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

The Rewatchables is brought to you 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 Sean Fennesee, he hosts the Big Picture.

Yes.

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.

Wait, what's the Watch?

The Watch. It's a TV culture pod, right?

What?

It's a Landman podcast.

Culture pod.

Wow. First I'm hearing of this.

Yeah.

We have other pods.

We do. We 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 on the original.

We've been doing this podcast since 2017. It has 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 of 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 belatedly into that spot. But we were making it up to Zodiac and the Zodiac Killer somewhere.

David pictures like, it's all been worth it. I made it onto Bill's list. Finally, the copy.

Well, he's a Netflix guy too, right? So maybe he's watching.

Anyway, Zodiac is next. 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 2, National Treasure 2, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and 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. No country for Old Men. Zodiac, Michael Clayton, Juno, American Gangster, Superbad Knocked Up. Charlie Wilson's Worth three. Ten to Yuma. Gone, baby, Gone. Eastern Promises, Assassination of Jesse James by.

The Coward, Robert Ford. He often doesn't get mentioned in the title.

I was. Sorry.

Robert Ford.

And out of all those, Zodiac was the slowest burn I saw in the theater. I was like, ah. 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 why, 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, go. 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 discussed 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. Yeah. Anytime we talk about a serial killer movie on this 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, but it's tough for Brad.

Pitt, but satisfying everybody else.

We at least 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.

No, we actually are going to solve it. Spoiler. Sierra and I have found out the killer that's coming at the end.

But, you know, 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, as this, like, beautiful, personal story about David Fincher's adolescence.

Yeah, I think it's almost unknowable on the first watch. You know, I mean, when you. When you spend time with this movie, especially, like, as we get ready for a rewatchable, we watch a movie usually, like, couple times during this week. And I found myself noticing things in the back of frames, gestures that people make, little, like, 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, like, 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, you're 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, oh, that was a good five clocker, and now I'm going home.

The other piece of it, it's kind of a good hang, which we talk about with rewatchables. Like, 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 I 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 tonight.

Yeah, like, I know what 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.

I want to hear 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. I have it in my notes somewhere. I'll find the exact quote. But he 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. Rewatchables. We're never gonna be finished.

This is part two. This is part two. Maybe we'll do part three. You guys have been reheating?

Well, yeah. I wasn't on the first one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 I. It must have happened over Covid. But this movie all of a sudden was on more, at least in the. In the ways we watch stuff. And then it was on the streamers live. It was on Netflix a lot.

This is.

It was just like, I'll throw this on, and the music's good in the beginning, and you just get sucked in.

It's. It's stature has really grown in the last 10 years. We. 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, 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. 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 is a movie about a newspaperman and a police detective trying to figure something out.

Wow. The symbolism of you guys.

Well, I mean, I think it's also that 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.

Producer Craig Horlbeck is with us as well. He joins us for every rewatchables. Craig, if somebody's flashing their lights at you and telling you to pull over because there's something wrong 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 pull over?

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. These were. Half of the shows back then were hitchhikers getting kidnapped and serial killers just running amok, people showing up at sorority houses, just going to town.

I think that there was the possibility of good Samaritanship back then. Now, like Zabora hopefulness, we just ignore each other. People just don't talk to Each other. Like, being neighborly is increasingly not a thing in this country. But back then, if you needed help, in theory, a stranger would help you.

Like, 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 wrong with your tire. Oh, I'm going to fix it for you. Okay, Sounds 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 pod, about like, oh, my God, 75.

That's our 75. 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. That There Will Be Blood. No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood was one of those. Like, 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 5. 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.

20 years later, but it does seem like it has not. I. I disagree.

I disagree.

You did you disagree personally or you disagree?

Like, I just. Personally, yeah, but not big picture. Do you think it's regarded in the same. In the same class as I do Not Blood. And.

And it's a very different kind of movie. It's just those other three movies are really maximalist movies, and it's a much more like kind of Restra 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?

Yeah.

All four of them, though. It's not just that it feels like our 75. They all feel like 70s movies. And Michael Clayton just. Just feels like a very familiar character study from.

And for Fincher and Gilroy, explicitly were like, I'm trying to make a 70s movie like those. That's. That's the playbook I'm following here.

You know what else helps with Those three. The directors.

Yep.

You, Fincher and the Cones. And you have pta, obviously. But then some of the other movies that came out that, you know, Superbad knocked up the combo of that. That was really when the comedy era. Those are two of the better done comedies that we've had. And you go all the way through, I think gangster.

You can. 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 like 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 for.

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 what Dark Knight and Iron man are the next year. Yeah, yeah, right.

Zodiac's first weekend, the film was outgrossed by Wild Hogs. Wild Hogs. Beat it. Shout out to Mike Tolan.

Wild Hogs rewatchables.

When Wild Hogs crushed it.

I didn't mind that movie when I watched it.

How many Tim Allen movies have been on the rewatches?

Zero.

Zero.

That's kind of surprising.

Santa Claus, classic.

And then 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's. It'll be fine. We'll do. It'll do okay.

It's doing. It's doing great now. I mean, I think what you said before is right. It's like, it's just fun. Kind of fun to have on. Even though it's about the most depraved thing in the. In recent history. I mean, it's 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, and 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. And most movies that are 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.

Want to do 4K transfer now or later?

It's a really unusual 4K transfer, just because 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.

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. The transfer is so good that you can actually tell they're different actors.

But I think you're supposed to be able to.

Yes.

Like, I think you're. It's supposed to lead to the ambiguity of, like, who was this guy? Was there more than one?

He definitely wasn't. The short guy in the basement can rule him out. He's too short.

Is that Bob Vaughn?

No, our guy from the movie.

Poster guy.

Yeah, our guy from welcome Back, Cotter.

No, I mean, Bob wasn't the guy's name Bob Vaughn.

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 President's Madness and Spotlight, I think, are weirdly similar movies, even though they're completely different about. Completely different thing. And the style of them is 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 watch it all the time because I love the process.

What number was that? Do you remember?

It was, like, in the. I'm going to say the teens.

Higher or lower than Proof of Life? It was.

It was higher.

So wait, is Zodiac going right into the Proof of Life slot, or is it actually higher? 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 used police reports as like a baseline for their.

Well, they spent 18 months on it.

That's what I'm saying.

I mean, that's like. I don't think anyone would ever do that again.

Well, I'm going to do that for Book of Basketball.

Too.

I'm going to get Isaiah Thomas. I'm gonna be like, hold on, what's the secret?

Are you adapting Book of Basketball for a narrative feature film?

Yes. I like this. It ends with a serial killer. Did you know they spent 18 months doing this?

No, but that makes sense. It's also very Fincher to do that. Maybe 60 takes.

Panic room. Oh, two.

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, this five part thing.

He's basically circling Mindhunter for about 15 years that.

So I guess that would have been HBO, one of the only Netflix could have gone this back then either HBO or Showtime. Where else would he.

Pushing into digital and him pushing into streaming. Like he's couple 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 says four years later, we're now in a different movie. But it's the same movie, obviously. 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 2 reporting. Procedural only unlike in Spotlight and All the President's Men. They never solve 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 Joel Embiid.

You don't feel you have the answer at this point?

No. Joel Embiid will go out and he'll torch the rockets and then CR Is like, maybe this case isn't.

I've been chasing the wrong guy.

Joel Embiid 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 Kleist, the sound designer, and Donald Graham Burt, the production designer. Like, he just has this coterie of genius artisans who all know exactly how to work with him. And so he. 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 movie making that we've seen in the century. And the movie itself, like, the obsessiveness thing is just what resonates with me the most because I'm one of those people. Like, we're all three of us are 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 Leigh 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 Leigh 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 Leone. Wait, is it?

Yeah. Yeah.

The scary thing about the moniker is that it could just stand in for evil and that there's evil in the one of two basements in California and there's evil out on 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 was cool, that, 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 microfiches 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 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 71 telecount in LA looked like in 1971, and this is what the ashtray 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. Even you were describing Fincher being obsessed by the Zodiac, and he describes him as kind of like his boogeyman. Like, I literally was like, that's kind of what Larry Bird was for you. You know what I mean? It's like he is 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.

But I would have loved nothing more than a Zodiac like Serica or running through Massachuset of New England. I would, as. As a little kid, I would. 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 that he's into because of the way that he gets fascinated by this stuff.

Yeah, we watched seven.

I.

My son is banging out all these 90s and 2000s movies, and we watched seven the other night, and you just forget, like, with some of these twists at the end, he's like, that's not gonna be Gwyneth Paltrow'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 Finchered out. He'd watch seven and Fight Club. He's like, I've had enough of Fincher. I was like, well, you'll circle back.

It's a different energy, too. You might want to be a little bit older.

It's.

Well, it's also. These Fincher movies are invasive.

Yeah.

Even Panic Room, which is a relatively simple movie. That's. That's not. You know, that's not a double feature.

He's manipulating us.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you love Mindhunter is your favorite TV show, probably of all time.

I mean, it's definitely one of the best shows of the 21st century. I would say that.

And it's got some umbilical cord to this.

Yeah.

I think that you can see in. I think the.

The.

The Lee interrogation is essentially like, a blueprint for a lot of what happens in Mindhunter, 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, equally large. You know, there's a bunch of stuff in Northern California in Mindhunter, but it's.

You know, it's equally about John David Carroll.

John Carroll Lynch.

John Carroll lynch, whatever his name is.

John Carroll. 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, because that's what it's like. It's like an hour and a half into 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 mastermind.

So he's like, oh, what's the next sin?

Exactly. 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 with 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 his mother, his.

Sister in law are like, he's the Zodiac.

Yeah. The same glove size, same shoes.

But it's like it go. It 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.

The letters and the letters stopped.

And then it takes them years to figure.

Murders both stop.

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 that Toschi has just gotten lost. You know, that he has. Just because there's been so much, like.

An Armistead mopping came and did a drive by on.

That was a tough one. We'll get into that.

You know that scene you talk about when they interrogate him, how great that was. And 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 faces Ruffalo makes in that scene where he's just. He's trying to stay deadpan, but you.

Can'T 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.

Yeah. May I see it? May I see it?

You know, he sits down and he crosses his legs and what's that guy's name? Elias Coteus.

Yeah.

And he just sees the boot and he's like, yeah, does one of those. But there's like 10 of those. One of the things with Fincher that, you know, he's such a stylistic awesome director. Right. And you think of him like how things look. 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 dialog 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.

Only time we get the killer's pov, right, because they're staring at him.

Our guy Michael Mann is good at this, too. Like, our fa. When we did Thief, our favorite scene was the diner scene.

Sure.

Where it's just two people talking for a while. Now, Michael Band had probably not as good as dialog as. As the Fincher movies were. Like, I don't think Michael, man, 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 and 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.

This is the movie, too, where that myth started because.

Because of Downey and Jill and all. Yeah. And. 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 a 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, cantaloupe, rhubarb, blah, blah, blah, to 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.

Fincher might be the Zodiac, you know.

He obviously kind of relates in some ways to the methodologies of these crazy people.

The actual Fincher quote was, films aren't finished. They're abandoned. So you mentioned the run he goes on. Here is this Benjamin Button, which randomly. I watched last night.

He shoots that immediately after this.

Yeah, I would have cut the lady in the Bed hospital. Old Cate Blanchett just would have cut every scene with that.

It's.

That would have been my note if Dave was coming to me like, hey, what should I do, Simmons?

Maybe he should come over for a pod. And you're just like, here's some notes for start.

Start with young.

Enjoy that.

Start with Turn his mic off.

Just let me talk. Yeah, so it would be like the top 50 pod. Yeah. Top 50 problems with your.

We could redo the top 50 pod with him, too.

You don't agree with me, so you like Limitless.

That is probably my least favorite David Fincher mov.

Mine too.

It is. It's really interesting technical marvel 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, like, 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 in there. I don't know.

It's a really fun swing and miss.

It's the. It's also the only, like, proper literary adaptation that he did. Like, obviously 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 Huston movie. 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 lionize, they're all, like, auteurs. They're writer directors. He is, like, going script to script, and he has his writers who he likes. But, you know, the. The James Vanderbilt script that was just, like, Disney optioned the Graysmith book and then it fell out of.

And he wrote it on spec and.

Then Vanderbilt wrote it on spec because he loved the story and loved the book. And then somehow they sold it and he just kind of came onto 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 of the last 30 years.

So this movie, Zodiac, Button, a year later, Social Network.

And then Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl.

Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl. And that's on like what, six years?

Yeah. Seven years through Gone Girl, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's an amazing run. 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.

Dion Waiters for Jake Gyllenhaal coming off broke back at a nice point in his career. Donnie Darko was like, 02 and jarhead. Yeah. And so it was kind of 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 rom com. That sucks. I might do a decent rom com. 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 have another good one. I love him in this movie. Really important Downey movie. This was like right at the start of the comeback. So almost down and out there in.

The mid 2000s, his kiss bang Bang and then this, right?

Bang Bang is like three years earlier.

I think he had been like, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was like, now I can be insured again.

And now.

And then Kiss Bang Bang this and then Iron man the next year. 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 welcome Back. Cotter was also Roger Rabbit, one of those guys.

Yeah. He was the head of Arcade. He was RK Maroon, head of Maroon Studios. You guys remember that from Roger Rabbit.

I don't no Maroon cartoons.

You guys remember that?

Sean was attracted to Jessica Rabbit.

I mean, Reddit. She was my zodiac killer. Yeah.

Zach Grenier.

Yeah.

One of those guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Might remember him from Philadelphia.

Yeah.

He was kind of the one who came around and had Andy's back a little bit.

He's the Justice Department guy in this.

He was. He was in Fight Club. He's Ed Norton's Boston Fight Club.

Philip Baker Hall Sherwood. I love hard, sharp bees and butter in my ass. That's just what I like.

It is funny when he's sharp, when he's like pruning his bushes. When Gyllenhaal comes and sees him, I'm kind of like. I kind of think he's gonna say.

Jake, everything's going to video.

The Simple Man. Yeah.

Little James La Gross. Just a tiny.

Just a little dash at the end. Yeah.

Little dash of Donald Logue.

Yeah. Logue.

John Carroll Lynch.

James Legro has one of my favorite lines in the movie where he's like, good for him. But he's like, yeah, that guy's gonna go catch the Zodiac.

John Carroll lynch. Fresh off Fargo.

Yeah.

This was kind of the peak for him.

He was Mr. Gunderson. Right.

Dermot Mulroney. Not sure why he's in this movie. And Chloe Sevigny Fincher said Chloe Sevigny.

We'Ll talk about momentarily. Maybe the hottest she's ever looked. German 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.

Yeah.

He has like a very glaringly pot belly.

They never worked together before. It's like, why is Jerma. Rudy was kind of a movie star. Yeah. He's in four scenes and he's like, interesting. Go get him.

What do you want to do?

Okay.

Take a night off.

Where does this rank for Gyllenhaal performances for you?

It's the last in a very important era. But is not my favorite era. It's the wide eyed innocent weirdo era.

Yes.

Which is like how he got launched with Donnie before this. It's after. Okay. And 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.

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.

Ten years later, we're like, there is something wrong with him.

We got to do prisoners just for Gyllenhaal being like, why? Why are you shopping for kids clothes?

Detective Loki.

Yeah, it was funny doing a podcast with in person with him, which I did probably like seven, eight years ago.

Was that for the Boston Marathon movie?

Yeah. When we had our old offices. Totally normal guy.

Yeah.

I kept waiting him for to be super weird, and he just wasn't.

Yeah, I met him. He was totally normal. But in every movie, he's like, you want to go do heroin? It seems insane.

Downey is just playing on. 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.

Aqua velvet.

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 Gyllenhaal's character is walking home from work and he peeks into that bar, and all the people from this paper just getting bombed. That was newspapers in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. Like, you finish work. There was some dive bar, like at the Boston Herald. It was J.J. foley's. Everybody would go to Foley's after.

Yeah.

There was a bar across the street from the Inquirer that it was like a prerequisite. Allegedly had a phone line directly to the copy desk. So the copy desk could call the bar.

Yeah.

To ask questions.

Every city has them.

Yeah.

And it was just like, I could have spent another 20 minutes with those guys just talking about, like, Dr. J.

One of my.

Dr. J. Coming.

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 bar, and he's got the oxygen tank in the bar with him.

Right.

He's so shot.

And then left it all on the floor, man.

Come on. What do you want from him?

Ruffalo? So he's in, you can count on me. That was like his arrival movie. And that's 2000. 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 thoughts cards.

You say that, and I. I 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.

Not. You wouldn't.

I think he's a little too idiosyncratic to be. I don't know. Who are you thinking of?

Chris Pratt. I've never been able to get a handle on what his career preference was because he just made a couple. How much he paying me? I'll take it.

I know.

But then he was also like, I really care about the craft. I'm just in it. And it's like, which are you? Which one. Are you the craft guy or are you the paycheck guy?

I mean, he's both. He's like.

I think that's the problem.

I'm 13 going on 30. I'm. Now you see me. I'm. You know, I mean, poor things. I mean, Shutter Island. Like, I work with the greatest filmmakers of all time. I've also made six Marvel movies. I don't. I kind of respect it. Like.

Well, you know what we really learned about him? They knew. They knew. You cut him loose.

This is a good. This is the pepper to that salt. This is like him just being like, finish the book. Like, he has some great lines and some great turns and like, Task. You 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, especially because the guy he's playing was a pretty legendary 70s. Yeah. Detective. Because he's tied in with Dirty Harry and all this stuff.

Yes. He's pretty well known guy. Yeah.

I think this is my second favorite Ruffalo performance.

After you Can Count on Me.

After you can Count On Me as the best. 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 caricature ish kind of actor. But he's very entertaining. Like, the spotlight thing is very memorable. But, like, is it good acting? Like, it's not particularly good. But it's appropriate for the movie. I feel this way in the Marvel movies, where I'm like, is Mark Ruffalo just, like, doing bits like, what is this? But he's obviously capable of a lot. The Toschi 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, Toski, 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, takes the tomato off because it would bother his stomach. He starts popping tums during the movie. You know, he's taking antacids because he's having stomach problems. They don't explain any of that stuff. But he as, 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 did. I mean, like, if you. If you want to see late period, Ruffalo absolutely cooking.

He didn't watch Task because he watched poor things seven times.

Just crank a couple times. It's good. Some good stuff.

No begonia.

A couple begonias. Liked it.

Director's commentary.

Didn't see that. Your ghost didn't see that. Did he do that? Did he do one for that? You don't know.

Gyllenhaal Downey. Ruffalo, your favorite out of those three, Craig in this, Ruffalo.

I think Ruffalo's 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 Marvel movies who just become action.

Figures, wears a bunch of tennis 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 raiser in every movie.

I love Ruffalo.

Robert Downey. I think going back now, I had never seen Zodiac until yet last night. The RDJ shtick, the Iron man shtick is, like, fully cooking in this movie. And it is 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 a little bit.

I felt this set that way a little bit too.

But in the moment, I'm sure you.

Were like, I like it though, because the movie needed it. It needed a weirdo.

He is like that in Chaplin, you know, like, he is like that in every movie. Like, that was his thing.

This is like what he does.

Definitely in that and Back to School with Roddy Danger.

Totally.

I don't know what he's going for.

That movie 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. Yeah. At like 48 years old, managed to turn it into the biggest thing that happened to movies in the 21st century.

Right.

We're gonna take a break and then there's an Oscars discussion we need to have, and we're gonna talk about the actual zodiac killer and what we think happened. 2007 Oscars March 2008. This movie just gets shut out. Zero doesn't make best picture.

I was shocked by this.

Zero, no best director.

If you were doing the big picture, what 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 everywhere, all at 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 vote for this.

Best Picture. No country wins Atonement. Juno, Michael Clayton. There Will Be Blood for doing that again. It's just cracking the list. I don't know who gets bumped.

Probably Juno would go out and so.

Juno had a moment, though, in 07 it was. People got really excited about it.

Sure.

There were new actors people got fired up about. It was a Jason Raymond.

Yeah, I like it. I think it's a good movie.

I like it. I think it gets bumped by something.

I really like Atonement.

I mean, personally, directors was Cohen's one. Julian Schnabel.

Schnabel.

Schnabel. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Yeah, you seen that one?

Tavier.

Yeah.

Jason Raymond, Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson.

I didn't forgot.

Gilroy got nominated Best actor, which I think Jake would have been eligible for.

Uh huh.

Uh huh.

Guy named Daniel Day Lewis. He won for a movie called. I think we're gonna keep that where it is.

Yeah, that's a good one. Clooney. That's a good win.

Tommy Lee Jones in the Valley of Elah. Ayla. Hila. I don't remember.

I can't remember. Honestly. It's been a minute.

It's a biblical reference.

Viggo Mortensen for Easter Promises. Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd, the demon barber. What the fuck were we doing there? Jesus Christ.

We were really enthralled. Big Depp at this time.

Jake could have taken that spot.

Big Depp and big Burton. You seen that? Sweeney Todd? No. Have you seen it staged?

I saw it on the. On Broadway. Yeah. I saw it in the. In the. As a play. Who was cool?

Do you remember who was in the.

I saw it in Boston. I saw 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? They're eating these people.

This barber's a demon.

That's the problem. It wasn't seeing Halloween when you were like.

So here's.

Coming up next, top 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.

Seymour Hoffman. Charlie Wilson's War. He's really good in that movie. Incredible. I can't kill him on that.

He owns the movie.

Hal Holbrooke and Into the Wild. That feels like an old guy getting roared 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 the whole Brook spot, I'm guessing, right?

Ruffalo over Downey.

You tell me.

It's Downey for me, but it's also a personal. He's also playing my kind of music in this movie.

Let's. 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, you know? Yeah.

This was actually the worst of all of these. Best writing Adapted screenplay. No Country Wins Atonement. Away from Her Diving Bell and the Butterfly and There Will Be Blood and 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 a lot. Most of what he was doing because he came out of music videos was oriented around success and, you know, 7 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. Guy Sierra.

I like the look of it, but I think it's. It's got a lot of. I mean, he. 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 or 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 Graysmith to. Basically, you got to give this up. He's like, this. Too much time has passed. People can't remember shit anymore. So I feel like Fincher slid that in there.

It's almost like the philosophy of the movie, right?

Yeah. It's like, if you don't spring on it now, we're in trouble.

Yeah.

Vanderbilt, the writer, pitched the story as, what if Gary Trudeau woke up one morning and tried to solve the Son of Sam? Interesting. They didn't want to glamorize the killer. Fincher said, quote, that would have turned the story into a first person shooter video game. We didn't want to make the sort of movie that serial killers would want to own. I like that because you're not. If you're like, a future possible serial killer, you're not watching this, like, Arthur Lee. I want to be this dude. This guy's really cool.

Amazing things that I 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, exorcist. Really good satire. And, like, there's even one that they're not sure it's from him, but he's, like, badly. Like, he hates Badlands. It glorifies murderers.

Yeah.

So they. So there was a bunch of unconfirmed material, and it just could have been some wacko writing, like, but it was.

It was like this guy, like, Just shooting from the hip, Rob.

We got to get the Zodiac killers Top 5 most rewatchable movies podcast. Seriously. Can he. Can he bounce back on your list?

You know, he's weighing in on Rick Barry in the 75 Warriors. I believe in these guys.

Is he into Devil? Worse. Prada? Where does he land on that one?

Oh, he would. He probably would have loved 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 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 at the 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.

Riverside is the first murders.

Yeah.

Okay, but he.

But Fincher 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, 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 want to describe it, we don't really even know what he's responsible for.

I gotta be honest. It was much more. It was easier to try and, like, read about the Kennedy assassination than it is to read about the Zodiac killer, because the Zodiac, it just has so many, like, different. 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 this guy. 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 Darlene Farron. Right.

They get. And the guy Mike Mageau 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 Berryessa. I. I can.

Kills the one, kills the girl, but.

And the other guy survives.

Yeah.

I can recreate some of the screams later if you want.

Like, privately.

Well, I could do that. I'll do my Quint Jaws impersonation just for that.

Save them for when Taylor comes back from his Achilles.

Yeah.

Graysmith makes the dangerous animal of them all. 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. Joel McCray. Right.

What was going on in this movie? The villainous Count Zaroff hunting live human prey.

You never read this story. This was like. 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 again with Ice Tea.

Right?

Yes. That game, that movie is. Is it called Trespass?

No, that's just called the Most Dangerous Game. Or Game.

I feel like they make this movie every 10 years. Then they do that. What was the COVID year? There was the Hunt. The Hunt. Let's hunt humans.

What is that Ice T movie?

It's not called Trespass. I thought it was called Dangerous Game.

Yeah, maybe it's called Dangerous Game.

Anyway, the original movie, 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 bloodstained shirt to the Chronicle taunting letter. He's talking a lot of smack. Yeah.

Yeah. Kind of the Anthony Edwards of serial killers. Yeah.

He's staring at the bench. Yeah, Little Dylan Brooks in there. Someone claimed to be Zodiac, starts fucking with this lawyer, Melvin Belly on a talk show. Ends up, but it's not really him. Then our guy, Roger Avery, played by downey, finds this 1966 Riverside murder that he thinks is tied to it, that the police missed. Then they interview Arthur Lee Allen in 71. They notice 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. We don't find out to the end of the movie. That he lived near the first victim.

Yes, because he. Right.

Also has a trailer full of fucking weird shit, including a wooden dildo. And there's 19 other things that seem suspicious, but the handwriting expert just kills it. He's like, nah, nah, it'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. Yeah, we might not have a movie or even a case. It might just be totally different.

Cr. How would you compare this to Pablo Torres Aspiration Investigation? A lot of circumstantial evidence, but can't find the smoking gun. And Palmer versus Arthur Lee Allen.

He should have similar.

They kind of have a similar vibe. Similar vibes, yeah, they do.

Pablo spinning out a little bit like Grace Smith there.

Yeah. 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.

Kawhi Leonard was paid properly under the cap rules. Then stuff stops. Not so coincidentally, Arthur Leon's in jail for the second time for molesting people. Yeah, another red flag. Definitely adding that to his draft combine file. Multiple molestations.

Jesus Christ.

By 1976, Graysmith is just losing his mind. Announces he's writing a book, starts getting the heavy breathing phone calls because guess who's out of jail? Arthur Leigh 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 going to kill somebody today, it's my birthday. And all the circumstantial evidence. Oh, by the way, it's ambidextrous. Forgot to mention that part. And then eight years later, after Graysmith's book has come out, Mike Mageau, somehow they have not asked to look at an Arthur leon photo for 12 years here. They're like, what about this guy? Is like, yeah, that's him.

Eight out of ten. Pretty good.

Yeah.

And then Arthur Leon dies of a heart attack. And that's basically the case against Arthur Leon.

Yeah. Part of the genius of the movie is the way it portrays bureaucratic disorder, the fact that there's so many police departments and police Officers and detectives. No Internet and no right. 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, Mindhunter, 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, what Graysmith'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. You know what I mean? It's like. It's the same thing with hospitals, where you're like. They used to just have, you know, 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 character, took such good notes.

Yes.

That there were so. 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 because, like, we think of that shit as really boring. And I. 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 President's been this movie, the Drudgery, you can feel it's like, fuck, all right. Gotta go through these files.

Yeah, it's boring.

All the President's Men has that famous scene when they're in the library, and it just like. Like the crane goes up and they're just like, all right, guess we got to go through these.

That's like the one basketball reference. You know, it's like, this isn't going to do itself. I got to get all this data.

I got to 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 night as the Bluff murders. Which he said was used to kill a chicken that day for dinner.

Yeah, 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 handwriting thing. So there was this other thing. This happened in December. So last month, an amateur sleuth, self taught cryptography expert named Alex Baber in West Virginia who said one of the reasons he was able to pull this is because he has autism. That makes him fixate on things until he can figure out what happened. And he used all 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 back 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 Dahlia 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 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 Dahlia. And this guy Alex Baber's like, this guy did both.

Yeah.

These were the two great unsolved murders of the 20th century or serial killer or whatever. And this guy's saying it's actually solved it.

It's actually like the demon of like the devil of California, right?

Yeah. The only thing that I always stumble on whenever I hear the. That kind of insinuation that the Black Dahlia Killer and the Zodiac Killer were one in the same is like that'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 so Marin to go murder.

But is the implication that was in Southern California up to the Riverside killings and then moved up to the.

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. The randomly killed, like the four people in that. In that dorm in Idaho. And he was studying. He was studying criminal law or something. Creepy. But he came, 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.

Yeah.

Craig, what are some of the mistakes you make as you. As you kill people around Southern California.

Up and down the coast?

I've had to stop. It sucks. Yeah. You know, you also.

You do have. You have a legacy in San Diego, Los Angeles and Northern California.

We know that about serial killer hotbeds. 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?

Not super far from where I grew up.

Yeah.

The reason I don't think the Baber 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's, like, responsible. There's something called, like, case breakers. That's like a bunch of ex 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. Sounded like really true Detective, where he had like a criminal posse and would like, indoctrinate people into this crew and they would like, like Maraud Northern California, but.

Well, that's another theory.

I think there was some DNA with Sherry Bates that they were linking to him or something. I can't remember. Yeah, well, that.

One of the other theories is that this was multiple people.

Yes, that's the one. The film, I think I ascribed to.

I think the film 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 Vaughn in the basement scene is the idea that there is a connection between these different people. I wrote the posters, 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 pin board lines meet.

Yeah.

And to me, like, we didn't go far enough. And 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 Leigh Allen killed Darlene. That's the one thing that I'm like, this makes too much sense.

And Mike Bion kind of knew who it was. Yes.

Right. He identifies him. The distance between them, the pre existing 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.

That he might have gotten help. Yeah. $70 million budget made. $85 million, barely made. Even a little bad for Fincher was like, wait, we give you a lot of money for this.

That was worldwide too. In the US made like 35.

He got it all back. I mean, like, he just goes on this run now.

He turned out fire.

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.

Yep.

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 gonna make this movie and they had a hard rule that said 2 hours and 15 minutes max, and then ended up taking it to Paramount. There is, 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 Gyllenhaal stuff really picks up and flies at the end. I do think There is a 15 minute chunk in the middle that could probably be cut, to be honest.

Director's cut, it's longer and they add a two minute kind of interstitial when it does the four years later, he cut something about basically all the music over the four years.

And basically in some news, like reports of like, oh, and then 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. I just spent four months making this two minute montage of four years of movies. Well, there's music.

There's rumors of a 3 hour and 10 minute cut that was submitted to the studio that they. That I. I haven't seen.

It's not. I mean, they have really nice 4K and there's a director's cut on the Blu Ray with like, that has the extra Avery and.

And a little bit of stuff.

Not a lot. It's all like 40 seconds or something like that.

Sean, I said on the another 48 Hours Rewatchables couple days ago that that is my number one release, the cut. So there's 25 minutes extra and apparently another 40 minutes and it's a totally different movie.

They reveal who the Zodiac killer is.

And that they don't. They don't do that. And there's no sign that that cut is even exists in a warehouse.

We got to find out from Walter.

Paramount butchered it at the last minute. They decided it needed to be 95 minutes. But there was all this Iceman cut, 25 minutes out.

Oh, interesting. Okay.

But that was. What's your number one release? The cut?

The Snyder cut? No, I. 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?

Yeah, we have. We were doing this for another 48. I couldn't really think of another one.

The one I. The other one I came up with was Eyes Wide Shut. Release the. Oh, yeah, Kubrick, right before he died. Cut.

The interview. There was. There's an interview with the editor of that film that came out when the Blu ray. When the 4K was released last year. And he said the version that is on the Criterion Disk is the version that Kubrick wanted out, that it has not been.

And then when the camera pans back, you can see the gun being pointed at him as he says it. Yeah, by the Illuminati.

I mean, it's possible that there's an illumination.

Kubrick tried to tell us 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 clear.

T shirt, no pants. What are you doing?

The street. The tubing.

Yeah.

This is. My wife went to New York for the weekend.

I'm Porky Biggin it all day for this one.

The tubing. Oh, my God. Roger Ebert, our guy. Yeah.

Yeah.

Every rewatchables we read the Roger Ebert review, four stars. He said Zodiac is the all the President's Men of serial killer movies. Sign 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 in style for a story about persistence in the face of evil. Raj, you like this? Checked a lot of boxes. Characters, plot, story.

You can always count on Raj. 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.

Yeah.

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. 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 know what I mean?

Like, you have the game, which is the craziest prank anyone's pulled on a family member.

Such a mean spirit.

That movie's Nazi. You have Fight Club, which is just one of the kind of secretly most vicious. Ben was watching the other day. I was like, I forgot how fucking crazy.

Chaos at your fingertips.

Now, Panic Room, which is basically these three burglars just going as far as you could possibly go, what if we.

Tortured a single mom and her 12 year old?

Yeah. Then you have this movie. Then he kind of cools off a little bit.

But Gone Girl's pretty perverted.

Yeah.

Then it goes back to Gone Girl.

Dragon tattoos, crazy dragon torture scenes in Dragon Tattoo.

I was saying, like, Benjamin Button he 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. Are bad. Yeah. Are wrong.

My favorite Fincher quote is still, people are fundamentally perverts. And I find that interesting. It's paraphrasing, but, yeah.

That's why you guys have 500,000 text words back and forth about Finch movies.

A couple of perverts would have been.

Funny if during this whole run, he just made, like, one random sports movie. Like Glory Road.

Yeah.

It's like I'm going back to the 1960s, 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 crafty.

Honestly, I would watch anything Fincher did.

Me, too. Yeah.

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, you know, the writer is like, Fincher, you know? All right. Most rewatchable scene, the Lovers 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 when they do this, it never goes well. The Hurdy Gurdy man, though, is just an amazing.

I love all the Vallejo stuff at the beginning, too. Just like that.

The fireworks.

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. Puts 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 because you said Roger. Yeah, because Roger Avery from Pulp Fiction.

Thank you for correcting me, Paul. Why did I keep saying Roger?

Because we know who Roger Avery is.

The screenwriter.

Yeah.

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 minds. You're trying to find the Zodiac murder.

And then when they. We find out he gave himself the name. I am the Zodiac. The bluff Murder.

So 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.

Were you sending coded messages?

Is that what it was?

This is Boston Movie Guy doing reviews you probably hated. You're probably reading them agents 12 being.

Like, this guy sucks on microfiche. Like, how is he getting access to them? The Boston movie Guy.

Boston Movie Guy. So I was like, I'll be Boston Sports Guy.

And then maybe me and the movie guy can know.

We might have tried a cross promotion thing. Didn't work out that great, huh?

Interesting.

The bluff murder in 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 also such a tough rewatch because you're just like, dude, look up. You know, 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. Where 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 the necklace and medallion looks like the living embodiment of murder.

Yeah, I think murders in peaceful locations are creepier too. They're like this nice idyllic place in broad daylight.

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.

Dennis, Benihana Award. Would you go scene stealing location for the buff or somewhere else?

I'd probably go Morty's, the bar.

But I like the diner at the end.

Diner at the end. There's some great diners in this movie.

Yeah.

Next rewatchable scene. 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 Belli is such a beautiful 70s figure. We don't have people like that anymore. Yeah, it's like that guy was a famous lawyer who would just show up on TV all the time.

Some Melvin Belli knowledge. He was the one who suggested to the Rolling Stones that they move the venue to Altamont.

That's right.

We Might want that one back.

He's in Gimme Shelter. He's literally portrayed in Gimme Shelter.

Guy spending a lot. He had his hands in a lot of things. You stop it with that gas chamber shit, Sam. I need to know. In off. I can't watch Brian Cox in anything. After succession. I literally can. I just wait for him to become Logan Roy.

Not even Hannibal Lector.

No, no. The Logan Roy ruined him for me.

Okay.

In a good way.

He is also the voice of McDonald's.

I think about that when he does that, too.

Him going B, that's the craziest thing that's ever happened.

I think he's actually done like a lot of VO stuff. And I'm just like, damn. This guy must just be like, the direct deposit.

Must be amazing, right? He loves money.

Eat this filet of fish. Or off the Ione Scott 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. Oh, thank you. And then the terror 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 where you think something horrible has happened.

When she's screaming on the side, she's.

Screaming to throw the baby out. Baby was fine. Just walking with a limp. I guess I'm going to throw your baby out the window. Yeah, that's very.

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. It's like, no, it's like, do people call me names?

The laugh line when Shorty hits him with that, though, is really, really funny.

And it keeps going. They end up with the Halloween card, 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 comp package was? Coffee. Guy in the Chronicle newsroom.

He's doing fine.

I'm going to shine in. Like, what is. What does that get 5% bumps every year?

Probably. Probably a checkered history for him in his 20s.

Sure.

Might have spent some time trouble.

Yeah.

Knows his way around a switchblade.

Might have been incarcerated for a couple of years there. So he's happ to be worth.

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 working here, man.

But there's a scene between Avery and Graysmith 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 there's a great moment when Avery's, like, asking Graysmith 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. Those are the same thing.

That's the same thing.

He's like, we can 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 then cut to an hour later, Avery's drinking them in the bar and he's just doing parts so good.

While Graysmith is like, look at my code 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. I love this scene. Searching Lee's place.

The squirrels.

Squirrels. The wooden dildo is the fucking grossest thing you could probably added to this movie.

Yep.

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. Just way back. Yeah, it's just way more disturbing and awful than you would ever imagine. Buffalo Bill still number one. Most disturbing.

I think if you're gonna. We could build small Mount Rushmore of disturbing places that get searched. It's definitely Arthur Lee's trailer. Buffalo Bill's basement. The house in the drug dealer house. And gone baby gone with all the newspaper on the windows.

Something in seven. There's a couple different seven locations.

Yeah, there's. I mean, the. The David Desmelchin house in. In Prisoners.

Oh, that's great.

That's where he.

Top five right there.

Suitcase. And it's got the snakes everywhere. That'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 myself.

Gyllenhaal's 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 my entire life, seeing it in the movie theater. And now it doesn't. Doesn't work as much. Doesn't hit as 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 so. Part of the movie, I feel.

Because you feel like it's tonally different or because you. It's like. It feels like 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 worst 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 gonna 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, also, like, hearing the footsteps on the top. What was going on there?

I think it's illustrative of Graysmith, the character in the film, finally confronting the stuff that Chloe Savigny's character was so worried about.

Yeah.

Where she's just like, you're putting yourself out there, going on television. You're writing about him.

Well. And you're so obsessed. This guy's like, let's just go back to my house. He's like, sure.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, he goes back, he brings his baby at the middle of the night to meet with Toski.

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, Graysmith should have been 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 is 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 pretty subtle, though. It 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, like, you to think Graysmith's experiencing. And it's so manic. And it's so like.

Yeah.

All of a sudden, it's like, everything is about Rick Marshall. And you're like, wait, what? Like, what happened with.

It's a good point. And who is Rick Marshall? Yeah. We don't even know who we're talking about.

Weird, random, anonymous phone call, and now all of a sudden, we've got a new suspect. Yeah.

Jake goes to Ruffalo's house because he figured out the birthday thing.

Yep.

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 just like, I'm just knocking on.

Your do over time.

It beats back.

Cr.

It beats back. You have to get out of bed. Your wife goes, I'll make some Folgers.

Yeah.

Of the three of us, I think he would like that the least.

I don't want to be. I don't want to be disturbed, but.

Not any more 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 gifable moments. The stare down.

Yeah.

I think. What's the. John Carroll Lynch.

Yeah.

Great face changes in this movie by him because he has, like, a nice face. Right. Where he's like, hey, can I help you? But then it drops into the evil face. It'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 throughout 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 in 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 more.

Can I just throw one that you didn't mention?

Yes. Which is.

Is it with Roger Avery?

Yeah.

It's Toschi and Armstrong doing the crime scene for the taxi cab. That's the first animal crackers moment. And it's also just.

Just.

It's just Fincher making a mini cop movie in the middle of this movie where it's like, they shot that in LA and used Bay Area digital backdrops to like, recreate the San Francisco street. But it's got all the like. Yeah, but you're not dumb because you waited for him to park the car. You know, like all the recreation and the forensic stuff and the pathology stuff is so awesome. And then that last shot of Toski gets out of the cabin. He like kind of walks right up to the camera. And then the David Shire music is really hitting. It's just awesome. Awesome. But it's the interrogation.

What do you have?

I have two more that we didn't talk about. One is the first time that Graysmith meets with Toski 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 Graysmith with the salt reaper shakers.

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 Gyllenhaal has and the way that Toschi 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 this sense of satisfaction. But then the movie doesn't let you have the satisfaction at its conclusion.

Sure.

With the title cards, like.

Well, I guess you have to decide whether or not you find Graysmith and Arthur Lee in the hardware store satisfying.

Right? Right.

What'd you have for most rewatchable?

Seeing it first time interviewing 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 piece things together.

Yeah, it's a great See.

May I see it? May I see it?

You already did the what's the most 2007 thing about this movie, which is Wide Eyed Crazy J. Killen. It's when we go backwards of movies, it's almost like we have to do what's the most 1970s thing about this movie? And I think it's Folgers coffee, because was really. That was the only coffee for ever.

We did have it in the 80s because I remember it in my house.

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?

Folgers Crystals was cooking in the 90s too. Right. But then for some reason, I mean.

Starbucks really, and Starbucks killed the Seattle Supersonics and Folgers.

But would you put murders. Were people putting Folgers in like a Mr. Coffee or were they putting boiling water in it? It was the old school instant coffee. You just pour the hot water in.

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 in like, when's the last time you had.

I can't even like an Airbnb or.

Something what it tastes like?

Yeah, bad. I would also say for a 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. Of Gen X art and like Gen X kind of looking back at their childhood and not to get too high minded about. About it, but it's like right before Obama. It's right before this kind of like shift. Oh, wow. Culturally, Sean's cooking 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.

I like it.

I had a hottest 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. Because 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 Most famous in tooth one.

Yeah. Almost famous for them. Totally.

That was good. I felt like I was watching Embiid Back. Somebody down in the foul line there. Just Sean was cooking before.

After you tried to injure Mitchell Robinson.

Wow. I love giving this award out the Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote. From the actual film shooter. I mean, the takes thing is always the funniest thing about researching a Fincher movie. It's hilarious how much the actors hate it. Gyllenhaal said, quote, you get a 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 garret him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I'm a perfect person to work for him because I understand gulags. 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 role come to them, they can't resent 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 56th 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, like, from the. 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 given. And there are different actors. Like, Chloe Sevigny 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 because he would really appreciate the craftsmanship.

I like whatever it takes.

David Chris would secretly bitch about it, but be a good soldier. And I'd be the one like, this guy, this motherfucker after 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 Gyllenhaal is not the expert in this scene. He's the guy who has to know more than Toschi. He's the guy who has to have all the information and is explaining it. They went back and reshot it, and he explained how when they reshot it, Gyllenhaal brought his dad, who's a 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.

Yeah.

But he does think about their psychology and how they work. And I do think that sometimes he gets that reputation because 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.

Shelley Duvall had a nervous breakdown, and Kubrick.

I mean, like, there. There's, like, legendary. Just, like, open a door 74 times, you know, like, there's an amazing moment in the behind the Scenes or the Making of Doc for Zodiac where Gyllenhaal's walking through the Chronicle newsroom and he's taking a bite of a donut, and Fincher's like, cut. And, like, you know, Gyllenhaal's kind of laughing. Cause 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 Gyllenhaal's like, ha, ha, ha. Of course you do. Like. And Fincher's like, yeah, no, go back. Go back and eat a bigger bite of it.

This is another really funny one in one of the docks where they. It's a very quick moment, but they're interviewing Gyllenhaal during the making of a 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 shot of you acting, you're not good at that. He literally says that to him 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 tough. He can be tough.

Well, I was gonna say this later, but one thing I noticed when I watch Fincher movies is when people are eating, it's like Anthony Anderwood's eating a turkey club at one point. And there's another part where Ruffalo's eating a burger.

Yes.

And it's hard not to think, like, I wonder if he had to eat, like, 58.

He takes a real bite of that burger.

Yeah. Like, if he made him do 58 takes of that, did he just have to make himself throw up?

I have never seen a man grip a hamburger the way I know he's holding it.

Right.

I don't think he wanted to eat it. He's probably like, I'm gonna fucking throw.

I don't know if they put, like, a Boca burger in there or whatever. We didn't have as great Impossible meats back in 07.

We're going to take a break, and then we're going to do what stage is the best before we do what stage? The best new category. This is a 2. 20. 22,026 er. 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 Sevigne's character. I'm gonna say Dennis Peck could have broken this one pretty quickly.

I. I think some Dennis Peck out there. Seems like he did. Yeah.

Yeah. I think somebody. I think she got Dennis Pecked.

The funniest thing about it is, from the moment they meet, he's giving you every single sign to run the other way, not 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 years or that never ended. Because, like, that happens sometimes. It's like you date for a while and then all, oh, wait, we're living together. That was weird.

You know, honestly, I blame her. Like, you saw he showed you all of his cards on date one. This guy's a weirdo.

This is because you're just like, I.

Never told you, baby.

I always said I'd be watching 12 hours of football every Sunday. I do. When you signed up, you knew how.

Much basketball I watch.

The movie doesn't explain it, but just. 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 the guy. Yeah.

It's just like, yeah. She's just such a fox in this movie. Her in the glasses and the long hair. Oh, my God.

Want to start? What's aged best with her.

She's got such a great sense of humor. Like 7 you does. Because there's an interview with her. She's just like. Well, I think they wanted to make Gyllenhaal less hot, so Fincher made me dress really frumpy.

Yeah. So they're supposed to seem like very like normal. And Graysmith is a cartoonist. Right. He's not a cool guy, but it's undeniable. I mean, both of them are beautiful.

Another what stage 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's ahead of the game with that. And then podcasts come 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 parters. Probably could have been just 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 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 figures who are still alive.

Do you think Zodiac would have been a good nickname for somebody in basketball? If Anthony Edwards was just.

His nickname was Zodiac, would you done it? What if it was for Zydrunus Ilgauskis and we were just like, oh, so.

Somebody with a Zodiac ghost killer. Is that it? Better football or basketball?

The drop step 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 thought you're gonna say a quarterback that throws a lot of hospital.

To us.

The schoolmaster, you can't decode his hospital passes. Late 60s, early 70s San Francisco. Just seeing that in a movie's age.

Post like post hippie follow 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. You've done this before. We, when we went to San Francisco like six or seven years ago, you were like, this place is the best.

I think other cities caught up.

Yeah.

Like when you see like a place like Boston now Boston is much nicer and more spread out, has more things going than it did.

It's kind of like you saying that the Celtics are doing what the Pacers.

Did even better basketball thing. But Boston built up San Francisco never had to build up. San Francisco is like, look how cool this is.

It's just an unusual place.

TR 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's. It seems like it's night 75% of this movie. And it. It is also like a little bit of a California thing where you're just like, man, 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. It's a weird state too because like you do have like. For as much as there's LA and, and. 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 kind cities and towns that are like Santa Rosa and Vallejo 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 show Fenway, you know, Chicago, they have to show the wide shot of the cities for the most part. Cities can be downtown, la, pretty amorphous. Vegas and New Orleans could technically count.

Yeah.

But San Francisco, you always know you're in San Francisco in these movies. I like the San Francisco building thing, which I know is a big film nerd that he shows the timeline.

Transcontinental. Yeah, yeah.

The transcontinental is another. What's age best? What do you have for what stage? The best here.

All of down America.

Sorry, Trans America.

Downey's mutterings to Gyllenhaal, especially his art criticism. But like, sweet mother of Christ, what are you drawing? And Jesus Harold Christ on rubber crutches. Bobby, what are you doing? You're doing that thing, that thing I don't like that starts with Nell. Like all of their banter and stuff, kind of culminating at Morty's. I also just. On these repeated viewings, like, the way that the film changes tonally when the protagonist. The movie, switches from Tuski to. To the four Years later bump. And the way it feels different, the way the investigation is not as ordered and documented, and it feels way more like a solo album. Like, he's got nobody helping him, the way that Taski 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, Graysmith 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. 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.

And you just described the Internet for the last 10 years.

I mean, that's what it. And that's really what we've all kind of become. We become kind of trapped by that ide. 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 Don Donald Chaney and who that person is and how he figures into this story. And it's like Graysmith 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. 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 Downey's comeback as a Wood stage. The best. And what it means in the context of his career, this movie. And then Iron Man.

That's a really good one.

Yeah, the Fincher catalog. And just what this movie Means I think has aged 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. They can make 20 movies, 30, whatever. But there's usually like five to eight that people are gonna.

It's interesting about what his personal passion projects are. Like. It's definitely Zodiac and Mank. I. I wonder what else.

One for two.

Love Mank. But Zodiac and Mank are both clearly about his dad. I mean, they're, you know, they're just their obsessions of his dad. He talks about his dad, had a bunch on the commentary. And, you know, his dad was just in this milieu at the time. And, you know, like all people, he's kind of haunted by the positives and the negatives of that experience.

I had Paul Every'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 houseboat, but.

It'S in whatever that was supposed to be in Sacramento.

I don't know where it was, but that's cool. Yeah, that seems like a great place to end up. If you're an alcoholic who's gonna die of pulmonary.

What's your commute? If you're. Is he living in, like, Marin? Like, where is he living?

That could have been in, like, Alameda or something.

I'm not really sure I liked it.

Okay.

Just. He's just gonna smoke cigs there and drink till he does.

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. Then maybe he is an Alameda or Oakland or something. If he's in the East Bay.

I had the Chronicles office and how they recreated it. Ebert made a good point about there's a couple scenes where it's just empty or pretty empty. 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 Inquirer on Sundays. And it was always like, this place is like Disneyland.

Yeah. That's like a movie set.

But the. And it's always that there's nobody there in the morning. And everybody starts showing up around 4 o' clock when deadline time starts to come around. Yeah.

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 70s, it turns into a little yacht rock. Little Steely Dan. Sorry. Donald Fagan. Boss Skaggs, Jerry Rafferty. Start sneaking him in.

All your guys.

No.

Christopher Cross. So Downey cruising to the Sean Penn. I brought my own pack. Award for excellence in on screen Smoking.

I mean, it's.

It's really. It's a higher level.

I don't think he. I think he's smoking filterless. So that's like another level, you know.

I mean, like, he's doing. Where he has the no hands. He's talking the cigarettes coming this way. He's puffing from it and then blowing out of his knees and nose and still just keeping the scene. It's incredible.

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. The letter from the Zodiac and he's like. And then I will. You were driving around on your motorcycles. And he's just like, clicks his lighter and bites 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 felt like I was in, like, an art seminar, you know, like it was learning about Degas.

If we did Mount Rushmore and De Niro's gotta be in there, obviously. I think Downey might be one of the four.

The Rye movie is Cleo Duvall. 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, too.

Yes.

She's into a couple of paintings.

That's one of her skills as an actor.

Yeah, there's been some. Yeah, yeah. Great shot.

Gor Award.

What you have? Sierra.

Jesus.

This is how long you got?

Opening City Fireworks is pretty cool. I don't. 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. 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 Gyllenhaal 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 favorite of mine.

I love that she's in the phone booth with him, which makes no sense.

Yeah.

She has that great line, like some weird ploy for you. For you to make me go home with you.

Yeah.

I'll get the food to go.

We should mention great shot. Gordo Award is the most cinematic shot. I guess I have to ID some of these awesome awards. New 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 Berryessa.

Yeah.

Then the cut to. Is it Harnell's. Harnell'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 be like, oh, that's fake blood. It looks good enough and it's moving fast enough that he's doing the job.

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 never complained.

Amazing Golden Gate Bridge shot. There's an aerial looking down that looks like an apple screen.

Kind of like a Vertigo kind of thing. 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.

He brought trees. He choppered trees into the Lake Berrysa.

Oh, yeah. To recreate the.

Because the. There were. The trees had changed since the time it had gone.

Some producers, like David, what if we don't have the trees, like, get the out of here. You're off the set, kid. Cuddy pursued a happiness award for best needle drop.

I have Inner City Blues.

I thought Hurdy Gertie. When it kicks in, when he starts.

Shooting them, I think that's the most.

Songs in the background. And then it gets loud.

Yeah, I have. I really like Bernadette in the Bar. That one's great. The four top song.

He also does, like, a little bit of a Scorsese Thelma Schumacher 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. Excited, Craig? Yeah. The David Fincher Award for. Wow. This director may have been a fucking lunatic. It 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, quote, too hairless and pretty.

Yeah.

He digitally added hair to his knuckles looking for accuracy. Maniac. Yeah, I love it. Anyway, that's the first time we got to hand that award.

Congrats to David.

We have the Sean fantasy word for stealth homage that gives every movie neared a criteria orgasm.

Okay, so there's obviously a couple of, you know, clear ones we've talked about already. Most Dangerous Game, all the President's 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 Joon Ho'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 hugely influenced by Seven and Fincher and Bong Joon Ho are in this, like, career long back and forth.

Zodiac is a total masterpiece.

He's like. Bong Joon Ho is like. My greatest in theater experience is seeing the Social Network. Like, 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 homies with Steven Soderbergh too.

Yeah, I like feet. We need to go back to fees.

I like when all we need to.

Go back to Paul Schrader just lighting everybody up and calling themselves.

You don't want. 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 with each other watching Rough Cuts. Oh, I love that movie. Was a masterpiece. Let's do. Craig. You do a flex. I'll, I'll move.

Can I throw one criteria orgasm in there? Just because I, I, I thought of. It was when Graysmith gets the first breather call and he picks it up and it's like on Graysmith, and then it pans to the right and closes in 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, starring John Holmes.

What?

Yes.

Let's fire it up. Let's watch 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 kill. Or he has sex with them and.

Then kills them and then. And then John Holmes is on the hunt.

Wow.

I wonder if. Was he Johnny wat?

It was 63 minutes, so it does pass the century.

Imagine if it was three hours.

Oh, my God, 63 minutes. I could have gone longer.

I prefer the porn Barry World clip of it.

It's not in 4K.

Does not look as good as. It's a real film.

Did you download it on your work computer?

No, that on the personal device.

John Holmes was in the Zodiac podcast.

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 perception. The double murders at the top of this movie. He can't kill either guy.

He can't finish the job.

He lets you both guys live crazy. He wore a watch that said Zodiac. Yeah, 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.

Yes.

Wore a giant name tag that said Lee at the hardware shop. It's kind of the Bob Koozie of serial killers.

Plumbers his name tag said Zodiac at the Ace Hardware.

This Guy was winning MVPs, but he couldn't dribble with.

His name's Zodiac.

Can I help you find something?

That's a great.

Got a painting job coming up.

Like, come on.

The Butch's Girlfriend Award for the weak link of the film. I don't. I think this film's great. It was hard to come up with a weak 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 downy scene almost.

It's just like, I.

It.

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 right. You know, when he.

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. Yeah, it's, like, very subtle in the dialog. 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 knit or an unanswerable question or what. What's, you know, kind of. Of more fits this category, but specifically the Donald Chaney character, who. The guy who gives the performance is totally fine, but the guy who gives all this information about Arthur Leow, he's like, oh, yeah.

And then he said this and said that.

Yes, he said this about the kids bopping off the school bus and taking them out. And he had all this specific detail that makes Toski think that and Armstrong 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.

So I was the first time that Donald Cheney Reddit.

It's all over the Zodiac Reddit. I mean, there's a ton 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. Killer is effectively backed by everything that Donald Chaney has provided.

Yes.

And it makes you to me Sierra's.

Having a great time.

Well, I. You're. You're totally right.

Sierra was just like.

And this 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? Think he's somebody else.

Okay.

Or even all the Tuskegee stuff about. About the letters to Armiston Maupin 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 weak link, they could have at least aroused some suspicion with us.

Fincher says that he finds that guy credible and that the reason that he's portrayed in the movie that way is because he doesn't feel the way that a lot of people who look closely at the story.

It's like. It's like very. Like, this is kind of like what Pellicanos and David Simon did when we owned the city, where they're like, we have decided that this person's version of.

This is, like, accurate, is at least worth portraying sincerely. Right. That choice kind of shifts the movie in a direction that makes you feel strongly about it.

What's aged 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 runtime with Four Years Later. I just. That's a bad decision.

Yeah.

That's like when they cut out my favorite Boogie Nights deleted scene of the second AVN 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. What did you think it was.

It was a very memorable scene with roller girl Louise Guzman.

That was another great scene. So I had for what stage the worst. There's that scene when Jack and Downey are at the bar we mentioned earlier, just decoding Zodiac shit. I wrote down. I'm five minutes light on these two together.

Y.

That would have been my note as the studio like any more downing Gyllenhaal just being weird together scenes because is 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 Graysmith were not friends.

Right.

So that. That is almost the most movie ish thing about the movie. And it is by far the most entertaining movie ever.

That's their based on a true story.

Taken 10 more scenes of the two of them going to a Giants game, you know, and being like, yeah, yeah, you know, smoking.

See the worst. Clifford Ray is back.

That would have been good.

I asked Ed for what stage the worst. Anthony Edwards with a wig on always throws me off. He's just like such like a proven bald guy that anytime 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 owned the baldness.

I think it's probably accurate to Armstrong's.

No, I know they. Yeah. Any other wood stage 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 is washed out, that Graysmith is kind of still on this by himself.

Okay. Any for you or.

No, just my certainty that it was Arthur Leigh 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 in this podcast.

There'S more info every day. You know, that you've talked about the special, you know, the expert who was like, this guy's autistic and it was him. Because of this, like, that stuff's never going to stop because it's. It's a cold case.

Just wait till we. Until AI just fully gets its talons into it, you know.

Oh, yeah. Another category we don't get to give out much. The Rose from Titanic award for Character who sneaky sucks. Close 70s character.

What are you talking about?

I would say 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 date. Wait, why are you. You're going to settle down with this fucking lunatic and be like, I thought you were like, I'm raising kids with this guy. Guy. And then she's mad at him. It's like, I don't know what you're doing. Your whole life revolves around this. Like, he told you on the first date that he was crazy.

Yeah.

You're, like, blindsided.

That would be kind of cool if, like. If Eileen was like, you sure do watch a lot of movies.

Yeah. She's like, what's the deal? All these 4K Blu Rays, Sean, we.

We get. Was there a number? They're like, what are you trying to.

She's like, sean, what are we doing? Are we going to dinner? He's like, I gotta watch, so I gotta. I gotta 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 that. I think that takes it personally.

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 in.

Okay, but in this case, it was the first two hours.

Yes.

They 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 emphysema.

It's the most exciting date I've ever had. It's.

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 June Diane Raphael being like, I'm gonna make the Folgers.

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, in 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. That her character is, like. It's basically an active comment on this world at that time by saying like. 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 yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is probably needed 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.

Yeah. What is it?

For the greatest fucking acting I've ever seen. It's Downey on the house boat being like, somebody should write a book about.

He's also doing the David Duchovny and Larry Sanders. Am I gonna see your balls hanging out here in this scene?

Yes. There's a lot of.

Is it like.

It's an epic amount of thought.

That whole. The whole houseboat scene is just.

I love the houseboat going on in the background.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest takeaway.

I kind of did a little bit of the. The PTA QT thing. But I will also say that I think the thrill, the dark thrill of the zodiac were 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. Don't go out at night. Because it would just be like, that.

Motherfucker'S a Bernie, bro. You know?

Like, it would just be. It would suck. It would probably be more like, this guy did Jan6.

Yeah, exactly.

Do you have a hottest take?

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 Chinatown?

Gone in 60 seconds? Probably death East. Like, I love Heat, right? That's a great movie. I love Manhunter. I love the work of Michael Mann. 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 gotta be comfortable being bored by the work that you do sometimes. There's a reason that there's connectivity between these guys at this time in history because they have a very similar approach to the world.

My hottest take, Craig kind of stepped on it earlier, but in A way maybe he doesn't realize I'm actually going the opposite way. 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 Dahlia Killer, which was another one who wasn't caught. Caught drove detectives and journalists crazy, created a world that led to books and movies and is still going on Reddit. Ambidextrous swimmer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's like James Harden with a hand.

Great nickname. Nobody. What serial killer has ever given themselves a better nickname than Zodiac?

You like that more than Son of S. Best?

Oh, easily. Best gimmick. Son of Sandwich is wacko. He's talking to his dog.

Yeah. Zodiac. Very measured.

Yeah.

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 with. Yeah.

Getting 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've solved all the other ones, how.

Thriving the community was. They're still doing incredible work online about every day.

Yeah.

You can't. When you Google it, so many things come up, you don't even know, like, which one to click on.

Yeah.

There's like, subreddits to the subreddits.

65 years old.

Yeah.

Like, we don't. You don't even. You don't.

And 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. Like for his time, what he did.

Oh, you think Zodiac just played against Plumbers?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Like, they're in the. The pre. Internet.

Pre.

Departments being able to coordinate investigations.

Police departments, fax machines. Not exactly.

It is fair playing.

Houston defense have like a. The. The LeBron of serial killers.

They all get caught.

Yeah. What a.

The worst is serial killer killers.

Yeah.

Right. Serial killing has aged the worst. Yeah.

Can't do it.

Well, I think just too hard. DNA. Have you tried cameras? No, I just think. I don't think we're gonna see another one, honestly. Yeah, I think it's too hard.

There's a camera every. Every house Has a ring. Camera.

There was a story about there might have been a Houston serial killer because they found all these bodies. Yeah. They don't know what happened. I don't believe that one. I think we have too much technology now, I think.

And he might have coasted off other kills that he took credit.

Credit for which I would argue is clever, because it completely threw them off the scent in the investigation. It got, you know, like, Mullinax is like, I like this guy. And you're like, well, that. 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. He's really smart. It doesn't mean the Zodiac is, like a brain genius, but he. He clearly did things with 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 isn't all an end game to me. Eating other humans, that's my thing.

I love whenever you do this, you make it sound like he looked into the camera and said those words.

We're the Wet Bandits.

The Wet Bandits, like Ted Bundy's like, I just love the ladies. And there's a dark side to it. That's my thing.

I love the ladies.

Zodiac was like, I actually like being in the mix. Here are my thoughts.

But it's so.

He was like the first podcast.

Do you know what's interesting, too, is.

My thoughts on the Dirty Harry movie.

Right, Exactly.

And then there's he, like, the attention of what he was doing, even things.

That weren't Zodiac, like the call to Melvin Bell, which is a guy in an in mental institution making the phone call. It goes towards the Zodiac's legacy. It's like. It was good building off of Mark Jackson's work, you know?

Yeah.

All that hard work that Mark did.

Who drafted Draymond? Ask yourself that.

Casting what ifs.

Mark was playing Monta Ellis over Steph Curry.

It is true.

He was saving him.

Casting what ifs. Gary Oldman was supposed to play Melvin Beli, but physically, they decided it couldn't work, so they got Logan Roy instead.

Ironically, he did go on to play Churchill, who was way fatter than Gary Oldman and won an Academy Award winner for it.

Gyllenhaal was the first choice for Graysmith from Fincher, but if he had said no, they had Orlando Bloom lined up.

You know the story, right? Of who it was who tipped Fincher off to the two leads of this movie.

It was Aniston, His.

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 rom com that they were in together?

Just like heaven or something?

No. Rumor has it.

Rumor has. Was it rumor. Was it from. Rumor has it.

Rumor has it.

Yeah.

And then he's like, you like them? Why don't you play the Chloe 70 role? She's like, no, thanks.

Yeah, thanks.

I got a rom com to do. Fincher wanted Brad Pitt as Avery before settling on down him basically would have.

Been Floyd's into romance as a journalist.

Yeah, it would have been 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 mid 2000s. I've settled down with Angelina and we're adopting kids every nine months.

Troy. Mr. And Mrs. Smith.

Post Mr. Ms. Smith. Pre Benjamin Button.

Yeah.

Pre Moneyball.

I mean, he's an assassination of Jesse J.

If he's just doing. If he's just doing Floyd from True Romance in this movie, I'm not necessarily. I'm willing to entertain it.

The thing is, is that Downey brings the fast talking energy that a guy, a smart aleck 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 burnt out really well. And 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.

Best that guy. A word. We're saying John Carroll 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 Getz is John Getz. I feel like he's been into many things. John Terry's a good one.

John Terry's 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 Carmela, but not really.

Yes.

Getting drunk with him. Father. What was his name? Father can't remember neither night when he goes on the college tour with Meadow. They're home getting drunk, and he. And it seems like something's gonna happen. He throws up that 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 90210, who had that great run. Run 10 years later, ends 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 or 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 Rainier, Philip Baker Hall, Elias Coteus, James Legro, Donald Logue, John Carroll Lynch, John Terry June, Diane Raphael, Adam Goldberg. These people are that guys. They are the definitive. That guys.

We go deep. Cut that.

But he's not letting me have John Getz.

Right. Like, you know, if you can't have John Getz gets. Then, like, part of why the movie is so good is that Fincher has the best taste for supporting.

That they graduated. That guys.

Yes.

The priest from the Sopranos. I don't know.

Yeah.

The Dion waiters award for biggest heat check in the movie. John Carroll lynch eligible. I think he's in two and a half scenes. Basement guy.

Charles Fleischer.

Yeah, Charles Fleischer. One scene.

I. Charles Fleischer and Clay Duke Duval, to me, is 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, all the helicopters are swirling. But Claire Duvall's pretty high up there.

Low key nomination. Melvin Bellis, housekeeper. When she drops the cookies off, she's great. She's like. I spoke to him. She's really good in that scene.

Yeah, she was good. He's like, was that important recasting couch director or city? Can we talk Anthony Edwards, for one second? Can I tempt you with a little Michael Keaton?

Too big for that role.

Yeah. So you'll enjoy this. If you have not listened to the commentary, I highly recommend you do. Because. Because Fincher is constantly using sports references and.

Sounds great.

He uses the phrase moving without the ball a lot. And what kind 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 er, in the center of that show that became George Clooney and Juliana Margulies and Eric LaSalle and all the people who were on that show at that time. Time. And in this movie, he's kind of the most important detective. Toschi 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 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, it broke him. You know, like. 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. It's really good.

Keaton as the Dom Dermot Mulrooney role.

Sure.

Just trying to work him in here somewhere.

He did that in the other guys, right? Yeah.

Special Agent Ray Nicollet.

That would be exciting.

My other note is I just don't know why John Slattery is not in this movie. And I don't know who's going to play John.

Terry is kind of playing John Slattery. Right.

John Slattery is just.

Slattery was in Charlie Wilson's War yelling at Philip Seymour.

Maybe that's why he wasn't. Sean, you have played finish for four years. It feels like that could be on, like, the Rewatch 2028 list. Charlie Wilson's.

There's like six.

It's.

It's kind of.

I really think Julia is great in that movie.

Yeah. The weak link is Hanks miscast, which.

Has 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 is worth noting given the intelligence of this category. The Tom Sizemore action is the Juice Award. Best toe 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, you know, 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? Is the basement scene.

Yeah.

Where you're like, oh, my God.

Are you making.

Oh my God now? Yeah, oh, my God. Oh, my God. And that's good. It, you know, like I said at the time when it came out, I felt like we were going to another level of the moment.

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 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 this just get put out by Eureka or something like that?

I haven't seen it for a couple years. So they make this bad Zodiac movie and the guy funds 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 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 to 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 where they like set up this whole sting inside of a huge event.

Yeah, yeah.

Robert Downey Jr's four straw trick that he does with the three straws, picking the fourth 26 takes to get it right.

Or 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, look, we don't give a 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 he got the part.

Yeah.

That's why you hired Rich Paul.

That's right.

And then Robert G.R. smith's cocktail. It's vodka, gin, lemon, lime, and blue caracao.

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 to my tomorrow.

I don't even drink blue Gatorade.

Apex Mountain. Fincher. Do we need to explain Apex Mountain now that we're on Netflix?

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Controversial category.

How would you describe it?

425 movies in Apex Mountain. When somebody was at the peak of their powers, career wise, had the most juice 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, I think it is 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. Oh, this is before Social Network. I see what you're saying.

Yeah. This movie comes after a five year break off of a successful but modest movie in Panic Room 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 is also a commercial box office.

And Social Network was another for hire job. You know, that was with a script from a well known screenwriter.

I would creatively, and I know that this is not going away, 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, 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 has 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. The Michael Jordan role and he, you know, basically makes a movie about how the only way to. To fix capitalism, to destroy it.

Early 90s bulls version of the Apex.

And then I think there's. 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.

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.

In 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 now?

You're right.

You think this is better than Manhunter?

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 TV show. Yeah.

I think it's this.

He's really. He's not in Collateral very much.

I love his look in Collateral. Great.

And then Pete Berg runs another one.

Like him and Pete Burke. That's a separate movie. I watched it.

I told you that. When I talked to him for Task, I basically did Chris Farley on him where I was just.

Remember that time.

Remember in Collateral when you had the goatee and he was like, yeah. And I was like, that was awesome.

Gyllenhaal. 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 a Zapex Mountain. Probably later. Right.

I. I think his best performance is maybe still Nightcrawler, but that's a really good movie. I. His Apex.

He.

He does. Doesn't he do Prince of Persia right before this?

Boo.

Because that movie stinks, obviously. But that was when he was like trying to become.

He's gonna get ripped.

Maybe end a Watch era when he starts doing written Persia2010.

So maybe it's this because this allows him to kind of springboard.

I tend to watch Prisoners era where he's like, I'm now an established. You can put me on a poster in different movies. And people will probably go, yeah, probably San Francisco movies. No.

What is 48 hours?

I would say both.

No, it's probably the one. One from the 70s.

Both of which are basically based on this story.

Chloe Sevigny.

Nope. Last Days of Disco.

Yeah, we did that on the Rewatchables. This is a good one. Fincher, Villains. I'll give you his nominees. John Doe in seven, Mark Zuckerberg in Social Network, or Arthur Len in this movie, unless you want to count Sean Penn in the game.

I'd probably go John Doe.

Definitely not Jared Leto. With the. With the. With the.

With Panic Room. Yeah, yeah. The Nepo thief.

I think it's John Doe. When 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 him mad and say, and Brad Pitt finally steps. You're a fucking T shirt. And we were just like, holy shit. Spacey is amazing in that movie.

He is. I guess it's just two different versions of villainy. Right? Like, the Zuckerberg thing is, like, the portrayal of Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg.

We should have known. He's trying to. Fincher's trying to tell us.

So acid, man. Like, so acid. The way that he sees him as this, like, sad, pathetic ambition monster.

Zuckerberg didn't totally realize it. Remember when Jesse Eisenberg hosted snl? Zuckerberg's like, yeah, I'll make a cameo. Like, he doesn't realize.

He didn't get it. Yeah, he didn't get it.

San Francisco Chronicle, both in real life and then in a movie, I felt like this was.

They were right at the center.

They were in the epicenter. Everything.

Yeah. You know what's interesting about all of his villains, by the way, is he doesn't psychologize 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 Arthur Lee Allen. It's not like, oh, well, the way he was. His upbringing, or he witnessed a traumatic event. He's not interested in that for the most part.

For. For a certain period. Like, nobody talked like that.

Yeah, yeah.

They just did things.

Yeah.

John Carroll lynch movies. This or Fargo.

This.

John Carroll lynch right now.

Sure.

Shout out to jcl.

He's doing great. He's a great actor.

Shout out to Joka Donovan. Music.

Joka. A little close to joke.

I think it's a Aquarius and Goodfellas.

Oh, see, I love the ending of To Die for with Season of the Witch. You know, the Season of the Witch. Nino dropped into Die Force.

Pretty Donovan secret movie soundtrack force or.

Getting absolutely dunked on and Don't Look Back. The Bob Dylan documentary.

Because it's Donovan. When Jimmy. When Tommy beats up Billy Batts.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the answer. Also the father of Ione Sky.

That's right.

Who, of course, is CR Apex Mountain for wooden dildos.

Yeah. I would Imagine. I mean, I can't think of any other.

It's probably the porn parody, I would say.

Yeah.

They still sell those? You still have them or.

No, you have to go to a specialty store. It's a Craftsman item.

I feel like there's a real splinter issue there that we got to examine.

Not if you get the right kind.

Of lack quality that I see.

Yeah. You really need to buck it down first.

Yeah. And then you can kind of get that. 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 whatever you describe it nowadays.

I just threw that in as a bonus.

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, watching seven to this day is still just really fun, you know, it's just really entertaining, and it still glides. We did. We've done it. I would re 7 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. Like it's the 11th time I've watched this. Holy.

Yeah. I. Man and the Killer. Mank and 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. So much cool shit in both of those movies.

Yeah. I agree. At least with one of those two movies. All right, Cruiser Hanks.

Hanks is Gray Smith.

It's funny. I thought Cruz is Graysmith.

I think Cruz as Toski. I would. I would be interested in.

I'd see. I could see Hanks as Toski.

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 Cruise.

I like Hanks is Toski. Cruz is Gray Smith.

Hank says Toski is good, but then we lose Ruffalo.

Yeah.

What about like 1988 cocktail era Cruz as Gyllenhaal's character?

Yeah, that works. That works.

Yeah. Good thing this is completely made up. We don't really have to choose.

He keeps stats.

You know, the advanced analytics. Cruz 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 in full speed with the puddles?

I think that I will say the cruise having done Eyes Wide Shut would be used to doing a hundred takes of something.

Yeah.

And I know.

I love it, man. Dave keeps telling me to do.

I don't know if Hanks has ever done done that. I don't know if he's ever had somebody who's like, we're doing it again, we're doing it again.

I don't know.

He worked with Stan the Man. I mean, Hanks hasn't. Cruz did, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

What? So Hanks were. Didn't they all hate Frank Darabont? Didn't he do this?

Was he a multi big take guy for the green?

Freeman's still mad at him for some reason.

Is that true?

It's like, Freeman, you're in one of the most iconic movies of the last 40 years.

Can't complain. I mean, still pissed about him up for of a lot 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. Yes, he's not interested in this aspect of the world. He's interested in how people move through the world.

You know what he is interested in? The rolling stones in 1969, 1970s San.

Francisco, and guys doing bumps and bars.

I think it just becomes an Altamont 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 that James Vanderbilt's script, which I'm sure was very good on First Pass. Fincher changed a lot. 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 Summer of Sam, right? Like he made a movie like this, but he didn't make it about the Curiosity Killer. He made it about what was happening to people around this time. So. So my answer is. My answer is Spielberg.

I have Scorsese just because I'd want to see the movie.

I would just be worried that this 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 gotta. We gotta work hard to find this guy.

I don't think Spielberg's dark enough for this movie. This movie's dark. Maybe best tang. Worst Tang. Paul Avery. Clearly best tank.

Best bar Knight.

Yeah, I think Zodiac. I'm going to go. Worst hang. Want to come back to my house? Want to come back to my trailer and watch the warriors game?

By far.

Here. Let me put the squirrels away.

I laid out a day for us. 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 drugged them, because I think he needed an alibi and also might have probably molested one of the kids. But it was during one of the. One of the crimes that he committed where he brought the kids with him on location, or so they said.

But there's another. This is another murder that is not a part of the Zodiac investigation that they talk about, where they say he basically, like, went down to a beach and may have killed someone on a.

Beach where he took a shot into a group of teenagers or something.

And then, like, a day later, there was a murder. They were like, we were just there yesterday, and I was asleep in the car.

And also, I don't remember the last two days. Yeah, Zodiac worst hang. Picky N. Why is the cartoonist in high level editorial meetings when they're reading the Zodiac letter, which is probably the most important thing in the city?

Fincher said he's like, 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 together.

Yeah. Getting the information at the same time.

Ione Sky's character falling for the. Your wheel looks loose. Trick.

Trick.

Come on, honey. You got a kid in the car.

Fincher says he definitively does not think that that was the Zodiac, that 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 other nitpicks do you have?

The only thing I had. Sean mentioned it earlier, but Toski being like, I can't help you. But if I were to help you, you could. I'd tell you to call Ken Narlo. So it's just like, help or don't help, but like, we don't have to make this into the Riddler, you know?

Yeah, I be funny if NBA trades work like that. We gotta trade. LeBron. Shit's falling apart. Same price is like, I can't help you, but if I were to help you.

Yeah.

Call Orlando. Yeah, they can help.

I have a sort of. Sort of related picking nit. Just about the insanity of being a police detective where three detectives are in a room, they're talking to the guy they're almost certain is the Zodiac Killer. He's wearing to Craig's Point a Zodiac watch.

Yeah.

And they can't get him. And then task is 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 Toschi accepted the handwriting thing.

Like.

And so what was he actually doing thinking about the case.

He makes 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 would be my guess. I have another one. I saw this on one of the Reddit things. I'm stealing it, which normally doesn't happen in rewatchables, but we were all reading so much Reddit when the Zodiac thing. I stumbled across this one. So apologies to who I'm taking this from Chloe, on the first date, orders penne a la vodka, but asked to substitute a cream sauce. Yeah, that's fucking stupid. Penne a vodka is a cream sauce.

I don't know how it was.

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 direct commentary.

Didn't exist yet.

Did not exist until the 1980s. Penne alla vodka with the cream sauce was a recipe that was popularized in the 1980s.

80S. 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 a cream sauce.

Can I Go back to Apex Mountain and knock this down a couple pegs.

Then if I was on a date and somebody ordered penne a la vodka, but then wanted to substitute it for cream sauce, I would have made. I gotta make a call. Be right back. And I'm out.

Sorry.

Hey.

This girl I'm here with has a head injury, and I can't date her.

I have a small picking net on behalf of my mother in law. Law, who was there watching the movie with us last night. When Melanie and Gray Smith are arguing about how Gray 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 Kane. And my mother in law shouts out, everybody read Herb Kane. And then we found out that the Zodiac did read Herb Kane.

Yeah. Oh, wow.

He actually mentions Herb Kane in a letter, Right? Yeah.

It's a good one.

Yeah. Oversight by.

Yeah.

Sequel. Prequel. Prestige. Tbr. Black Caster. Untouchable became Prestige tv.

They did Minehutter.

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 the front tire and then pick the kiddies off as they come bouncing out. You're gonna do this for me? I don't know what that voice is, but it's sort of.

It should become Bono crossed with Burger the Florist. I thought for sure you were gonna do Doris DB yeah.

Mr. Zodiac.

Mr. Bo Zodiac. We see the patience with all your symbols.

I'm trying to decipher your game, Mr. Zodiac, and I cannot.

Not just one Oscar. Who gets it? Fincher. Yeah, probably. Unanswerable questions. 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 Silence, Slim, he knew her. He knew what he covets. It's like, yeah, no kidding. This is every murder.

All the stuff with Darlene and Mike kind of being like, we. We know who. This is so creepy.

Yeah, just go back and interview everybody.

In their recognition of I.

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 did that you Would have been willing to kind of throw your life away to explore the way that Graysmith did for cr.

It's Edie Falco and Copland.

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. Well, it depends on, like.

But it can't be, like, related to the Sixers or prestige television. No. You know what I mean?

That's the problem with what we do is that we get to bring the passions into our professions. It's the best part about what we do. But, like, too. What would be something like the mcl.

But. Okay, so my.

Follow the mcl. If we.

If you guys learning about the ligament.

What's up with you? Come on.

You know, like, I didn't like how the Sixers looked last night. I'm officially threatened.

So did you specifically ever seriously consider criminology? No. Forensic science?

No.

Serial killer investigation?

No. I would do that. I told you guys. I would do these deep dives with, like, all the President's men. Then I'm just, like, throwing myself in a Watergate for three weeks in 1991. But I would always get bored and move on.

But for what?

But I don't.

Just weird thing that we have.

Right? But he's doing this just for fun, too.

The Zodiac?

Robert Graysmith.

No. But at some point, he starts seeing dollar signs. He's like, I can turn this.

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, I can make money from this.

Wonder if Melanie wishes she hung up.

Out.

I have a really important unanswerable. Was there an easier job ever? The 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.

Like, can you tell that, like, somebody does a K with 3 strokes or 2? Like, would you be able to do.

This guy's bombed with a J. Giant Sherlock Holmes thing and he's deciding burger cases.

Never heard a magnifying glass described as a giant Sherlock Holmes thing.

Yeah, it's like, oh, hold on, let me get my monocle. I'll really be able to tell this.

I'm gonna zag on this. I got a very specific real world. Real world reason for that. Woke up early this morning to get it ready to come over here to do the pod. My daughter Alice is awake and she's sitting at what we call the messy table where she, you know, draws and colors and, 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 7 o' clock in the morning, she's already awake, sitting at this table by herself, drawing in a notebook.

I was worried you were gonna say zodiac symbols.

Well, her, 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, this guy, Philip Baker hall, he might have been a full blown alcoholic for all you know.

She's like, could a killer be ambidextrous? No, not my 38.

It.

Sean's 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 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 straight.

You're like the kid in Insidious.

But it was just cuz it was the first thing, like an older kid was like, if you ever want to draw a ninja, this is how you do do it. There's like three triangles and a guy like blood splurting out of his bed. Yeah.

What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie?

The I am not Paul Avery button.

That was a good one. Yeah, I like that houseboat. To your point, it's not really memorabilia. Oh, allow it. I'm going with the not want the wooden dildo.

Okay.

That just seems like an awful artifact. Like imagine that behind Sean's head right now. What's that? It's a wooden dildo from Zodiac.

Maybe don't put it there.

Maybe can digitally insert it. Like Fincher wood.

Probably like one of the original letters or all of the original letter recreations that they did for the Zodiac things would be a cool thing to have.

Oh, one of the actual letters that were written.

His whole scrapbook of all the newspaper casting the murders. That would be cool. 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. They're 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, going. Keep pushing. Fincher might be waiting for you. He loves obsession. Just keep going. Best.

Did you have a life lesson?

Can't top that.

Best double feature.

All the Presidents Men.

Dirty Harry.

I had Dirty Harry. I want to go after this movie. I need a change of pacer. I'd go Dirty Harry first, then I would do this.

Yes. Dirty Harry is the exciting version of this story that is solved. Zodiac is the real version of this story that is unsolvable.

I never really fully realized that till I was doing the research. How much Dirty Harry kind of informed.

Isn'T it? Scorpio and Dirty Harry.

How they kind of just ripped off Zodiac and made Dirty Harry with it with Quinn Easter.

It's also such a different. Like, you know, there was just so much more local media back then, so the idea that Toski would be like this character in the newspapers and be a character based on him in 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 Toski, 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 chattery style. And Toski talks more like a lot of cops that I knew growing up, which were just like, kinda like. What do you mean, buddy? Come on over here. You know, like, kinda 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. The like, well, do ya 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 Toski and he met Toski, he, like, spent time with him for the role, but he's not trying to do an impression of him. It's really interesting.

It's interesting also that they're. They're police officers, but we Never see him actually in an action scene or anything.

Yeah, sure.

We never see him.

Like, the most cop thing he does is the taxi cab crime scene.

Yep.

We never see him, like, wait, who's that? And, like, do a chase scene holding the gun up.

Yeah, Yeah.

I don't think he ever holds a gun in the movie.

No, he just has. He has it holstered, but it's.

Yeah, he's got that easy access holster.

Who won the movie?

Fincher.

Agreed, 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 burnished by this film.

I think it's notable how much this movie's 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. 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 its success is its relationship to what would become Mindhunter in the way that Fincher wanted tell this kind of story.

There's something else related to it too, that I. 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.

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. It feels like elaborate montage. The whole movie. It's a. It's a. It's a funky movie, you know? Like, 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 do.

See at the desk, calls him a late homosexual.

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 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 in 07, so there's modern filmmaking 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 deaths, 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 when you first saw it. I feel like you do kind of back into this movie because you go in expecting something completely different. And then now, I mean, even hearing you guys talk, I'm like, 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. About it for 30 minutes, and it's almost a puzzle that is not meant to be.

Family movie zodiac.

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. And 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 detectives.

The turn, when it goes to Graysmith and the way that they leap to Marshall is like you have to really be dialed in on pieces of paper that they've got or, 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. Yeah, but this is totally a movie.

That's Craig's asking his mother in law, what's the deal with 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 it up. And there was a phone in there. I've never seen that before.

Did he say that those were.

He's like, oh, yeah, those were a thing. He's like, right when I started, they basically disappeared when people got cell phones.

Yeah.

But, yeah, never seen those before. But this movie was great.

Huge thumbs up.

Big thumbs up. And 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 rallied back.

I got the rare, like, panicked 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 rewatchables on Netflix. Sadly, these aren't gonna be on YouTube anymore, but happily they're gonna be on Netflix.

I think we blasted past the running time of the film podcast 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 gonna 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 podcast, the 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 Ventura, which we've never done. That's on there. And then two, four films. The recastaway is looming, but is it.

Going to be a solo recast away?

It 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 was your Apex Mountain.

Kobe has this 81 point game. I have solo castaway 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 next month, but that's it for rewatch.

The Keep Live.

It's Black Hat, actually. We're gonna explain it.

And then Big Picture, which is also gonna be on Netflix.

Yeah.

And then a lot of rumors about live right after the Oscars. So some rumors could happen.

Yeah. Where's it gonna be taking place? Place. Am I going to be inside of the theater?

Literally. Might be here.

Will I be on stage receiving an Oscar live? Potting.

I was very upset about Joel Edgerton. I get it. It was a loaded category. You can't be surprised. Hurt my feelings.

You just can't be surprised. Quiet performance.

That was my number one that I.

I was happy about F1 getting best pick.

I they did they put the one popcorn movie in, right?

Yeah.

So that beat what, Avatar?

I I, I, I thought Weapons would have been the choice because it was a little bit more critically acclaimed, but it made sense to me.

Yeah. Even if it was sacrifice.

Glad people came around to my side on Weapons. Keep it out of the category.

I don't think. I don't think that's what happened.

I think people, I think I saw.

You think because it wasn't nominated for best picture that everyone decided Weapons isn't good.

Jesse Buckley.

Here's the thing.

Once I talked about it Hamnet a little bit, I think that really helped their kid.

Nice job. Good, 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 that said, wow, she was really great in that movie.

I'll give you back a month of my salary if you get Jesse Buckley on the podcast.

Oh, my God, I would love her.

Yeah, she's amazing.

She's great.

She's a great actress.

Great job. Mezcal was tough, too, for supporting.

What about Mescal and me?

I call him.

It's like he plays second base for the Angels.

Luis Mescal.

He just signed with the Rangers.

Yeah, the Padres right field.

Did you see Paul? Big Red Sox fan.

I Is he really actually there?

Paul Mescal's a big Red Sox fan. He's from England.

He's got obsessed with the Red Sox. He said in an interview.

So lame.

What was your number one? Stop, I didn't hear your pod yet.

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 other choice.

I never thought it would get it. It's tough because it's like verse predictions versus movies that I liked. You know. I don't know if there was like a massive overlook. Are you surprised in the act. I mean chase infinity maybe for one battle after another was probably the one that most people thought was going to happen. Plemons, Lodi, Cat Air. But also I thought just category fraud that she was. She was supporting. I mean Plemons was great in Bonia. Did you watch Begonia?

I did.

Okay. It's too bad.

What'd you think?

There's certain movies that just aren't my kind of movie.

You're not a Yorgos guy.

Me neither.

I'm.

I am 100%.

You're out on your ghost too.

I do not like your listen movies.

I am in the. I appreciate. I appreciate your ghost exist.

You guys like you're like horny for each other right now.

For me, three hour and six minutes.

To center women in his films. Is that the issue?

I just. No, it's not.

No. Okay.

Cup of tea.

Got it.

Not my cup of tea.

So when Emma Stone's character in Poor Things kind of realized her agency as a woman.

Do you like your movies?

I do. Yeah. I had him on the big picture for Bonia, which I thought was a cool movie. Not like the best movie of the year, but I thought it was cool.

CR yeah. Great to see you as always.

Great to see you, man.

Sean, Fantasy. Great to see you as always.

Thanks, Bill. You too.

Thanks to Gahau. Thanks to Craig. Thanks to Eduardo as well. We will see you next week on the rewatch.

Sam.