Zodiac

This week we are diving into one of the best movies of 2007! It deals with some of Jesse's favorite topics Process and Obsession. Starring three of our best actors, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. 

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Music produced by Joey Prosser. X @mrjoeyprosser

Transcript

Why Zodiac Grabs Us

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to the We Recommend Podcast. A movie podcast where every week we recommend a movie for you to watch and then come back here and listen to us discuss. I'm Jesse. I'm Jason. Jesus Herald Christ on Crutches. This week we recommend Zodiac. Jason. Yo. I think this might be my favorite movie ever made. Really? Yeah. That's awesome. Holy shit. Well, so I never know what my favorite movie is. It used to be Drive, it used to be No Country for Old Men. And then it's just like, you know, I guess over time, it's just like, ah, I don't know if those it's just hard to pick a favorite movie, but man, watching this, I was like, doing this podcast kind of helped me understand maybe this might be my favorite movie because it has everything I like in it. And you know I love process. And God dang it, this movie has process. This movie is processed to a T. It takes so many notes. There's notes. It yeah. It might for the point I have something to talk about. Notes and myself in it. Um but I don't know, just even at the start, when you see uh J. Dylan Hall's character, Gray Smith, walking in, and he kind of pans to the mail truck, then he walks in, and then the mail truck enters, and then we see the letter being delivered, and then it's eventually delivered to the editor, and then there's in there in a meeting, and then the letter comes out, and I'm like, I'm coming, I'm coming.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

You know, last night we watched uh like three episodes of How It's Made, and holy cow, I get what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Love that show.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

I never never watch it enough, but I love that. Man, corn tortillas, it's wild. It's it's so it's just so satisfying.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah, yeah. For real. Just like especially when they get into like the factory elements of it and just seeing that the cheese perfectly make everything.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Yeah, it's everything's perfect. It's like I wonder why can't we do it all perfect that way? Right?

SPEAKER_00 2:17

They're not showing me the times it doesn't work though.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Oh, that's what it is.

Process, Pacing, And “Slow”

SPEAKER_00 2:20

I'm sure if they did a fac cheese factory or cheese packaging plant, they would be they wouldn't, we wouldn't show them the parts where all our fucking machines suck. They wouldn't cut to the palletizers where all the lines are red because all the palletizers suck. Um forgot what I was talking about. Anyway, processes of murder. Well, and then just like the detective stuff. Oh best detective. Is it is this potentially the best detective movie ever?

SPEAKER_03 2:51

They're pretty good. I mean, it it it is a lot of detecting. And I like it that how it goes into the people who aren't cops, like Jake Jenhall.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Yeah, the writer of the book that this is based on.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

They become obsessed. Yeah. Like there was that comedian, I can't remember his name now, but like his wife, it does this for a living. And she was like taking Xanax, she was taking all these pills to deal with her because she was helping looking I think she's helping look for the the night um Night Stalker? Night Stalker.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

And she ended up dying from like a heart attack just because she was so obsessed. Yeah. Do you know what you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

No.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Uh I watched something on the Night Stalker that I'm pretty sure mentioned her potentially. Yeah. Can't remember. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's super stressful, and that's why like a lot of people die of heart attack. Murderers. The silent killer. Stress. So was this your first time watching the movie?

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Yeah, it was. Did you like it? I did. I loved it. It was so good. Uh even though it was I felt like at times it was like I was still engaged, even though it was a little slow with all the just following the clues. I was still like super engaged. Slow.

unknown 4:03

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

But like I'll come across this table. Well, I'm not saying that it's bad because it was slow. No, I know. There just wasn't enough murder. Yeah.

Arthur Leigh Allen And Suspicions

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Well, because like the front half is murder city. But like the first hour is murder city, and then the rest of it's just like, where'd the zodiac killer go? Why is he not doing anything? And might be because he was in prison.

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Yeah, he is in jail.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Actually, so there was a Netflix documentary. Um as relevant as a problem. If only people would go to jail for that these days. Right? Instead of starting wars instead.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Um you know what the biggest crime is raising our gas prices.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yeah. Okay, let's not get too political. Um Arthur Lee Allen, he did it right. Yeah, I think so. I mean, pretty much. I mean, how can you I mean, just insane if you're super creepy? Just in because I watched a documentary that was on Netflix and it's just like he obviously did it. How could he have not done it?

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

I mean, he was literally door to door.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

And he had a bunch of squirrels in his tra trailer. Well, he had to eat. Yeah, that's true. Squirrels just like famously have zero meat on them. Yeah. It's they're so greasy. And you know, rabies and I either one time uh the first squirrel, uh the only squirrel I ever shot, I had to shoot it like 15 times because he got stuck in the tree.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Uh my grandmother cooked it and she cooked its brain, and I ate its brain. Cool. Along with its whatever like as legs. Was it the size of like a jelly bean? Yeah. It's super tiny. All the meat, it's just no meat.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Maybe because she squeezed out the gust. She squeezed it out, yeah. She got all the good stuff.

Cast Praise And Fincher Era Context

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Thank you for coming to Squirrel Talk. Yeah, man. Uh I remember the first time I watched it, I got it from Hastings. Just the DVD. It was just like$2 used. And I was like, ooh, cool. Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo. I like these people. And then I got it and I was like, whoa, this movie's scary in some parts. And it's just it's this wall-to-wall bangers of scenes. It's great. Um, and it's wild how you know, this was because this was kind of a this was before um Iron Man and Marvel. So, you know, like I only knew Robert Downey Jr. just from like other movies I've seen before Iron Man, and I always liked them. And then like this movie was like, whoa, I need to watch more Robert Downey Jr. movies. And then like I saw uh just a couple of Roughlow movies as well. And then I was like, whoa, this guy's fucking fantastic. I always loved Jake Gyllenhaal ever since like elementary school, just because uh they loved what is it, October Sky? Yes, the rocket movie or whatever. Yeah, we we watched it like every year in elementary school, and I was like, it's kind of like Gladiator, where I also watched it every year in high school, and I'm like, Why did you watch that in high school? History teachers are all coaches. They love that movie. Um like literally, like four straight years. Like all my history teachers were always like a coach or something, and they're like, Oh, you have to do this, you have to teach at this school. So it's either movies teach, right? You know, like and then of course, you know, because their coaches are like gladiator, you know. Yeah. And there's not and there's a little, you know, historical relevance to it. But always loved Jake Jill and Hall. I love um after October Sky, the next one I probably watched was Bubble Boy.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

Yes. Hell yeah. Love that shit. That was one of the movies that came on after like Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Comedy Central, like on Saturday morning.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah, that's where exactly probably how I watched it too, because it was constantly on Comedy Central. And then uh Donnie Darko was like this the I don't know, like probably changed me a little bit. Probably became a little emo boy after that. Awesome. That has to have a little bit of correlation. That and Fallout Boy both made me emo, I think. Um, but that movie also rips in. We're gonna do it eventually.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

You can say a lot about Fallout Boy, but they've been making music for like 30 fucking years and they're still doing it.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

And they're still like and they still at least have one good song on each album. Yeah, just one good song mostly, but you know, they have it.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

They're totally hitting that middle range of mediocrity.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Bro, when I saw Sugar were going down for the first time, it was just a music video. I was like, this song goes. Yeah. My friend uh wrote me the CD and uh they were my favorite band for like 10 years. No, my friend did the FBI. My friend pirated and gave it to me. Okay. I am not. How would I prove that? Come on, Mark Ruffalo, come get me. Um, so who do you think has the best performance in this movie?

SPEAKER_01 9:03

I really like the I mean, I guess Jake Jill and all, but like I really like the detective.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Mark Ruffalo.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

I think it's a movie-stilling performance in only in just one scene with John Carroll Lynch as the zodiac.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Yeah. Just I mean when the mechanic when he's in the interview?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah. Like just the one where you know, like just every little movement, and I know it probably also goes to like David Fincher, because David Fincher is like a crazy obsessive director who makes people do like 80 takes for one shot, essentially. Um, but like everything to comes in, he's all like, he just seems like a normal guy, right? Comes in, sits down, then he crosses his leg. And of course the camera is forcing us to be like, he's a little too calm in this situation, right? Like he feels like he's smarter in this situation than any normal person who would be like, oh, I know what this is about. And then it's just like the way he changes how he's talking, like constantly throughout the conversation. And because at first he's really confident, you can tell he kind of gets a little like nervous and he's like acting like he's nervous or whatever, and then he's acting like he's sympathetic. And I don't know, man. There's like so many different emotions that he was like portraying in that, and it's fucking beautiful. Unless I'm like overlooking into it, but I don't think I am. I'm a small boy. But I was because this was the first time that I was like, because I watched that scene like two to three times during to do the notes, and I was just obsessing over it, and I was like, oh shit. The movie's making me become these detectives. Hell yeah. What what so what's the deal with the watch? Zodiac watch. Oh Zodiac with also the symbol. I didn't even notice that. Yeah, because at one point I accidentally watched the director's cut. Um, so I don't know what may be put in and what was taken out. Um, but yeah, because at one point Robert Downey Jr., you know, when he's like, dude, fuck this guy. He's probably not even actually killing anybody, and then he like shows them like some evidence that might prove that, and then he's like, Look, it's a zodiac watch. He didn't even come up with it himself. It literally says zodiac and has the exact same symbol. And he's like, Oh.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

So no, that part wasn't in it. They what I saw, they just he's just like, hey, let me see that watch. And then they like two of the detectives looked at it, they passed it around.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah. Yeah, so it's supposed to be a zodiac watch. Um, I don't know. I just think that and then I'll probably it'll definitely after that would either be Jake Jalen Hall or Mark Ruffalo, and you know, Robert Downey Jr. is doing his Robert Downey Jr. But it's he's fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

He was fantastic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

He's uh I love whatever it's like. That drink, the blue drink. He's like, what the hell is that? I don't cover any blue drink. Five drinks he's had of it. It's so good. Um, so are have you you big fan of Dave Adventure? Yeah, I think so. Uh so like what would be your favorite movie of his? He did Fight Club, The Game, uh Gone Girl. I know I watched Fight Club like a billion times. Ever every dude did at some point. Um he did seven. Um Zodiac, obviously, Mank, The Killer, Alien Three, and I don't think I'm leaving any out. Yeah. That one's good. Um the more I've watched it, the more it's kind of like lowered in my list. It's still probably being his top five movies.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Where to watch it now, I'd probably be really upset. It's like But I remember loving it.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah, it's like sometimes like I was like, man, I love this movie so much. It's like, is it because I'm a boy?

unknown 12:38

Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

But then like now, if you watch it, it's like, oh, yeah, fuck consumerism.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Yes is what it's all about. Well yeah. It's great.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

And jizzing into soup. Yeah, some jizz soup. Meatloaf's in that movie. It's great. Bob. Um, I definitely think it's probably it's either this one, maybe seven for me. I do love detective shit, man.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Yeah, detective stuff is great. Yeah. And what I remember being so disturbed by Seven. Because when I watched it, I mean the last time I watched it, I was a teenager, and I was definitely into like the whole evangelical thing. So it was really like I was terrified. Like when he cut off his finger, like his fingertips. Yeah. That was so gnarly. I know, it's crazy. Uh and the whole penis blade thing. Yeah.

Ciphers, Media, And Mythmaking

SPEAKER_00 13:33

That was the part that really like when I first watched it, I was like, oh no. No shit. So the world is evil, huh? Yeah, man. Um I don't want to miss out on these uh three movies. He also did Girl with Dragon Tattoo, Fucking Rolls. That was it. Um, you haven't seen it? It's really good. Uh Social Network. Kind of forgot about that. Yeah, we did that one. It's kind of like the best movie of the movie. That was really good. That decade. Um God, and then Benjamin Button and Panic Room. I haven't seen Benjamin Button, but I have seen Panic Room. I remember when Benjamin Button came out, people were like, why did he do this? Nobody even died in this movie. I was like, it's still a fucking fantastic film. Um yeah, I love that movie too.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

I think I got the gist of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yeah. Um Panic Room.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

Born old dies young.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Yeah. But it's great.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

And like super wrinkly. Was he like a super wrinkly baby?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Wrinkly old man baby. It's great. It's fantastic. Um, but man, when it gets to the point where there's a point where it's like you got like peak, like it's almost like he's supposed to be like 20 years old or 30 years old, and it's Brad Pitt, and it's just like he's on a motorcycle with some sunglasses. Yeah, it's just like, don't uncontrollably JO. Don't uncontrollably JO. It's that strong.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

This is like crazy. I can't wait to JO.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

It's like I literally saw it and I was like, wow, that's the most handsome man that's ever lived on the planet. And he still is. It's so wild. It's ridiculous. It's like no matter what he ended up doing, as long as he didn't get like addicted to drugs or anything, like Brad Pitt was just gonna be successful just based off his looks alone, I feel like, at a point.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Do you feel like if do you think if Benjamin Button did a whole bunch of drugs, he would just look better? Like, because usually they look older and worse.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

As he gets younger, he'll start. I don't know. Then you just look like a young, young drug addict. It's like, damn, that kid smoked how many cigarettes?

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Cigarettes.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Cigarettes. All right, so the shooting script was 200 pages long. Um, if you think about it, it's a minute a page. Uh, usually, whenever you think about um scripts, that's usually how you characterize it. It's a minute a page. And to prevent any problems with link that such a long script might cause, Director David Venture decided to ask his cast members to speak faster. So that's why that's why everything's just like that's more clue. So that's whenever I was kind of getting ri couldn't wait to get to this part because whenever you said it was slow, I was like, what are you talking about? They're speaking so fast. You have to pay attention as hard as you can.

Racism, Errors, And Missed Chances

SPEAKER_03 16:18

I know you maybe it was just like the the onslaught of like information.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

Uh maybe that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Yeah. And if and I think what really benefits me is the fact that I kind of talk fast anyways. Proof is in the podcast. The pudding. So maybe it's just like, yeah, I'm just like, I love that shit.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

We should have a podcast about pudding.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah. The pudding pod. Um, so because he wanted to film this the film to be as accurate as possible, David Venture decided not to depict any of the alleged zodiac murders for which there were no surviving victims or witnesses. It's also why they start with the second murder instead of starting with the first murder, which was the 1966 one. Because there was like you have no idea what is true and not true in that one, because I mean, really, it's circumstantial evidence, which technically I guess the whole thing is. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 17:11

Right. Do you think it's because how like some serial killers kind of ramp up what they do until they find their niche?

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Yeah, right. Because like most people, like, as we've everybody loves true crime now, right? So usually it's like at first you start you're just kind of weird, you kill some pets, and then you like kind of you stick some squirrels in the freezer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

You're like, I fucking love this. Yeah, this is great.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Probably how you start is probably starting killing squirrels, right? And then, you know, you just kind of slowly build up until you finally kill somebody, and then you start killing more and more, right? Yeah, god, I love killing. I just love it. What day is it? Tuesday? Damn, I haven't killed anybody since Sunday. So um when Mark Ruffalo met David Toshi, the investigator he plays in the film, he was very impressed to learn that Toshi had perfect recall of every detail of every case. God damn. Because you know, he obsessed over it. That's wild. Something that while watching the movie, I was like, damn, we have it so much easier these days.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

Have you ever seen like a detective in the wild, like in real life? Like no, just when I went to jury duty. I saw oh wow, shit.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Well, just because the detective had a murder?

SPEAKER_03 18:25

No. Okay. Anyway, I saw one uh on my street and he was like looking around because there was a murder at our on our street.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

Uh like two houses down. Gotcha fucking blew that his girlfriend away. I don't remember when he told me that. The house is up for sale now if anybody's wanting it. Ooh, how much? She's supposed to be my neighbor. Um murder. Too many trees. Murder house. He's got a bunch of trees. Don't do it. He looked fucking rough, man. Did he? Like, I'd I don't think I'd ever seen like a detective that had looked ever. But like he looked like he had not slept in like a week.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Really? He must be like a homicide detective then. Yeah. Because mine, when I went to jury duty, it was a drug case, and the guy looked like a buff and honestly, handsome AI. Oh, just let him go. He's handsome. No, the detective, not the the drug dealer did not. Oh, the drug dealer was handsome. Let him go. I know. He looked just like Brian.

unknown 19:31

Yeah.

Obsession And Lives Unraveling

SPEAKER_00 19:31

So cute. Um, so uh the Zodiac's first confirmed attack, the murders on Lake Herman Road was excluded from the film since there was no surviving victims to collaborate details. Um, that's why they started with the July 4th murders. Robert Graysmith and Paul Avery were not actually friends. Their relationship is fictionalized in the film. Which kind of sucked because they seem like a fun pair. Yeah, they worked well together. I could just see just like Gray Smith hanging out with Avery and just Avery constantly shitting on him, but it's like, oh, you're funny. I don't know. It's the only one that talks to me at work. Everybody else calls me the R-word. Well, maybe Gray Smith was a Mormon.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Why? He was an Eagle Scout. Are all Eagle Scouts Mormon?

SPEAKER_03 20:14

Mostly, yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. It's definitely a Mormon thing to be in the boy.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Boy Scouts uh not Mormon and Eagle Scouts are?

SPEAKER_03 20:21

Uh no, no, no. Whatever. The only time I spent in Boy Scouts was because we joined the Mormon church for like a couple years. Really? And after that, we're like, were we not doing Boy Scouts anymore? No.

unknown 20:34

No. Cool.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

All right.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

And the only Boy Scouts or Eagle Scouts I've ever known were a Mormon. I'm not saying it's Boy Scouts that were Mormon, but I don't know a single one.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

You were in the Mormon section of the Boy Scouts, I guess. I suppose. Well, I'm just glad you made it out of there unscathed. Uh yeah. Especially also being I'm just not.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

Fucking mom was the Boy Scout leader for a while. Like, what the hell is that shit? Your mom was? Yeah. Why? Oh, well, that would suck, actually. It was yeah, it was it was weird.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah. Yeah. Your mom being a teacher or a leader in any sort of thing, and you're in it, that would be the worst. Honestly. Yeah. I get it. It's like, dang it. Stop rubbing dirt off my cheek with me.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Spitting on her hand.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Um, so David Venture and screenwriter James Vanderbilt and producer Bradley J. Fisher spent 18 months conducting research into the zodiac murders. They interviewed witnesses, family members, suspects, retired, and active investigators, the only two surviving victims, and the mayor of San Francisco and Vallejo. They did their work. So the hardest code to crack, known as code 340, was seemingly finally solved by cryptographers on December 5th, 2020. After some 51 years of fame as one of the most difficult ciphers, it was discovered that. Some letters in the alphabet were never used in the deciphered message, JQXYZ. The eight letters were represented by a single symbol, and that the others were represented by between two and ten symbols, a few of which were the actual letter. The message reads, including misspellings, I hope you are having lots of fun and trying to catch me. That wasn't me on the TV show, which brings up a point about me. I'm not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise dice D-I-C-E. Uh all the sooner because I now have enough sl slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradise, D-I-C-E. So they are afraid of death. I'm not a arrayed A-R-A-I-D, because I know that my new life is life. My new I know that my new life is life will be an easy on in paradise death.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

So this is a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

That's all it was. It says nothing, so like why make it harder than other than just to throw people out. Yeah, I don't think he was. Definitely don't think he was.

SPEAKER_03 23:13

I wonder if he had a group, they were all just at the end of every session, they're just like, what the fuck, man?

The Basement Scene And Dread

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah. Right. And it's it's it is kind of crazy because uh watching the the documentary about him and you know, just he really doesn't seem like the type of guy that would do all this cypher shit and stuff like that. Like just like looking at him and like how he grew up and like you know, always going to races and stuff, it's like, what the hell? Like if it was Arthur Lee, yeah, um, Alan. But it's just I always I kind of thought I was like, man, what makes this serial killer um so fascinating, right? Because we all have fascination with serial killers because it's true crime. Um, and it's just like obviously there's the letters and like everything that built them up and they showed it all over the TV and in the newspapers, so it just made it like bigger than ever. You only killed five people. I say only killed five people, but I mean there's like plenty of serial killers that have killed way more people than that. Yeah. But it like took over San Francisco and surrounding areas, and it's just kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

But but didn't they have multiple serial killers working at the same time apart from the Zodiac?

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Well, it was like in the late 60s and 70s when this all takes place, and you know, we had leaded gas and everybody's going fucking insane. Thanks, DuPont's. Yeah. You know what? Jeff Gordon, DuPont on your fucking hood.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Just murdering people. Yeah. You know what I I really when I was little uh growing up in the in the 80s and early 90s, I had a uh monthly subscription to this like um I want to say like spy club. Okay. They sent me like all these texts, like little magazines, you know, pamphlets and things about how to do ciphers and codes. That was fascinating. Completely missed out on but they could have created some serial killers, but they also could have helped us solve find them. Yeah. But all the ones they sent us were bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah. Well, it's like while watching this, I think it kind of clicked on um well, obviously, everything I said earlier was you know makes it fascinating. But then after watching a dock and then re-watching this, I'm just like, it's just some guy. And I think that's truly what's the most fascinating part about the thing. It's like, this guy that lives in a trailer full of squirrels is capable of doing this. Yeah. Right? The ciphers and like manipulating the newspaper and the police and this like driving people up the fucking wall. And it's just like just some guy that likes to go to races and shit. Yeah. And was in the military.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

He just has normal jobs.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

And I I like I'll heart I like the idea that it is the the extreme mediocrity. I think you've heard that term before. Yeah. And that just makes people go insane. Yeah. I think that maybe that's what happened. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Well, we took a break and now we can't remember what we're talking about, so we're just gonna continue. Continue.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

The show must go on.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Um, David Fincher recalled how as a child he came from he came home from school one day after noting how a police car had been following his bus, his father matter-of-factly replied, Oh, yeah, there's a serial killer who's killed four or five people who calls himself Zodiac, who's threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot off the tires of a school bus and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

That's awesome. Well, I mean, bad, but thanks, Dad. Cool.

Circumstantial Evidence Mounts

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Anything else happened today? Yeah. Well, that's cool. We're having pizza, I guess. Um, Nancy Slover, the Vallejo operator who took the first Zodiac call, was asked to help provide voice direction by selecting an audio recording of readings by various unidentified actors. After selecting the recording that sounded closest to Zodiac, it was revealed that she selected a reading by John Carroll Lynch, who plays the prime suspect. Damn. Yeah. Um, so you know, we were discussing about like how good how I thought he was probably the best actor in this. Oh, he's so intimidating. How is he so intimidating? He looks like a c like a little teddy bear. Yeah, yet like you somehow that's scary, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:34

It is because you don't you choose the bear in the woods, right? You remember that the thing recently? If you a woman meets a man or a bear in the woods, what do you choose? Oh, you choose the bear.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

You know the bear will kill you. The man you don't know. The bear is predictable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

That's true.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Whoo, hell yeah. Um, so George Lucas gave an interview to Empire magazine once stating that the zodiac murders captured his imagination at the time as a high schooler and then college student at USC. And he always felt like Toshi was harshly judged for how the investigation was handled. He explained this is why he named a location on Tatooine, Toshi Station, in honor of the San Francisco Police Department. Fuck. Do you think that's what Star Wars is all about?

SPEAKER_02 28:19

It's all about the Zodiac killer. Damn.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Emperor Palpatine is Arthur Lee Allen. If only. Man, that's crazy. Yeah. Uh when I read that, I was like, God, I hope this isn't just some lie on dude. I mean, it's in Empire magazine, so you know.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

It's gotta be true if it's in a magazine.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

But uh George Lucas is also known of saying things after he made something. So you know that was the plan the whole time. So believe what you want to believe with him. So Robert Downey Jr. was so unaccustomed to the experience of both David Fincher's multiple takes and the process of filming digitally that he rebelled against Fincher for having no time to get my shit together in my trailer behiding uh mason jars full of urine on set. Downey finally uh acquiesced to Fincher's demands, recalling I just decided aside from fair from several times I wanted to garat him that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I'm a perfect first person to work for him because I understand gulags.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

Yes. How does he understand gulags? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Robert Downey Jr. went through uh some tough times. Yeah. Well, he was in jail for a lot and you know he had a drug addiction and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

Yeah, all that.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

And then he's Iron Man.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Now he's Iron Man. Hey, he got clean, you know? That yeah, he doesn't do drugs anymore. And now he's like an advocate of getting helping people get off drugs and stuff like that. And uh, you know, getting off addiction. So Jake Gyllenhaal went fucking bonkers on this movie. Um, and I think it kind of changed his whole like career path. His life. Yeah. So um he was it's famous that he like was going insane from all the multiple takes because they do like 88 takes a scene.

SPEAKER_03 30:04

Jesus fucking. He hated it. That would drive me insane too.

Face To Face With “Lee”

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah. Um and I guess at the time Jarhead was coming out, the movie, and so they're like, Jake, you might win an Oscar, you gotta go to all these film festivals while also filming this. And Fincher was like, Yeah, he's all s all distracted and stuff all the time, or at least that's Fincher's side of it. He's like, Yeah, he was just distracted. It's not his fault, but you know, I like he he could have done better and stuff like that. And it's like, shot golly. Um, but yeah, apparently Jake Dylan Hall was I had a rough time filming this. Yeah, I bet anybody would. But here's the thing David Fincher gets your best performance, right? So it's like and Kubrick was the same way, you know, he would do thousands of takes. What? Um well not thousands. That was that was a bad way to say it. But like, yeah, he would do like take after take after take after take. Shooting an actor to the the extremes of I mean it kind of on the shiny, it kind of drove everybody crazy on that. And you know, he was very harsh to uh blanking on her name, but you know, the the wife um Shelly Duval, I believe that's her name. Yeah. And like was like with like Popeye's wife, yeah, with like braider and stuff to get her in that mindset of being that character. That's why she's so good in it, but also it's like, Hubert, we're fucking acting here, okay? Let's calm down, okay? Um so Mark Ruffalo said, if you get into who these cops were, you realize how they have to take their hunches, their personal beliefs out of it. Dave Toshi said to me, as soon as that guy, Arthur Lee Allen, walked in the door, I knew it was him. He was so he was sure he had him, but he never had a solid piece of evidence. So he had to keep investigating every other lead. That has to be frustrating. It's like, especially if that interview with Arthur Lee Allen happened exactly how it happened, I'd be like, what are you talking about? This is the most insane coincidence on the planet. It's like you can see like one or two coincidences, right? But he had every coincidence ever. Having bloody knives the exact same day of the murders in the park, like being in the areas the exact same times that all the murders happened, literally having the zodiac watch with the symbol and the watch, being in the middle, it's like, whoa, what in the world?

SPEAKER_03 32:23

I think maybe maybe we just need to start blaming the people who make this zodiac predictions.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

Did anybody ever interview them?

SPEAKER_03 32:31

No. Hey, be nicer. Yeah. How about don't say that you should kill people?

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Because I'm a Scorpio. Was I a dirty hairy? No.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Yeah. I'm a Virgo.

SPEAKER_03 32:46

What even is that? What's their sign?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

What's this what's the isn't it isn't it the the lady? So you're a virgin?

unknown 32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Essentially. Yeah, it's just like it's like a it's like a woman. Just a lady. Yeah. Ladies love killing.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

And uh apparently it's why I can't just like take vague notes because I'm a virgo.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

Plus all the stars have changed from you know, the positions of the planet. Are you even have you have you even looked at the updated signs?

SPEAKER_01 33:24

I think I did. I think I'm still a Virgo. Okay.

Theme: Obsession’s Cost

SPEAKER_03 33:28

Um it is I mean, I know all that's probably like a little bit. You know, like the Chinese zodiac, I'm I'm born in the year of the rat. Really? Really?

SPEAKER_00 33:38

We can't we can't get on this topic. We can't. We have so much movie to work with.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

I love the idea that I'm a rat.

unknown 33:44

I'm a rat.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Um, so Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo were cast in part thanks to Jennifer Anison. Director David Fincher was in the pre-production stages of the film when he asked her who some of her favorite co-stars were. She replied with Gyllen Hall and Rufflow, who she had previously worked with on The Good Girl, 2002, and rumor has it in 2005. And uh also uh Donnie Darko for Jake Gyllenhaal. And my last fact, the only real comment that Robert Graysmith said about the finished screenplay was, God, now see why my wife divorced me.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Captain Hindsight showed up and just like, hey man.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

It was probably the scene where the wife comes home and you have all like the the house is filled with like files and separated at that point. As as he was like trying to write his book and stuff and figure out the case. That was probably the scene where he's like, ah, maybe I went too far. Yeah. And also going to a killer's house. I don't see my kids in like three months. You can't talk to him until it's over. And it's like, priorities.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Never gonna be over.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

But hey, he wrote a book that became a really good movie. Yeah. Good for him, I guess. It's usually people don't have the greatest home life when he I mean, it's like directors, right? They they're never home. They're always working. I don't know any. Constantly trying to make well, I mean, like he worked, like Venture worked 18 months, just researching just essentially being a detective just to make the movie, and then you know you got like three or four months of shooting, and then post-production. It's like, how are you ever home?

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Yeah, there's no kissing involved in any of that.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 35:36

I don't even know if he's married.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Sometimes Jason, you say things I'm like, I don't really understand.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

You will love it. See, I'm playing 5D chess.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

SPEAKER_00 35:48

And I'm not playing anything. So we're gonna hop into the plot. Uh before we do that, I want you to think what the point of this movie was. And if you know the point, then leave us some fan mail to where you'd be like, this is the point of the movie. This is what I think. And at the end of the podcast, I'm gonna say what I think the point of the movie is. So Jason. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab. Can't wait to get to that park scene. God, that was horrible. That was awful. So Zodiac 2007. Let's go, baby. So the film opens on July 4th, 1969. With a Zodiac Killer's second attack, the shooting of Darlene Farron and Mike uh Mayo? Mayo, I think is what they called it. Uh at the Oh, M-E-I-G-H O. No, it's M-A-G-E-A-U. What the fuck, man? Yeah, I remember they say it at the end, and I was like, I remember how to say that. And now here I am, like, oh. Um at a Lover's Lane in Vallejo, California, Zodiac also calls the police and reports that he did it.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Um fun fact, last night on How It's Made, we watched how Mana is is made.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Oh, that is not relevant. Mayo. Mayo Mayo. Um Mayo survives while Farian dies from her inner injuries. Uh so this whole scene. So the guy comes the woman picks him up and he's like, Oh no drive. He's like, Are you gonna get in?

SPEAKER_03 37:21

No, I feel like this is the one time that maybe, yeah, he should have been driving the car.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

I don't know. If he was in the driver's, he might have died. He might have died. Who knows?

SPEAKER_03 37:31

Uh or he would have driven away immediately. Yeah or not go.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Because his reaction was like, Maybe we should go.

unknown 37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:38

Yeah. Yes. After the first creepy thing with the fireworks, leave. After the second one where the guy parks behind you and turns off his lights and then drives away, leave.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

That is immediate reaction. Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave, leave, leave.

SPEAKER_03 37:54

Leave as fast as possible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

And I like that. So that they're gonna go to like a drive-in or a dine-in uh place, and they're like, it's too busy. And she's like, Yeah, let's go somewhere a little more quiet. They get there, he's like, What are we doing here? It's like, bro, she wants to make out with you, yes, obviously. And or have sexual intercourse.

SPEAKER_03 38:13

Maybe hint, bro. He's trying to differentiate the thoughts from his wiener, and that then with the thought that she hasn't eaten in 24 hours and she may not be thinking straight.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

He's just like, I haven't eaten in 24 hours, and he's like, I thought you wanted to eat. It's like, bro, trying to figure out what's going on.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

All he's thinking is maybe she can gobble this knob. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

But like, fucking hey, man. Yeah. Um, and then we kind of learn that she has a husband in this kind of a cheating situation. Oh the fireworks situation is uh fuck off and die, and he says it funny, and then hurdy gird, hurdy gird, girdie, gird, gird, gird.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

Is one of the most fun instruments that I've played in video games. Oh, is that like a thing? Yeah, I didn't know it was an idea. They play it on the pirate ships, and you just twist this thing that plays and then you like, I don't know how you So that's what the song's about.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

A hurdy girdie man. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:12

Yeah, it's like with the monkey, and he's down there like dancing, and the guy's twisting the thing. Oh that's what a hurdy girdie is.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

I literally never knew what a hurdy girdie was. I just I should have looked that up. It's okay. So it is one month later, a letter written by the Zodiac Ravs of the San Francisco Chronicle. Paul Avery, played by Robert Downey Jr., is a chronicle crime reporter, Robert Graysmith by Jake Gyllenhaal, is a political cartoonist there. The newspaper receives encrypted letters that the killer sends telling them to put the code on the front page of the paper or you'll kill 12 people.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

Man, it's like one of the you should have put the code on the back of a cereal box.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Yeah, then everybody figured out.

SPEAKER_03 39:49

Yeah. Well, I mean, they kind of did.

Double Features And Closing

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Yeah. Um police also, police also got the same letter with a different code. Um, I love the following the letter to the mail truck to the editor. It's uh it it just makes you think of like, wow, it was just a mundane day, and then the world was then into all of California was taken by storm. Whoa. But it's just like, you know, it's just when you think about it, it's like at one point everything was one way, and then a letter showed up. The mail was delivered and everything changed. Damn. Like in that area of California in San Francisco, Vallejo, and all that area. It's just like crazy. Crazy how mail just one person did that just by making something a puzzle, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

Oh man, I love puzzles.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Because I mean, if someone just, you know, was murdered and they just like five people were murdered and they never knew who murdered those five people, nothing would have changed in this world. Right. But sending a letter and forcing them to post it in a newspaper changed everything. It's crazy. We should do it. Murder people and send a letter to I'm calling the cops, I'm calling the cops, I'm calling the cops. To try to change the world with a letter.

SPEAKER_03 41:09

Yeah, we send a letter to the the news and we're like, hey, we're gonna make podcasts if you don't post this letter. And then we're gonna keep doing it. You and everyone with a microphone.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

What makes you special? You know.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

So uh because of Gray Smith's status as a cartoonist, he's not taken seriously by Avery and the editors and is excluded from the initial details about the killings. Despite his interest in the case, we see multiple people trying to crack the code, but as a history teacher who figures it out, it's just like him and his wife. You want to try this? Yeah, it's like the morning paper.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

Like thank you, retired people. I used to love doing the morning crosswords. Uh, I'm so bad at crosswords because I can't spell. I feel like if newspapers really want to make a difference, they should just start making puzzles with the zodiac puzzle. Today's zodiac puzzle.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Honestly, I would love to just get I should look up just like a book of like encrypted and just try to do them. That'd be fun. So, 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 make several correct guesses about the killer's actions, like he's not gonna put his name in it, Avery begins sharing information with him because he's like, Oh, well, you're the only one that thought that, so what's up, guy? So the zodiac killer attacks again in what I find to be the most horrifying scene of the movie.

SPEAKER_03 42:39

Fucking crazy.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

It's uh so um stabbing Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepherd at Lake Bariessa in Napa County. Shepard dies as a result of the attack while Hartwell survives. Zodiac leaves leave a writing on their car and calls the police again because people were gonna ask if the Oh, yeah, and then um, so like while it's like how the whole scene was set up, right? So they're just laying there, and then the music kind of starts to pick up whenever she says, Hey, there's someone over there, and he's like, Yeah, it's a fucking park. Like this time the girl is scared and the guy's not just like it's a park. What are we supposed to do here? Everybody's gonna be here. Um, and then it's like, oh, he's hiding now. Oh, it's getting closer. Then he's getting closer. He's got a gun. She said he's got a gun. And he still didn't move. I know. And then it's like becomes the whole situation where it's like, all right, give me keys and wallet. And then he's acting so calm. It's like, just take whatever, I'll write you a check. And he's like, All right, get on your knees and tie his hands behind his back. And he's still just like, all right, dude, whatever. You can just take whatever, just do this and go. Then he starts tying the legs. And they don't know anything yet, but we know, and it's just like it's getting scarier and scarier, and he's just talking. And then it like, cause he hog ties them essentially, and then the stabbings happen. And the stabbing is so brutal. Yeah. And I don't ever want to die like that. No, man. It was awful. It the whole scene, it's it's the fact. Oh, and then there's also the line. Um, he's like, um, yeah, there's a line. Is that gun even loaded? Because people are gonna ask if it was even loaded, and then he shows them that it was loaded. Fuck, dude. And there's something so terrifying about the fact that the guy's not taking it as serious, but me getting mugged, I completely get it. Because at first it was like nothing, and then I was like, wait, what's happening? And then it's like, oh fuck, good thing I didn't get shot. Yeah. Or stabbed brutally. Um but yeah, I guess it's just the broad daylight in a park, and stabbing is a very violent and intimate death.

SPEAKER_03 44:45

Yeah, man. And then it's attack. And it looked so uh like he didn't he didn't want them to die immediately. Yeah. Because you would stab you know, if you wanted to die immediately, you stab him in the heart or something.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

He just stabbed him in like all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

All over just someone enjoying killing someone. Man, God. And he seemed to enjoy killing women a little bit more. Yeah, I'd say so. Uh and I think in like the documentary, they did say something about him potentially being gay or something like that. I can't remember. Oh, he has to be. But he did have a wooden dildo in his uh groom.

SPEAKER_03 45:21

I saw that. Yeah. A real peg.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 45:24

I wonder if it was a real peg left.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

His nickname was Peggy.

unknown 45:30

Peggy.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Um, but yeah, so this was last week when I told you there's like a very horrifying scene. This was a scene that I saw. It was, though. It's just it's kind of what makes this movie um more brutal than any other like serial killer movies that you kind of think of. Because even in seven, you don't really you don't really see most of the killings. You like there later aftermath. And this one it shows the killings. Oh fuck. Yeah. All because there was a survivor. Um, worst day of your life, though, that's for god dang sure. Um so we see uh Avery is getting closer to Graysmith and curious on who he is. Soon afterwards, San Francisco taxi cab driver Paul Stein is shot and killed in the city's Prasido Heights district. San Francisco police detectives Dave Toshi and his partner Bill Armstrong are assigned to the case, liaising with other detectives such as Jack Molinax in Villejo and Ken Narlo in Napa. Um I love the overhead shot of the taxi. Yeah. Fantastic. Uh the lamp bit, whenever he gets the call and he's like, yo, me and you lamp. Here, let me describe the lamps so I can tell you which one to get me. Uh the weird animal crackers thing.

unknown 46:39

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Boy loves animal crackers. You just ask everybody if they have animal crackers, like that's a normal human thing to do. And uh the process of them trying to figure out where and how he was killed, like so it's like because they go to the spare book, he's like, Oh, it's a block down where he's supposed to be let go, and they kind of figure out it's like the whole street's lit up. So and he's like, Well, it could have been like someone's walking their dog, so he tells them to go a little further, and it's just fascinating. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 47:05

This is this is why I feel like um maybe we should pay waitress or like service people enough so they don't need tips. Yeah. Because I feel like if you don't want to tip, you don't want to have to you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 47:18

Like you don't have to kill somebody. Oh, I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, oh, tipping the driver, yeah. Yeah. Um and they figure out it's not like a robbery because uh he was the first fair of the day.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

Yeah. Maybe he just like too nice?

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Well, I think it no, he was just I think it was Zodiac throwing off the cops. He'd be like, why? Oh because every at that point he was either killing women or he was killing couples. And then he just killed him. Then just killed a taxi cab driver for now.

SPEAKER_03 47:46

Yeah, that will throw him off.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

I think it's all because he just needed he needed a reason to send another letter. And he needed evidence that he needed a jaildo real quick. Um but yeah, this scene is kind of great. I love just like detectives on a scene figuring out like kind of casing the fuck yeah, man. Crime scene. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 48:04

I should have done it like the Boondocks Saints, how they do it all in reverse. Oh, the movie?

SPEAKER_00 48:12

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, yeah. Um because it in William Dafoe has like the music, like he's doing that.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

That would have been a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

I need to rewatch that movie. I remember watching it being like, this has a lot of style.

SPEAKER_03 48:30

I love William Defoe.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

Um, so the Zodiac sends another letter in a piece of a bloody shirt. This time he is threatening school kids. Um, little, what did he call them? Little darlings?

unknown 48:42

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Uh something like that. Um, the newspaper is gonna run the letter without the threat on school children. Gray Smith has a kid and is anxious, and he like lets the kid get on the bus and he's like, Well, I'll just travel. I'll just travel. I'll show him. It's like, yeah, dude. Obviously. Fuck man. Um, so Dave takes the letter to a handwriting expert who played by uh shit, what's it what's his name? Bill Baker Hall, uh, one of our just a fucking wonderful actor that appears in like a billion movies, and you're like, hey, that guy. So um, yeah, so Dave takes the letter to a handwriting expert who determines the letters are the same. Bill wants them to release the information about him killing school kids. Uh, in a series of phone calls, we learn the first victim kidnapped uh victim skipped town as soon as he was out of the hospital. So Dave and Bill can't question him. He's he was just like, Yeah, we showed him like a billion different people's pictures, and it was none of them. And then as soon as he got let out of the hospital, he booked it.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

Fuck yeah, man, I'd leave too. It's like insane. I got shot like eight times by this guy.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

I just feel like here's my phone number, though. You can if I can help in any way. Yeah, dude. Like, yeah, you want to I guess I don't know. You don't like catch the eye thing. But he's also young and was already couldn't catch a hint that a girl wanted to have sex with him. So yeah, it's rough. He's just like, I gotta get out of here. I'm not fit for California. So they learned that the killer wore military grade boots uh because of the boot prints. So they believe it had to be someone in the mil military, because I guess at that point you couldn't get those unless you were in the military. Um and this is I put in my notes.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

I feel like they should still keep doing that.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:17

Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 50:18

Um I put in my notes. It's crazy how hard everything was back in the day, right? Because there's no email. Right. So like everything's gotta be sent to the mail. Because as he starts talking to other detectives, they're like, Well, we don't have that. Well, we don't have this. Like I think they have the very early stages of faxing. Well, because like some of the police departments didn't have fax yet. Like, we don't have a fax machine. It's like, well, I'll have to mail it to you. It's like, well, I'll mail my thing to you too. And it's like, go to a fucking library. But it's just kind of crazy because now it'd just be like, yeah, I'll email that to you.

unknown 50:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:50

That's all it'd be. This whole like months of investigation could have been shortened down to weeks.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

It probably would have got him. Right? It's insane. Um, so uh two cops saw a guy, then we cut to like them talking to two cops that saw a guy walking near a taxicab shooting where the taxicab shooting took place, but they didn't stop him because they were saying that it was over the at first, it was said that he was a black guy that did the killing, so they were looking at a black guy and this was a white guy walking, right? Um, and it's just that one wrong detail ruined everything. They could have caught him right then and there.

SPEAKER_03 51:26

Racial profiling has never ruined anything.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

What are we talking about? And it's just like, don't say what color the guy was because it was nighttime. How do you know if you're seeing it in a house where it's lit up in your house so it makes it harder to see out and you're just gonna assume it was a black guy? Racism. We would have probably caught the zodiac killer if it wasn't for racism. So if you're racist, maybe don't be because they could have caught the zodiac killer. I mean, honestly, so many crimes would have been solved if it wasn't for racism. Like, I mean, in true crime podcasts, all the time it's like people are misled because they thought it would be a certain type of person.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

Asian.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

So um we see Dave and Bill discussing the case while Avery and Gray Smith are doing the same thing. They all realize at the same time the zodiac is breaking his pattern by killing the cab driver. I love it. That was some of my favorite shit in this movie is whenever they'd have two people talking and then other two people talking, they're talking about the same thing and they keep intercutting between them having the same conversation and they both come to the realization at the same time. Yeah, that's cool. Filmmaking baby. I think rock damn hard.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

That's what the great thing about puzzle solving. I mean, I've never done it in a group setting. Yeah, I don't think. Yeah, it's super cool.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Yeah. Except uh, I don't know. Usually I feel like eco's gonna get involved in group settings. For sure. Yeah. Um, so Dave receives a call saying the killer wants to speak on TV, so they call him Brian Cox, baby, who plays Melvin in this film. Uh, they want they want to keep him talking. Um, I love it when they pick up Melvin. He's just like, are these windows bulletproof? And he's like laying in the backseat, like the guy's gonna come up and shoot him. It's like Dwight from the office. Yeah, exactly. It's so good. I love Brian Cox in this movie, though. He's he's just like so nonchalant and just like isn't really taking anything too serious except unless his life is online. So they want to keep the zodiac killer talking whenever he's ends up calling in. The killer or someone posing as him continues to toy with the authorities by speaking on TV. They talk about headaches, but the killer stops the call short because of call tracing. He's worried about going to the gas chamber. He screams because of headaches, and he says he's gonna kill them. Melvin says he will meet him at a church. Um they go, but they have the whole force taking him and like every new channel ever follow him. Uh Brian from the park uh murders say that that wasn't his voice, and the call came from a mental institute. But that scene, ripping as hell though. Could you imagine watching that live as it happened? God damn, no. That would be insane. Insane. Insane. Insane. So and then another later shows at the newspaper, it's poking at the police, and Dave and Bill are there. It's constantly calling piggies.

SPEAKER_03 54:25

I know. And like whenever uh Allen was after the interview, he's like, I wait for the day when cops will no longer be called pigs.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

And then it just cuts to Bill's face like it's Thanks. It's definitely him. Because like if that is actually something he says, you could like, I mean, that's just that's just doing exactly what these letters are doing. It's like shoving it in their face. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

It's wild. So at a bar together drinking aquavelvas, which Avery initially makes fun of Graysmith for, but he ends up loving them himself. They discuss the coded letters. Graysmith says he figured out the codes because of double L's and using a Middle Ages code book called the Zodiac Alphabet. Avery says it's good business for everyone but him. So he's kind of waiting to get to here, right? So throughout this film, there's like three different things that says Zodiac. There's the Zodiac Alphabet, which was like the Middle Ages thing, the Zodiac Watch, and um the symbol is a little later we'll find out it's in like the news reel, or not the news reel, the film print for the uh most dangerous game.

SPEAKER_03 55:39

So I'll show you at work that that symbol is also on all the boxes that I use.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

Yeah, I I know what you're talking about, yeah. So do you think that the Zodiac Killer Um like it was a coincidence, like, oh, I know about ciphers and I know about like the um zodiac alphabet? I have a watch as zodiac that has the same symbol. It's kind of made it his thing. And then it's like on the film reels that at a place that he potentially may have what he watched that reel, of course. So do you think he's like, ah, I'm gonna build a character off this? Like, what do you think can first? Like I know I think he's got a watch and then just went with that, or he knew about the cipher, the zodiac alphabet, and had the watch and it just all clicked?

SPEAKER_03 56:24

Yeah, well, I think it just it started as kind of an interest, as in a lot of people think that there are these supernatural things that control your life in some way. Yeah, it will predict your life in some way. And like I feel like maybe he thought there's all these signs of that are confirming his ideas that I the w the universe is predicting his fucking crazy lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Maybe even like a little bit of OCD about it.

SPEAKER_03 56:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:54

Like definitely not in terms of I'm OCD about how my trailer looks. No. But like can be OCD about other things, right?

SPEAKER_03 57:02

Yeah, yeah. About how he he's he probably felt like he was not in control of his life in a way, like it was all destined, like predetermined. Yeah. And he couldn't do anything else.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

It's like it's just fascinating to me because you know, like you have everybody else obsessing over everything, and it seems like Zodiac had an obsession about literally just things that were zodiac. Things that had the word zodiac in it. It's just kind of interesting to me.

unknown 57:30

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

Um but yeah, it's just like once you put all the things together on like how he may have came up with like Zodiac and the symbol, and it's like what came first. Okay, so uh Dave gets a hunch because one letter says basement, and there isn't a lot of basements in California. Oh because you know earthquakes. Uh Melvin gets a yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:54

I feel like the basement would be the best place for an earthquake. So the house can fall on you?

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Well you do I don't think you want to be underground during an earthquake. Maybe. Maybe you're right. You're thinking tornadoes. Tornadoes.

SPEAKER_03 58:08

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But like if you want don't want things to fall on you, being underground is pretty safe.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

Uh well, not with a whole house on top of you. Yeah, but you'd still like because like tornadoes take the house away. Yeah, yeah. And then you're underneath.

SPEAKER_03 58:22

Well, they also knock things over.

SPEAKER_00 58:24

Yeah. But like it's usually if it's gonna go straight through it, the house goes away.

unknown 58:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

Um, it's also just like a famous saying that that's why people didn't build basements in California because of earthquakes. They're like, it's too dangerous. I guess that makes sense. I don't know. Don't fight me on this, I know. Um and uh Melvin gets a letter on Christmas. Uh Dave and Bill learn that the Zodiac has been calling Melvin. Merry Christmas, summoned Zodiac. And Melvin's been big game hunting in uh Africa and is just like, oh it's fucked up, man. Melvin's not a cool person.

SPEAKER_03 58:59

Melvin needs to leave. It was the 60s. No one gave a shit back then. There are no rules about ivory. You know, he was hunting elephants.

SPEAKER_00 59:08

It's probably lions and tigers. And bears. Oh my. Oh my god. Um, we cut to a scene where a woman and her baby are driving, and the killer gets her to pull over and tells her her tire is loose. Would you like to know a little fact about the actress? Yo. It's Ion Sky from Say Anything. Nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:28

Uh this is her big breakout role.

SPEAKER_00 59:32

No, Say Anything was. But she kind of stopped acting, and uh I think this was kind of like her first role in a while at this point. So um is this kind of cool. I was like, oh shit. I watched this before um I ever saw it say anything. So I was like, I don't even know it's I know that face. Um so um the killer gets her to pull over and tells her her tire is loose. He messes with her wheel and drives off. And I was just like, Wait a minute, you just saw him loosen your tire. It was like because you could see it's like the the lug nut was tight, and then he, you know, he loosens it and it's just like now it's loose. This is why everybody should, you know, learn how to learn how learn how to uh put a tire on yourself because uh if that's the way that he tightened it, that's completely wrong.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:21

Or just don't ever trust a man ever. Yeah. Ever, ever, ever. Yeah, never pull over. This is a cop, never pull over. Or even then. Drive to the police station.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

Yeah. True. A woman alone with a baby. It's like drive to uh an area.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:36

Yeah, turn on your cell phone and drive. Well, try again.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

They didn't back then.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:42

They should have.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

So uh as she drives off, the uh the wheel falls off. Whoop! Whoopsie. Oh no, it was loose. He was right. So he comes by and offers her a lift to a service station. He seems weird when he realizes she has a baby. It's like, you have a I didn't know you had a baby. It's like is that an issue? It's like more than marriage. Oh God. It's like, eh.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:06

I never would have helped you if I knew you had a baby. It grossed.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:09

And they pass like a gas station, and he's like, You didn't there was a gas station right there. It's like, it's closed, and it's like, before I kill you, I'm gonna throw your baby out a window. Aww. And it's like the baby will learn how to fly, maybe. Um maybe he'll put it in a basket and float it down the road. But I mean, like, if that was you, wouldn't that be the most terrifying thing you've heard? That would be horrible. Just like and um we cut to her on the side of the road. Apparently, she jumped from his car, she and then she hit a baby in case he came back. Um, this scene fucking rolls.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

Because the whole time you know, is like, don't don't pull over. Please for God's sakes, don't pull over. Oh man. And then, you know, the baby involved immediately makes it more terrifying. And then just the line, I'm gonna throw your baby out a window. But what really caps it all off is when we see her on the side of the road, she goes, it's like, my there's they're like the people on the side of the road are like, Where's your baby? And she goes and picks it up out of the ditch, and it's like, Did you hide the baby? It's like, yeah. If he came back. And I was like, chilling.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:14

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:14

Chilling, chilling.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:15

It's like the story of the guy lost in uh Australia. Uh and he had his two kids and he buried them under the sand so they wouldn't get sunburned because he thought they were gonna die from dehydration. Well, did it work? Well, no, he they lived because someone found them eventually, but he was like burying my kids.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

I mean, it's not the worst idea. Well, I don't know, because like sand like gets hot.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:43

Oh, well, yeah, but at least it's not the sun. I don't know. It's all just I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

Wow. This m our podcast about this movie is driving it's it's how would you save your babies? It's turning Jason into Jake Gyllenhaal during filming a zodiac. All right, so um, then we get a montage of letters um uh not claiming some some killings and claiming some. He wants uh people to wear buttons now of the zodiac symbol um and threatening more murders and explosions.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:18

And the button idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:19

Yeah. I want people to wear buttons of me. It's like that's so fun. That is insane. It's insane.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:27

I love a button.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:28

This guy was literally just messing with everybody in that Californian area. Yeah, it's insane. Um, and then Paul believes Zodiac is full of shit because some of his letters are coming out after the killings are run in the newspaper because he's like, look, he wrote this like three weeks after we already posted in this uh newspaper, and he's just writing things that were like only in the newspapers and stuff like that. So he doesn't he thinks that like most of everything that he's saying is just full of shit. And then he shows um an ad for a zodiac watch that has the same symbols, and he's just like he can't even come up with his own thing. He's like stealing things from other properties and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:05

Super not original, he's the zodiac. Yeah. And then the most unoriginal thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

Yeah. So Avery gets a Halloween card, because after all this, because he kind of like, you know, Avery's been kind of shitting on the zodiac killer callant saying that he's like a homosexual and things like that. Um sick burn. Of course, like, well, back in the 60s, yeah. Like people did not like that thing. They hated it. Um so Avery gets a Halloween card with it. Things are better now. Yeah. Seemed like it was gonna. It's so much better. Um Avery gets a Halloween card with a bloody shirt in it. He's like, ah, thank you. So he's like, um, and then Dave and Bill come up and he's like, I want a gun. So uh we cut um, oh, and then Avery is gonna see uh we cut to him shooting a gun. Yeah. Because he immediately went and got a gun. Fuck yeah. Um Avery is gonna go see an anonymous tip, but Gray Smith can't go with him because he has a date that he shows a plate for. She tells him that it's not a good idea for Avery to go alone to talk to the person. He's like, Gray Smith is like kind of immediately gets distracted. Like, he'll be all right. He's got a gun. Like 10 seconds later, you know, he actually got me thinking that maybe I should go call him. So he goes and uh him and his date go into the phone booth together to call, and he he's like, he's not home yet, so I'm gonna have to go home and wait for the call. And she's like, Is this a what is this a trick to get me to go to your house? And I'm like, if you know this guy, he's not that type of guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:33

He's an eagle scout. He's not really uh he's not that uh imagine all the missed opportunities we've had as gentlemen in phone booths, which is not a thing anymore. You can't force a woman to be inside a small space with you to make a phone call.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Oh man, we're really missing out. We Dennis Randall's from It's Always Sunny. It's the impacciation. She's already in the phone booth with me. So, uh, Paul Avery and uh Gray Smith work together and uncover additional evidence, such as evidence of Zodiac's first murder in 1966. Throughout, they share a love-hate relationship with the police department. Avery goes to the place and he has new information. He thinks the first killing happened in 1966. All the police forces go to Riverside Police Force to find out about the killing. All turns out it might be the same guy, but Riverside Police don't think so. They receive letters and everything. Avery gets yelled at by Dave. He's mad at Avery, he didn't come to them first, and it made Dave look bad and also kind of, you know, obstructed like their investigation a little bit. I love that the um the Riverside police just like keep showing information that is like, this is exactly how the Zodiac did it. This is exactly how the Zodiac did it. This is exactly how the Zodiac did it. We don't think it's him. It's like, dude. He literally just like everything almost looked exactly. Trust me, bro. It's definitely not him. But I mean, if in like going through and um because wasn't it like the BTK killer, like he killed someone and then like didn't do it for like a year or two. Yeah, what? Sometimes there was like seven years between when he was just like, these people are fucked up and we don't know how they're gonna react. So I mean that could be the f and you know, we always say how uh they always say about like the first kills are usually kind of spur of the moment. Yeah. And so I mean he may emotional, he may have not perfected like the lettering and things like that. So and it could have been him. Yeah, choose the bear ladies.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:35

Yeah, they're predictable.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

But he also is he's pretty good at manipulating everyone, everyone and he had the whole public view of everything. Jesus. It's fascinating, absolutely fascinating, and terrible that it happened. So, because I keep saying fascinating, I have to I just fascinating. I just want to make sure that this sucked that it happened. Wish we didn't even have to do a podcast over this movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:57

So see, guy, ladies, guys can do great things even if they work at a really crappy job. It's not personal. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:07

You can imagine guys can become killers. It's crazy. They can even come up with puzzles.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:14

You can be really smart and still work at a crappy job.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:17

Yeah. Starting to get a little nervous up here with Jason. All right. He's so smart. I think that's weird that I saw you working on like a cipher the other day. Does that have to do with anything? You know, the Zodiac sign is on all the boxes. On every single one. That's where Jason got the idea. The Zodiac killer makes boss boxes. So goes all the way to the top. Then Bill gets a tip about Arthur Lee Allen, who essentially told a coworker all that he was gonna do. He used the same language and even told him that he would call himself the Zodiac Killer. Dave is a little unsure though. He's like, why would he just tell him all this? Right. Um But saying you're gonna do something before doing it, there's a difference, right? You could say you're gonna do this and all this and have all this idea, but I mean, even before he did it and became a madman, there could have been the idea in his head, but I probably won't do it. And then he did it, and he's like, ah, I probably shouldn't have told that guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:20

Yeah. Just think of how useful like an outlet like TikTok would have been back then. Sure, he probably would have just started a cult. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:32

Or squirrel cult. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:34

I would, I'm in.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:35

Well, like a squirrel kill.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:37

Just for a little bit. I want to pet squirrels. I'll never pet a squirrel.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

Yeah. Well, you know, if it happened that they. He would have also probably been caught like first killing if he was a. Uh nuts. Squirrel traps. I don't think they're actually even that hard to catch, Jason. They make specific traps to catch uh rodents. Yeah. Like, you know. I don't know. Raccoon traps, things like that. They're vermint traps. Come on, Jason. Vermonts. Get your head in the game here.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:10

Maybe I just put a pet squirrel. I saw a TikTok of a guy petting a squirrel, and it was adorable.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:15

We just like we because you know, like we had traps and it was to catch possums and release them in other places. So I've seen many traps like that. Um, because I'm a country boy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:26

Woo!

SPEAKER_00 1:10:30

So it uh in 1971, Toshi, Armstrong, and Molinax question Arthur Lee Allen in one of the best scenes that the guy didn't know a potential suspect in the case. In an excellent scene where they see that he has a zodiac watch, that one of his favorite books is The Most Dangerous Game, which is, you know, said in one of the letters. Um, and he was in Riverside during the 1966 murder. Um because he likes to go watch racing there. And um racist. We also know that Alan is amphidextrous, but he tells them that he's not, that that's teachers ambidextrous. Um wish he didn't ask that question because it blew out of my mind immediately.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:14

There was um he's like, I'm writing this with my left hand, I love the murder. Well uh right hand.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:22

Because someone that they talked to said that he was ampedictrous. Oh, this the writing guy. Uh the writing No, it was um the guy that they talked to that told him, like, hey, I had this co-work, I had this person that I talked to and told me everything that he was gonna do, and it turns out he did it. Uh that guy. The guy who's like, yeah, I was fishing with a guy and he said, Yo, I want to be a zodiac killer and shit. Have you ever tried to do things in your offhand? I can't. I tried. You ever tried like even I can barely write with my dominant hand.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:51

Have you ever tried like throwing a stick with your offhand? It's ridiculously funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:56

I have cousins that learned how to throw a football with their left hand, and uh it made me jealous. Because they were really good at it.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:03

Stupid. That is so dumb. How does that happen? We mean like trying to teach yourself how to do something. How do you do things better with your bad hand?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:11

They didn't say you did it better. Oh. No, they just said Well, your football friends did. Well, you didn't do it better than throwing with their right hand, but they threw pretty well with their left hand. Okay. Um, but he was also uh we learned he was fired from a school from lessing students where one murder took place. He that's problematic. Visits a lake very often where the murders of the or the attack on that one couple was. Little murder lake. Had uh a bunch of bloody knives in his car the day his neighbor saw him returning from the lake, but that's because he was killing a chicken.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:41

Oh, oh I thought you were gonna say fish. Bro. You could have been gutting a fish.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:45

And like this is one of those things. I just go to the lake to kill chickens. Well those good old lake chickens. No, he said he was fucking great. He didn't say he was like um So he didn't say he killed the chicken at the lake, Jason. He just said he was killing the chicken, like I guess around his house for dinner. Um But this is a wild lake chicken. This is a classic, like a serial killer thinks they're smarter than the police.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:16

Obviously.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:16

Because he just says that information just because it's like almost like he's messing with the channel. Because then he quickly says, like, and I told him that they could uh and you could talk to the guy, but he died of a heart attack.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:27

You could even talk to the chicken, but he got stabbed. He also got stabbed, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:33

But is it's just like one of those, because whenever he says it, and like now that when I first watched it, I didn't really watch true crime, but now that like I listen to podcasts and me and my wife watch shows about it, I'm like, that's something that fucking happens in interrogation rooms all the damn time. And it's just like, why didn't they do true why didn't these officers listen to these same podcasts and watch these same shows that I watch today? Yeah, because they didn't exist. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:56

Whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:57

So they go to his brothers to analyze the letters. They say that he spells the same words wrong when they uh receive Christmas letters. Like it's uh the way he spelled Christmas is like Christ Christmas or something like that. And he's like, Yeah, he spells the exact same way in this letter as he did in my Christmas card. And it's like it's probably because it's him. However, a handwriting expert played by Philip Baker Hall insists that Alan did not write the zodiac letters, and Dave learns that they can't get a warrant to search Arthur Lee Allen, essentially ending their search of him. That's why we need the warrant to get the evidence that he is that what he would be hiding inside of his house. Yeah. But that's kind of like the you know, the problems that like detectives have to face. It's like, well, we can't just barge into every house just because of a hunch.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:50

Not anymore. No, unless you're ice not real, um, so uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:59

Avery, who is paranoid, addicted to drugs and alcohol now, has to be put in charge of the investigation. He's like, Awesome. Because like his boss is like, you want me to you want me to ask for you to be put in charge of the investigation? You got it. And they're like, hey, you need to act right or get out of here. He's like, you know what? Maybe I will go to a different newspaper.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

He's like, you need to stop drinking. He's like, well, maybe I just want to go drinking right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:24

Yeah. Um, and then uh Gray Smith sees him and he sees that he's like all disheveled and stuff, and he's like, he goes up to you and asks if he's okay, and he's like, No. And it's it's fucking it's something Robert Downey Jr. does so well. He even does it in like um the Marvel movies. There's he Yes, it's that that injured deeply injured like emotionally, yeah, yeah. And just the way he looks at him and says, No. It's just the way he just I don't know, timidly says it. And it was like the first person to ever ask him if he was okay, and he's like, Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:59

And he shrugs it off, like I'm not okay. It's not gonna get better.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:06

Thanks for asking. I'm gonna go drink. You wanna go drink? I'm gonna go drink in my house boat and play Pong. Um But it's just like one of those situations where like that was that was him asking for help, I think, in that little situation. Um, but no one helped him. So that wasn't shown at least. I mean, maybe Jake Dylan Hall's character tried to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:26

I mean, he kind of tried.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:27

He came to his house later. Yeah. But that was all just for his own obsessive reasons. So Bill and Dave learn that Alan lives in a trailer in Santa Rosa, California, and they may be able to get a warrant from there because it's not the same because they couldn't get a warrant from uh Napa. So, or Vallejo, those two areas. So they're like, wherever they thought he lived. I don't know. Um and they want a different handwriting expert to look at it because not everyone thinks that people would write the exact same way with both hands, or um, I don't know. I think I got that reversed. Um, because I think Philip Baker Hall's character was like, uh, this would be impossible to do with both hands, or something like that. And the guy they talked to is like, no, we all have there's actually two ways to think about it, and he doesn't think that way, but I do, so they're gonna go to him.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:14

Maybe he's just making the squirrels write the notes. That's why he's training them.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:20

Let's let's spend a minute to think about that. No, I don't think that happened, basically. How do you know? You aren't there. They go into his house, they open the door, there's a squirrel sitting in a computer chair turning around with glasses on his head.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:34

It's like they've got the quills with the feathers and they're dipping it in inkwells. You caught me.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:42

Attack. And all the other squirrels start attacking.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:47

They form like a a human and like a squirrel human of conglomerate squirrels. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:53

Yes. I am on board with this. Yeah. So they lay out all the information on Alan. Uh this is when they're talking to I um like they're gonna they're talking to maybe like the boss who's gonna, or like the person over the police station. They're like gonna lay out all the evidence for them so that they can go to a judge with the information. So they lay out on the inf uh information on Alan, who definitely seems like he did it, and they eventually get their warrant because they're like, he was literally in all the place. He literally has similar handwriting. Literally has this, this, knives. This person said he did it. This is the guy that lived.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:31

Um, well, not quite yet, but that's at the end. But like his friend. It's like his friend literally said he told him everything that he's doing. Um, so they grant him the warrant, and on September 14th, 1972, in Santa Rosa, they go to his trailer. He isn't home, he has a pet squirrel, nudie max, wooden dildo, 5'7 gloves, he's got a bunch of guns. You said one pet squirrel. There were squirrels all over that place. Yes, that's because I wrote I wrote that and then one of the squirrels was in a cage. That's the one they showed. And then all of a sudden, there's a bunch of squirrels. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:04

They're wielding guns, probably.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:07

Yeah. And um it is funny because uh like, you know, once again, true crumb podcast, but not even that, but just like watching things or hearing things about people that um you know have like hor like mental issues is like the way his trailer looked is can be a sign of like a lot of those things, like keeping animals rodents and just messy house and things like that. Uh yeah. Where I don't like and I don't know, it just seems like it does definitely seems like he has a weird OCD. Like a different OCD than like when you think of OCD. Yeah, dude. Um, so and then Arthur shows up.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:43

I wonder if people in the neighborhood know him as the squirrel gun. He's the squirrel killer. Why are they in his freezer? Yeah. What are we doing? He killed him. He's got like a little Frankenstein operation where he's bringing him back to life.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:57

It might be why he can go like a like a year or so without killing somebody, because he's killing the squirrels. Squirrels, ohunders in his house. Genius. But then Arthur shows up outside in a pretty nice car and in the sexiest pair of tiny shorts you could see on a man.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:11

That's that is true. That was that kind of shocked me.

unknown 1:20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:16

That this was the uh 70s, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:18

Yeah. And uh six.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:20

Shorts must have been a new thing back then.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:21

Yeah. Shorts. My God, I've never heard of a short.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:26

Or are you saying short pants?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:29

Or those pants up? That's crazy. Now, I if pants, they usually go to your ankles, correctly.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:35

And where do these end? These don't even go to your knees? They don't even reach your knees.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:40

By God, I didn't think it was impossible. Um so uh yeah, and then uh it cuts the scene and they're like, yeah, everything you got doesn't match. Uh so investigate someone else, and they're like, fuck. Like, oh man. That's be so frustrating though. That would be like if you were a detective and it's like all signs point, this is the only possible person. And if it's not this person, then this is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me in my life. That's true. And then like Dave's boss is like, Do you want some time off? It seems like you might need it.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:12

Yeah, he definitely does. He's like, sure, I'll go see a great movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:17

Yeah. You ever heard of Dirty Harry? Now, what do you think the what do you think the intentions of this movie was? Uh it's based off the Zodiac. Um, yeah. Uh maybe also rules.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:31

Great. And Jake Jill Hall's in the same theater. Like, did he ask him to go?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:35

It's like uh they all just it's a bunch of it's probably the premiere night. And one of the biggest movies of the the like decade. Everybody in California was super obsessed with the movie, so because uh the Zodiac killer. Yeah. Um at a screening of Dirty Harry, Graysmith meets Dave for the first time. He tells him he's gonna catch him. Gray Smith says to Dave that you'll catch him, man. Um and then uh we cut a few years. It's uh 1977 now. Avery leaves the Chronicle. Bill quits the homicide division because you know, he wants to see his kids. Yeah. Um Gray Smith visits Avery who lives on a houseboat and looks pretty rough. The house boat looks pretty funny. Weed, drugs, alcohol. Yeah, he's having a great time. Yeah. Why are you bothering him? And he's watching uh the uh he's watching himself lose horribly at Pong.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:21

I know. I think maybe he just set it off as an experiment. Do you remember the movie Wally, the Disney one? Where he just plays Pong by himself for years and years, hundreds of years. I think maybe there's a time. Maybe that's where the Pong is the Zodiac killer. And he just lived forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:40

Yeah, he yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:45

Maybe it's a stretch.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:46

Yeah, or maybe they invented time travel and Wally figured it out and he went back in time, and then he's just like, hmm, I like zodiacs. Yeah. So Avery tells him oh, uh, he tells Avery that he should write a book. Graysmith does. Avery tells him more people die all the time than the zodiac ever killed. Avery gets pissy and Graysmith lives, leaves. That is true. Yeah, because that's gonna be something now in like the the last half of the movie where once everybody's off the case, they're like, or you know, once a few years pass, it's like people die all the time. This guy killed five people and we couldn't catch him. But and uh I can't remember, Avery says something, it's like, you know, like 500 people like died in this one area and nobody said anything about it. So it's like it's worse. People this guy quit killing people and he's not writing letters anymore. So puzzling. Because he was in jail. I just love his puzzles so much.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:39

I miss them.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:41

But it is uh, it's also, even though it's it's just a very sad line in the movie, where it's like, yeah, you're right, people are getting murdered all the time. Nothing in this movie will make you feel good about life. Oh so Gray Smith continues his own in-depth investigation, interviewing witnesses and police detectives involved in the case. He takes Dave out for lunch. He tells Dave that at certain military libraries that cipher books have been stolen, and it's all the same libraries that eventually will learn Arthur um Arthur Lee Allen would you know, be at. Um he tells Dave that a Dave sends him to other detectives in other cities. Um they allow him to search in a room filled with zodiac files. It was like your car turning around. Yeah. Yep, essentially. My brain car. Um, but I love this. This is the part of the movie where it's fun because it's like, you know, you kind of want to be Gray Smith in this situation, right? Because we're not detectives, but it'd be so fun to be like breaking a case, right? To the point to where like even detectives are like, we can't help you. We're not gonna tell you anything. We gave up. But maybe these names help. Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, it's fun. And then like because he's able to save Dave's name to all these people, but if like no one's around listening, can't you just be like These are people that took their jobs very seriously?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:07

I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:07

You know what, Jason? You know how whenever we say, like, oh man, they would have caught a killer if it wasn't for these bad detectives or something like this. These are detectives technically doing exactly what they're supposed to do. You're right. They just didn't realize this Graysmith kid was gonna be like, I don't know, really good at finding.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:27

Yeah, but once they saw that he was actually like finding shit out, like good shit. Yeah. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:33

That's where like the movie kind of like for a second you're not horrified and you're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go, baby. So if only the zodiac killer watched Phoebus and Bowser, everything would have been great. He might have, we don't know. Um, and when when he goes to search like the room filled with uh the zodiac files, it's just a big room, every file in there's zodiac, and uh they're like, you can't write anything down. They like take his pins because it's illegal. I think that he's in there.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:05

So taking the job so seriously.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:08

So he meets with Dave and tells him that the Zodiac uh knew Darlene and called her family 90 minutes after the killing, like made four phone calls to people in her family 90 minutes after the killing. Dave sends him to Melvin, um, where it's the guy from the TV, where the housekeeper tells him that the Zodiac called on his birthday, which is something they did not know. Or they did, but they couldn't figure anything out. When pushing the birthday thing, he hits a wall, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:35

I love how that the the house cleaner was like, yeah, I was the one who talked to him. Yeah. Not a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:42

It's just the most haunted killer in all of time.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:48

Spoke to him. He was really nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:50

Yeah, he's really nice. It's like at first he thought that he thought he was gonna, well, because I think it was one of those things where he's like, it was kind of like the baby thing, right? Where he's like, Oh, I didn't know you had a baby. There's like a break in his serial killer mind where he's like, I didn't know you had a baby. And he's like, is that anything wrong? It's like, then his voice kind of changes a little bit. It's like, more the merrier. And I'm assuming like this phone call would have probably been pretty similar, like, hello, yes, can I speak to Melvin? Oh, he's not here. Shit. Ah shit! I was really wanting to kill somebody on my birthday. You know, this really this is my birthday. Yeah. So um, Graysmith's investigation is profiled in the chronicle, which uh the prime suspect is known to read, and he allows himself to be interviewed until well, that's a little bit later, uh, for his book that's in process concerning the case. He then gets a call saying that he should contact Bob Vaughn, whose friend is the Zodiac. He says the killer is Rick Marshall. He then meets with a handwriting expert to talk, uh, Philly Baker Hall. He then learns that the expert also had uh Wallace Penny, the same guy that called uh Gray Smith, telling him. To look at Rick Marshall, he eventually gives Graysmith his number. So obsessing over the unsolved case, he begins receiving anonymous phone calls with heavy breathing. He's pilling and it's like the same thing that uh Darlene and the family stuff got uh after her killing. Um so the Napa detective tells him that Rick Marshall was the number one suspect that he had. He was in the Navy and learned how to code, apparently. So he calls Penny and figures out that Rick Marshall wrote movie posters. The posters are the closest thing that matches the letters, everything but the K. So suddenly a new letter comes in. Someone apparently thinks Dave wrote the letter himself and got kicked out of the police force. He gets he meets uh Graysmith meets an angry Dave, and uh Dave tells him that the expert got fired for drinking. Dave does not believe Rick Marshall is the killer. Um yeah, I put that line that he's like he got uh fired for drinking. That was Philip Baker Hall's character. God, and this is the 70s. Graysmith didn't know about it. You had to drink a lot to get fired back then. For real. As long as you weren't doing drugs, it was okay. And then even in some professions, if you're doing drugs, that was okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:15

I feel like as long as you make it to work without running anyone over, yeah, it's probably fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:22

So um, because of his uh subversion, um, submersion in the case, like having his kids help, Graysmith loses his job and his wife, uh Melanie, uh leaves him because she was mad that they showed his face on TV when talking about the book. Um, and she took the children with her. Um, why do you keep doing this? Why do you need to do this? Like, I need to know. I need to look him in the eye and know he did it. Yeah. Um obsession. Obsession. So Gray Smith, Grace Smith meets with Vaughn and goes to his house. Never go to the second location. Second location.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:01

Well, did they really have a first location?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:03

Yeah, he's gonna meet in my coffee shop. Um, just come to my basement. This is the most terrifying scene that does not have a murder in it. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:16

It was super fucking creepy.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:18

Yeah, so Graysmith brings up the most dangerous game, uh, a movie that Vaughn likes, and uh um that they showed around the times of the first killing. Apparently, in the film, filmreel, the symbol of the zodiac, can be seen. When he brings up how Rick drew the posters, Vaughn says that he drew the posters, and Graysmith is immediately scared.

unknown 1:30:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:39

But not scared enough to leave yet. Then Vaughn wants to show him when they last showed the most dangerous game, which is in the basement. But she's like, not a lot of people have basements in California. He's like, but I do. I do. He goes down with him and then starts hearing footsteps above him, and he's like, Is anybody else out in the house? Is there anybody else here? Uh Vaughn tells him they ran the movie nine weeks before the first killing. He then hightails it out of there. He runs to the door and he's like, I can't get it over there.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:08

He's got one of those fucking doors where you gotta unlock it from the inside. God damn it. So then he comes up and just unlocks it and lets him go. I've only ever seen that in one other movie that we did. The one with the dinner party one. Uh, with John Carol Lynch. Yes. Yes. I don't know, man. Fucking terrible. Yeah. If there's not a fucking deadbolt thingy on there, I'm not going anywhere else.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:33

I'd just jump through the window. Well, I say that I would not have thought that I would have panicked and done the same thing he just did.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:40

I don't know. I've I've successfully kicked in uh a couple of doors. I feel like I could try at least.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:46

Um break at least a couple of windows in the process.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:49

When I was younger, we um we lived in a trailer and then we got a new trailer, and it's one of those, you know, they brought it. And so we were tearing down the old house or trailer, and it was fun. Like, you know, people were like running through the drywall and shit. Just because it's fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:03

Driving a car through it.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:04

And so when like they were taking a break, and I was just kind of in it, and I was like, I'm gonna kick down a door. Couldn't do it. Oh, you know the scene in Cloverfield when the um lead character tries to kick the door and like pushes himself back into the wall? Yeah, very similar to how I did it. Um, so you're just not a big enough boy, Jesse. Yeah, he eats your Wheaties. So Graysmith visits Linda, who was a friend of Darlene's. She mentions that Darlene was stalked by Zodiac before her murder. A weird guy attended her party two weeks before she was killed, says his nickname was Lee. Bum, bum, bum. Um, but yeah, and I love in this scene because he kind of starts getting frustrated at her. He's like, his name was Rick, right? You remember his name was Rick. He's like, it definitely wasn't Rick. His name was Rick, and then he gets mad and starts to leave.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:54

And she's like, it was Lee. Is that in a women's prison? I guess. She was in prison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:02

Oh, gotcha. Um, I was gonna even middle name's Lee. He's gonna make it sound douchery. I was like, well, she was in prison and a woman, so yeah. So he tells Jack at the Vallejo police department his finding and uh he waves him off. So Graysmith, oh yeah, because he comes in in the middle of the night. Yeah, and because he's like, Look, I have all this information. There's like he's like, I'm calling the police, and then he's just like get away from my house. There's like nothing we can do about it. Oh, that's something different later.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:36

Okay, about that. So I thought he went straight over there after that.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:41

So Graysmith's wife visits him at his lowest. She tells him to do whatever he has to do and finish it. She gives him some mail that has Arthur Lee's driver's license on it and his birthday December 18th, which is when the phone call happened to Melvin. That's around the winter solstice. Yeah. I wonder if that oh this guy, Zodiac. The Zodiac. So um he immediately runs to Dave's house, who is gonna kill him. It's like, I'm gonna kill him. Where's my gun? Yeah, I would too. And then I love it because he's like, get out of here, go away. He's like, I'll meet you around front. He's like, No, you won't. So funny. Dave Adventure makes fucked up movies that have some of the best jokes in them. That's true. Yeah, it's so wild. So he tells him it's Arthur. He it was Arthur's birthday when he called Melvin. Arthur wrote Dave on um, Arthur wrote Dave uh a letter saying, like, sorry, it wasn't it's like it wasn't me, and I'm sorry if I can do anything to help later. And he's like, We he wrote it on a typewriter, something that you can't track for handwriting. Um, he also knew Darlene. When Dave brings up that he cleared handwriting, uh, Graysmith says the same one that drinks every day and got fired for it. Oh shit. Um, they go to a diner, Gray Smith goes through all the circumstantial evidence, like the fact that the letter stopped after Lee was arrested, and after release, another letter is sent after he was released from prison. He also learns Lee lived next door to Darlene, Darlene, 50 yards, door to door. It's like, how do you know? It's like I walked it. That was clear. Um That was fucking screen scary. There's a line, just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not true. Um, easy, dirty Harry. Uh and then Dave's just like finish the book. It's like I can't we can't do anything because we don't have physical evidence, actual evidence that we can prove in a court. So just finish your book. Like, oh, maybe people would be like, we gotta heavily look into killer. Um, it only took like 20 more years to do it. So nice. And then coming into the conclusion, in December 1983, a full 14 years after the original slangs, Graysmith tracks down Alan to a Vallejo hardware store where he is employed as a sales clerk. After Alan asks if he can help Graysmith with anything, they stare at each other for a moment with blank expressions, during which time Alan's name tag can be seen with Lee written on it. Before Graysmith simply replies with a no and leaves the hardware store.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:16

That was Imagine coming face to face or something like that. And he got it.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:21

He got what he wanted. He's like, Wanted to be able to look in his eyes and know that he did it. Damn. And he did. Because like when he just stares at him, uh Junkaro Lynch, great facial actor, obviously. Kind of changes the way he looks, where he's like He's like, oh shit, this guy knows. No one ever comes in here and looks at me like this. Something's going on here. So then we cut to seven and a half years later in 1991. Mayhew meets with authorities and identifies I just said it right that time. Couldn't say it earlier, and then it just off the Mayhew ran right off my desk there. That's wild.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:55

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:56

Mix meets with authorities and identifies Alan from a police smug shard shortly before as the authorities walk um, shortly before the authorities walk by a bookshelf copies of Robert Graysmith's book Zodiac is spotted in the shelf for bestsellers. Final title, um, and then like he's like, All right, I got a thing of pictures for you. Point out who, if any of these people, are the zodiac killer. And he looks at it and he's like, This guy. He's like, Yeah, that's my favorite actor. And it's Arthur Lee Allen. Yeah, he's always really intimidating in movies. Did you ever notice that? Or he's a teddy bear. He could go either way. Um, and then, so yeah, and that's it. Final Todd Cards informed the audience that Alan died in 1992 from a heart attack before he could be questioned further by police. And DNA tests performed in 2002 did not match samples gathered from the zodiac letters. Uh, the police departments believe that he is still the killer, even though that the um tests didn't show. Uh, and we learned that Dave was uh cleared of all charges of writing the letter, and that uh Graysmith is with his kids and has a good one.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:01

Lives happily ever after, yeah, to some degree.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:04

Which is great. Sometimes you just gotta get all of it out easily.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:08

And that is Zodiac.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:11

Yeah. What a fucking wild ride. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:16

Jason, what do you think of what is the point of zodiac?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:22

I think it's about uh obsession.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:26

That is exactly what I put. And how it can ruin your life and break you down psychology psychologically. Maybe seek therapy.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:34

But also help you solve maybe a murder. Yeah, maybe solve a murder, but maybe ruin your life in the process. I know like a lot of people do this, are just obsessed with these with puzzles. Do sudoku. Yeah. That's a nice, like, kind of I don't know, uh, placebo. Yeah. If you know why I do them at work. Right. You just can't stop murdering people.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:59

Do it do a sudoku. Yeah, that's why you don't have to worry, guys. I do sudo's when I'm bored at work. See, and that's healthy. And we appreciate that. And it's also, yeah, I mean, it gets you out of your head, right? It makes you stop playing with other people's heads. You know, because I realized that this movie is about obsession like obsession, like about maybe like halfway through, I was like, I like had to go to the bathroom. So I paused it and I was like, I was kind of thinking, I was like, shit, I'm obsessive. You do love going to the bathroom. No, just like I was well, so I was thinking, like, I didn't want to do the notes as detailed as I always do because I'm like, I spent two and a half hours. Yeah, I spent I was like, I was just gonna kind of just like, you know, just make it like vague and just like hit the points, but like I obsessively can't do that. Yeah. Like I've tried every time I try it, I'm like, no, I gotta write this down, I gotta write this down, I gotta write this down. And I was like, oh shit, am I an obsessive person getting really weird? I was like, oh no. But then I like I see it in other things in my life that I do, and I was like, huh. Maybe I should talk to somebody about it. Yeah. Well, it's like, it's not about a lot of things, it's only about like certain things. I don't know. I was like, oh, thanks, thanks, Zodiac. You got you got you got things that I need to you made me think about things.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:21

More people just need just need outlets, you know? Yeah. Have a hobby, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:25

Yeah, play video games. I don't know. But yeah, so um, we're gonna hit our next category the good, the bad, the ugly, the fine. It's where we discuss the good of the film, something we like, the bad, something we didn't like, the ugly, something that didn't age well, the fine, something that did age well. For the good, I put let's see, what did I write? Fucking everything. Yeah, cool. That pretty much covers it. No, but I mean, honestly, for this movie to me, um, if I had to pick like what makes this movie good, um I think it's the direction. It really is. The way I mean, I guess it's just like the whole process of filmmaking. So yeah, everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:06

Sure. No, I I feel like uh mine was kind of the same in a different way. It's just the fear that the way he that creates the fear and makes you feel it by that horrible murder scene.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:20

Yeah, well, yeah, in the park, right? Yes. So he doesn't the when he starts stabbing the guy, you don't it like you don't see it from a side perspective. Well, you see it from his face because he stabs the guy f first, right? Because he's like she's staring at him, she's he's scared, and then starts stabbing, and then you see his face, and he's like, ah, and he can't move, all he can do is lift his head. And then like it stays on him for a second, and then he moves to her, and then that's where you get the side profile of like you see him doing it to her. And that's good filmmaking.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:54

It is really good, and it kind of makes it obvious like why these people got so obsessed with it, these horrible things that happened.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:03

Yeah. And this is probably the movie that best um shows the terror and horrifying things of being stabbed in movies, right? Because I will we'll we watched Scream Seven, the newest Scream recently. You know, in that movie, when someone gets stabbed, I'm like, eh, yeah, rock on, the knife is so pretty. In all those, um and which, you know, Wes Craven's great director, right? But like no, like no stabbing in any of those movies made me feel in any horror movie, it made me feel like this, where I was just like, I hate everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:40

Yeah, because he had them where he wanted, they were defenseless. He could have just walked away, he could have just shot him in the head like he did the other ones. But he w he relished in the killing. But he's also a coward. Yes, for title. He's a fucking coward.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:56

Fuck you, serial killers. It's just like the whole time though, like whenever he has them at gunpoint and he's like, All right, don't move. I'm just like, there's water behind you. If you can make it to that water and jump in, he'd never catch you. Bullets do not cannot shoot you in water. Mythbusters have proved it. They explode on impact of the water. Yeah. Just in case anybody's about to get shot near water, jump in the water, please. Jump in the water. Or if you at least if it boils. Yeah. So um for the bad, I put what is this that I put fucking nothing. Oh, that's weird. Pretty similar to mine.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:33

Well, I mean, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:35

Well, I just thought even though I was it's kind of like what I said at the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:41

There's just I don't know, not a lot happening after the first like hour and like the second half of the movie. There it's just clues, clues, clues, which is great.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:56

And then but you only see Zodiac like twice. I don't know. Maybe maybe it's not bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:05

So I will say that I think I don't know if it's well, they're obviously basing it off a book, so you know, they're just kind of going through how it is like that, because it's based on Gray Smith's book. But I think it's just one of those things where it's just like, I think that's showing hey, see how easy it was for him to kind of get away with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:27

Yeah, so I guess it's not really bad because what I was thinking of like, why are they showing Jake Jenhall or Gray Smith's character, like his dating life, and like they're doing this, but like I guess you have to to show how it ruins his fucking Yeah, it's kind of to show the point of what maybe the movie is the point of obsession, how it destroys you.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:46

So maybe just that's the bad. Yeah, obsession. Obsession. No, like I get it. Like you shouldn't have squirrels in your house. It's illegal. Yeah, and it's not safe for the squirrels. And they had the run of the place, and there were guns. Just squirrels could have had the guns.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:03

And was it the squirrels wooden dildo? Yeah. Was that theirs? That was messy. Maybe it was a tree and they like splinters. They like carved, they're like chew, chewing on a piece of wood, and there's like Arthur Lee Allen's like, I promise it's not a dildo. This is this is something the squirrels did. I do pirate cosplay. Um so uh the ugly, the fact that he was never found. Why would you have a wooden dildo?

SPEAKER_03 1:45:31

Now I'm stuck in that. That's that's just man. Maybe he carves wood. I mean, that's ancient dildos were made out of wood. They're like super smooth, and like some of them made out of like ivory and stuff. Why would?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:44

Wood is bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:45

Don't people know that?

SPEAKER_00 1:45:47

It can't feel good. Well, I mean, people put a lot of things in themselves. Yes. Yeah. Light bulbs. Yeah, they break. They break. So don't clinch. Yeah. Oh so uh anyway. Sorry, I'm sorry. No, you're good. So uh for the fine, I put the whole movie. I feel like it gets uh but so this movie came out in 2007. It was one of the best one of the best movie years we've ever had. Like if you go back and look at all the movies, the same year as There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, which is a really good movie, and then this movie. Um and it I feel like it kind of gets overlooked because you know, even around 2007, I mean, I didn't hear a lot of people talking about it. They're talking about No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood. And it's just like, hey, there was also like a third masterpiece, guys. I don't know if you all heard about it, it's called Zodiac. But now I think it's finally now that people more are online and talk about movies all the time, it's kind of gotten a little bit more respectful.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:46

Yeah, I couldn't believe that I'd never seen it. Yeah. And it's so good. Even even today, like I'm I guess that's one thing I think is really great about time pieces. I guess what'd you call it? Time piece. Period piece. Period piece. That they kind of age better than most things. Yeah, because it's like that 40 or 50 year difference.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:08

Yeah, because it already happened. So it's like it's like now if they make a movie, it'd just be like you know, it's like, well, that's a little out of date. I don't know. Well, it's like because you could release a movie. You could start filming a movie like nine months before it's released, and then like after those nine months, like, well, it's already kind of really as relevant.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:27

Like how how far out of time does it take to become relevant again? Like, or like I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:36

Well, it's kind of like in movies, like especially like comedies when they make very specific jokes about things that are happening in the time that are gonna be forgetting forgotten later in the future, like some that was really funny then, but like is not really something that's gonna historically make an impact.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:55

So I guess this movie is more timeless because of the of what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:03

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:04

And like they they kind of avoid those types of like in you know, in the beginning where Jake's showing off his drawings to the the uh editor, he's he's got like Richard Nixon in there. And like but there's no like Nixon jokes. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that would have been I feel like that would have been a thing that would have made this movie a lot worse. But like Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:26

I don't know. Yeah, because like whenever we see that, like they there's like a Nixon pin, right? Like on one of the guys' decks uh desks, and it's like that was during that scene, that was before Watergate, and like they never even brought up Watergate throughout this. Though in the director's cut, I don't know if it was in yours, there is like a section where it's like a full minute of a black screen, and it's trying to tell you how like time has passed by like giving you a bunch of like news radio, like radio and news um audio. It's like talking about how Vietnam's over and like all these things that have happened, and like even like other serial killers that have been caught, just show like all this has happened, so no one really cares about the zodiac killer anymore, yeah. Except for like Gray Smith and these few detectives. And also to show like this guy, like no one they never caught him.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:14

A lot stuff, a lot of stuff has happened, and it's we've had a lot of better serial killers since the zodiac, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:21

Well, in terms of body count, yes. I mean, because you had Bundy, Night Stalker, all in BTK.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:29

Bundy with his hand in his pants. Oh, love that show.

unknown 1:49:34

What?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:37

Oh Married with Children, yeah. Um also for the fun, I put the whole cast. I mean, like they're all they're all like huge stars now. Yeah, so it was it was amazing. It was a great movie, and I really enjoyed it. Um, so we're gonna hit our next category. Double features. We recommend a movie to go alongside this movie. I obviously put Dare Dirty Harry. Nice. I can't wait to watch Dirty Harry. Yeah, because that's also the next movie we're doing because Zodiac told me to.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:07

You read it today in the paper.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:09

So what was your double feature? I loved uh Donnie Darko. Yeah. So it is so surreal and there's so much just like lore, I guess, surrounding the movie. I just fell in love with it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:25

Something about Jake Gyllenhaal and like his career, especially in the 2000s, is he has a very childlike feel to him. Even in this film, right? He does. He has like a childlike feel to him.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:36

Every time he was like had kids, I was like, what?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:38

What? Yeah, why do you have a kid?

SPEAKER_03 1:50:40

Wait, you have three kids now? Like you got a baby at night talking to a detective? Like, what the fuck, man? You're like 19.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:47

Yeah. I think it was and it's just because I guess the way he looks and the way he sounds and stuff. But there's like the part where he's talking to the bunny and he kind of like giggles at him. He's like, what are you talking about, Bloody? Fantastic. But it was the first.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:02

Donnie Darko is like the first movie where it really got into like the psychological, like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:10

Like I feel like it's a lot of you know, young adults, like first, like mind bender.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:18

Yeah. Have you ever thought about this, man? But like with the time travel and shit. Like the crazy shit coming out of their chest, like guiding them through the so good. Oh. Can't wait. We're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:31

We're gonna do it. We're gonna do Dirty Harry. No.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:36

No. I can't wait to watch Dirty Harry.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:38

I say we should do this week, Dirty Harry, and the week after, or next week, Dirty Harry, the week after that, Orange County, the week after that, Donnie Darko. Sound good? I'm down. Let's see if I can remember any of that. Yeah. Join us next week for Dirty Harry. We're gonna wrap this song bitch up. We're gonna get dirty. Thank you for listening. Send us some damn fan mail. Link in the description. Email at the bottom of the description. We recommend mailbag at gmail.com. Leave us some reviews. We also definitely got another listener. So thank you. If you are new here, preach. Preach. Preach. That's appreciated.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:16

I've never heard that before. Yep. That's so fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:18

Just did it for the first time. Or right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:20

Big tell me.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:21

So uh get ready for our merch where we just say preach. Preach. Preach. Or how do you spell it? P-R-E-E-S-A? I can't even spell appreciate anyway. So don't ask me. Me and the Zodiac have something in common we can't spell. But yeah, uh, we'd love to hear from you. Please leave some reviews and stuff like that. Tell friends about it. Be like, hey. Listen to these assholes. I'm listening to. You want to listen to a movie about a serial killer and a bunch of jokes, then here you go. Um I'd also like to thank Joey Prosser for intro and outro music. You can follow him at Mr. Joey Prosser on X. And this has been the We Recommend Podcast. I've been Jesse. I've been Jason. I just want to look this podcast in the eyes and know that it's a podcast. Bye. Nice.