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

Summary

The Rewatchables: ‘Zodiac’ (2007)

Host: Bill Simmons
Guests: Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey
Date: January 26, 2026
Podcast: The Ringer’s The Rewatchables

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Rewatchables team revisits David Fincher’s 2007 film Zodiac, diving deep into its enduring legacy, meticulously crafted filmmaking, obsessive characters, and its cult status as a “rewatchable” despite its grim subject matter and chilly original reception. Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey analyze why the film has grown in stature over the years, explore its craftsmanship and influence, debate its place among the best crime films, and dissect the obsession at the heart of both the case and the movie itself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Zodiac’s Slow Burn Legacy

• Initially a box office underperformer, Zodiac has become a cult classic and is regarded as one of the most rewatchable films of the 21st century.
• Sean Fennessey attributes its "slow burn" reputation both to its delayed release (from awards season to a February dumping ground) and its unsatisfying (but thematically apt) lack of closure.
  (03:27) Sean Fennessey: "The whole point of this movie is the unknowability of evil, the unsolvability of these stories... Any time we talk about a serial killer movie on this show or elsewhere, it’s all about the hunt for the killer. Se7en is so satisfying because we get that great resolution... here, you’re meant to revisit, reimagine, to be kind of unsatisfied at the end of it."

2. Fincher’s Methodical Obsession & Craftsmanship

• The film’s obsessive research and attention to detail reflect Fincher’s personal connection to the Zodiac case and his perfectionist style.
• Chris Ryan praises how every rewatch reveals new details—a shadow in the background, a character’s gesture—making it "almost made to be studied" rather than just watched.
  (04:54) Chris Ryan: “It’s a demanding, almost an endurance test of a film... you’re constantly having to pay attention to every single thing on 100% of the screen.”
• The production team re-interviewed living witnesses and rebuilt entire locations (like the Chronicle’s newsroom) down to authentic period newspapers.
• Fincher’s famed digital filmmaking (and his eye for background detail) makes the film visually modern and immersive even today, aiding its streaming-era longevity.
• Fincher’s mindset: "Films aren’t finished, they’re abandoned."
  (06:33) Bill Simmons: "He was basically like, I never finished making Zodiac—I just had to stop making it to make another movie."

3. Obsession as the Film’s Core Theme

• The hosts reflect on the film as a meditation on obsession—both the investigators’ and, by extension, Fincher’s and the audience’s.
• Fennessey (whose father was a detective) and Ryan (whose dad was a newspaperman) note the film’s resonance as it dramatizes two parallel obsessions: journalistic and investigative.
  (07:41) Sean Fennessey: “This is a movie about a newspaperman and a police detective trying to figure something out.”
• The hosts compare the enduring appeal of Zodiac to All the President’s Men and Spotlight—procedurals driven by drudgery and process, but here filtered through a case that remains fundamentally unsolvable.
• Obsession and lack of resolution as a double-edged sword:
  (19:53) Sean Fennessey: “...It not being enough actually makes it interesting to spend more time thinking about. So, it’s pretty profound, don’t you think?”

4. Comparisons with 2007 Cinema and the Shifting Industry

• 2007's Zodiac had to contend in a year with There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, and Superbad—a year the hosts call "our 1975" for modern cinema.
• The hosts lament what’s been lost in the years since: procedural, adult-oriented thrillers replaced by franchises and sequels dominating the box office.
• Zodiac’s initial box-office struggles are playfully noted (it was outgrossed by Wild Hogs and 300).

5. On the Film’s Structure and Style

• It’s a two-part film: The first half is a horror-tinged investigation; the back half is a sobering meditation on the impact of obsession, years later.
• The use of multiple actors for the killer and digital clarity enhances both ambiguity and the film’s feeling of modernity.

6. Cast & Characters

• The ensemble cast gets praised: Jake Gyllenhaal (Graysmith), Mark Ruffalo (Toschi), Robert Downey Jr. (Avery), Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, John Carroll Lynch, and Chloe Sevigny.
• On Gyllenhaal: This marks the transition from his "wide-eyed innocent" era to his later, odder roles.
• On Ruffalo: Praise for his commitment to the ulcer-ridden, detail-obsessed Toschi, with subtle physical business.
• On Downey: Avery’s role is "Downey karaoke," brimming with charisma and sardonic humor.

7. Most Rewatchable Scenes

• The “interrogation of Arthur Leigh Allen” is unanimously nominated as the film’s crown jewel: an intense, riveting, dialogue-driven showdown.
  (26:34) Bill Simmons: “It’s probably my most rewatchable scene... It’s so much fun to watch—the three actors, sizing him up, the faces Ruffalo makes in that.”
• Other top scenes:
  • The opening Lovers’ Lane murder (with “Hurdy Gurdy Man”),
  • The Lake Berryessa stabbing (daylight horror in an idyllic setting),
  • The bar interactions,
  • The infamous basement scene with Bob Vaughn ("one of the most scared I’ve ever been in a theater" - Sean Fennessey, 78:57),
  • The Graysmith–Toschi breakfast revelation.

8. Awards & Industry Context

• Despite critical acclaim, Zodiac was shut out at the Oscars in 2007, likely due to release timing, its perceived “commercial director” status, and being “too cold” for voters.
• The episode discusses who should have gotten nominations, and how the film’s reputation has grown in retrospect—once “not regarded,” now regarded as a masterpiece.

9. The Real Zodiac Case—Unsolvable Mystery

• The hosts walk through the real-life Zodiac timeline, the impact of bureaucracy (multiple agencies, no shared databases), and the obsession that spun off books, documentaries, and endless Reddit threads.
• They discuss real suspects, including Arthur Leigh Allen, recent AI-fueled cryptography theories (the Marvin Margolis "solution"), and the messy realities that keep the case ever-open.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Obsession and Unknowability:
  “It’s almost unknowable on the first watch... so much information, visual and expository, that you’re trying to keep track of. It’s almost made to be studied.”
  – Chris Ryan (4:54)

• The Psychology of Rewatching:
  “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.”
  – Bill Simmons (5:51)

• On Fincher’s “Gulag” Approach:
  “He hates sincerity and he hates earnestness in performance... Basically, he’s like, there are two things: I want them to push past the point where they’re acting to achieve a single take that is the right take... The actors on his screen are 10% of the screen. He’s also looking at the way light hits a glass in the background.”
  – Chris Ryan (28:02)

• On the Case’s Elusiveness:
  “The whole point of this movie is the unknowability of evil, the unsolvability of these stories... you’re meant to revisit, reimagine, to be kind of unsatisfied at the end of it.”
  – Sean Fennessey (03:27)

• Fincher’s Perfectionism:
  “He digitally added hair to the close-ups of Jake Gyllenhaal’s knuckles as he draws or holds letters. Because Fincher felt Gyllenhaal’s hands were ‘too hairless and pretty.’”
  – Bill Simmons (107:23)

• On Serial Killers and Modern Life:
  “I don’t think we’re going to see another one, honestly. I think it’s too hard. There’s a camera. Every house has a Ring camera.”
  – Bill Simmons (123:35)

• On the Film’s Structure:
  “It’s almost more like prestige television, where you could watch this in 40-minute bursts if you wanted to... Little breaks here with the fade out. You can step away if you want to and start it again the next day.”
  – Chris Ryan (161:56)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Initial Context: Top movies of 2007, what made Zodiac stand out – 02:31–03:09
• Why Zodiac became a cult rewatchable – 03:09–07:30
• Fincher’s perfectionism and obsession, "movie isn’t done, it’s abandoned" – 06:33–06:54
• Cast discussion (Gyllenhaal, Ruffalo, Downey, ensemble) – 32:20–38:00
• Most rewatchable scenes ("interrogation", basement, opening murder) – 71:09–84:36
• On the real Zodiac case and speculation about the killer – 53:51–63:36
• Oscars and the film's reputation over time – 43:11–47:10
• Fincher’s filmmaking style, legendary perfectionism, anecdotes – 88:29–91:28
• Apex Mountain for Fincher and the film’s place in film history – 135:36–143:03
• Scorsese vs. Spielberg as hypothetical ‘Zodiac’ directors – 145:48–147:02
• Who won the movie?/Final thoughts – 160:49–164:14

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Conclusion: Why Zodiac Endures

The hosts agree: Zodiac has grown from a cult curiosity to a canonical work, revered for its meticulous craft, emotional resonance, and depiction of obsession—both in its story and creative genesis. As a procedural that resists closure, it is cinema’s enduring, endlessly rewatchable puzzle box—one that, like its titular killer, may never be caught or fully understood.

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Quick Reference: Segment Highlights

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|--------------| | Why Zodiac is now a cult rewatchable | 03:09–07:30 | | Fincher perfectionism/"never done" | 06:33–06:54 | | Acting / Cast breakdown | 32:20–38:00 | | Most rewatchable scenes | 71:09–84:36 | | Real-life Zodiac case / suspects | 53:51–63:36 | | Awards shutout and legacy | 43:11–47:10 | | Fincher’s process and funny on-set tales | 88:29–91:28 | | Apex Mountain & film history context | 135:36–143:03| | Alternative directors (Spielberg/Scorsese) | 145:48–147:02| | Who won the movie? Final reflections | 160:49–164:14|

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Memorable Moment

Chris Ryan (28:02):
“Fincher at this period is moving into this new phase where he’s on digital... There are two things—a) I want them to push past the point where they’re acting to achieve a single take that is the right take. Let’s actually work. Let’s actually find something interesting. And second of all, the actors on his screen, as Mark Ruffalo said, it’s like, they’re 10% of the screen. He’s also looking at the way light hits a glass in the background.”

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The Rewatchables makes the case for Zodiac not just as great Fincher, but as a definitive American crime film—a knotty, haunting investigation that keeps drawing audiences (and podcasts) back in for another look.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

This episode is brought to you by Amazon MGM Studios. New heist thriller Crime 101. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan and Halle Berry. Set against the sun bleached grit of Los Angeles. I love it. An elusive rule following Jewel Thief carries a string of high stakes heists along the 101 freeway. Wow, this sounds like it's for me. And Chris Ryan. Until he uncovers the score of a lifetime as a relentless detective closes in, the line between hunter and hunted blurs. Crime 101 is only in theaters February 13th. Filmed for IMAX. Don't miss it on the big screen. Check out crime101.com to learn more. The rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. This is our first podcast that we are running not only on Spotify as a video, but on Netflix as well. That's 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?

[Chris Ryan]

I still crank it out.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. And we've been doing the rewatch.

[Sean Fennessey]

What's the watch?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Culture pod.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow. First I'm hearing of this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

We have other pods. We do.

[Bill Simmons]

We have other podcasts.

[Sean Fennessey]

Exciting.

[Bill Simmons]

We have been circling this one for a long time. Because we already did it. This podcast goes.

[Sean Fennessey]

You've been circling it?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I wasn't 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 gonna 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Anyway, Zodiac is next. 2007 top 10 movies. Spider Man 3, box office.

[Sean Fennessey]

Not your favorites.

[Bill Simmons]

No, Box office. Spider Man 3.

[Sean Fennessey]

Shrek.

[Bill Simmons]

3, Transformers Pirates 2, Harry Potter 3, I Am Legend, Born to National Treasure 2, Alvin and the Chipmunks and 300. That was our top 10 box office.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's pretty rough.

[Bill Simmons]

Here's what also came out in 2007.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

There will Be Blood. Yep. No country for Old Men. Zodiac, Michael Clayton, Juno, American Gangster, Superbad Knocked up Charlie Wilson's worth 310 to Yuma. Gone baby, Gone. Eastern Promises, Assassination of Jesse James by.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I was.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sorry.

[Chris Ryan]

Robert Ford.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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. 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Pitt, but satisfying for everybody else.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 gonna spend an hour here trying to solve this case.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

But, you know, the ingenious idea of the movie is it's not Dirty Harry this. 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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, 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 o', clocker, and now I'm going home.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Right, right.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Is that how you feel about trade value?

[Bill Simmons]

That's how I feel about this. Rewatchables. We're never going to be finished.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I would. Yeah. I wasn't on the first one.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And it's interesting. One of the reasons I wasn't on the first one was I wasn't totally there yet with the movie as rewatchable, and it must have happened over Covid, but this movie all of a sudden was on more, at least in the ways we watch stuff. And then it was on the streamers a lot. It was on Netflix a lot. It was just like, I'll throw this on, and the music's good in the beginning, and you just get sucked in.

[Sean Fennessey]

Its stature has really grown in the last 10 years. I mean, Chris and I have done, like, 15 podcasts about Fincher at this point. We wrote a column about David fincher together, like, 20 years ago. We've been kind of, like, studying him through our friendship, and I. I. Is it safe to say this is your favorite? Because this has been my favorite for about 10 years.

[Chris Ryan]

It is, yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

So.

[Bill Simmons]

Really?

[Sean Fennessey]

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 newspaperman and my dad was a police detective. And this is a movie about a newspaper man and a police detective trying to figure something out.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow. The symbolism of you guys.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Producer Craig Horlbeck is with us as well. He joins us for every rewatch. Wells. 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.

[Craig Horlbeck]

One of our biggest nitpicks watching. Last night, we were watching and we were like, who is ever gonna pull over if somebody's just honking and flashing their lights at you on the freeway?

[Chris Ryan]

Why would you ever pull over and.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's really funny.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

That's our 75. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't feel this way in the moment in 07. 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. Not 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 five times. And then Zodiac was a slow burn, too. It's interesting because I think Michael Clayton felt like it was on the level with those in the moment. And I don't think it is at.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

You do?

[Bill Simmons]

You disagree personally or you disagree?

[Chris Ryan]

Like, I just.

[Bill Simmons]

Personally, yeah, but not big picture.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think it's regarded in the same. In the same class as I do not Blood.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 feels like a very familiar character study from.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

You know what else helps with those three? The directors.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

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, like, those are two of the better done comedies that we've had. And you go all the way through, I think, gangster.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 20 years.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

And what Dark Knight and Iron man are the next year.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Wild Hogs rewatchables.

[Bill Simmons]

When Wild Hogs crushed it, I didn't.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Mind that movie when I watched it.

[Sean Fennessey]

How many Tim Allen movies have been on the rewatches?

[Bill Simmons]

Zero.

[Chris Ryan]

That's kind of surprising.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Santa Claus, classic.

[Bill Simmons]

And then second week, 300 blew it out. And the movie didn't do that well. Barely made back its money. But I think in the physical media it'll be fine. It'll do okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's doing great now. I mean, I think what you said before is right. It's like, it's just kind of fun to have on. Even though it's about the most depraved thing in recent history. I mean, it's two of the most.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Of the most disturbing interrogation, criminal interview scenes.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have a theory about this, too, about the movie's sustainability, which is that 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Want to do 4K transfer now or later?

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a really unusual 4K transfer, just because it's like, it was a movie that is shot digitally, basically, in 1080, so it shouldn't look good. And then you pop the disc 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Right up at the edge of this. Looks too good.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

And you.

[Chris Ryan]

The.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Is that Bob Vaughn?

[Bill Simmons]

No, our guy from the movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Poster guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, our guy from welcome Back, Cotter.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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 a 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Which I think stunned people, but I watch it all the time because I love the process.

[Sean Fennessey]

What number is that? Do you remember?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Or lower than Proof of Life. It was.

[Bill Simmons]

It was higher.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, they spent 18 months on it.

[Chris Ryan]

That's what I'm saying.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Book of Basketball, too.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm getting Isaiah Thomas. I'm gonna be like, hold on.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

What'S the secret?

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Bill Simmons]

60 takes, panic room. Oh, two.

[Sean Fennessey]

Five years go by between movies, and.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

He's basically circling Mindhunter for about 15 years.

[Bill Simmons]

So I guess that would have been HBO. One of the only Netflix back then. Either HBO or Showtime. Where else would he.

[Chris Ryan]

Pushing into digital and him pushing into streaming. Like he's a couple of years ahead of everybody. Yeah, for a while there. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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 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 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Joel Embiid will go out and he'll torch the rockets. And then CR Is like, maybe this case isn't closed.

[Chris Ryan]

I've been chasing the wrong guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

Joel Embiid is Rick Marshall.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 moviemaking 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 Lee Allen. That's the answer.

[Bill Simmons]

Cool.

[Sean Fennessey]

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?

[Bill Simmons]

That's why we End up in the.

[Sean Fennessey]

Basement, among other places.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of.

[Bill Simmons]

Definitely worth of Leone. Wait, is it?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Now.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a 71.

[Bill Simmons]

Telecom in LA looked like in 1971, and this is what the ashtray looked like.

[Sean Fennessey]

But two movies made by guys reflecting on when they were 13, I mean, that's really a big part of it, too. Like, when you're thinking about. 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 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.

[Bill Simmons]

But I would have loved nothing more than a Zodiac, like Sirico or running through Massachuset of New England. I would have. As. As a little kid. I would. Would have been the most fascinating thing happening in my life.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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, is that. 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. But, yeah, it's. It's. 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. Like, well, you'll circle back.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

It's manipulating us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, it's 15 years. It's definitely one of the best shows of the 21st century. I would say that.

[Bill Simmons]

And it's got some umbilical cord to this.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I think that you can see in. I think 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Equally about this guy John David Carroll.

[Sean Fennessey]

John Carroll Lynch.

[Bill Simmons]

John Carroll lynch, whatever his name is.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 also 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Even though he's like, his mother and.

[Chris Ryan]

His sister in law are like, he's the Zodiac.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. The same glove size, same shoes.

[Sean Fennessey]

But it's like 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.

[Chris Ryan]

And the letters stopped.

[Sean Fennessey]

And the letters stopped.

[Bill Simmons]

And then it takes them years and murders both stop.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Armistead Moppin came and did a drive by on it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Man, that was a tough one. We'll get into that.

[Bill Simmons]

You know that scene you talk about when they interrogate him, how great that was. And it's probably my most rewatchable scene. Cause 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 see. He's like.

[Chris Ryan]

When he's like, I suppose you'll want to know about the bloody knives in my trunk.

[Bill Simmons]

And they're just like.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's like, that's a nice watch. May I see it? May I see it?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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 dialogue scenes we've had this century.

[Sean Fennessey]

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. In that scene. In that scene, you see every single person looking right into the camera.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

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 it. I don't think Michael Mann could have done the first Social Network scene that would not have been in his movie.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

This is the movie, too, where that.

[Chris Ryan]

Myth started because of Downey and Jill and all.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Fincher might be the Zodiac.

[Sean Fennessey]

I. You know, he obviously kind of relates in some ways to the methodologies of these crazy people.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

He shoots that immediately after this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I would have cut the lady in the bed hospital. Old Cate Blanchett just would have cut every scene with that. It's been my note, if Dave was coming to me, like, hey, what should I do, Simmons?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Start with young.

[Sean Fennessey]

Enjoy that.

[Chris Ryan]

Start with Mike off.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Just let.

[Chris Ryan]

Be like, the top 50 pod.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Top 50 problems with your.

[Sean Fennessey]

We could redo the top 50 pod with him too.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

That is probably my least favorite David Fincher mov.

[Chris Ryan]

Mine too.

[Sean Fennessey]

It.

[Chris Ryan]

It is.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's really interesting technical marvel and a fascinating idea. And you can see him trying to, like, get his arms around sincerity.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a whimsical fantasy.

[Chris Ryan]

Maybe there's not, like, a full idea in there. I don't know.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a really fun swing and miss.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 James Vanderbilt script, that was just, like, Disney optioned the Graysmith book, and then it fell out.

[Chris Ryan]

Of ownership and he wrote it on.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

And then Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, seven years through Gone Girl, right?

[Chris Ryan]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. I was recently rewatched Dragon Tattoo and I was like, this is absolutely awesome.

[Bill Simmons]

The cast.

[Chris Ryan]

Is this a 22 person cast? Like 22 people deep? Like, it's. It's nuts.

[Sean Fennessey]

This is the cast they designed.

[Bill Simmons]

Dion Waiters for Jake Gyllenhaal coming off broke back at a nice point in his career. Donnie Darko was like, oh, two 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 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, almost down and out there in the mid-2000s.

[Sean Fennessey]

Kiss, kiss, bang, Bang. And then this right?

[Bill Simmons]

Kiss, bang, Bang's. Like three years earlier.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

And then Kiss Bang Bang this and then Iron man the next year. That was it.

[Bill Simmons]

Anthony Edwards, one of the most successful TV actors of all time.

[Sean Fennessey]

Secret sauce of this movie for sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Logan Roy.

[Chris Ryan]

Brian Cox.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

I don't no Maroon cartoons.

[Sean Fennessey]

You guys remember that?

[Bill Simmons]

Sean was a attracted to Jessica Rabbit.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, redhead. She was my zodiac killer.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Zach Grenier. Yeah, One of those guys.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Might remember him from Philadelphia. Yeah, he was kind of the one who came around and had Andy's back a little bit.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah, he's the Justice Department guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

And yeah, he was. He was in Fight Club. He's Ed Norton's Boston Fight Club.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Jake, everything's going to video.

[Sean Fennessey]

The Simple Man.

[Bill Simmons]

El Catus. Little James lros. Just a tiny.

[Sean Fennessey]

Just a little dash at the end. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Little dash of Donald Log.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, log.

[Bill Simmons]

John Carol Lynch.

[Chris Ryan]

James lro 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.

[Bill Simmons]

John Carol lynch. Fresh off Fargo.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

This is kind of the peak for him.

[Sean Fennessey]

He was Mr. Gunderson. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Fincher said, Chloe Sevigny we'll talk about momentarily. Maybe the hottest she's ever looked. Derman 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He has like a very glaringly pot belly.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

What do you want to do? Okay, take a night off.

[Bill Simmons]

Where does this Frankfurt Gyllenhaal performances for you?

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

Which is like how he got launched with prisoners 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.

[Chris Ryan]

I do something strange.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

We gotta do prisoners. Just for Gyllenhaal being like, why? Why are you shopping for kids clothes?

[Sean Fennessey]

Detective Loki.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Was that for the Boston Marathon movie?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Downey is just playing on. It's like Downey karaoke in this movie. He's playing all the hits.

[Chris Ryan]

I want to get like a little patron saint necklace of Downey in this movie and wear it all the time.

[Sean Fennessey]

Aqua Velvet. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

To ask Questions.

[Bill Simmons]

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. Dr. J coming.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

He's so shot and then on the floor, man. What do you want from him?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Not. You wouldn't.

[Chris Ryan]

I think he's a little too idiosyncratic to be. I don't know who you're thinking of.

[Bill Simmons]

Chris Pratt. Like, I mean, I've never been able to get a handle on what his.

[Sean Fennessey]

Career.

[Bill Simmons]

Preference was because he just made a couple. How much are you paying me? I'll take it.

[Chris Ryan]

I know.

[Bill Simmons]

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?

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I think that's the problem.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm 13 going on 30. I'm. Now you see me, I'm. You know, I'm in 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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I think this is my second favorite Ruffalo performance after you can count on me. You can count on me as the best. I think that's the best he's ever been in a movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

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. Cause 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.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a very calculated, cultivated, manicured performance.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I really like it. It's a great job.

[Chris Ryan]

It's very, very, very under control. Did you watch Task?

[Sean Fennessey]

I didn't.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. He's. I mean, like, if you. If you want to see Late period, Ruffalo, absolutely cooking.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Just cranked a couple of times. It's good. Some good stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

No begonia.

[Sean Fennessey]

A couple begonias. Liked it.

[Bill Simmons]

Director's commentary.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

I don't know.

[Sean Fennessey]

You don't know?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Figures, wears a bunch of tennis balls and becomes the whole.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Here a little bit.

[Bill Simmons]

I felt this set that way a little bit too.

[Craig Horlbeck]

But in the moment, I'm sure you.

[Bill Simmons]

Were like, I like it, though. No, because the movie needed it. It needed a weirdo.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

This is like what he does.

[Bill Simmons]

Definitely in that. And Back to School with Rodney Danger. Totally. I don't know what he's going for that movie is.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Craig Horlbeck]

I was shocked by this.

[Bill Simmons]

Zero, no best director.

[Chris Ryan]

If you were doing the big picture, what back then would you just have quit?

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Juno would go out and say, Juno.

[Bill Simmons]

Had a moment, though, in 07. People got really excited about it.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

I really like Atonement. I mean, personally.

[Bill Simmons]

Directors was Cohen's one. Julian Schnabel.

[Sean Fennessey]

Schnabel. Schnabel.

[Bill Simmons]

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. You seen that one?

[Chris Ryan]

Tavier.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Jason Raymond, Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson.

[Sean Fennessey]

I didn't forgot. Gilroy got nominated.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Huh.

[Chris Ryan]

Huh?

[Bill Simmons]

Guy named Daniel Day Lewis. I think we're going to keep that where it is.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. That's a good one.

[Bill Simmons]

Clooney.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a good win.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a biblical reference.

[Bill Simmons]

Viggo Mortensen for each New Promises. Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd. The Demon Barber. What the fuck were we doing there? Jesus Christ.

[Sean Fennessey]

We were really enthralled. Big Depp at this time.

[Bill Simmons]

Jake could have taken that spot.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I saw it on the. On Broadway. Yeah. I saw it in the. In the. As a play.

[Sean Fennessey]

Who was cool? Do you remember who was in the.

[Bill Simmons]

I saw it in Boston. I saw with my dad.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

That's what it was.

[Sean Fennessey]

Interesting. Oh, I mean, also a movie about a serial killer I might have seen.

[Bill Simmons]

A little too young. I was like, what's going on? They're eating these people.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

This barber's a demon.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yep. Really good.

[Bill Simmons]

Really good.

[Sean Fennessey]

Really good.

[Bill Simmons]

Seymour Hoffman. Charlie Wilson's War. He's really good at that movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Incredible.

[Bill Simmons]

I can't kill him on that.

[Sean Fennessey]

He owns the movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Hal Holbrooke and Into the Wild. That feels like an old guy getting roared by the Oscars. And then.

[Sean Fennessey]

It is a good performance, but it is exactly what you just described.

[Bill Simmons]

And then Wilkinson for Michael Clayton.

[Sean Fennessey]

Who's good? Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Ruffalo probably takes the Holbrooke spot, I'm guessing, right?

[Chris Ryan]

Ruffalo over Downey.

[Bill Simmons]

You tell me.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Let's go with either. I think one of those guys has to be in there.

[Sean Fennessey]

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?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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 I 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think Fincher was considered such a commercial director, and most of what he was doing because he came out of music videos was oriented around success. And 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.

[Bill Simmons]

You and alien 3 guy Sierra.

[Chris Ryan]

I like the look of it, but I think it's. It's got a lot of. I mean, he had a terrible time making it. I think there was a lot of recutting and rewriting and stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

It was like, this guy, like, just shooting from the hip.

[Sean Fennessey]

Rod, we got to get the Zodiac killers Top 5 most rewatching movies podcast. Seriously. Can he. Can he bounce back on your list?

[Bill Simmons]

You know, he's weighing in on Rick Barry in the 75 Warriors. Do you think these guys.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, he would. He probably would have loved that Zodiac timeline. So they don't have the first attack.

[Chris Ryan]

In the movie for a very specific reason, though.

[Bill Simmons]

Explain.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

So when you watch 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?

[Craig Horlbeck]

I assume they were the first murders just watching it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. So I think it's a little bit of a flaw in the movie. I don't think they made it clear.

[Chris Ryan]

Riverside is the first murders.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay, but he.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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. It's. I think, just the fact that it took place over so many years, over so much mileage, so many miles. Like, it's just much more complicated to wrap your head around.

[Bill Simmons]

So Lovers Lane, that one that starts the movie. That's July 69.

[Chris Ryan]

That's Darlene Farron.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Kills the one, kills the girl, and.

[Bill Simmons]

The other guy survives.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I can recreate some of the screams.

[Sean Fennessey]

Later if you want to tell me, like, privately.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Save them for when Tatum comes back from his Achilles.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Graysmith makes the dangerous animal of them all. Connection to the most dangerous game. 1932. Sean, you have that on 4K.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have the Eureka edition of it on blu Ray. Yeah. 1932. Quality film. Joel McCray. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

You never read this story? This was given to us in seventh grade English class.

[Bill Simmons]

I remember the story. I don't understand why they made it a movie in 1932 and then they.

[Chris Ryan]

Made it again with Ice Tea. Right.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I feel like they make this movie every 10 years. Didn't they do the. What was the COVID year? There was the Hunt. The hunt? Like, let's hunt humans.

[Sean Fennessey]

What is that ice tea movie?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Maybe it's called Dangerous Game.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Anyway, the original movie, Surviving the Game. Surviving.

[Chris Ryan]

Surviving the Game. That's right.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Then we get the cab driver shot and killed, Zodiac males, the bloodstained shirt to the Chronicle.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

Taunting letter. He's talking a lot of smack.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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, same. 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes, because he.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

There's just a dramatic thing where they just can't get a warrant to search his trailer before he cleans out his trailer and moves. I mean, that's the most important thing that happens in this entire case. If they're able to search him and if they had approached this differently, we might not have a movie or even a case. It might just be totally different.

[Bill Simmons]

Cr how would you compare this to Pablo Torres Aspiration investigation? Lot of circumstantial evidence, but can't find the smoking gun. And Balmer versus Arthur Lee Allen.

[Chris Ryan]

He should have similar.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Pablo's spinning out a little bit like Gracemith there.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I'm not the CEO of Aspiration, and I wouldn't tell you if I was.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, you're talking about why we planted those trees. Well, I can explain that.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Jesus Christ.

[Bill Simmons]

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, 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? He's like, yeah, that's him.

[Chris Ryan]

Eight out of ten. Pretty good, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Rules where they couldn't really.

[Chris Ryan]

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. 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

And 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 that there was so much detail and information that they could even just pull from for the movie, let alone for the investigation itself. And if you don't have that raw material, you can't solve crimes. You can't do your job the way that you're supposed to. It's really interesting 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that's why all three of those movies we mentioned earlier, Spotlight all the President's Ben, this movie, the Drudgery. You can feel it's like, fuck.

[Sean Fennessey]

All right.

[Bill Simmons]

Gotta go through these files.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, it's boring.

[Bill Simmons]

All the President's Ben 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's like you want basketball reference, you know, it's like, this isn't going to do itself. I got to get all this data.

[Chris Ryan]

I got to find out what this guy's nickname is.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, Normal.

[Bill Simmons]

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 that's actually solved it.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I mean you could do that stuff back then. Now you can't. Like the guy who. What was the guy in North Dakota Orever 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 can't. He drove and then he drove back to where he was thinking he would, but then didn't realize his cell phone was being tracked. These guys always forget about the cell phone.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Up and down the coast?

[Craig Horlbeck]

I've had to stop. It sucks.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. You know, you also, you do have. You have legacy in San Diego, Los Angeles and Northern California.

[Bill Simmons]

We know that about serial killer hotbeds.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yeah, I didn't realize. I didn't realize Fincher was from North Bay, from Marin.

[Sean Fennessey]

You didn't realize this was a sting operation and we've identified you as a serial killer.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Not super far from where I grew up.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The reason I don't think the Baber theory is true, because I don't think somebody would shut that off for 20 years.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes. Yeah, I agree.

[Bill Simmons]

I think you're. Once you're. Once you're going, you're going.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that's another theory.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, well, that one of the other theories is that this was multiple people.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I think the film kind of taps into that a little bit with. With the basement guy. And could people have been working together?

[Chris Ryan]

The creepy thing about Bob Vaughn in the basement scene is the idea that there is a connection between these different people who I wrote the posters, but that they all knew each other and that they were all kind of like on the same frequency.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

And to me, like.

[Bill Simmons]

Like we didn't go far enough.

[Sean Fennessey]

And. And we can. Well, 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.

[Chris Ryan]

And Mike Bichone kind of knew who it was.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

That he might have gotten help.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

$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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

He turned out fire.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

What are your thoughts? What's the ideal runtime?

[Craig Horlbeck]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

And basically in some news like reports of like, oh, and then this is.

[Sean Fennessey]

Happening, the screen goes to black.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Fuck you.

[Bill Simmons]

I just spent four months making this two minute montage of four years of movies. Well, there's music.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

And a little bit of stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Sean, I said on the another 48 hours rewatchables a couple days ago that that is my number one release, the cut. There's 25 minutes extra and apparently another 40 minutes and it's a totally different.

[Sean Fennessey]

Movie than they reveal who the Zodiac.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

We gotta find out from Walter.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

We were doing this for the another 48. I couldn't really think of another one.

[Bill Simmons]

Besides the one I. The other one I came up with was Eyes Wide Shut released the. Oh, yeah, Kubrick. Right before he died.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 the end of 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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

By the Illuminati.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

This is a true solo one for me.

[Bill Simmons]

This is a cr. Solo.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. This is like, everybody leave.

[Bill Simmons]

Clear out.

[Sean Fennessey]

T shirt, no pants. What are you doing?

[Chris Ryan]

The street, the tube.

[Sean Fennessey]

And.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, this is. My wife went to New York for the weekend.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm Porky bigoted it all day.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God. Roger Ebert, our guy.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Every rewatchables. We read the Roger Ebert review, four stars. He said, Zodiac is the all the President's bend 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

But also is completely terrorized by it. And the idea that, like, these people died, you know, like, it's not a joke. And yet there is this real sense of black humor in the movie and a real acceptance of not knowing, never knowing what really happened.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well.

[Bill Simmons]

So he has seven guys. The fucking craziest person probably who's ever killed anyone in a movie.

[Chris Ryan]

But. But it's like, oh, this guy would have won Jeopardy. You know what I mean?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Such a mean spirit.

[Bill Simmons]

That movie's nuts. 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 this is.

[Sean Fennessey]

Chaos at your fingertips.

[Bill Simmons]

In that movie Panic Room, which is basically these three burglars just going as far as you could possibly go, what.

[Sean Fennessey]

If we tortured a single mom and her 12 year old?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

But Gone Girl's pretty perverted. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Then it goes back to Gone Girl.

[Sean Fennessey]

Dragon Tattoo's crazy. Some of the torture scenes in Dragon Tattoo were so cool.

[Bill Simmons]

I was saying, like, Benjamin Button, he cools off.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Break and what encourages them to do things that we know are not in polite society. Are bad.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Are wrong.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, but you guys have 500,000 text. Text words back and forth about Finch movies.

[Sean Fennessey]

A couple of perverts would have been.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like I'm going back to the 1960s, the first All Black starting.

[Chris Ryan]

Five guys getting corrupted by, like, a betting ring and shooting steroids the entire time.

[Sean Fennessey]

You'd watch it, though. It'd be meticulously crafty.

[Bill Simmons]

Honestly, I'd watch anything Fincher did.

[Sean Fennessey]

Me, too.

[Bill Simmons]

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 and, you know, the writer is like, Fincher, you know? All right. Most rewatchable scene, the lover's Lane murder is fucking creepy. I don't like flash flashlights as a murder scene Gimmick really freak me out.

[Sean Fennessey]

Just putting the flashlight on top of the gun.

[Bill Simmons]

Just when they do this, it never goes well. The Hurdy Gurdy man, though, is just an amazing.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

The fireworks.

[Chris Ryan]

Static tracking shot of the suburbs and the fireworks and stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a really, really good first six minutes. Like, it's. You're just. You're in.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Paul, you keep saying Roger because you.

[Bill Simmons]

Want to say Roger.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, because Roger Avery from Pulp Fiction.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Because we know who Roger Avery is.

[Sean Fennessey]

The screenwriter.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Paul Avery is the journalist. Thank you, Chris.

[Bill Simmons]

I knew I was going to have name mess ups in this.

[Chris Ryan]

You got a lot on your mind. You're trying to find the Zodiac murder.

[Bill Simmons]

And then when they we find out he gave himself the name. I am the Zodiac. The Bluff murder version of that.

[Sean Fennessey]

When did you say I am the Boston Sports Guy?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that was when there was a Boston movie guy.

[Chris Ryan]

Were you sending coded messages?

[Sean Fennessey]

Is that what it was?

[Bill Simmons]

This is Boston Movie Guy doing reviews you probably hated. You're probably reading them. Age shit, 12. Being like, this guy sucks on microfiche.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, how is he getting access to them? The Boston Movie Guy.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Sports Guy, and then maybe me and the movie guy can know.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

It's fine.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 the medallion. It looks like the living embodiment of murder.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

But I like the diner at the end.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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?

[Sean Fennessey]

Melvin Belli is such a beautiful 70s figure. We don't have people like that anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Where it's like that guy was a famous lawyer who would just show up on TV all the time.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

That's right.

[Chris Ryan]

We might want that one back.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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 or out? Well, fuck off. I can't watch Brian Cox in anything after succession. I literally can. I just wait for him to become Logan Good Ray.

[Sean Fennessey]

Not even Hannibal Lecter.

[Bill Simmons]

No, no. Logan Roy ruined him for me.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

In a good way.

[Sean Fennessey]

He is also the voice of McDonald's.

[Bill Simmons]

I think about that when he does that, too.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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?

[Sean Fennessey]

He loves money.

[Bill Simmons]

Eat this filet of fish. Or off the Ione Scott car ride scene.

[Chris Ryan]

I just have holy fucking shit written down for this.

[Bill Simmons]

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. She's like, oh, thank you. And then the terror of realizing he didn't fix it. And then they do kind of. It's almost like a no country for Old Men jump cut ahead of time, where you think something horrible has happened.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, please don't do that anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

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 people call you retard? And then he goes to Downey and it's like, people call me retard. It's like, no.

[Craig Horlbeck]

He's like, do people call me names?

[Sean Fennessey]

No. Laugh line when Shorty hits him with that, though, is really, really funny.

[Bill Simmons]

And it keeps going. They end up with the Halloween card, the gun range. I just like when they're hanging out. You.

[Chris Ryan]

You're. You've been around the block a couple times. What do you think Shorty's comp package was? Coffee guy in the Chronicle newsroom.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he's doing fine.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm shining. Like, what is. What does that get 5% bumps every year?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Might have. Might have spent some time.

[Sean Fennessey]

Trouble. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Knows his way around a switchblade.

[Bill Simmons]

Might have been incarcerated for a couple years there. So he's happy to.

[Chris Ryan]

I just love that towards the end of the movie when Downey is getting basically fired and he's like, shorty, let's go for one. Shorty's like, yeah, sure. It's like, shorty, you're fucking working here, man.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

That's the same thing.

[Craig Horlbeck]

He's like, we can no longer ignore this drink here.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

The whole scene where he's just like, you wouldn't make fun of it if you tried it.

[Sean Fennessey]

And then cut to an hour later, Avery's drinking them in the bar, and he's just doing parts so good, while.

[Chris Ryan]

Graysmith is like, look at my code breaker book.

[Sean Fennessey]

They're so good together.

[Bill Simmons]

Interrogating Arthur at work. We talked about this scene.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, yeah, That's.

[Chris Ryan]

That's.

[Bill Simmons]

I think this is my most rewatchable scene.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's it.

[Bill Simmons]

I love this scene. Searching Lee's place.

[Sean Fennessey]

H. The squirrels.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

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 bad guy.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's just way more disturbing and awful than you would ever imagine. Buffalo Bill still number one. Most disturbing.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, that's great. That's a top five right there.

[Sean Fennessey]

Suitcase. And it's got the snakes everywhere. That's fucking incredible.

[Bill Simmons]

Second prisoners reference. Yeah. Interesting kind of circling now.

[Sean Fennessey]

Circling. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The basement scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Rick didn't draw any posters. I do the posters myself.

[Bill Simmons]

Gyllenhaal's like that.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 my entire life. Seeing it in the movie theater. And now it does not. Doesn't work as much. Doesn't hit as hard. 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 it's part of the movie, I feel.

[Chris Ryan]

Because you feel like it's tonally different or because you. It's like. It feels like he's trying to scare you.

[Sean Fennessey]

And I know he's doing, like, movie stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

In that scene where he's trying to make you uneasy. The whole movie makes you uneasy because of the worst nightmare.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Out.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, right.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's upsetting. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. But that's kind of what I mean about the way that the movie's made, where when you're watching the movie for the first time, you're like, this is getting really, really uncomfortable. But then when you watch it with a little bit of distance, you're like. Like, they showed us the key locking, you know, to make you uncomfortable. But it's pretty subtle, though. It still is really effective.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you want to test that out and have.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I don't think you can do it anymore.

[Chris Ryan]

You just like, I'm just knocking on your door. Back Cr.

[Sean Fennessey]

Be.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

That's. I don't want to be. I don't want to be disturbed.

[Chris Ryan]

But not any more than that.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't like when people come over. And yet Jake, last seen Jake goes to see Lee at the hardware store, which I think also gets the Fortune 3 Clap Award for most gifable moment. The stare down.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

John Carroll Lynch. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Great face changes in this movie by him because he has 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

So what do you have from us? We watch.

[Chris Ryan]

Mark, can I just throw one that you didn't mention?

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

Which is.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it with Roger Avery? Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It's Toschi and Armstrong doing the crime scene for the taxicab.

[Sean Fennessey]

Taxi cab.

[Chris Ryan]

That's the first animal crackers moment. And it's also just.

[Sean Fennessey]

Just.

[Chris Ryan]

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 re. The recreation and the forensic stuff and the pathology stuff is so awesome. And then that last shot of Toski gets out of the cab, and 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.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you have?

[Sean Fennessey]

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 with the shaker. And he says, darlene worked at the House of Pancakes in Vallejo.

[Bill Simmons]

I walked it.

[Sean Fennessey]

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. 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 with the title cards.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Right, Right.

[Bill Simmons]

What'd you have for most rewatchable seeing.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a.

[Sean Fennessey]

See you. May I see it? May I see it?

[Bill Simmons]

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 in movies, it's almost like we have to do what's the most 1970s thing about this movie. And I think it's Folger's coffee because was really. That was the only coffee for ever.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

My grandmother had it.

[Bill Simmons]

Something shifted. I don't really know what, but it was basically. I don't even know. Was there another coffee?

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Starbucks really and Starbucks killed the Seattle Supersonics and Folgers.

[Chris Ryan]

But would you put two murders. Were people putting Folgers in like a Mr. Coffee or were they putting boiling water in it?

[Bill Simmons]

It was an old school.

[Chris Ryan]

Because there's instant coffee. You just pour the hot water in.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Really cared about grinding it like in like when's the last time you had.

[Sean Fennessey]

I can't even like an Airbnb or.

[Chris Ryan]

Something what it tastes like?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Bad. I would also say for 70s thing about the movie, just coordinating investigations between cities. Sure. It just would be different now. Okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

Can I give you one other 2007 thing?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 culturally. Kind of like reckoning with the end of the summer of love and what the 70s could have been and then how they turned out so toxic and dangerous. And it felt very chaotic to live in that time. This kind of desperation to have like a little bit more peace culturally. Like I'm reaching a little bit, but the movie does feel like him kind of reckoning with some of those feelings.

[Bill Simmons]

I like it.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Shaped their Almost Famous in too.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's the fourth one, almost four of them. Totally.

[Bill Simmons]

That was good. I felt like I was watching Embiid back somebody down on the foul line there. Just. Sean was cooking.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is this before or after you tried to injure Mitchell Robinson?

[Bill Simmons]

Wow. I love giving this award out the Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film. Shit. 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 Garrett 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 take. And it's the 56th take that's in the movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

He.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

I think if we were all actors, Sean would like it because he would really appreciate the craftsmanship.

[Sean Fennessey]

I like representatives.

[Bill Simmons]

Whatever it takes. David Chris would secretly bitch about it, but be a good soldier. And I'd be the one. Like, this fucking guy. This motherfucker after 35 takes. Asshole.

[Sean Fennessey]

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. And they went back and reshot it, and he explained how when they reshot it, Gyllenhaal brought his dad, who was 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, who's the number one guy who did this? Kubrick. And he basically. Duvall had a nervous breakdown, and Kubrick.

[Chris Ryan]

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 because he's eating a donut and Fincher's laughing, and he's like, yeah, I want you to eat. Like, take a bigger bite. And Gyllenhaal's like, ha, ha, ha. Of course you do.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Like.

[Chris Ryan]

And Fincher's like, yeah, no, go back. Go back and eat a bigger bite of it.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Jesus.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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 Anders is eating a turkey club at one point. And there's another part where Ruffalo's eating a burger.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

He takes a real bite of that burger. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

We're going to take a break, and then we're going to do what stage is 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 Sevny's character. I'm gonna say Dennis Peck could have broken this one pretty quickly.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it. 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. Like it. That. That happens. Sometimes it's like you date for a while and then all, oh, wait, we're living together. That was weird.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

This is because you're just like, I.

[Bill Simmons]

Never told you, baby.

[Chris Ryan]

I always said I'd be watching 12 hours of football every Sunday. I do.

[Bill Simmons]

And you signed up. You knew how much basketball I watch.

[Sean Fennessey]

The movie doesn't explain it, but you 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.

[Chris Ryan]

She's on a blind date with the guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

She's got such a great sense of humor. Like seven.

[Sean Fennessey]

You does.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Another Wood stage. The best is just true crime.

[Sean Fennessey]

The last two decades, that was my number one. Not just true crime, but the obsession with it.

[Bill Simmons]

This movie is 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. I missed it when it was out. I don't know how I missed it.

[Sean Fennessey]

This is the Zodiac speaking, right?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. As usual with those three parters. Probably could have been just. Just an hour 25. Dragged it out a little bit, but it was interesting.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Somebody with a Zodiac Ghost killer. Is that a better football or better basketball?

[Sean Fennessey]

The drop step killer.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Basketball.

[Bill Simmons]

Basketball.

[Chris Ryan]

Although back in. You know, back in, like, the Steve Atwater days, it Would be great if a free safety was nicknamed Zodiac kills.

[Sean Fennessey]

I thought you were going to say a quarterback who throws a lot of hospital balls.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Like post hippie, follow the hate. Kind of like.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, I had this later, but there's something about the city back then that really kicked everybody else's ass about San Francisco.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

I think other cities caught up.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Did even better than the basketball thing. But Boston built up San Francisco. Never, never had to build up. San Francisco is like, look how cool this is. It's just an unusual place is 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's.

[Chris Ryan]

It seems like it's night 75% of this movie. And it is also like a little bit of a California thing where you're just like, man, there could just be something behind that fence over there.

[Sean Fennessey]

There's just.

[Chris Ryan]

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 San Francisco, there is like super rural parts and like trailer parks and like, that's a.

[Sean Fennessey]

Big part of this movie is the kind of like disconnected, various styles of small towns that comprise most of Northern California. I mean, Northern California is not San Francisco in the Bay. It's like, it's a lot of different kinds cities and towns that are like.

[Chris Ryan]

Santa Rosa and Vallejo or lower middle.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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. They have to do. They have to show Fenway, you know, Chicago. They have to show the wide shot of the cities for the most part.

[Sean Fennessey]

Cities can be downtown, la, pretty amorphous.

[Bill Simmons]

Vegas and New Orleans could technically count.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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. The time.

[Sean Fennessey]

The transcontinental.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah, the transcontinental is another. What's age best? What do you have for what's age? The best here?

[Chris Ryan]

All of Down America.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sorry, Trans America.

[Chris Ryan]

Downey' mutterings to Gyllenhaal, especially his art criticism. But like, Sweet mother of Christ, what are you drawing? And Jesus Herald 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, that's what it. And that's really what we've all kind of become. We've 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 kind of attitudes of people who live online now.

[Chris Ryan]

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 journalist. Like, what are you doing?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a really good one. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The Fincher catalog. And just what this movie means, I think has aged the best.

[Chris Ryan]

Best.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't want to say he needed it, but he kind of needs it. When you think, like, holy. 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 going to.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

One for two.

[Sean Fennessey]

Love Mank. But Zodiac and Mank are both clearly about his dad. I mean, they're, you know, they're just. They're obsessions of his dad. He talks about his dad. Dad 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.

[Bill Simmons]

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 cool.

[Chris Ryan]

Houseboat, but it's in.

[Bill Simmons]

Whatever that was.

[Chris Ryan]

It was supposed to be in Sacramento, though.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know where it was, but.

[Sean Fennessey]

I thought it was cool.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that seems like a great place to end up if you're an alcoholic who's going to die of pulmonary commute.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I'm not really sure I liked it.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay. Just.

[Bill Simmons]

He's just going to smoke cigs there and drink till he dies.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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. And that really is what it's like to work for a newspaper. Like, you go in in the morning, there's like five people there.

[Chris Ryan]

My dad would sometimes take me by the Inquirer on Sundays. And it was always like, this place is like Disneyland.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

That's like a movie set.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

All your guys?

[Bill Simmons]

No. Christopher Cross. So Downey cruising to the Sean Penn. I brought my own pack Award for excellence in on screen smoking.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, it's.

[Bill Simmons]

It's really about.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know, I felt like I was in like an art seminar, you know, like it was learning about, you know, Degas.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

The Run.

[Bill Simmons]

I really was impressed.

[Chris Ryan]

Is Cleo Duvall. Great smoking scene. Yes, great smoking Scene.

[Bill Simmons]

They do a good job of really making her seem like she's seen a few things in her day, too.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, we'll just do a couple of paintings.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's one of her skills as an actor.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, there's been some. Yeah, yeah. Great shot. Gorder Award. What'd you have, Sierra?

[Sean Fennessey]

Jesus.

[Bill Simmons]

This is.

[Chris Ryan]

How long you got?

[Bill Simmons]

Opening City Fireworks is pretty cool. I. There's too many choices.

[Chris Ryan]

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've 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 just. It's a personal favorite of mine.

[Craig Horlbeck]

I love that she's in the phone booth with him, which makes no sense. She has that great line. It's raining like some weird ploy for you. For you to make me go home with you.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I'll get the food to go.

[Bill Simmons]

We should mention great shot. Gordo Award is the most cinematic shot. I guess I have to ID some of these words for this new audience named after Gordon Willis.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Then the cut to. Is it Harnell's, Hartnell's face, The way that it holds on his face while he's being stabbed.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, my God.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 quake. So he's like, just. The idea of rebuilding this freeway that I grew up with was interesting to me.

[Chris Ryan]

He brought trees. He choppered trees into the lake. Bara.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah. To recreate the.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

I have Inner City Blues.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Shooting them, I think that's the most.

[Bill Simmons]

Songs in the background. And then it gets loud.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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 nickels as he draws or holds letters. Because Fincher felt Gyllenhaal's hands were quick quote, too hairless and pretty.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Congrats to David.

[Bill Simmons]

We have the Sean Fantasy Award for Stealth homage. That gives every movie nerd a criteria. Orgasm.

[Sean Fennessey]

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. 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 7, and Fincher and Bong Joon Ho are in this, like, career long back and forth.

[Chris Ryan]

Zodiac is a total masterpiece.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's like. Bong Joon Ho is like. My greatest in theater experience is seeing the Social Network. These two guys are kind of fascinated with each other. I've never seen them talk to each other before.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't like how Fincher has this many allies. Like, now he's with Tarantino. I like when directors hate each other.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, he's like. He's with Steven Soderbergh too.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

I like when all the.

[Bill Simmons]

We need to go back to Paul Schrader just lighting everybody up and calling themselves.

[Sean Fennessey]

I know you don't want. Want it to be Bird magic. You don't want LeBron and Steph being friends.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Good one. Flex, Craig. Go ahead.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

What?

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

Let's fire it up. Let's watch it together.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you read. What were the details? Was he a killer or was he the cop? He must have been the cop.

[Craig Horlbeck]

He was the cop.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Craig Horlbeck]

And the Zodiac Killer kills and then has sex with women and then.

[Chris Ryan]

Wait. After the kill. Or he has sex with them and.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

I wonder, was he Johnny Wat? It was his detention.

[Craig Horlbeck]

63 minutes, so it does pass the century.

[Sean Fennessey]

Imagine if it was 3 hours 63 minutes.

[Bill Simmons]

I could have gone longer.

[Chris Ryan]

I prefer the porn fairy world. A clip of it.

[Craig Horlbeck]

It's not in 4K.

[Chris Ryan]

Does not look as good as a real film. Did you download it on your work computer?

[Craig Horlbeck]

No, that on the personal device.

[Bill Simmons]

John Holmes was in the Zodiac podcast.

[Sean Fennessey]

Exciting.

[Bill Simmons]

Great.

[Craig Horlbeck]

The other one I'll do is the.

[Chris Ryan]

Vincent Chase Award for.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Are we sure this character was good at his job? I'm going right at Zodiac. Lower kill rate than Drake May's completion percentage. You the double murders at the top of this movie. He can't kill either guy.

[Chris Ryan]

He can't finish the job.

[Craig Horlbeck]

He you lets both guys live Crazy. He wore a watch that said Zodiac.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Chris Ryan]

It would be great if he had plumbers. His name tag said Zodiac at the Ace Hardware.

[Craig Horlbeck]

This Guy was winning MVPs, but he.

[Sean Fennessey]

Couldn'T dribble with his ass.

[Bill Simmons]

Can I help you to find something that's a great.

[Chris Ryan]

Got a painting job coming up.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Like, come on.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

It felt like they needed an extra downy scene, just like I. It.

[Chris Ryan]

I suppose it's also like, this is where Avery is kind of leaving the tracks and is starting to, like, chase shadows a little bit. But that's where he. You know, when he.

[Bill Simmons]

I have a tiny one, which is. I. 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 dialogue. It assumes the viewer already knows, but I don't. As the movie ages over time, I think I just think they should have figured out A better way to do that.

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't know if what I'm gonna say is a picking knit or an unanswerable question or what. What's, you know, know kind 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.

[Chris Ryan]

And then he said this and said that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes, he said this about the kids bopping off the school bus and taking them out. And he had all this specific detail that, that makes Toski think that and Armstrong think that it's him. You know, there are a lot of interviews with this guy 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 this time.

[Bill Simmons]

That Donald Cheney Reddit.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 that just seems so, so circumstantial that points directly at the guy that makes him seem like a bad serial killer is effectively backed by everything that Donald Cheney has provided.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

And it makes you it to me.

[Bill Simmons]

Sierra's having a great time.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Sierra was just like.

[Chris Ryan]

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, like he makes his living by going to conventions and peddling theories about stuff like that.

[Bill Simmons]

Or is that who John Holmes played? Or no. Was he somebody else? Think he somebody else.

[Chris Ryan]

Or even all the Taski stuff about the letters to Armiston Mopin and then whether or not he wrote the Zodiac letter and stuff like that, which is like I proven to be untrue, I think.

[Bill Simmons]

But for the most, it's a good weakling. They could have at least aroused some suspicion with us.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

It's like, it's. This is kind of like what Pell and David Simon did when we Owned the city where they're like, we have decided that this person's version of this.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm surprised to learn that's your favorite deleted scene.

[Bill Simmons]

That's my favorite deleted scene. What do you think? My favorite. What did you think it was?

[Sean Fennessey]

It was a very memorable scene with Roller Girl. Luis Guzman.

[Bill Simmons]

That was another great scene. So I had for what stage to worst. There's that scene when Jack and Downey are at the bar we mentioned earlier. Just decode Zodiac shit. I wrote down. I'm five minutes late on these two together. Yeah, that would have been my note as the studio. Like any more Downey and Gyllenhaal just being weird together scenes because put another one in.

[Chris Ryan]

There is another one deleted. I don't know if you want to say it's aged the best or the worst because it's both. But they weren't real friends. Avery and Graysmith were not friends.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

So that is almost the most movie ish thing about the movie. And it is by far the most entertaining thing the movie ever would have taken. 10 more scenes of the two of them going to a Giants game, you know, and being like, yeah, you know, smoking.

[Bill Simmons]

Say the worst. Clifford Ray is back.

[Sean Fennessey]

That would have been good.

[Bill Simmons]

I asked that 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 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.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it's probably accurate to Armstrong.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I know. They had to.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Any other would say is the worst.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I had the. 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 Grace Smith is kind of still on this by himself.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

Any for you or no, just my certainty that it was Arthur Lee Allen for the, like, 10 years after I saw the movie. And now the idea that we're just like. The thing that is haunting the guys in this movie is now what haunts the culture of finding the zodiac killer.

[Bill Simmons]

Which is just like, there's this podcast.

[Sean Fennessey]

There'S more info every day. You know, you've talked about the special that, 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Just wait till we. Till AI just fully get. Gets its talons into it, you know?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, what are you talking about?

[Craig Horlbeck]

I would say she's actually quite reasonable.

[Chris Ryan]

She's pretty cool, man. She knows what she's getting into.

[Bill Simmons]

Counter. Get the fuck out. After the first date, 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. And then she's mad at him and 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

What are we doing? Are we going to dinner? He's like, I gotta watch. I gotta. I gotta do some Spielberg research. I'm taking the kids. I'm going to my.

[Sean Fennessey]

Are you guys surprised? This movie resonates with me.

[Bill Simmons]

I just. It really bothers me that she signs up for this. I think that takes it personally.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He's waiting for a call from his pulmonary emphysema.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. I mean, she's the only female character of note in the film. I mean, there's just not. There's.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

But she's also just playing the wife, you know, like, there's not really any. There are no women in this world. Like, in the world of, you know, police departments at this time and newspapers. Like, they were secretaries, you know, and that's part of the reason why the movie is that way. And I think you could make the case that. That. 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Who can't make time to take care of his children because he's trying to solve a crime.

[Bill Simmons]

It's really an advertisement for dating services that. I don't think we're around yet. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. This is.

[Bill Simmons]

Probably needed a few more.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Thank you, Raya.

[Chris Ryan]

Do I have a flex?

[Bill Simmons]

You can take one right now.

[Chris Ryan]

I just had the Rick Dalton Award.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. What is it?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes. There's a lot of.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it like.

[Chris Ryan]

Ah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's an epic amount of thought.

[Chris Ryan]

That whole. The whole houseboat scene is just.

[Sean Fennessey]

I love the house going on in the background.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Word.

[Chris Ryan]

I kind of did a little bit of the. The. The PTA QT thing. But I will also say that I think the thrill. The dark thrill of the zodiac were to happen today would be ruined by everybody trying to figure out who he voted for. You know, there would be no, like.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, this is cool.

[Chris Ryan]

Watch out. Don't go out at night.

[Bill Simmons]

Because it would just be like, that motherfucker's a Bernie bro.

[Chris Ryan]

You know?

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, it would just be.

[Chris Ryan]

It would suck.

[Sean Fennessey]

It would probably be more like this guy did Jan6.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you have a hottest take?

[Sean Fennessey]

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 Deathbeast. 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.

[Bill Simmons]

And this was a real story too.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think that it's because it's more of an act of journalism than it is an act of crime solving?

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

The Goat serial killer of all time.

[Bill Simmons]

Never caught so good. He might have also been the Black Dahlia Killer, which was another one who wasn't to going caught. Drove detectives and journalists crazy, created a world that led to books and movies and is still going on. Reddit. Ambidextrous swimmer.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's like James Harden with a hand.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

You like that more than Son of S. Best?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Zodiac. Very measured.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Getting away with it is number one.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

I had no idea.

[Bill Simmons]

We've solved all the other ones, how.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

There's like, Reddits to the subreddits, 65 years old. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

And by the way, we're not any closer to figuring out who did It.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's really. It's a crazy one, but I think Craig made a good point. Like, finish the job.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Well, you're going kind of the Bill Russell case here, like, for his time, what he did.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, you think Zodiac just played against Plumbers?

[Craig Horlbeck]

You know what I mean?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, true. Yeah. Like, they're in the pre. Internet, pre departments being able to coordinate investigations.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Police departments didn't have fax machines, right? Not exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

It is fair playing the Houston defense.

[Sean Fennessey]

Do you have, like, a. The LeBron of serial killers.

[Bill Simmons]

They all get caught. Yeah.

[Craig Horlbeck]

What's aged the worst is serial killer killers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Right. Serial killing has aged the worst. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Can't do it well, I think just too hard. DNA.

[Sean Fennessey]

Have you tried cameras?

[Bill Simmons]

No, I just think. I don't think we're going to see another one, honestly. Yeah, I think it's too hard.

[Chris Ryan]

There's a camera. Every. Every house has a ring camera.

[Bill Simmons]

There was a story about there might have been a Houston serial killer because they found all these bodies.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

They don't know what happened. I don't believe that one. I think. I think we have too much technology now, I think.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Credit for, which I would argue is clever, because it completely threw them off the scent in the investigation. It got. Mullinax is like, I like this guy. And you're like, well, what does that guy have to do with any other kill? And he's like, yeah, but I have evidence that shows that he's connected to this one. So it creates this distortion effect around the investigation. He's really smart. It doesn't mean the Zodiac is like a brain genius, but he clearly did things with a level of manipulation that does distinguish him from other serial killers.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

Or the Wet Bandits.

[Bill Simmons]

Like Ted Bundy's. Like, I just love the ladies. And there's a dark side to it, but that's my thing.

[Sean Fennessey]

The ladies.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

But it's so.

[Bill Simmons]

He was like the first podcast.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

My thoughts on the Dirty Harry movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Right, Exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

And then there's the attention of what.

[Chris Ryan]

He was doing, even things that weren't Zodiac. Like the call to Melvin Belli, which is a guy in an mental institution making the phone call. It goes towards the Zodiac's legacy. It's like Steve Kerr building off of Mark Jackson's work, you know?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horlbeck]

All that hard work that Mark did.

[Sean Fennessey]

Who drafted Draymond? Ask yourself that.

[Bill Simmons]

Casting what ifs.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Mark was playing Monta Ellis over Steph Curry.

[Bill Simmons]

It is true.

[Chris Ryan]

He was saving him.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

It was Aniston, His.

[Sean Fennessey]

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?

[Chris Ryan]

Just like Heaven or something?

[Bill Simmons]

No. Rumor has it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Rumor has. Has it? Was it rumor? Was it from Rumor has it.

[Chris Ryan]

Rumor has it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Basically would have been forced into romance as a journalist.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, it would have been a little distracting.

[Bill Simmons]

Can we talk it out?

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Sean Fennessey]

Has anyone who looks like Brad Pitt ever been a journalist?

[Bill Simmons]

Brad Pitt, really good at playing down.

[Sean Fennessey]

True, true.

[Chris Ryan]

Is this like Snatch era? Brad Pitt?

[Bill Simmons]

No, this is after that mid 2000s. I've settled down with Angelina and we're adopting kids every nine months.

[Sean Fennessey]

Troy. Mr. And Mrs. Smith.

[Bill Simmons]

Post Mr. Ms. Smith. Pre Benjamin Button.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Pre Moneyball.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Sean Fennessey]

He plays dumb really well. He plays low key or burnt out really well. And he's.

[Chris Ryan]

He.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's always clever as Rusty in the oceans movies, but not fast.

[Chris Ryan]

He's a little bit more. He has a Little bit more stoner, whereas Downey has a little bit more uppers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Best that Guy award. We're saying John Carroll Lynch. Not eligible. Probably not for us.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you know who that was, Craig?

[Craig Horlbeck]

Recognize him? Don't know his name.

[Chris Ryan]

I grabbed two guys from the editorial meeting, which is John Getz and John Terry, the editor in chief and the publisher.

[Bill Simmons]

I think John Getz is John Getz. I feel like he's been in too many things.

[Chris Ryan]

He's.

[Bill Simmons]

John Terry's a good one.

[Chris Ryan]

John Terry's really good.

[Bill Simmons]

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 Carmelo, but not really.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

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 when they go to location.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Skippy from Kicking and Screaming, who was also calling the drug dealer In Beverly Hills 90210, who had that great role run 10 years later, ends up in Zodiac. But I think that's a good. That guy.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a great.

[Sean Fennessey]

That guy.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he's on, like, Chicago Fire now or one of those.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay. The problem with doing 500 episodes of this show is that you know all the people, but just to every normal human being. Zach Rainier, Philip Baker Hall, Elias Cotes, James Legro, Donald Logue, John Carroll Lynch, John Terry, June, Diane Raphael, Adam Goldberg. These people are that guy's. They are the definitive. That guys.

[Bill Simmons]

We go deep, cut that guy.

[Chris Ryan]

But he's not letting me have John Getz.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

That graduated. That guys.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Charles Fleischer.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, Charles Fleischer. One scene I. Charles Fleischer and Clay.

[Sean Fennessey]

Dr. Cla Duval, to me, is the pinnacle of this category because she has one scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

And the camera, like, doesn't move off of her.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, she was good. 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?

[Chris Ryan]

Too big for that role.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Sounds great.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 the that 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Keaton as the D. Dermot Mulrooney role.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Just trying to work him in here somewhere.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

It would be good if they could just get Special Agent Ray Nicolette.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

John Terry is kind of playing John Slattery. Right.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Maybe that's why he wasn't. Sean, you stayed finish for four years. It feels like that could be on like the Rewatchables 2028 list. Charlie Wilson's world.

[Chris Ryan]

There's like six.

[Bill Simmons]

It's. It's five scenes in there. I really think Julia is great in that movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. The weak link is Hanks miscast just.

[Bill Simmons]

Happened a few times.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You have a flex category?

[Sean Fennessey]

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 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 where you're like, oh my God.

[Chris Ryan]

Are you making how.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Half ass. Internal 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 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?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

It's been around 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 keep them. And it's this whole weird. It's almost like a movie within the movie that probably would be bad.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's kind of like Snake Eyes. They set up this whole sting inside of a huge event.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Or he made him do it 26 times.

[Bill Simmons]

He showed Fincher asked to perform it, and then they kept doing it. You mentioned the blood thing. This is a great Mark Ruffalo quote. I'll never forget, when they were negotiating my deal for Zodiac, the student negotiator literally said to my manager, look, we don't give a shit about Mark Ruffalo. We don't even want Mark Ruffalo in this movie. So you're going to take what we're offering or forget it. That was his memory of how he got the part.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's why you hired Rich Paul.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I've never been a big.

[Bill Simmons]

That just feels like the vomit special.

[Chris Ryan]

That's just a Long island iced tea. Dyed blue, basically.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's like I'm throwing up to tomorrow.

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't even drink blue Gatorade.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Go ahead. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Controversial category.

[Sean Fennessey]

How would you describe it?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Even though we've argued, I think it is for Fincher.

[Sean Fennessey]

I do not.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's Social Network for Fincher.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

He needed Social Network to have his like, okay, this guy is also a commercial box office guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

I would creatively, and I know that this is not going away, but I Think creatively. This is like him.

[Bill Simmons]

No, you could go creative. Fincher as an Apex mountain.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think he's a. He is a re. Apex candidate because I think Fight Club is his first Apex Mountain because he uses the success.

[Bill Simmons]

The Michael Jordan rules.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. And he, you know, basically makes a movie about how the only way to. To fix capitalism to destroy it.

[Bill Simmons]

Early 90s bulls version of the apex.

[Sean Fennessey]

And then I think there's never been a higher moment for him than Gone Girl, where he's like, I can take an airport novel and make it a $500 million movie and nobody else can do this.

[Bill Simmons]

Then he's like. And next up, a Netflix series that CR Is going to love the most.

[Chris Ryan]

It's true.

[Bill Simmons]

Serial killer movies. Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Silence.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a tough one.

[Bill Simmons]

Does that count as a serial killer movie, though?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, he's got a nickname. He's moving around. He's doing his thing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, you're right.

[Chris Ryan]

How's that? Not a serial killer?

[Bill Simmons]

No, you're right.

[Sean Fennessey]

You think this is better than Manhunter?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It'S a different. It's a. It's a totally different movie.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

This Collateral or Task TV show. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's this.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I love his look in Collateral. Ruffalo. Great.

[Chris Ryan]

And then Pete Berg, another one like.

[Bill Simmons]

Him and Pete Burke. That's a separate movie I wanted.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Remember that time.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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 his Apex Mountain.

[Chris Ryan]

Mm.

[Bill Simmons]

Probably later.

[Sean Fennessey]

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?

[Bill Simmons]

Boo.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

He's gonna get ripped.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

What is 48 hours?

[Sean Fennessey]

I would say both.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Both of which are basically based on this story.

[Bill Simmons]

Chloe Sevignier.

[Sean Fennessey]

Nope. Last Days of Disco.

[Bill Simmons]

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 Lee Allen in this movie. Unless you want to count Sean Penn in the game.

[Chris Ryan]

I'd probably go John Doe.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

They were right at the center.

[Bill Simmons]

They were in the epicenter. Everything.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 Leigh Allen. It's not like, oh, well, the way he was, his upbringing, or he witnessed a traumatic event.

[Chris Ryan]

He's not interested in that for the most part. For. For a certain period. Like, nobody talked like that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

They just did things. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

John Carroll lynch movies. This or Fargo?

[Sean Fennessey]

This.

[Bill Simmons]

John Carroll lynch right now.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Shout out to jcl.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Shout out to Joka Donovan. Music.

[Sean Fennessey]

Joka.

[Chris Ryan]

A little close to joke. I think it's a Aquarius and Goodfellas.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 good.

[Bill Simmons]

Donovan Secret movie soundtrack Force.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

That's right. Who, of course.

[Bill Simmons]

See our Apex Mountain for wooden dildos.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Bill Simmons]

They still sell those. You still have them or.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Not if you get the right. Kind of lack quality.

[Sean Fennessey]

I see. Yeah. Buff it down first, and then you can kind of get that right. Get that grease on it. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Apex Mountain for actual Fincher movies. What do you mean, Is this the best Fincher movie?

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, well, I see. This is why I get whatever you describe it.

[Sean Fennessey]

That is.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I just threw that in as a bonus category.

[Chris Ryan]

I think this is the best Fincher movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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 shit.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Man taught me this.

[Sean Fennessey]

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. Thinking. There's so much cool in both of those movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I agree. At least with one of those two movies.

[Sean Fennessey]

All right.

[Bill Simmons]

Cruiser Hanks.

[Chris Ryan]

Hanks is Graysmith.

[Bill Simmons]

It's funny, I thought Cruz is Gray Smith.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we have to pick Cruiser Hanks. You pick Hanks? Yeah, I'm picking Cruz. I think it's fun to have Cruise in this movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

I do too.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it's Cruise.

[Craig Horlbeck]

I like. Hanks is Taske. Cruz is Gray Smith.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, that works. That works.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

He keeps stats.

[Bill Simmons]

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?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know Hanks has ever known. 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't know.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, he worked with Stan the Man.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, Hanks hasn't.

[Bill Simmons]

Cruz did, Right?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Was he a multi big take guy for the green?

[Bill Simmons]

Freeman's still mad at him for some reason.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is that true?

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Can't complain. I mean, still pissed about him. Up for life.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Scorsese or Spielberg?

[Chris Ryan]

I have either.

[Bill Simmons]

No, that's not an answer.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Francisco, and guys doing bumps and bumps.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 killer. He made it about what was happening to people around this time. So my answer is Spielberg. My answer is Spielberg.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

I would just be worried that the Spielberg version of this turns out like the Post, which isn't a bad movie, but it's just a little bit more like, we just gotta. We gotta work hard to find this guy.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think Spielberg's dark enough for this movie. This movie's dark.

[Sean Fennessey]

Maybe.

[Bill Simmons]

Best hang, worst hang. Paul Avery. Clearly, best tank, best bar Night. Yeah, I think Zodiac. I'm gonna go. Worst hang. Want to come back to my house? Want to come back to my trailer and watch the warriors game?

[Chris Ryan]

By far.

[Bill Simmons]

Here, let me put the squirrels away.

[Chris Ryan]

I laid out a day for us, a little bit of skin diving, then we're going to cook up some squirrel. I got a bunch of nudie mags.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, in the Zodiac documentary that was on Netflix in 2014, 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 of the 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 crimes that he committed, where he brought the kids with him on location, or so they said.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

And may have killed someone on a.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

That 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Getting the information at the same time.

[Bill Simmons]

Ione Sky's character falling for the. Your wheel looks loose trick. Come on, honey. You got a kid in the car.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

What does he say to her? Like, they don't need much help when I'm done with them or something? God damn it.

[Bill Simmons]

What other nitpicks do you have?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I be funny if NBA trades worked like that. We got to trade. LeBron. Shit's falling apart. Sam Price is like, I can't help you, but if I were to help you. Yeah, call Orlando. Yeah, they can help.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have a certain 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 are almost certain is the Zodiac Killer. He's wearing to Craig's Point a Zodiac watch.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

And they can't get him. And then Toschi's like, I'm going to keep working on this case on and off for the next seven years. I am the sole proprietor of the investigation. But, like, he. I don't believe that Toschi accepted the handwriting thing. Like, and so what was he actually doing thinking about the case?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

It.

[Bill Simmons]

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 asks to substitute a cream sauce. Yeah, that's fucking stupid. Penne. All vodka is a cream sauce.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know how it was made.

[Bill Simmons]

Can you say, I don't want vodka? Can you make it cream sauce instead?

[Sean Fennessey]

So the real picking knit. And again, this comes from the director's commentary.

[Bill Simmons]

Didn't exist yet.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

So what does Fincher say? Like, this is actually a fake order.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, he's like, we fucked up.

[Bill Simmons]

Fincher, who recreates the San Francisco Chronicle office. That's a cream sauce.

[Chris Ryan]

Can I go back to Apex Mountain and knock this down a couple pegs?

[Sean Fennessey]

Then?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Craig Horlbeck]

I have a small picking that on behalf of my mother in law, who was there watching the movie with us last night. When Melanie and Graysmith are arguing about how Graysmith is kind of starting to gain notoriety in the paper, he goes, 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 King.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Oh, wow.

[Chris Ryan]

He actually mentions Herb Kane in a letter, right?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a good one.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Oversight by Griffin.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's awesome.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Sequel, prequel, Prestige tv, all black caster, untouchable became Prestige tv.

[Chris Ryan]

They did mine Hunter.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, Buffalo Bill, Doris Burke, or someone else here?

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

But it's sort of possible it's become Bono crossed with Burger the Florist. I thought for sure you were gonna do Doris DB yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Mr. Zodiac.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm trying to decipher your game, Mr.

[Bill Simmons]

Zodiac and I cannot just. One Oscar. Who gets it? Fincher? Yeah, Probably Unanswerable questions. I have two good ones. Do you guys have any.

[Chris Ryan]

Who's the Zodiac?

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, I have the same thing down here.

[Bill Simmons]

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 the Lamb, he knew her. He knew what he covets. It's like, yeah, no fucking kidding. This is every murder.

[Chris Ryan]

All the stuff with Darlene and Mike kind of being like, we know who this is, is so creepy in the beginning.

[Bill Simmons]

Just go back and interview everybody. And they're like.

[Chris Ryan]

The recognition of.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay, so this is kind of. This is related to that. I wanted to ask you this both initially. If there was ever anything that was not related to the work that you do that you would have been willing to kind of throw your life away to explore the way that Graysmith did for cr.

[Bill Simmons]

It's Edie Falco and Copland.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm not sure if that requires a life's work. It might be a life's fascination.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, do I have, like, an obsession that I would take so far that I would get rid. Well, it depends on, like.

[Sean Fennessey]

But it can't be, like, related to the Sixers or prestige television. You know what I mean?

[Chris Ryan]

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. What would be something like the mcl.

[Sean Fennessey]

But, okay, so my.

[Chris Ryan]

Follow the mcl.

[Sean Fennessey]

If we.

[Bill Simmons]

If you guys learning about the ligament.

[Chris Ryan]

What's up with you? Come on.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

So did you specifically ever seriously consider criminology?

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Sean Fennessey]

Forensic science?

[Chris Ryan]

No.

[Sean Fennessey]

Serial killer investigation?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

But.

[Bill Simmons]

But I would always get bored and move on.

[Sean Fennessey]

For what?

[Chris Ryan]

But I. I don't.

[Bill Simmons]

Just for that weird thing that we have.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

The Zodiac, Robert Chris Smith.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

You think that's what it was?

[Bill Simmons]

I think at some point, I think he was obsessed with it, but then was also like, wait, I can make money from this.

[Chris Ryan]

Wonder if Melanie wishes She hung out.

[Bill Simmons]

I have a really important unanswerable. Was there an easier job ever than 1970s handwriting expert? What were your qualifications? It's what made somebody better than somebody else. Basically. This guy just brings out a magnifying glass and he's like.

[Craig Horlbeck]

And a big glass of wine.

[Sean Fennessey]

Whiskey.

[Chris Ryan]

But you can't tell, like.

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Chris Ryan]

Can you tell that, like, nobody does a K with three strokes or two? Like, would you be able to do.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm gonna zag on this. I got a very specific real world, real world reason for. 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 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 7:00 in the morning, she's already awake, sitting at this table by herself, drawing in a notebook.

[Bill Simmons]

I was worried you were going to say zodiac symbols.

[Sean Fennessey]

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 we know.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Jesus.

[Chris Ryan]

Child straight.

[Sean Fennessey]

You're like the kid in Incident. Idiot.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

The I am not Paul Avery button.

[Bill Simmons]

That was a good one. Yeah, I like that houseboat. To your point, it's not really memorabilia of. Oh, allow it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm going with the. Not want. The wooden dildo.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

Maybe don't put it there.

[Chris Ryan]

Maybe I can digitally insert it like Fincher would.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, probably like one of the. One of the original letters or all of the original letter recreations that they did for the Zodiac things would be a cool thing.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, the. One of the actual letters that were written. The.

[Bill Simmons]

His whole scrapbook of all the newspaper cast and the murders. That would be cool. Coach Finack, Mr. Miyagi Award for best or worst life lesson.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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. Keep pushing. Venture might be waiting for you. He loves obsession. Just keep going. Best.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you have a life lesson?

[Sean Fennessey]

Can't top that.

[Bill Simmons]

Best double feature.

[Chris Ryan]

All the President's Men.

[Sean Fennessey]

Dirty Harry.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Isn'T it? Scorpio and Dirty HarryC.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

It's also such a different.

[Sean Fennessey]

Different.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, you know, there was just so much more local media back then, so the idea that Taski 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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? 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. Kind like. What do you mean, buddy, come on over here. You know, like, kind of like Metropolis.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, sure.

[Bill Simmons]

We never see him.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

We never see him, like, wait, who's that? And, like, do a chasing. Holding the gun up.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, he's got that easy access holster.

[Bill Simmons]

Who won the movie?

[Sean Fennessey]

Fincher. Agreed, right?

[Bill Simmons]

Pretty easily. Fincher.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes. Okay. I mean, did the Zodiac killer win.

[Chris Ryan]

The movie because he got away?

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, because his. His myth is. Is. Is burnished by the. This film.

[Bill Simmons]

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 watched app. And it was on, like, Amazon, Paramount, like, it's literally everywhere. Because there's a reason people keep cooking on this.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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 to tell this kind of story.

[Sean Fennessey]

There's something else related to it too, that I kind of meant to say at the beginning of the conversation is it's hard to do most rewatchable scene for the movie because the scenes are so short. There are not a lot of scenes where you're like, oh, I was here for 10 minutes.

[Chris Ryan]

The cutting style of this movie reminds me a little bit of Oppenheimer and later, period Nolan, that, where it's like really dense, important scenes that are like 30 seconds long.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes. It feels like elaborate montage. The whole movie. 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Do we ever see Downey typing?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, we do see him at the.

[Chris Ryan]

Desk, calls him a latent homosexual.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, Craig, what's your take? You never saw this movie?

[Craig Horlbeck]

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 was texting my dad as I watched it. I watched it with Liz's parents, and there's a lot of. 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. Even the deaths, like you said earlier, they're not sensationalized or romantic at all.

[Chris Ryan]

No, they're a little tame.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horlbeck]

And you end up respecting that. And it's a movie you really want to dig into. You have to turn your phone upside down. And after the movie was over, we talked about it for 30 minutes, and it's almost a puzzle.

[Chris Ryan]

That is not meant to be family movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Zodiac.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Yeah, it kind of is.

[Sean Fennessey]

It brings the fam together because it's.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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, yeah, we had trouble with that. And we realized this is more just about.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. 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 totally. Pieces of paper that they've got or, like, quick conversations that they have.

[Sean Fennessey]

So since I want to see it again soon. You think I should show it to Alice tonight? What do you think we should should do?

[Craig Horlbeck]

Not the John Holmes film. Maybe this one got it. Yeah, but this is totally a movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Craig's asking his mother in law, what's the deal with wooden dildos back then? Did they really have those?

[Craig Horlbeck]

Well, one thing, I texted my dad, who was a police officer. I was like, there's a moment where they. They go up to this thing that literally says police telephone on the street. Yeah. They open it up, and there was a phone in there. I've never seen that before.

[Chris Ryan]

Did he say that those were.

[Craig Horlbeck]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horlbeck]

But he. Yeah, never seen those before. But this movie was great.

[Bill Simmons]

Huge thumbs up.

[Craig Horlbeck]

Big thumbs up. And it's something you need to revisit. Like, I already want to go back. And now watch this again.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

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?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

I think we blasted past the running time of the film podcast. Running time.

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

What's coming next?

[Bill Simmons]

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 22224 films. The recast away is looming, but is.

[Chris Ryan]

It going to be a solo recast away?

[Bill Simmons]

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.

[Sean Fennessey]

It was your Apex Mountain.

[Bill Simmons]

Kobe has this 81 point game. I 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.

[Sean Fennessey]

The Keep Live.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Literally Might be here.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I was very upset about Joel Edgerton. I get it. It was a loaded category. Hurt my feelings.

[Sean Fennessey]

You just can't be surprised. Quiet performance.

[Bill Simmons]

That was my number one that I.

[Chris Ryan]

I was happy about F1 getting best pick.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So that beat what? Avatar.

[Sean Fennessey]

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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Even if it was Sacrifice.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Bill Simmons]

I think people, I think I said.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Jesse Buckley.

[Sean Fennessey]

Here's the thing.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

Nice job. Good. Just good job. Did you get, did you get the check from Focus Features for pushing Hamnet the way that you did?

[Chris Ryan]

I would actually Give you the first.

[Bill Simmons]

Ones that said, wow, she was really great in that movie.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God, I would love her.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, she's amazing.

[Bill Simmons]

She's great.

[Sean Fennessey]

She's a great actress.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

What about Meal and Me?

[Bill Simmons]

I call him.

[Chris Ryan]

It's like he plays second base for the.

[Sean Fennessey]

Luis Mescal.

[Bill Simmons]

He just signed with the Rangers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, the Padres right field.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you see Bob, A big Red Sox fan?

[Bill Simmons]

I. Is he really actually there?

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

So lame.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

What was my number one step?

[Chris Ryan]

Just an accident.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, it was just an accident. I think was a movie that people thought was going to go in there, but I didn't predict that.

[Chris Ryan]

No other choice.

[Sean Fennessey]

I never thought it would get it. It's tough because it's like 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 category Plens. Lod Cat. But also I thought just category fraud. That she was. She was supporting. I mean, Pl. Plemons was great in Bonia. Did you watch Bonia? I did. Okay. It's too bad.

[Chris Ryan]

What you think.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

You're not a yor ghost guy.

[Chris Ryan]

Me neither. I'm.

[Bill Simmons]

I am 100%.

[Sean Fennessey]

You're out on your ghost, too.

[Chris Ryan]

I do not like your movies.

[Bill Simmons]

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

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

For me, three hour and six minutes.

[Sean Fennessey]

He tends to center women in his films. Is that the issue?

[Chris Ryan]

I just. No, it's not.

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

It's not my cup of tea.

[Sean Fennessey]

Got it.

[Bill Simmons]

Not my cup of tea.

[Sean Fennessey]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Do you like your guest movies?

[Sean Fennessey]

I do. Yeah. I. 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.

[Bill Simmons]

Cr.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Great to see you as always.

[Chris Ryan]

Great to see you, man.

[Bill Simmons]

Sean, Fantasy. Great to see you as always.

[Sean Fennessey]

Thanks, Bill. You too.

[Bill Simmons]

Thanks to Gah. Thanks to Craig. Thanks to Eduardo as well. We will see you next week on the Rewatch.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sam.