Zodiac

How David Fincher channelled the real-life obsession of those investigating the Zodiac serial killings of the late 1960s into one of the best crime thrillers of the 21st century.

What follows is based on actual case files.

The opening title card of David Fincher’s Zodiac explicitly sets the tone from the outset. This isn’t another identikit true story serial killer film that pieces together the usual tired tropes of the genre like a composite sketch; it’s a film that is crafted as forensically as the real-life investigation of the case that it follows.

The Zodiac is one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. He is known to have murdered at least five people across Northern California in the late 1960s, and used a series of handwritten letters sent between 1969 and 1974 to taunt San Francisco police. Having first signed the letters with a symbol resembling a crosshair, the killer then revealed his self-proclaimed title; ‘this is the Zodiac speaking’. Some of his letters contained mysterious ciphers – a series of symbols that need to be decoded to be understood – which helped cement the Zodiac’s infamy in the eyes of the American public. By the time of his last letter in 1974, the Zodiac claimed to have killed 37 people. Though his claim of additional victims is disputed, the psychological toll that the Zodiac’s actions had on those trying to identify him is unquestionable. These are the Zodiac’s other victims; the people who spent years of their lives investigating the case and damaging their relationships, careers, and health in the process. Despite their efforts, the Zodiac was never caught and his identity remains unknown. David Fincher puts these people at the centre of Zodiac.

The basis of the film is Robert Graysmith’s book of the same name. Graysmith, a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the murders, became obsessed with the case after the killer’s letters arrived at the offices of the newspaper. Despite being employed to draw satirical political cartoons, Graysmith was in the unique position of being present in the meetings where the letters were first discussed by the Chronicle’s editorial team, being around the reporters covering the case, and would have been one of the first people to see the ciphers, which he attempted to decode. His years spent as an amateur detective culminated in the release of two books on the Zodiac.

Unlike Graysmith’s books, where he details the case in a third-person, novel-like style, Fincher puts Graysmith, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, front and centre of the film – charting his decline from well-wishing Boy Scout (Eagle Scout, actually) cartoonist to a full-blown obsessive, unable to decipher whether a lead is actually relevant to the case, or he just wishes it was so that he could move one step closer to knowing the identity of the Zodiac.

If Graysmith is the clean-cut yin, then Paul Avery is the yang. Another employee of the Chronicle, Paul Avery is a bit of a rockstar in the San Francisco area – a laidback, hard-drinking reporter who is known around town; a throwback to an era where a local newspaper reporter was actually a somebody with a following. After his investigative work on the case led him to claim that another killing, from 1966, was also committed by the Zodiac, Avery was the first person to receive a letter personally addressed to him; a Halloween greeting card telling him that he was ‘doomed’. After being singled out, he started carrying a gun for protection. Completely understandable.

Avery is played by Robert Downey Jr., in one of his last roles before he floated himself on the Hollywood stock market and spearheaded the Marvel movement that now dominates the film industry. You could argue that the success of Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, the wave of films that followed, and the focus of major film studios on the earning potential of blockbuster franchise films, is why great mid-budget films like Zodiac are now becoming few and far between (but that’s a conversation for another day). You get the impression that Downey Jr. is channelling a lot of himself in Zodiac; the cheeky quips befitting Tony Stark, followed by the incoherent ramblings that signal Avery’s descent in to substance abuse, something Downey Jr. also has a history of.

Dave Toschi is the third focus of Zodiac. A police homicide detective, Toschi became the lead investigator of the case after the Zodiac killed taxi driver Paul Stine in San Francisco. Toschi was even more of a local celebrity than Paul Avery, due to his flamboyant look of floppy bow-ties, slick tailoring, upside-down gun holster, and chunky sideburns. He was even the inspiration for the famous on-screen San Francisco detectives of Bullitt (played by Steve McQueen) and Dirty Harry (played by Clint Eastwood); another sign of the times – a local detective being used as a template for characters played by two Hollywood legends.

Mark Ruffalo plays Toschi, in easily a career-best performance. The way Ruffalo carries himself is completely different to any of his other roles, and it’s confusing as to why he hasn’t been used in a similar way more often. He even seems to adopt a different, higher and more gravelly voice compared to his other film and interview appearances. His partner, Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), is the ideal calming foil for the combative Toschi. Ruffalo perfectly captures Toschi’s internal mental battle; he knows he needs to avoid becoming personally invested in the case, doing everything he can to treat it like any other routine investigation, despite being desperate to unmask the Zodiac. You fully grasp how Toschi, the bigshot cop openly referred to as Bullitt by other characters in tribute to his on-screen alter ego, is outside his comfort zone; he is the city’s premiere police personality, and he’s being given the run around by a killer and his pen and paper. Toschi goes full circle in a late scene when Gyllenhaal’s Graysmith tries to share crucial evidence that could uncover the Zodiac’s identity. Ruffalo expertly shifts from refuting Graysmith’s information as ‘circumstantial’ from behind his barrier, then slowly starts to mirror Gyllenhaal’s wide-eyed enthusiasm as he hears more of Graysmith’s theory. We’ve been on the journey with Ruffalo’s Toschi; seeing him drop his guard and allow himself to be caught up by the prospect of identifying the Zodiac embodies how you feel as a viewer, the urge for closure in the case. Easy, Dirty Harry.

The real-life Graysmith, Avery and Toschi all carried the mental burden from their experiences of the case long after the last letter arrived and the Zodiac faded in to folklore. Graysmith’s second marriage disintegrated, owing to his obsession with the case. His time spent trawling through police reports, revisiting old clues, and writing his book distracted him from his family, describing his relationship with his children as ‘not good; Zodiac was number one, it just took over’.

Avery’s peek-a-boo message from his ‘secret pal’, which is how the Zodiac referred to himself in the Halloween card, stuck with him. Although perhaps unlikely to be directly targeted by the Zodiac, given the apparent random selection of his victims, Avery’s decision to start carrying a gun suggests the prospect of coming face to face with the unidentified killer did live on in the back of his mind. Other San Francisco-based journalists started to wear ‘I am not Avery’ badges on their jacket lapels, a semi-tongue-in-cheek gesture to ensure the Zodiac didn’t mistake another reporter for his secret pal. Avery died in 2000, aged 66, from emphysema caused by years of heavy drinking and smoking; his final years were spent with an oxygen tank by his side to help his damaged lungs.

Another letter purporting to be from the Zodiac arrived in 1978, but it was quickly deemed to be a hoax. Dave Toschi was accused of forging the letter in an attempt to keep the case, and by extension himself, in the public eye; the Hollywood cop’s thirst for attention driving him on to create fake evidence to stay relevant does make for a good scoop. High-flying Toschi was removed from the case and from homicide in general, moving to the far more mundane robbery beat, and it’s thought that this episode cost him the chance of the San Francisco police chief job. He was ultimately cleared of writing the 1978 letter, but the impact was irreversible. Toschi’s reputation was damaged due to his close association with the case – another win for the Zodiac.

The case and the mental and physical toll that it took on those closely associated to it has parallels with the production of Zodiac. The Zodiac tormented the real-life Graysmith, Avery, and Toschi, but another man from Northern California inflicted his own brand of mental torture on the on-screen versions of these men; David Fincher.

Fincher is notorious for his attention to detail and for demanding multiple takes from actors, filming the same scenes or sequences several times. When I say words like multiple and several in the last sentence, I’m seriously underselling Fincher’s fetish for working actors within an inch of their existence to make sure he gets what he (thinks he) needs. During the Zodiac press tour, Fincher stated that he hates ‘earnestness’, and that ‘usually by take 17, the earnestness is gone’. 10 to 15 takes would be considered on the high end for most directors; Fincher normally demands between 25 and 65 for every scene. His film Social Network opens with Jessie Eisenberg and Rooney Mara in a Harvard campus bar, the subject of their conversation neurotically jumping back and forth between prestigious ‘finals’ clubs that Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg could attempt to join, rowing crew, and Chinese test scores – a masterclass in Aaron Sorkin dialogue. If you have seen the film, you’ll recall how it’s a multi-layered conversation at 100 miles per hour, lasting about 5 minutes. Fincher demanded 99 takes.

On the special features of the Zodiac Blu-ray, we see Jake Gyllenhaal take 26 takes to drop his cartoonist notepad on the passenger seat of his car. At about take six, Fincher leans in the driver’s window and shows Gyllenhaal how he should throw the notepad down. It looks pretty identical to how Gyllenhaal has been doing it. 20 takes later and Fincher is satisfied. This shot is used in the opening credits, when Gyllenhaal’s Graysmith is driving to the Chronicle newsroom – have a look out for it next time, all tenth of a second of it. Worth the 26 takes, I’m sure.

Fincher’s methods are eerily similar to the real-life investigation that is portrayed in the film. Filming and re-filming the same scene over and over again, being worn down by things you have already seen or said, trying to present them in a new light to maybe make the breakthrough that can bring you to the ultimate goal; in Fincher’s case: the next scene. This is exactly what those investigating the case had to do; pour over the same material again and again, hoping that something would jump out that would allow things to move forward.

Mental torture aside, the obsession with the case and the need to unmask the killer that we see on screen was mirrored by the production crew of Zodiac. Like the real-life Graysmith, Fincher, writer James Vanderbilt, and producer Bradley Fischer took part in their own amateur investigation, taking 18 months before production started to review case files, trawl through 10,000 pages of documents, and re-interview witnesses. The film’s costume designer, Casey Storm, said during production that the crew would normally spend 30 minutes at the start of every day discussing theories and putting forward possible suspects based on their own internet research. Storm claims that there was a genuine expectation that the crew would unearth something that would lead to the case being solved. Like Graysmith in the 60s and 70s, like the film crew in 2006, there is something about the Zodiac case that pulls you in and dares you to become obsessed.

The allure of the Zodiac case comes from the fact that it is frozen in time, a product of a bygone era; it couldn’t happen today. The murders and investigation took place in the last era in the history of civilisation where the killer could feasibly get away with their actions in the way that they did. It’s an era where a smart and devious person could get away with things, where they could push police to their limit; the last era where it was purely mind versus mind, a criminal outsmarting the police. In the modern world, the film feels unbelievable, yet you know what you are seeing actually happened. The Zodiac’s actions look like an idiot’s guide to how not to get away with murder, yet that’s exactly what happened.

The Zodiac started with two incidents six months apart, targeting couples in secluded lovers’ lane spots. He killed three of the four people involved; fortunately the male present at the second incident, Mike Mageau, survived. Killing random people in remote areas under the cover of darkness – fair enough, pretty textbook. He then targets a couple in broad daylight at a lake in Northern California, then kills a taxi driver in the middle of San Francisco; he’s seen leaving the scene of the taxi incident and leaves his gloves behind. He’s leaving evidence behind, leaving survivors, committing crimes during the day, and sending a series handwritten letters to police, yet somehow doesn’t get caught.

Despite what look like shortcomings, the Zodiac played the system to perfection. The ability to extract forensic evidence was virtually non-existent, tertiary at best, and limited to comparing handwriting or exact matches of finger prints. Whether an intentional ingenious plan or not, each of the four confirmed Zodiac murders took place within the boundaries of a different police jurisdiction in Northern California, meaning four different police departments were investigating the individual crimes. No joined up approach, no coordination. Nothing as basic as a police database to log evidence and clues, allowing each police department to compare notes without the need for manual, analog actions. We see this play out in the film, as Napa County detective Ken Narlow tells his San Francisco police department counterpart that they don’t have access to the wonderful technology of fax yet, meaning handwriting samples from the Zodiac letters need to be mailed over instead. If nothing else, Zodiac really makes you appreciate e-mail.

Zodiac perfectly captures the limitations that the police were operating with – as a viewer today, it’s almost hypnotic to watch how restricted and primitive police investigations were, versus what they are capable of doing now. You find yourself shaking your head with each barrier or mistake that Toschi and co face in the film, knowing that modern technology makes these barriers obsolete today.

Fincher’s commitment to telling the story properly – rarely straying from the facts laid out by eyewitness accounts and police reports – while harnessing his ability to masterfully create suspense and tension is what makes Zodiac one of the best crime thrillers of the 21st century. He chooses not to succumb to the temptation of making this about the killer: the faceless, shadowy Zodiac figure is only ever seen on-screen when there is a real-life surviving victim or eyewitness to confirm his existence. This was a conscious decision made by Fincher to avoid Zodiac descending in to slasher territory. This approach means that the film begins with Zodiac’s second murder, where Mike Mageau was shot six times but survived.

The opening scene is Fincher at his best. The haunting groove of ‘Easy to be Hard’, by Three Dog Night, soundtracks the sight of 4th of July fireworks being let off over the San Francisco bay area from victim Darlene Ferrin’s car radio. ‘How can people be so cruel?’ is a fitting lyric to set us up for what we’re about to see over the next two hours and forty minutes. Darlene picks up her date, Mageau, and they bypass a busy diner to head for a secluded woodland spot, a traditional lovers’ lane. There is a constant air of ominous tension, as if these two know something bad is going to happen to them. A car pulls up behind them and Ferrin and Mageau – plus the audience – fear the worst. Mageau offers to do the gentlemanly thing and have a word but Ferrin – without moving her eyes away from the strange car, sounding almost medicated with dread – tells him to ‘stay in the car’. The car moves off and drives further down the round. Thank god. The relief washes over us all. In the distance, we hear the terrified howl of a woman, then realise that it’s actually the screech of car tyres. The sound of an approaching engine intensifies, and the same car pulls up directly behind Ferrin and Mageau, blocking their exit. A man approaches the passenger door, where Mageau is sitting, with a torch shining in the young couple’s eyes. He fires 12 bullets in to the car, walks away, and returns to shoot another four times. ‘How can people be so cruel?’

Fincher uses the Zodiac’s murders as the first act; they all take place in the first 45 minutes of the film, and the next two hours shift to the story of those suffering from the fallout of his crimes. They think they make progress with a suspect, they observe things that are too coincidental to be red herrings, yet something always crops up to refute the evidence and set them back. Their obsession builds, they become increasingly unhinged, and they never achieve the sweet release of closure that they so desperately desire.

In one letter to police, the Zodiac outlines his desire for a film adaptation: ‘I am waiting for a good movie about me, who will play me’. Fincher only had the chance to meet one of his demands. ‘Good movie’? No problem. ’Who will play me’? The Zodiac ruined that by not getting caught.