige TBR. It did might hurt. Yeah. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie, the florist, Buffalo Bill, Doris Burke or someone else here? If Fergie wrote one of the Zodiac letters, "You better keep your kids off that school bus, or I'll take them out, the Zodiac way. I'll shoot out the front tire and then pick the kiddies off if they come bouncing out. You're going to do this for me." I don't know what that voice is, but it's sort of the boss away. I love it. It's become Bono Cross with the leader of the florist. I thought for sure you were going to do Doris. DB. Yeah. There's Zodiac. Mr. BozoDiac, we see the patience with all your symbols. I'm trying to decipher your game, Mr. Zodiac. And I cannot just want to ask her who gets it, Fincher. Yeah. Probably an answerable question. I have two good ones. Do you guys have any? Who's the Zodiac? Well, I have the same thing down here. In these movies or TV shows, why don't cops realize that the serial killers always start with somebody they know. This seems to be the big revelation with 20 minutes to go in the movie. The silencer lamp. He knew her. He knew what he covered. It's like, yeah, no fucking kid. This is every murder. All this stuff with Darlene and Mike kind of being like, we know who this is, so creepy in the picture. Yeah. Just go back and interview everybody in their life. The recognition. Okay. Okay. So this is kind of, this is related to that. I wanted to ask you both, initially, if there was ever anything that was not related to the work that you do, that you would have been willing to kind of throw your life away to explore the way that Grace Smith did. For CR, it's Eddie Falco and Colin. I'm not sure if that requires a life's work. It might be a life's fascination. Like, do I have like an obsession that I would take so far that I would get rid of? Well, it depends on like, but it can't be like related to the Sixers or prestige television on the, you know what I mean? That's the problem with what we do is that we get to bring the passions into our professions. That's the best part about what we do, but like, what would be something like the MCL? But okay. So my follow the MCL, if you guys are learning about the ligament, what's up with you? Come on. You know, like, I didn't like how the Sixers looked last then, I'm officially threatened. So did you specifically ever seriously consider criminology? No. Forensic science, serial killer investigation. No. I would do that. I told you guys, I would do these deep times with like all the President's been that I'm just like throwing myself in a watergate for three weeks in 1991. But I would always get bored and move out the next day. But for what? But I just, just for that weird thing that we have, right, but he's doing this just for fun too. Is that Zodiac? Robert Christmas. No, but at some point, he starts seeing dollar signs. He's like, I can turn this. Do you think that's what it was? I think at some point, I think he was obsessed with it, but then was also like, wait, that can make money from this wonder if Melanie wishes she hung out. I have a really important unanswerable. Was there an easier job ever than 1970s handwriting expert? What were your qualifications? It's what made somebody better than somebody else. Basically, this guy just brings out a magnifying glass and he's like, and a big glass of whiskey. But you can't tell it like, can you tell it like somebody just like that? It's different. A K with three strokes or two. Like, would you be able to do this? This guy's fucking bombed with the giant Sherlock Holmes thing and he's deciding burger cases. Who the fuck is this guy? Described as a giant Sherlock Holmes thing. Yeah. He's like, oh, hold on, let me get my modicle. I'll really be able to tell this. I'm going to zag on this. I got a very specific real world, real world reason for that. Woke up early this morning and get it ready to come over here to do the pod. The daughter Alice is awake and she's sitting at what we call the messy table where she draws and colors and stuff and she's learning how to write. She's got her notebook open. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I get out of bed at seven o'clock in the morning. She's already awake sitting at this table by herself, drawing in a notebook. I was going to say zodiac symbols. Well, her drawing does somewhat recall some of the zodiac cryptography, but you can already see at four and a half that she has like patterns with the way that she draws letters. She has a style. There is like a kind of perverse art to individual handwriting. I've never spent any time studying it. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but just watching her develop like literally learning from nothing to I can draw a. I can draw L. I can draw I. You could kind of see. Now, this guy, Philip Baker Hall, he might have been a full blown up hall. She's like, could it kill her being a bed actress? No. Not my 30 years. Sean Story reminds me of when I was first learning how to draw and like in kindergarten, one of the first things I kind of learned how to replicate were ninjas. I knew I realized how to draw ninjas and in kindergarten, I did like basically a mural of death of ninjas killing each other and they had to have me talk to like a child. Jesus. You're like the kid in insidious, but it was just because it was the first thing. Like an older kid was like, if you ever want to draw a ninja, this is how you do it. There's like three triangles and a guy with like blood splurding out of his bed. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? The I am not poly every button. That was a good one. Yeah. I like that. Houseboat. To your point. It's not really memorabilia of, oh, love it. I'm done with the not want. The wooden dildo. Okay. It seems like an awful artifact like a match that behind Sean's head right now. What's that? So wouldn't build up from Zodiac. I think you don't put it there. I mean, you can digitally insert it, but you would probably like one of the original letters or all the original letter recreations that they did for the Zodiac things would be a cool thing. Oh, the one of the. The scrapbook is cool too. His whole scrapbook of all the news. Yeah. Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi award for best or worst life lesson. It's really a throwaway line in this movie, but it's not finished until you type it up. It's a really good life lesson, which is basically movies aren't finished or abandoned. Yeah. I had don't ever give up figuring out a murder investigation, even if it costs you your family and your sanity because it might lead to a David Fincher movie. Just keep going. Keep pushing. Yeah. Fincher might be waiting for you. He loves obsession. Just keep going. Best, uh, did you have a life lesson? Can't talk about that. Best double feature. All the presents, Ben. Dirty Harry. I had dirty Harry. I want to go after this movie, I need a change of pace, sir. I'd go dirty Harry first. Then I would do this. Yes. Dirty Harry is the exciting version of this story that is solved. The act is the real version of the story that is unsolvable. It is. I've never really fully realized that until I was doing the research, how much dirty Harry kind of informed, um, isn't it Scorpio and dirty Harry? Yeah. Yeah. Like how? How they kind of just ripped off Zodiac and made dirty Harry with it with Quinista. It's also such a different, like, you know, there was just so much more local media back then. So the idea that Toskey would be like this character in the newspapers and be a character based on him and the tales from the city columns and that bullet and Dirty Harry would have like his gun style and stuff like that. So I was watching some interviews with Toskey and Ruffalo's performance doesn't really sound like him. You know, Ruffalo does that like, what did you say? What do you mean by that? Like that kind of whispery kind of shattery style and Toskey talks more like a lot of cops that I knew growing up, which were just like, like, what do you mean, buddy? Come on over here. Yeah. Kind of like metropolis detective guy. And it sounds like what Ruffalo is doing is like, I haven't had my coffee yet, Dirty Harry. Like he kind of is doing the Clint Eastwood voice, they're like, well, do you punk in his voice? So it's this weird thing where like those movies are in such harmony together that even in the performance of Toskey, and he met Toskey, like it's been time with him for the role, but he's not trying to do an impression of him. Also, that they're police officers, but we never see him actually in an action scene or anything. Yeah. Sure. I get it. the taxi cab crime scene. We never see him like, wait, who's that? Like do a chase scene holding the gun up? Yeah. I don't think he ever holds a gun in the movie. He has a holster, but it's yeah. He's got that easy access holster. Who on the movie? Fincher. It's a great. Right. Pretty easily, Fincher. Yes. Okay. I mean, did the zodiac killer win the movie? Because he got away. Well, because his myth is is is is furnished by this film. I think it's notable how much this movie is still on. Like, I feel like it's been I know it's leaving Netflix maybe at the end of January. And I'm sure it'll come back. But it feels like people continue to consume this, which was ironically one of my cases with limitless when we did the 50 most rewatchable. I looked at where limitless was just streaming right now on that just watch app. And it was on like Amazon Paramount. Like it's literally everywhere because there's a reason people keep cooking on this. Yep. I never when I saw Zodiac in '07, I never thought that would be the destiny of this movie as a rewatchable in your life. Usually what we would call a rewatchable is something that's like 90 minutes to two hours that has like recognizable peaks and valleys that you can be like, Oh, I want to stay for this or I can leave for that. Yeah. And with zodiac, it's almost more like prestige television where you could watch this in 40 minute bursts if you wanted to. There are little breaks here to like, you know, with the fade out, you can step away if you want to and start it again the next day. So I wonder whether or not some of the success is its relationship to what would become mind hunter in the way that Fincher want to tell this kind of story. There's something else related to it too that I kind of meant to say at the beginning of the conversation is it's hard to do most rewatchable scene for the movie because the scenes are so short. There are not a lot of scenes where you're like, Oh, I was here for 10 minutes. The cutting style of this movie reminds me a little bit of Oppenheimer and later period Nolan that where it's like really dense, important scenes that are like 30 seconds long. Yes. And it feels like a elaborate montage, the whole movie. It's a it's a funky movie, you know, like it's it's not like the point you just made about how Ruffalo's never running with a gun. Like that's obviously a very intentional choice, but it's so different from almost any other movie of its kind. Do we ever see Downey typing? Yeah, we just got the death cause of the late homosexuals. Yeah, all right. Craig, what's your take? You never saw this movie. Never saw this movie. I would argue I know you said you like to watch this with no pants on alone. I think this is a decent family watch. I think it's a generational connector. Yeah, because I watched I was texting my dad as I watched it. I watched it with Liz's parents. And there's a lot of like they described to us how things worked back in the day. We were asking questions, but it was made no seven. So there's modern film making to it. I'm more familiar with Fincher films than my parents or her parents. And yet they knew everything about living in California in like the 70s and 80s. So actually, and it's not really as gory as I thought it was going to be. Yeah, even the death, like you said earlier, they're not sensationalized or romantic at all. No, they're a little tame, at least to what I'm used to and what I expected coming into a Fincher film. Yeah, I think it's why like you said, you were a little bit lukewarm and you first saw it. I feel like you do kind of back into this movie because you go and expecting something completely different. And then now, I mean, even hearing you guys talk, I'm like, well, this really, it felt like creepy all the president's men. Yeah. And you end up respecting that. And it's a movie you really want to dig into. You have to turn your phone upside down. And after the movie was over, we talked about it for 30 minutes. And it's almost a puzzle that is not meant to be. Family movies. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of is. It brings the fam together because it's not really a puzzle. I mean, half the time, I didn't know what was going on. We kind of discussed how all these names and all these connections were pretty blurry. And we had trouble with that. And we realized this is more just about. Yeah, the detective. The turn when it goes to Grace Smith and the way that they leap to Marshall is like, you have to really be dialed in on. Totally pieces of paper that they've got are like quick conversations that they have. So since I want to see it again soon, you think I should show it to Alice tonight. What do you think we should do? Not the John Holmes film. Maybe this one. Got it. Got it. Yeah. But this is totally crazy. Cricks asks his mother. What's the old wooden dildos back then? Did they really have those? Well, one thing I texted my dad who was a police officer. I was like, there's a moment where they go up to this thing that literally says police telephone on the street. Yeah. That's open up. And there was a phone in there. I've never seen that before. But did he say that those were he's like, oh, yeah, those were things like right when I started they basically disappeared when people got cell phones. Yeah. But yeah, never seen those before. This movie was a huge thumbs up. Big thumbs up. And it's like a it's something you need to revisit. Like I already want to go back and now watch this again. All right. So strong. So we had another 48 hours. He liked that one. Just one of the guys was bad. So now we've now we've really backed. I got the rare like panic to text from Craig about just one of the guys on like a Friday afternoon where he was like, Hey, man, just like level with me. What's going on with this one? That's it for the first three watchables on Netflix. Sadly, these aren't going to be on YouTube anymore. But happily they're going to be on Netflix. I think we blasted past the running time of the film. We did that. That's running time. Also, if you have Netflix, you can click on the watch list thing for all of our podcasts. But especially this one's once a week. So anytime we do a new one, it'll just pop up on the thing and we're going to try to do Netflix movies over the course of the next like two months, at least. So follow me on Twitter because I will tell you what's coming or my podcast, Bill Simmons podcast. What's coming next? Let you know. I don't know what the order is. But I know we're circling wild things pretty hard. Ace Ventora, which we've never done. That's on there. And then two two two two films. The recast away is looming. But is it going to be a solo recast away? Will not be a solo because I did cast away by myself during Covid, which I still feel like was my 81 point game. It's your apex mountain. Kobe has this 81 point game. I have solo cast away during Covid. Yeah. But we need to redo that one at some point. But we have a lot of good ones. There might be a Michael Mann movie doing live in Los Angeles. No. Next one. But that's it for rewind. The keep live. It's black. It's black. It actually had. You're going to explain it. And then big picture, which is also going to be on Netflix. Yeah. And then a lot of rumors about live right after the Oscars. So some rumors could happen. Yeah. Where is it going to be taking place? Am I going to be inside of the movie? You might be literally might be here. Should I be on stage receiving an Oscar live potting? I was very upset about Joe Edgerton. I get it. It was a loaded category. It's just my feelings. You just can't be surprised. That was my performance. That was my number one that I was like, uh, happy about F1 getting best pick. I think they put the one popcorn movie in, right? Yeah. So that beat what avatar. I thought weapons would have been the choice because it was a little bit more critically acclaimed, but it had made sense to me. Yeah. Even if it was sacrificial. Glad people came around on my side on weapons. Who's keeping up the category? I don't think that's what happened. I think people I think I started because it wasn't nominated for best picture that everyone decided weapons isn't good. Jesse Buckley nominated. Here's the thing. When once I talked about it, hand made a little bit. I think that really helped their kids. Good job. Good job. Did you get did you get the check from focus features for pushing hamnet the way that you did? I would actually give you the first ones who said, wow, she's really great in that movie. I'll give you back a month of my salary if you get Jesse Buckley. I would love her. Yeah. She's amazing. She's great. She's a great actress. Great job. Uh, mescal was tough too for supporting. What about mescal? And mescal. I call it mescal. It's like you placed second base for the east. The east mescal. He just signed with the Rangers. Yeah, the podris right. Did you see Paul that's a big red socks fan? I did. Is he really actually that Paul mescal's a big red socks fan? He's fucking England. He's got access with the red socks. He said in a new interview. It's so lame. What was your number one stuff? I didn't know your pod yet. Uh, what was my number one accident? I mean, it was just an accident. I think was a movie that people thought was going to go there, but I didn't predict that. No, the choice. Right. I never thought we'd get it. It's tough because it's like first predictions versus movies that I liked. You know, I don't know if there was like a massive overload. You surprised in the act. Let me chase infinity. Maybe if one battle after another was probably the one that most people thought was going to have that. Plenance. Uh, loady category, but also I thought just category fraud. She was, she was supporting. I mean, Plenance was great in Bogonia. Did you watch Bogonia? I did. Okay. It's too bad. What do you think? There's certain movies that just aren't my kind of movie. You're not a your ghost guy. I'm, I'm a hundred percent. You're, and you're out on your ghost too. I do not like your movies. I am in the, I appreciate, I appreciate your ghost exists. You guys like, you're like horny for each other. No, no, no, it's just for me. Three hour and six minutes. It's like he tells the center women in his films. Is that the issue? I just, no, it's not. No, it's not my cup of tea. Got it. That my cup of tea. So when Emma Stone's character and poor things kind of realized her agency as a woman, do you like your ghost movies? I do. Yeah. I had him on the big picture for, uh, Bogonia, which I thought was a cool movie. Not like the best movie the year, but I thought it was cool. Uh, CR. Yeah. Great to see you as always. Great to see you, ma'am. Sean Fantasy. Thanks Bill. You too. Uh, thanks to, go how? Thanks to Craig. Thanks to Eduardo as well. We will see you next week on the real match.