Zodiac

It's not completely like trashing it.

But the one thing that did come into my mind near the beginning was, was Zodiac.

yeah there's a very similarity between not as it weirdly not as it goes later but early on I was intrigued to begin with because it has obviously this people this this car that pulls up in the middle of the night you know kind of lovers lane kind of that kind of thing And then we have this attack from the Phantom, as it's called.

And the way it's like, and the person's like pulled out of the car.

which we have so much now but this is like an earlier attempt at trying to do one of those like real life murder kind of

yeah

ones and it is kind of doing it a bit more like documentaries that would have done it so it kind of introduces like a documentary and we only get snippets of the people that were actually affected by the phantom and then we get the police investigation and stuff like that so i could get with that kind of the docu kind of part of it at the beginning um and then as you like introduce and you start to see some of the kids but it it does start to feel very much the reason it feels so dated uh kind of like what i was thinking in my head is faces of death that we did where it has that documentary style but again the voiceover sounds so it sounds like they're trying to make a story out of it when this feels kind of like a murderous killer who they've pieced together things that randomly happened over a period of time and tried to say that this is you know it is like if you take David Fincher's Zodiac which has a similar thing of a killer who did stuff over a long period of time and they tried to get except in that case they blended together the interesting parts of the detective work the journalist work to try and piece together things And it made for a slow but interesting kind of film.

Whereas here, we've got scenes put together of it, and we've got police work that's put together, but none of it feels like it ever comes together to make a whole.

That's my feeling about it.

Zodiac.

I like Zodiac.

Boring.

Oh, no, I like Zodiac.

Boring, boring, boring.

No, it was not boring.

Fincher movie.

Oh, I was going to pick Panic Room, and then the next one that came up was Zodiac, and I was like, well, we're good.

We can figure something

else out.

Well, and the best part was it was our other guest that we had, too, and we're like, what do you want to pick? And he's like, Zodiac.

Like, no fucking shit.

Like, both guests want to go to Fincher.

Like, if you give it its single nomination, there's that, because, like...

This is also 2007 where they just forgot that Zodiac existed and didn't nominate it for a single

film.

Well, in fairness, the studio that released Zodiac.

Yes, they also forgot

about it.

But the, um, the, the, so the thing with, uh, with Fincher, who I absolutely blame for, um, like digital becoming the thing, uh, it's, you know like he I mean he really like you know forced it down Hollywood's throat like way before it should have been a it should have been forced down Hollywood's

throat I mean you watch BTS from like well no I think it was side by side the Keanu Reeves doc where he was interviewing Fincher and you can hear him bitching about like on Zodiac how horrific it was to work with the Viper and you're just like well then why did you

like you didn't have to I know.

Well, he was, so his answer was, I could walk down Hollywood Boulevard with a shotgun and not hit anybody who could see the difference.

And for this year's fall entry, we're venturing into the intriguing thick of an infamous true crime mystery.

Grab some animal crackers and check out some books from the library, because on this episode, we'll be interrogating David Fincher's 2007 crime thriller, Zodiac.

Obsession and paranoia collide in this journalistic investigation and police procedural mashup that twists meticulous craft, pitch-perfect performances, thoughtful ambiguity, and incredible tension into truly gripping cinematic perfection.

Joining me to discuss this unsolved mystery and crack the cipher is my usual seasonal partner in crime, Rob Chenoweth.

And we will get to that.

But yeah, how does now living over in California feel?

Not necessarily specific areas where that took place, but does that amp up the creep factor for you? What it does is it makes me think – and this is true for any movie, not just Zodiac.

Every time I watch a movie that takes place in California or is clearly filmed in California – I always immediately want to know now where it is because I've lived in two places.