Killer Profile Zodiac
Killer Profile Zodiac
Zodiac is a 2007 American film directed by David Fincher and based on Robert Graysmith's non-fiction book of the same name. The Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures joint production stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey, Jr..
Zodiac tells the story of the hunt for a notorious serial killer known as "Zodiac" who killed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with letters and ciphers mailed to newspapers. The case remains one of San Francisco's most infamous unsolved crimes.
Fincher, screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and producer Brad Fischer spent 18 months conducting their own investigation and research into the Zodiac murders. During filming, Fincher employed the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera to shoot the film. Contrary to popular belief, Zodiac was not shot entirely digitally; traditional high-speed film cameras were used for slow-motion murder sequences.
Reviews for the film were highly positive. It did not perform strongly at the North American box office, grossing only USD $33 million. However, it performed better in other parts of the world, earning $51 million. This brought its box office total to $84 million, with a budget of $65 million spent on its production.
Plot
The film starts in July 1969 with the Zodiac killer’s second attack, the shooting of Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau at a lovers' lane in Vallejo. Mageau survives while Ferrin dies from her injuries. A letter written by the Zodiac arrives at the San Francisco Chronicle in August of that same year.
Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a Chronicle crime reporter. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a political cartoonist there. The newspaper receives encrypted letters that the killer sends, taunting the police. Because of Graysmith's status as a cartoonist, he is not taken seriously by Avery and the editors and is excluded from the initial details about the killings despite his interest in the case. In particular, he is drawn to the encrypted code that is included with the letters and is given access to one. When he is able to crack one of the codes and makes several correct guesses about the killer's actions, Avery begins sharing information with him.
The Zodiac killer stabs Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard (Pell James) at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Shepard dies as a result of the attack. Soon afterwards, cab driver Paul Stine is shot and killed in Presidio Heights. San Francisco police detectives Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) are assigned to the case, liaising with other detectives such as Jack Mulanax (Elias Koteas) in Vallejo and Ken Narlow (Donal Logue) in Napa. The killer, or someone posing as him, continues to toy with authorities by speaking on the phone with celebrity lawyer Melvin Belli (Brian Cox) when he makes an appearance on a television talk show. Avery and Graysmith form an alliance, delving deeper into the case.
In 1971, Toschi, Armstrong and Mulanax question Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), a potential suspect in the case. However, a handwriting expert (Philip Baker Hall) insists that Allen did not write the Zodiac letters. Avery receives a new letter threatening his life. He becomes increasingly paranoid and turns to drugs and alcohol. At one point, he shares information with a rival police force which angers Toschi and Armstrong.
Years pass and careers change. Avery leaves the Chronicle. Armstrong quits the homicide division, Toschi is demoted for supposedly forging a Zodiac letter. Graysmith, meanwhile, continues his own in-depth investigation, interviewing witnesses and police detectives involved in the case. Obsessing over the case, he begins receiving anonymous phone calls with heavy breathing (on the night of Ferrin's death, Graysmith realized someone prank called her family doing the same thing), he loses his job and his wife Melanie (Chloë Sevigny) takes their children with her.
Graysmith persistently contacts Toschi about the Zodiac murders and eventually impresses the veteran detective with his knowledge of the case. While Toschi cannot directly give Graysmith access to the information he discovered over the years, he provides contacts of other police departments in counties where the other murders occurred. The cartoonist acquires more information that points to Allen as the Zodiac, and although circumstantial evidence points him out, the hard evidence such as fingerprints, and handwriting exonerate him.
In 1983, a full 14 years after the original slayings, Graysmith tracks down Allen to a Vallejo hardware store. Eight years after that, Mageau identifies Allen from a police mugshot.
Final title cards, however, inform the audience that Allen's DNA did not match samples gathered from the Zodiac letters.
Cast and characters
- Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith: a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle . While researching the film, Fincher considered Gyllenhaal to play Graysmith. According to the director, “I really liked him in Donnie Darko and I thought, ‘He’s an interesting double-sided coin. He can do that naive thing but he can also do possessed.’” To prepare for his role, Gyllenhaal met Graysmith and videotaped him in order to study his mannerisms and behavior.
- Mark Ruffalo as SFPD Inspector David Toschi: Initially, Ruffalo was not interested in the project but Fincher wanted him to play Toschi. He met with the actor and told him that he was rewriting the screenplay. “I loved what he was saying and loved where he was going with it”, the actor remembers. For research, he read every report on the case and read all the books on the subject. Ruffalo met Toschi and found out that he had “perfect recall of the details and what happened when, where, who was there, what he was wearing. He always knew what he was wearing. I think it is seared into who he is and it was a big deal for him.”
- Robert Downey, Jr. as Paul Avery, a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle who covered the Zodiac killer case.
- Anthony Edwards as SFPD Inspector William Armstrong: When casting the role, Fincher said he thought of Edwards because "I knew I needed the most decent person I could find, because he would be the balance of the movie. In a weird way, this movie wouldn’t exist without Bill Armstrong. Everything we know about the Zodiac case, we know because of his notes. So in casting the part, I wanted to get someone who is totally reliable."
- Brian Cox as Melvin Belli, a prominent defense attorney who received a letter from the Zodiac killer. Originally, Gary Oldman was to play him but "he went to a lot of trouble, they had appliances, but just physically it wasn't going to work, he just didn't have the girth", Graysmith remembers. Cox was cast instead.
- John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Leigh Allen, a prime suspect in the case. Allen was never charged with these crimes.
- Chloë Sevigny as Melanie Graysmith, Graysmith's wife.
- John Getz as Templeton Peck, Chronicle Managing Editor.
- Elias Koteas as Sgt. Jack Mulanax, a police detective from Vallejo.
- Dermot Mulroney as Captain Marty Lee, Armstrong's and Toschi's supervisor in the SFPD homicide division.
- Donal Logue as Ken Narlow, a police detective in Napa.
- Philip Baker Hall as Sherwood Morrill, a handwriting analyst.
- Adam Goldberg as Duffy Jennings, a real life journalist who replaced Avery at the San Francisco Chronicle when the latter went to the San Francisco Examiner . He received a letter from the Zodiac in 1978.
Production
Development
James Vanderbilt had read Robert Graysmith's book Zodiac in 1986 while in high school. Years later, he became a screenwriter, met Graysmith and became fascinated by the folklore surrounding the Zodiac killer and attempted to translate that into his script. Vanderbilt had endured bad experiences with the endings of his scripts being changed and wanted more control over his material. He pitched his adaptation of Zodiac to Mike Medavoy and Bradley J. Fischer from Phoenix Pictures, by agreeing to write a spec script if he could have more creative control over it. Graysmith first met Fischer and Vanderbilt at the premiere of Paul Schrader's film, Auto Focus , which was based on Graysmith's 1991 book about the life of actor Bob Crane. A deal was made and they optioned the rights to Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked when they became available after languishing at Disney for nearly a decade. David Fincher was their first choice to direct based on his work on Se7en . Originally, he was going to direct an adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel, The Black Dahlia (later filmed by Brian De Palma), and envisioned a five-hour, $80 million mini-series with movie stars. When the studio backing it did not agree, the director left the project and moved on to Zodiac . He was given Vanderbilt’s 15
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