The 2007 drama, which chronicles the notorious San Francisco slayings of the late 1960s, is more than just another serial killer thriller from the director of "Seven" -- it's a meditation on the pursuit of truth, a quest that sometimes goes frustratingly unfulfilled. "Zodiac" also marked a career highlight for its trio of sleuths, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo, a cast that would be difficult to assemble today without a truckload of cash and some superhero costumes.
Even for longtime Fincher fans who've seen "Zodiac" multiple times, the film itself offers some still-ambiguous mysteries. Perhaps we can put some of them to rest in the items below.
2. Fincher took on the directing job because he had vivid childhood memories of the case, having grown up in the area. He says he remembers a police car trailing his school bus for a couple of weeks, and his father casually explaining later that the Zodiac had threatened to slaughter a busload of schoolchildren. He says he also remembers being "appalled" by watching "Dirty Harry" at age 12 and seeing the Zodiac case exploited as a plot device.
4. The resulting script must have been pretty accurate, especially regarding Graysmith's obsessiveness. When he read it, he said, "God, now I know why my wife divorced me."
6. The director persuaded a reluctant Ruffalo to sign on to play detective David Toschi by assuring him he was having Vanderbilt's screenplay rewritten to accommodate his more rigorous research. Downey completed the primary cast as crime reporter Paul Avery.
8. For Philip Baker Hall, who played the handwriting expert, "Zodiac" was actually his second film about the case. In 2005, he'd co-starred as a fictional police chief in "The Zodiac," a low-budget, more loosely fictionalized drama about the unsolved murders.
10. In real life, the bar where the reporters hung out wasn't Morti's, but the real tavern wouldn't let its name be used in "Zodiac" because it depicts cocaine use taking place there.
12. Fincher's notorious perfectionism and insistence on shooting dozens of takes wore his three stars down. Gyllenhaal said he found it ego-deflating to hear Fincher order ten digital takes at a time to be deleted with a keystroke. Downey said he felt at times like strangling the director and compared the shoot to a gulag.
Ruffalo said an actor has to be willing to submit to Fincher and be open to his process. "You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that's new and pushes and changes you," Ruffalo said, "or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that's filled with disappointment and anger."
14. Despite Fincher's painstaking attention to detail, "Zodiac" came in on time and under budget, costing a reported $65 million. It earned $85 million in theaters worldwide, including $33 million in North America.
