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

14:45Sean Fennessey:It's a really unusual 4K transfer just because it's like, it was a movie that was shot digitally basically in 1080, so it shouldn't look good. And then you pop the disc in and you're like, they spent a fuck ton of time improving it. It looks better on 4K now than it did in movie theaters. I can't think of very many examples where that's true. Right up at the edge of

15:00Bill Simmons:this looks too good.

15:02Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

15:02Bill Simmons:It looks so good that they use, one of the things about this movie is he uses, I think, a different actor for each kill scene. Yes. And you, the transfer is so good that you can actually tell they're different actors. But I think you're supposed to be able to. Yes. Like, I think it's supposed to lead to the ambiguity of, like, who was this guy? Was there more than one? It definitely wasn't the short guy in the basement. You can rule him out. He was too short. Is that Bob Vaughn? No, our guy from... The movie poster guy. Yeah. Our guy from Welcome Back, Cotter. No, I mean, Bob... Wasn't the guy's name Bob Vaughn?

15:35Bill Simmons:Bob Vaughn, yeah. I wrote down things I like about Zodiac and why I think it has the power that it does. Meticulously researched and executed. So there's... The big three for this is all the President's Men in this and Spotlight. I think are weirdly similar movies, even though they're completely different, about completely different thing and the style of them is different. But they're both like people trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle and newspapers are prominently involved. And what is this? How do we figure this out, right? And we love all those movies. We've done all of them on rewatchables.

16:09Bill Simmons:I had Spotlight in the most rewatchable list, which I think stunned people, but I watched it all the time because I loved the process of it. What number was that?

16:16Sean Fennessey:Do you remember?

16:17Bill Simmons:It was like in the, I'm going to say the teens.

16:20Sean Fennessey:Higher or lower than Proof of Life?

16:22Bill Simmons:It was higher. So wait, is Zodiac going right into the Proof of Life slot or is it actually higher? Okay. You say meticulously researched. It's worth mentioning that David Fincher and James Vanderbilt, the screenwriter, re-interviewed all the living witnesses, cops, newspaper people that they could find who were involved with this case and basically redid the police work and used police reports as like a baseline for their... Well, they spent 18 months on it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, that's like, I don't think anyone would ever do that again. Well, I'm going to do that for Book of Basketball.

16:58Book of Basketball, too? I'm going to get Isaiah Thomas. I'm going to be like, hold on. Yeah, hold on. Wait, are you... What's the secret?

17:05Sean Fennessey:Are you adapting Book of Basketball for a narrative feature film like this? It ends with a serial killer.

17:11Bill Simmons:Did you know they spent 18 months doing this? No, but that makes sense. It's also very Fincher to do that. I mean, he takes 60 takes. Panic Room 02. Five years go by between movies. And he was supposed to do this Black Dahlia project that he wanted. It's interesting in the research, he envisioned it as this movie miniseries, this five-part thing. He's basically circling Mindhunter for about 15 years. So I guess that would have been HBO? One of the only places it could have gone. Netflix didn't even exist back then. Either HBO or Showtime? Where else would that even go? He had to be pushing into digital and him pushing into streaming.

17:44He's a couple years ahead of everybody for a while there. So anyway, that's one.

17:50Bill Simmons:It's a two-part movie where it's like the first half of the movie is basically Zodiac. He's killing people. How do we figure that? And then the second part is all about the impact that all those murders had on all of these characters that were in there. And I like how there's a clear shift when it says four years later. We're now in a different movie, but it's the same movie episode. But I like how they just shift. It's a horror movie that's not a horror movie. It's super scary, but it's not Saw. It's not Halloween 2. Reporting procedural, only unlike in Spotlight and All the President's Men, they never solve it.

18:29Bill Simmons:and then the big one which I think you know is the easiest point to make about this but it's this movie about fucking crazy obsession only in this case what happens if you're obsessed with something you never get an answer which is how CR feels about Joel Embiid

18:46Sean Fennessey:you don't feel you have the answer at this point no because Joel Embiid

18:49Bill Simmons:will go out and he'll torch the rockets and then CR's like maybe this case isn't closed I've been chasing the wrong guy

18:57Sean Fennessey:Joel Embiid is Rick Marshall.

19:00Bill Simmons:So, I don't know. Anything else other than that stuff? I mean, the acting's superior, and then it's one of the best filmmakers the last 30 years.

19:06Sean Fennessey:Yeah, it's also like, you know, he's just got a roster of people that he's been working with forever, you know, like Ren Kleist, the sound designer, and Donald Graham Burt, the production designer. Like, he just has this coterie of genius artisans who all know exactly how to work with him. and so he always gets what he wants. You might not always like what he gives you and he's, you know, the last few movies have been much more divisive for him but I think that this is kind of him going to phase two and getting like, basically entering one of the most impressive sequences of movie making that we've seen in the century and the movie itself, like the obsessiveness thing is just what resonates with me the most because I'm one of those people.

19:48Sean Fennessey:Like we're all three of us are just like we're rabbit hole people. Like we just get super into the stuff that we care about. we can't get outside of it sometimes we can't see past it and we like do lose the force for the trees but sometimes the trees are worth spending time on you know and I really love that aspect of it and I also am getting like I'm starting to really realize the intention of the movie the older I get the first time I saw it I was like oh Arthur Lee Allen that's the answer cool this is like a very convincing way of explaining this movie to me and then over time you realize it's Arthur Lee Allen to these guys But that's not enough.

20:25Sean Fennessey:And not being enough actually makes it interesting to spend more time thinking about. So it's pretty profound.

20:30Bill Simmons:Don't you think that's why we end up in the basement?

20:33Sean Fennessey:Among other places, yeah. I think there's a lot of Zodiacs. It's definitely Arthur Leon. Wait, is it? Yeah. The scary thing about the moniker is that it could just stand in for evil. And that there's evil in one of two basements in California, and there's evil out on the highway, and there's evil with this guy who likes going skin diving. You know what I mean? Like there are different, like basically physical representations of what this thing, the Zodiac is. Now, I don't know if Fincher saw it as like a symbolic kind of, you know, more allegorical piece. I think he was very much doing it as a piece of journalism.

21:06But to Sean's point about the obsession, I think the thing that jumps off the screen, especially after you watch it a few times in the making of documentary that comes with the 4K, but you can also watch it on YouTube. I think the prop master or the set designer talks about how when they were doing the San Francisco Chronicle building. That was cool. That, you know, they basically have recreated this newsroom inside of a post office in Los Angeles to shoot in. And they went to the Chronicle and then they had to go to a library in Michigan that had all the old microfiches for 1969 San Francisco Chronicle newspapers.

21:41And they were like, we reprinted them on authentic newspaper so that they were just around in the newsroom. And I was like, I don't know that. That could have just been a pile of, you know, New York Times' from last week if you wanted to. But I feel like the actors knew. And I feel like the people who were, like, working on the movie really did feel like they built this monument. And it jumps off the screen somehow. And maybe it helps to know it. But you know what I mean? Like, you can feel the extra 10 % that went into this movie. That's one of the reasons I like Almost Famous so much.

22:16Bill Simmons:Like, every single aspect of it. He's like, this has to be perfect. That's a 71. This is what this hotel in LA looked like in 1971. And this is what the ashtray looked like.

22:25Sean Fennessey:But two movies made by guys reflecting on when they were 13 years old. I mean, that's really a big part of it too. Like when we were thinking about, you were describing Fincher being obsessed by the Zodiac and he describes him as kind of like his boogeyman. Like I literally was like, that's kind of what Larry Bird was for you. You know what I mean? It's like, he is like, he is legitimately not in a scary way, but he is like a figure from your past when you were young who looms large. And like these people, these things, they imprint on you. And then you just kind of spend your whole life thinking about them.

22:55Bill Simmons:But I would have loved nothing more than a Zodiac-like serial killer running through Massachusetts and New England. Well, as a little kid, it would have been the most fascinating thing happening in my life.

23:06Sean Fennessey:And I mean, it completely explains his filmography. Like look at all the crazy, depraved shit that he's into because of the way that he gets fascinated by this stuff.

23:13Bill Simmons:Yeah, we watched Seven. My son is banging out all these 90s and 2000s movies and we watched Seven. the other night. And you just forget with some of these twists at the end. He's like, that's not going to be Gwyneth Paltrow's head in the box, is it? And I'm like, I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, it's fun to relive some of this stuff through people. Zodiac is one that, he didn't want to watch that one with me. He's like, I'm Fincher'd out. He'd watch Seven and Fight Club. He's like, I've had enough of Fincher. I'm like, well, you'll circle back.

23:49Sean Fennessey:It's a different energy, too. You might want to be a little bit older.

23:52Bill Simmons:Well, it's also these Fincher movies are invasive. Yeah. Even Panic Room, which is a relatively simple movie. That's not a double feature movie. He's manipulating us. Yeah. Well, You Love Mindhunter is your favorite TV show probably of all time of the last 15 years. It's definitely one of the best shows of the 21st century, I would say that. And it's got some umbilical cord to this. Yeah. I think that you can see in... I think the Lee interrogation is essentially like a blueprint for a lot of what happens in Mindhunter where they're going to these sort of notorious killers and being like, what can we learn from you to help us to profile and to help us catch people in the future?

24:34And like equally large, you know, there's a bunch of stuff in Northern California in Mindhunter, but it's, you know, it's equally about obsession.

24:42Bill Simmons:John David Carroll.

24:43Sean Fennessey:John Carroll Lynch. John Carroll Lynch, whatever his name is. John Carroll. So that scene in particular, which I'm sure we'll spend time on, is one of the most electrifying people talking to each other scenes I can ever remember in a movie theater. In the movie theater, I was vibrating during this scene. Now, it ultimately is not as impactful as you think it's going to be. Because also it's like an hour and a half and in the movie you're like, wow, we're getting near the end. They found him. I didn't know anything about the Zodiac. I was not like a serial killer kid growing up. I didn't really follow this stuff.

25:15Sean Fennessey:And the fact that the movie is just like, okay, that happened. And now we've got an hour more of movie. And the next hour is just like, well, we don't really know. It's a crazy choice. That's an amazing choice. For somebody like Ben, who's like, okay, I watched Seven. I watched Seven. And it's about these two cops who learn to work together to bring down this mastermind. So he's like, oh, what's the next sin? Yeah, exactly. And it's like, but it's David, you know, it's the Kevin Spacey's sin that takes down David because it's like he goes, he covets his wife. It's like, I get it. I get it. With this, it's like, they catch him, and then because an eccentric handwriting expert disagrees with them, the Zodiac killer is free.

25:58Even though his brother and his sister-in-law are like, he's the Zodiac. Yeah, in the same glove size,

26:04Bill Simmons:same shoes.

26:05Sean Fennessey:It's like, it runs even deeper if you even believe in that idea because it's like, they did catch him for pedophilia, and he was in prison for years. So he was off the street. And the letters stopped. And the letters stopped. And then it takes them years to even figure it out.

26:19Bill Simmons:The letters and murders both stopped.

26:20Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I mean, there's just like, it's not just about obsession, it's also about information overload and getting lost in the information. And you can see by the end of the movie that Toski has just gotten lost. You know, that he has just, because there's been so much. That's because fucking Armistead Mopping came and did a drive-by on him, man.

26:36Bill Simmons:Yeah, that was a tough one. We'll get into that. You know, that scene you talk about when they interrogated him, how great that was. And it's probably my most rewatchable scene because it's so much fun to watch. and the three actors kind of sizing him up and the faces Ruffalo makes in that scene where he's just, he's trying to stay deadpan, but you can see he's like... When he's like, I suppose you'll want to know about the bloody knives in my trunk. And they're just like... He's like, that's a nice watch. May I see it? May I see it? You know? Yeah. He sits down and he crosses his legs and what's that guy's name?

27:11Bill Simmons:Elias Coteas? Yeah. And he just sees the boot and he's like, Yeah. Does one of those, but there's like 10 of those. One of the things with Fincher that, you know, he's such a stylistic, awesome director, right? And you think of him like how things look. He's a music video guy. He's so good at people talking. And I don't know if it's because he makes them do 800 takes for every scene, but he has some of the best dialogue scenes we've had this century.

27:38Sean Fennessey:He definitely talks a lot in the commentary for this movie about making sure that the human behavior is right, making sure that it feels appropriate. to how people would act. But I think he also does stylistic stuff, to your point, in that scene in particular where he doesn't do a lot of singles directly down the barrel of the camera in the whole movie. Except for this. In that scene. In that scene, you see every single person looking right into the camera. It's the only time we get the killer's POV. Right. Because they're staring at him.

28:06Bill Simmons:Our guy Michael Mann is good at this too. Like when we did Thief, our favorite scene was the diner scene. Where it's just two people talking for a while. No, Michael Mann had probably not as good dialogue as the Fincher movies were. I don't think Michael Mann could have done the first social network scene that would not have been in his movie. Yeah, yes, right. I mean, look, Fincher at this period is moving into this new phase where he's on digital. And his whole thing is he hates sincerity and he hates earnestness in performance. So basically, there are two... I want to talk a lot about David Fincher and running a gulag while he's shooting this thing.

28:45And it's one of my favorite elements of talking about this movie. This is the movie, too, where that myth started. Yes, because of Downey and Jill and all. Yeah, but basically he's like, there's two things. A, I want them to push past the point where they're acting to achieve a single take that is the right take. He's like, let's actually work. Let's actually find something interesting. And second of all, the actors on his screen as Mark Ruffalo said is like they're 10 % of the screen. He's also looking at the way light hits a glass in the background. And if you watch some of those newspaper, the newsroom scenes, just try, go watch one of those online and watch the people walking around in the background.

29:28It looks like real life. It's not three people going cantaloupe, rhubarb, blah, blah, blah to each other. It's people actually doing jobs in the background. And apparently Fincher would be like, yeah, man, like she would not be going to that office because she works for this guy, so she has to go to that office. Like, that level of understanding of, like, 100 yards.

29:48Bill Simmons:Fincher might be the Zodiac guy.

29:50Sean Fennessey:You know, he obviously kind of relates in some ways to the methodologies of these crazy people.

29:56Bill Simmons:The actual Fincher quote was, films aren't finished, they're abandoned. So you mentioned the run he goes on here. Is this Benjamin Button, which randomly I watched last night. He shoots that immediately after this. Yeah. I would have cut the lady in the bed hospital old Cate Blanchett just would have cut every scene with that it's that would have been my note if Dave was coming to me like hey what should I do Simmons maybe he should come over for a pod and you're just like here's some notes for you just start start with young he'd probably enjoy that turn his mic off just let him go so it would be like the top 50 pod

30:32Sean Fennessey:yeah top 50 problems maybe we could redo the top 50 pod with him too just

30:37Bill Simmons:you don't agree with me cut her out so you like Limitless that is

30:41Sean Fennessey:probably my least favorite David Fincher movie mine too it is it's really interesting to watch that a technical marvel and a fascinating idea and you can see him trying to like get his arms around sincerity I feel like I wonder whether or not like he was like spent from Zodiac and was like I can do all the like surface level like technical brilliance of this but there's not

31:04Bill Simmons:it's a whimsical fantasy romance maybe there's not like a full idea in there I don't know it's a really fun

31:09Sean Fennessey:swing and miss. It's also the only like proper literary adaptation that he did. Like obviously Fight Club was a novel, but like a kind of more classical old school movie. And like he had circled a number of movies like that for years, including like 20 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And it's kind of the closest he got to make, like making a John Huston movie. But the thing I was going to say about that is that he's not a writer director. And like unlike most of the people that I lionize, they're all like auteurs. They're writer directors. He is like going script to script and he has his writers who he likes.

31:42Sean Fennessey:But, you know, the James Vanderbilt script, that was just like Disney optioned the Graysmith book and then it fell out of ownership. And he wrote it on spec. And then Vanderbilt wrote it on spec because he loved the story and loved the book. And then somehow they sold it and he just kind of came onto the project for hire. And that makes him very different. Like it makes him very different from I think a lot of the way that we think about the great filmmakers of the last 30 years. so he so

32:08Bill Simmons:this movie Zodiac Button a year later Social Network and then Dragon Tattoo Gone Girl Dragon Tattoo Gone Girl and that's all in like what six years yeah seven years through Gone Girl right yeah

32:22Sean Fennessey:that's an amazing run and all those to me all of those movies maybe with the exception of Button get better every time you watch them yes I recently rewatched Dragon Tattoo and I was like this is absolutely awesome the cast is this a 22 person cast like 22 people deep like it's it's nuts this is the cast they designed

32:43Bill Simmons:deon waiters for jake gyllenhaal coming off broke back at a nice point in his career donnie darko was like oh two and jarhead yeah and so it was kind of like hey this guy he might be something and this was an important movie for him and he's the star of the movie ruffalo who was now in that zone of like i'm gonna do a weird rom-com that sucks i might do a decent a rom-com. I'll be in this weird indie movie. Then I'll be in an awesome movie. Then I'll be in another weird movie. Then I'll be in another awesome movie. He was just all over the map. But he'd been collateral a couple years earlier. This movie.

33:15Bill Simmons:And it's just every few years he'd have another good one. I love him in this movie. Really important Downey movie. This was like right at the start of the comeback. It was almost down and out there in the mid-2000s.

33:26Sean Fennessey:Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and then this, right?

33:28Bill Simmons:Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is like three years earlier.

33:30Sean Fennessey:I think he had been like, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was like, now I can be insured again. and now and then and then Iron Man the next year that was it

33:38Bill Simmons:Anthony Edwards one of the most successful TV actors of all time

33:42Sean Fennessey:secret sauce of this movie

33:43Bill Simmons:for sure Logan Roy Brian Cox Brian Cox yeah Charles Fleischer we mentioned who the old people can remember from Welcome Back Cotter was also Roger Rabbit one of those guys

33:57Sean Fennessey:yeah he was the head of RK he was RK Maroon head of Maroon Studios you guys remember that from Roger Rabbit I don't. No? Maroon cartoons? You guys remember that?

34:06Bill Simmons:Sean was attracted to Jessica Rabbit. I mean, redhead. She was my Zodiac killer. Zach Grenier? Yeah. One of those guys? Yeah. Might remember him from Philadelphia?

34:18Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

34:19Bill Simmons:He was kind of the one who came around and had Andy's back a little bit. He felt bad. Oh, yeah. He's the Justice Department guy in this.

34:25Sean Fennessey:He was in Fight Club. He's Ed Norton's Boston Fight Club.

34:28Bill Simmons:Philip Baker Hall? Sherwood. I love hard sharp B's and butter in my ass. That's just what I like. It is funny when he's like pruning his bushes when Gyllenhaal comes and sees him. I'm kind of like, I kind of think he's going to say. It's like, Jake, everything's going to video. It's a simple man. Elias Koteas. Little James Legros. Just a whiff. Little Dash at the end. Little Dash at Donald Logue. Yeah, Logue. John Carroll Lynch James LeGrow has one of my favorite lines in the movie where he's like, good for him but he's like, yeah, that guy's gonna go catch the Zodiac John Carroll Lynch, fresh off Fargo yeah this was kind of the peak for him he was Mr.

35:15Bill Simmons:Gunderson, right? Dermot Mulroney, not sure why he's in this movie and Chloe Sevigny

35:20Sean Fennessey:Fincher said Dermot Mulroney Chloe Sevigny, we'll talk about momentarily maybe the hottest she's ever looked Dermot Mulroney Fincher says, he was just like Just one of my favorite guys doesn't really have anything to do in this movie. I don't know why he did it. We put him in a fat suit. I thought it was funny.

35:35Bill Simmons:He has a very glaringly pot belly.

35:38Sean Fennessey:They've never worked together before. It's like, why is Dermot... Dermot Maruti was kind of a movie star. Yeah. He's in four scenes and he's like, interesting. Don't get him. He's like, what do you want to do? Okay. Take a night off.

35:51Bill Simmons:Where does this rank for Gyllenhaal performances for you?

35:55Sean Fennessey:It's the last in a very important era, but is not my favorite era. It's the wide-eyed, innocent, weirdo era. Yes. Which is like how he got launched with Donnie Darko. Is Prisoners before this? It's after. Okay. And so right after this stretch, this was going to be what's the most 2007 movie, 2007 aspect of this movie for me. One of them was immediately after this, end of watch, prisoners and enemies. Enemy comes. And then he's like, we're off. Like I'm a fucking weirdo in every movie. Yeah. My eyes are bulging out of my head. I do something strange. I've just blown a line of cocaine directly into my cortex.

36:30Sean Fennessey:And I have insane energy no matter what. And he still holds that to this day with like ambulance and roadhouse and everything else he's been doing. This is the last time it was like, he's sweet. Is there something wrong with him? You know, like that's kind of the energy that he's given. Ten years later, we're like, there is something wrong with him. We got to do prisoners just for Gyllenhaal being like, why are you shopping for kids' clothes?

36:56Detective Loki.

36:58Bill Simmons:It was funny doing a podcast in person with him, which I did probably like seven, eight years ago. Was that for the Boston Marathon movie? Yeah, when we had our old offices. Totally normal guy. I kept waiting for him to be super weird, and he just wasn't.

37:12Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I met him. He was totally normal. But in every movie, he's like, you want to go do heroin? It seems insane.

37:19Bill Simmons:Downey is just playing all... It's like Downey karaoke in this movie. He's playing all the hits. I want to get like a little patron saint necklace of Downey in this movie and wear it all the time. Aquavalva? Yeah. Downey's in his own movie that I also would have watched. If there was like a Paul Avery, there's this fleeting three seconds when Gyllenhaal's character is walking home from work and he peeks into that bar. Morty's, yeah. And all the people from this paper just getting bombed. That was newspapers in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. Like, you finish work, there was some dive bar. Like at the Boston Herald, it was J.J.

37:54Bill Simmons:Foley's. Everybody would go to Foley's after work. Yeah, there was a bar across the street from the Inquirer that allegedly had a phone line directly to the copy desk so the copy desk could call the bar to ask questions. Every city has them. And it was just like, I could have spent another 20 minutes with those guys just talking about, like, fucking Dr. J. Is Dr. J coming?

38:15Sean Fennessey:One of my favorite cuts in the movie is late in the movie when Avery's really kind of bedraggled, and they cut to him and he's sitting in the bar and he's got the oxygen tank in the bar with him. right he's so chock and then Ruffalo he left it all on the floor man come on what do you want from him

38:31Bill Simmons:Ruffalo so he's in you can count on me that was like his arrival movie that's 2000 and he kind of had this could be the next one vibes for a while I don't think it 100 % happened for him the way maybe we might have thought when we were buying his tops cards you say that and I know what you mean but he's also the Hulk and he was just in task I mean like I feel like he's had a really solid career. But not, you wouldn't... I think he's a little too idiosyncratic to be... I don't know, who are you thinking of? Chris Pratt? I've never been able to get a handle on what his career preference was. Because he just made a couple...

39:12Bill Simmons:How much are you paying me? I'll take it. But then he was also like, I really care about the craft. I'm just in it. And it's like, which are you? Which one? are you the craft guy or are you the paycheck guy? I mean he's both. He's like

39:26Sean Fennessey:I'm 13 going on 30. I'm now you see me. I'm you know I'm in poor things. I'm in Shutter Island. Like I work with the greatest filmmakers of all time. I've also made six Marvel movies. I kind of respect it.

39:43Bill Simmons:Well you know what we really learned about him? They knew! They knew and you cut him loose! this is a good this is the pepper to that salt this is like him just being like finish the book like he has some great lines and some great turns and like Toski could be like you could really put a lot more mustard on this one and he doesn't he keeps him really like kind of grounded especially because the guy he's playing was a pretty legendary 70s detective because he's tied in with Dirty Harry and all this stuff yeah he's a pretty well known guy yeah I think this is my second favorite Ruffalo performance.

40:23Bill Simmons:After you can count on me? I still think you can count on me as the best. I think that's the best he's ever been in a movie.

40:28Sean Fennessey:And you can count on me, he seems like a real person. You know, he seems like somebody you've met. And there's like something very tangible about kind of like the mistakes that he's making. And he has become like a little bit more of a caricature-ish kind of actor. But he's very entertaining. Like the spotlight thing is very memorable. But like, is it good acting? Like it's not particularly good, but it's appropriate for the movie. I feel this way in the Marvel movies where I'm like, is Mark Ruffalo just like doing bits? Like, what is this? But he's obviously capable of a lot. The Tosky role is like a real performance where he's changing his voice, changes his posture.

41:04Sean Fennessey:Fincher talks about all the stuff he brought to it where like Tosky at the time he learned was really having trouble with ulcers. So when he walks into the diner and he gets half of the BLT from Armstrong, he takes the tomato off because it would bother his stomach. He starts popping Tums during the movie. You know, he's taking antacids because he's having stomach problems. They don't explain any of that stuff. But he, as like a very serious actor, he's like, I'm going to spend time with this guy, research him and make choices. I don't always feel like he does that, but when he does do it, he's pretty much elite.

41:33Bill Simmons:It's a very calculated, cultivated, manicured performance. Yes. I really like it. It's very, very, very under control. Did you watch Task? I didn't. Yeah, he's, I mean, like if you want to see late period Ruffalo absolutely cooking. He didn't watch Task because he watched Poor Thing seven times. Just cranking it out. Saw it a couple times. Just got some good stuff. Know what? Begonia. Saw Begonia a couple times. A couple of Begonias. Liked it. Director's commentary. Didn't see that. Your ghost director. Didn't see that.

41:59Sean Fennessey:Did he do one for that? I don't know. You don't know.

42:02Bill Simmons:Gyllenhaal, Downey, Ruffalo. Your favorite out of those three, Craig, in this. Ruffalo. I think Ruffalo's great. I think he's been the least corrupted by Marvel in my mind. I almost think part of it is because he never had to physically transform like the rest of these guys in the Marvel movies who just become action figures. It's a good point. And Ruffalo has always looked and seemed like a normal person. And I think it's why he's just a floor raiser in every movie. I love Ruffalo. Robert Downey, I think going back now, I had never seen Zodiac until yet last night. The RDJ schtick, the Iron Man schtick is like fully cooking in this movie.

42:38Yes. And it is a little weird to kind of play with that. It's still enjoyable and I think he's very good in it. But it's hard not to be like, I'm kind of watching Tony Stark here. A little bit.

42:46Bill Simmons:I felt that set that way a little bit too. But in the moment, I'm sure you were like, oh my God. I liked it though. No, because the movie needed it. It needed a weirdo.

42:52Sean Fennessey:He is like that in Chaplin.

42:54Bill Simmons:You know, like he is like that in every movie. Like that was his thing. This is his thing. This is like what he does. He's definitely in that in Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield.

43:00Sean Fennessey:Totally. I don't know what he's going for in that movie. He is. I mean, he's always kind of that like yammering, sarcastic, smarter than everybody guy. That's his screen persona, right? And it just so happens that he, at like 48 years old, managed to turn it into the biggest thing that happened in movies in the 21st century.

43:18Bill Simmons:Right. We're going to take a break and then there's an Oscars discussion we need to have. And we're going to talk about the actual Zodiac killer and what we think happened. This episode is brought to you by Hotels.com. Save Your Way is a new feature on Hotels.com and it's as simple as it sounds. When you book a trip as a Hotels.com member, you decide how to use your savings. Take the instant savings now or bank the savings as rewards for later. It's your call. Only at Hotels.com. Save Your Way is available to loyalty members in the U.S. and U.K. and hotels with member prices. Other terms apply.

43:50Bill Simmons:See site for details. This episode is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. You know that thing where you finish a movie and you immediately have to look up who directed it, what year it came out, how much money it made? Suddenly it's 1 a.m. Well, Claude is built for that kind of rabbit hole. Deep research featuring digs across dozens of sources. Pulls it all together. Cast connections, box office context, production history so you're not bouncing between 10 tabs because that stinks. It thinks with you instead of just handing you a quick summary. Try it free at claude.ai slash rewatchables.

44:28Bill Simmons:2007 Oscars, March 2008. This movie just gets shut out. Zero. Doesn't make Best Picture. I was shocked by this. Zero. No Best Director. If you were doing the Big Picture

44:39Sean Fennessey:back then, would you just have quit well it came out and it came out in late february and back then that was a problem now everything ever all at once came out in march sinners came out in april it's no longer a problem they've changed the calendar but if you put your movie out in february you're telling the world in 2007 don't worry about this you don't have to vote for this best picture no country

45:01Bill Simmons:wins atonement juno michael clayton there will be blood if we're doing that again it's just cracking in the list. I don't know who gets bumped. Juno would go out. Juno had a moment, though, in 07. It was a huge movie. People got really excited about it. Sure. There were new actors people got fired up about. It was a Jason Ryben movie. Yeah, I like it. I think it's a good movie. I like it. I think it gets bumped. I really like Atonement. I mean, personally. Directors was Cohen's one. Julian Schnabel. Schnabel. Schnabel. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Yeah, you seen that one? Tavier, yeah. Jason Ryman, Tony Gilroy, and Paul Thomas Anderson.

45:39Bill Simmons:I forgot Gilroy got nominated. Best Actor, which I think Jake would have been eligible for. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Guy named Daniel Day-Lewis won for a movie called They're Ruby Blood. I think we're going to keep that where it is.

45:53Sean Fennessey:Yeah. That's a good one.

45:54Bill Simmons:Clooney. That's a good win. Tommy Lee Jones in the Valley of Ela.

45:59Sean Fennessey:Mm-hmm.

45:59Bill Simmons:Ela? Ela? I don't remember. I can't remember, honestly. It's been a minute since I saw that Haggis. Viggo Mortensen. For Eastern Promises. Johnny Depp and Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber. What the fuck were we doing there? Jesus Christ.

46:15Sean Fennessey:We were really enthralled to Big Depp at this time.

46:19Bill Simmons:Jake could have taken that spot.

46:20Sean Fennessey:Big Depp and Big Burton.

46:21Bill Simmons:Have you seen that Sweeney Todd?

46:23Sean Fennessey:No. Have you seen it staged? I saw it on Broadway.

46:27Bill Simmons:Did you really? Yeah, I saw it as a play. It was cool.

46:30Sean Fennessey:Do you remember who was in the lead? I saw it in Boston.

46:32Bill Simmons:I saw it with my dad. Okay. That's what it was. Interesting. I mean also a movie about a serial killer I might have seen it a little too young I was like what's going on they're eating these people this barber's a demon that's the problem it wasn't seeing Halloween when you were like coming up next top five demon barbers best actor in a supporting world this is when it gets tough Bardem wins for no country fine I support it Casey Affleck and Jesse James yep really good really good Seymour Hoffman Charlie Wilson's War he's really good in that movie. Incredible. I can't kill him on that. He owns the movie.

47:06Bill Simmons:Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild, that feels like an old guy getting rewarded by the Oscars.

47:11Sean Fennessey:It is a good performance, but it is exactly what you just described.

47:14Bill Simmons:And then Wilkinson for Michael Clayton, who's good. Yes. Ruffalo probably takes that Holbrook spot, I'm guessing. Right? Ruffalo over Downey. You tell me. It's Downey for me, but it's also a personal... He's also playing my kind of music in this movie. Let's go with either. I think one of those guys has to be in there.

47:35Sean Fennessey:I think in a just world, it's the kind of thing where we just saw two actresses get into supporting from sentimental value. Why would you not just put both guys in from Zodiac?

47:47Bill Simmons:This was actually the worst of all of these. Best writing, adapted screenplay. No Country Wins. Atonement Away from Her, Diving Bell and the Butterfly and There Will Be Blood. Zodiac, I guess, which they spent four years on in the screenplays i just don't understand that one at all but this speaks to how the movie was regarded in 2007 which it was not i think fincher was considered

48:13Sean Fennessey:such a commercial director and a lot most of what he was doing because he came out of music videos was oriented around success and you know seven being such a surprise hit after recovering from the Alien 3 issue, that this movie being a commercial failure, I think, was really held against it around all this stuff.

48:33Bill Simmons:You an Alien 3 guy, CR? I like the look of it, but I think it's got a lot of... I mean, he had a terrible time making it. I think there was a lot of recutting and rewriting and stuff. Alright, so we mentioned this movie was adapted from Zodiac 1986 and Zodiac Unmasked in 2002. And they spent all this time interviewing witnesses suspects our family members suspects the surviving victims they interviewed mayors and Fincher said so much time had passed memories are affected the different telling of the stories would change perception so whenever we had doubt we went with the police reports Ruffalo's character basically says that in the movie when he's telling um Gray Smith to basically you gotta give this up he's like too much time has passed people can't remember shit anymore so I feel like Fincher slid that in there um

49:24Sean Fennessey:It's almost like the philosophy of the movie, right?

49:26Bill Simmons:Yeah. It's like, if you don't spring on it now, we're in trouble. Vanderbilt, the writer, pitched the story as, what if Gary Trudeau woke up one morning and tried to solve the son of Sam? Interesting. They didn't want to glamorize the killer. Fincher said, quote, that would have turned the story into a first-person shooter video game. We didn't want to make the sort of movie that serial killers would want to own. Hmm. I like that. Because you're not, if you're like a future possible serial killer, you're not watching this like, Arthur Lee, I want to be this dude. This guy's really cool. Amazing things that I found about when reading about the actual Zodiac killer is that there's a couple of unconfirmed Zodiac letters where he's like chiming in on movies.

50:11He's just giving takes and he's like, Exorcist, really good satire. And like, there's even one that they're not sure it's from him, but he's like, Badlands, like he hates Badlands. it glorifies murderers yeah

50:26Bill Simmons:so there was a bunch of unconfirmed material and it just could have been some wacko writing like but it was like this guy like just shooting from the hip we gotta get the

50:34Sean Fennessey:Zodiac Killers top 5 most rewatchable movies podcast seriously can he bounce back on your list you know he's weighing in on Rick Barry in the 75 Warriors I believe in these guys is he into Devil Wars Prada or does he land on that one

50:49Bill Simmons:oh he probably would have loved that Zodiac timeline. So they don't have the first attack in the movie. For a very specific reason, though. Explain. Well, they don't have any living witnesses. And so they were like, we're not going to start with something where we can't. The ones that they depict are ones that they had living witnesses to be able to corroborate some of the details about.

51:10Sean Fennessey:Yeah, it also allows the movie to be both introduce a kill at the very top, but also be in media res for the rest of the people around it. So like the newspaper and the cops get to be like, we know there's an issue. Like something is building here as opposed to starting all the way at the beginning.

51:27Bill Simmons:So when you watch this for the first time last night, did you think the murders at the beginning of the movie were the first murders? Or did it make sense as they explained it that there was a murder before it? I assume they were the first murders just watching it. Yeah, so I think it's a little bit of a flaw in the movie. I don't think they made it clear enough. And Riverside is the first murders? Yeah. Okay.

51:44Sean Fennessey:But Fincher says that he's not totally convinced that Riverside is Zodiac. That there is like... That's part of the genius of the movie, right? Is that there's so many incidents in which people are claiming credit as Zodiac for doing them. But Zodiac is... Whether he's smart or crazy or however you want to describe it, we don't really even know what he's responsible for. I gotta be honest. It was much more... It was easier to try and read about the Kennedy assassination than it is to read about the Zodiac killer. Because the Zodiac, it just has so many... different perspectives and permutations and like, this could have been him and there's five guys over here who think it's him and then this guy.

52:26I think just the fact that it took place over so many years, over so much mileage, so many miles, it's just much more complicated to wrap your head around. So, Lover's Lane, that one that starts the movie,

52:38Bill Simmons:that's July 69. That's Darlene Farren, right? They get, and the guy, Mike Mugeot, survives. We see him at the end of the movie. One month later, Zodiac letter to the San Francisco Chronicle with the coded messages. And then September kills the two law students on the water bank. Lake Berryessa. Kills the girl. And the other guy survives. I can recreate some of the screams later if you want to tell me. Like privately? I'll do my Quint Jaws impersonation just for that. Save them for when Tatum comes back from his Achilles.

53:19Bill Simmons:Graysmith makes the dangerous animal of the mall connection to the most dangerous game, 1932. Sean, you have that on 4K?

53:25Sean Fennessey:I have the Eureka edition of it on Blu-ray. Yeah, 1932. Quality film.

53:31Bill Simmons:Joel McRae, right? What was going on in this movie? The villainous Count Zaroff hunting live human prey? You never read this story?

53:38Sean Fennessey:This was given to us in seventh grade English class.

53:41Bill Simmons:I remember the story. I don't understand why they made it a movie in 1932. And then they made it again with Ice-T, right?

53:48Sean Fennessey:Yes. That movie is called... Is it called Trespass? No. Isn't that just called the most dangerous game? Or game?

53:54Bill Simmons:I feel like they make this movie every 10 years. Didn't they do... What was the COVID year? The hunt. The hunt. It's like, let's hunt humans. What is that Ice-T movie? It's not called Trespass. I thought it was called Dangerous Game. Yeah, maybe it's called Dangerous Game.

54:08Sean Fennessey:Anyway, the original movie is... Surviving the game. Surviving the game. There you go. Game, that's right. It's only like 80 minutes. You can feel that they're stretching out a short story. But it's a pretty good movie for the 30s.

54:19Bill Simmons:Then we get the cab driver shot and killed. Zodiac mails the bloodstained shirt to the Chronicle. Yep. Taunting letter. He's talking a lot of smack. Yeah.

54:28Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Kind of the Anthony Edwards of serial killers.

54:31Bill Simmons:He's staring at the bench. Yeah. Little Dylan Brooks in there. Someone claimed to be Zodiac. starts fucking with this lawyer Melvin Belly on a talk show ends up but it's not really him then our guy Roger Avery played by Downey finds this 1966 Paul Avery Riverside murder that he thinks is tied to it that the police missed then they interview Arthur Lee Allen in 71 they notice the Zodiac watch so he's the Zodiac watch he's got same gloves same glove size he's got the boots he's kind of moved around in the general vicinity of where these murders were. We don't find out until the end of the movie that he lived near the first victim.

55:14Bill Simmons:Yes, because he, right. Also has a trailer full of fucking weird shit, including a wooden dildo. And there's 19 other things that seem suspicious, but the handwriting expert just kills it. He's like, nah. Nah, it's not him. Well, it's really hard to watch it and just understand the difference between circumstantial and hard evidence. You know, and like, the idea of like coincidence versus like incrimination.

55:37Sean Fennessey:There's just a dramatic thing where they just can't get a warrant to search his trailer before he cleans out his trailer and moves. I mean, that's the most important thing that happens in this entire case. If they're able to search him and if they had approached this differently, we might not have a movie or even a case. It might just be totally different.

55:55Bill Simmons:CR, how would you compare this to Pablo Torres' aspiration investigation? A lot of circumstantial evidence, but can't find the smoking gun. and Balmer versus Arthur Lee Allen he should have dressed up they kind of have a similar vibe yeah they do Balmer and Pablo's spinning out a little bit

56:15Sean Fennessey:like Graysmith did I'm not the CEO of Aspiration and I wouldn't tell you if I was oh you're talking about why we planted those trees well I can explain that Kawhi Leonard

56:26Bill Simmons:was paid properly under the cap rules yeah um then stuff stops and Not so coincidentally, Arthur Lee Allen's in jail for the second time for molesting people. Yeah. Another red flag. Definitely. And adding that to his draft combine file, multiple boastations. Jesus Christ. By 1976, Gray Smith is just losing his mind, announces he's writing a book, starts getting the heavy breathing phone calls because guess who's out of jail? Arthur Lee Allen. and he figures out he lived close to the first victim figures out the birthday thing which they somehow fucked up where he mentioned I'm going to kill somebody today it's my birthday and all the circumstantial evidence oh by the way it's ambidextrous forgot to mention that part and then eight years later After Grace Smith's book has come out, Mike Mageau, somehow they have not asked to look at an Arthur Leown photo for 12 years here.

57:26Bill Simmons:They're like, what about this guy? He's like, yeah, that's him. Eight out of ten. Pretty good. Yeah. And then Arthur Leown dies of a heart attack. And that's basically the case against Arthur Leown. Yeah. Part of the genius of the movie is the way it portrays bureaucratic disorder.

57:40Sean Fennessey:The fact that there's so many police departments and police officers and detectives. And no internet. And no centralizing force, really. The fact that the FBI is not as involved in this case as it would be in 2025 is kind of fascinating. Like, Mindhunter, in part, is about the kind of development of forces to account for these kinds of crimes. And that doesn't exist here in the same way. And so you've just kind of got all of these local precincts and districts, some from major cities, some from much smaller towns in California. And all these rules where they couldn't really cross the line. Just think about what Graysmith's project is that he tells Avery about on the houseboat.

58:17He's like, I was just thinking if we could just write everything down and if we could just basically like organize all the facts of the case that it might jog something loose. But we take it for granted that there would be this database that has all that information. You know what I mean? It's like, it's the same thing with hospitals where you're like, they used to just have, you know, the charting by hand. And it would be like, sometimes if somebody screwed something up, that would be a huge deal. It's the same thing for police work back then where it was just like, one guy has a telefax, the other doesn't.

58:47One person took good notes, the other didn't. You know, like one guy's pissed at that other jurisdiction and, you know.

58:53Sean Fennessey:In fact, Fincher says that the movie exists and that the entire investigation kind of operated in the way that it did was because Armstrong, Anthony Edwards' character, took such good notes. That there was so much detail and information that they could even just pull from for the movie, let alone for the investigation itself. And if you don't have that raw material, you can't solve crimes. You can't do your job the way that you're supposed to. It's really interesting because we think of that shit as really boring. And I remember for years hearing from my dad about the kind of drudgery that comes with police work.

59:26Sean Fennessey:But when you're trying to solve a major crime that is national news, you need to put all that information somewhere.

59:32Bill Simmons:Well, that's why all three of those movies we mentioned earlier, Spotlight, all the presents been in this movie, the drudgery you can feel. It's like, fuck. All right. We're going to go through these files. Yeah, it's boring. All the president's men has that famous scene when they're in the library, and it's just like, the crane goes up, and they're just like, alright, I guess we gotta go through these. That's like Elon Basketball Reference. You know, it's like, this isn't gonna do itself.

59:52Sean Fennessey:I gotta get all this data.

59:54Bill Simmons:I gotta find out what this guy's nickname is. Arthur Lee Allen, other stuff with him, taught high school students when he was a teacher how to use letter symbols and then decode them. That was on the record. An incredible swimmer, and then found with a bloody knife the same night as the bluff murders, which he said was used to kill a chicken that day. For dinner.

1:00:15Sean Fennessey:Yeah, normal.

1:00:16Bill Simmons:And then, again, multiple pedophilia stuff. So there was... And lived in a trailer full of squirrels and weird shit. And he checked every box except for this one handwriting thing. So there was this other thing. This happened in December. So last month, an amateur sleuth, self-taught cryptography expert named Alex Baber in West Virginia who said one of the reasons he was able to pull this is because he has autism that makes him fixate on things until he can figure out what happened. And he used all these AI programs and he claimed that he figured out the Zodiac thing. And a lot of it came down to the 13 letter names with the mysterious symbols.

1:01:01Bill Simmons:He put it through, it came back 71 million. Then it came back and he kept narrowing the number down until he could narrow it down to 14 and landed on this name Marvin Merrill, who was an alias assumed by Marvin Margolis, who was investigated for the Black Dahlia murder, who was 21 at the time and had all of the same stuff the Zodiac killer would have done. Was a Navy medic, was good at like just doing quick amputations and shit like that, was really bitter about how the Navy thing happened. And then a year before his death, did this drawing of somebody named Elizabeth that looked like the Black Dahlia and this guy, Alex Babers, like this guy did both.

1:01:44Bill Simmons:Yeah. These were the two great unsolved murders of the 20th century or serial killer or whatever. And this guy's saying, I've solved it. It's actually like the demon of, like the devil of California, right? Yeah.

1:01:57Sean Fennessey:The only thing that I always stumble on whenever I hear that kind of insinuation that the Black Dahlia killer and the Zodiac killer were one and the same is like, that's a great distance to travel to commit these crimes. and where the person is living and how they're doing that. And you hear this over and over again. It's like, so somebody had like a 14-hour round trip visit to Marin to go murder a 19-year-old. But is the implication that he was in Southern California up to the Riverside killings and then moved up to the Bay?

1:02:27Bill Simmons:I mean, you could do that stuff back then. Now you can't. Like the guy who, what was the guy in North Dakota or wherever that was recently who killed the, randomly killed like the four people in that dorm?

1:02:38Sean Fennessey:Mm-hmm. Oh, in Idaho.

1:02:40Bill Simmons:And he was studying criminal law or something creepy. But he drove, and then he drove back to where he was, but then didn't realize his cell phone was being tracked. These guys always forget about this cell phone. Yeah. Craig, what are some of the mistakes you make as you kill people around Southern California? Up and down the coast. I've had to stop. It sucks. Yeah. You know?

1:03:00Sean Fennessey:You also, you do have, you have a legacy in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Northern California. We know that about you. Yeah, three serial killer hotbeds. Yeah. I didn't realize Fincher was from North Bay from Marin you didn't realize this was a sting operation and we've identified you as a serial killer this is the captain yeah my buck was right outside the way I'm not super far

1:03:19Bill Simmons:from where I grew up the reason I don't think the Baylor theory is true because I don't think somebody would shut that off for 20 years yes yeah I agree I think you're once you're going you're going there was also somebody there was like a University of Maryland I'm trying to remember who was like responsible there's something called like Case Breakers that's like a bunch of ex-FBI Justice Department people, and, you know, like, they basically tried to solve cold cases. Yeah. And they named someone, it was this guy Greg Post, but he was, like, he made, that was almost, like, sounded like really true detective-y, where he had, like, a criminal posse and would, like, indoctrinate people into this crew, and they would, like, maraud Northern California, but...

1:04:02Well, that's another theory with this. I think there was some DNA with Sherry Bates that they were linking to him or something. I can't remember, yeah.

1:04:07Bill Simmons:Well, one of the other theories is that this was multiple people. Yes. That's the one I think I ascribe to. I think I do too. The film kind of taps into that a little bit with the basement guy. And could people have been working together? The creepy thing about Bob Vaughn and the basement scene is the idea that there is a connection between these different people who wrote the posters. But that they all knew each other and that they were all kind of like on the same frequency.

1:04:33Sean Fennessey:I'm such an Occam's Razor person with this stuff though. and we talked about this when we did JFK on the show, right? Where you guys were like, I'm ready to spend four hours trying to figure out where all the pinboard lines meet.

1:04:43Bill Simmons:Yeah. And to me, like...

1:04:44Sean Fennessey:I feel like we didn't go far enough. And we can read JFK as soon as you want because I'd love to watch it again. But in the movie and based on anything that I've read, it feels very clear to me that Arthur Lee Allen killed Darlene. That's the one thing that I'm like, this makes too much sense. And Mike Vigione kind of knew who it was. Yes, right? He identifies him. The distance between them, the pre-existing relationship, the way in which the murder is happening because of the information that he had around that. So that's one thing that you can kind of put your arms around and say, this makes a lot of sense.

1:05:15Sean Fennessey:It's everything else, the information splatter, the variation in the crime style that is just a little bit harder to make sense.

1:05:23Bill Simmons:That he might've gotten help, yeah. $70 million budget made$85 million. Barely made even. A little bad for Fincher. It was like, wait, we give you a lot of money for this.

1:05:33Sean Fennessey:That was worldwide too. in the US and made like$35 million. He got it all back.

1:05:36Bill Simmons:I mean, like he just goes on this run now. He turned out fine. Yeah. 157-minute runtime. We have a new category in 2026, the Craig Century Club. Craig feels like every movie should be 100 minutes. Craig, this was a minus 57. Yeah. What are your thoughts? What's the ideal runtime? I understand that this movie is supposed to feel like this long, painful process, and it needs to be long. It can't be 100 minutes. I'm willing to admit that. I think you could have probably cut 15 minutes. MGM was going to make this movie, and they had a hard rule that said two hours and 15 minutes max, and then ended up taking it to Paramount.

1:06:12There is, I think, a section in the middle where it's kind of Ruffalo just running into dead ends for a while that starts to feel slow. It's like the first, the Robert Denny Jr. first 15 minutes is great. The Gyllenhaal stuff really picks up and flies at the end. I do think there is a 15-minute chunk in the middle that could probably be cut, to be honest.

1:06:30Bill Simmons:Director's cut, it's longer. and they had a two-minute kind of interstitial when it does the four years later. He cut something about basically all the music over the four years and basically fingered it up. And some news reports of like, oh, this is happening. The screen goes to black. I would have put that in. I feel like that part of the movie is pretty clumsy where it's clearly edited. He almost seems pissed off. It's like, fine. Here's your four years later graphic. Fuck you, motherfuckers. I just spent four months making this two-minute montage of four years of movies.

1:07:01Sean Fennessey:Well, there's rumors of a three-hour and ten-minute cut that was submitted to the studio that I haven't seen. No, it's not. I mean, they did a really nice 4K and there's a director's cut on the Blu-ray with like, that has the extra Avery and... A little bit of stuff. Not a lot. It's all like 40 seconds or something like that.

1:07:21Bill Simmons:Sean, I said on the Another 48 Hours rewatchables a couple days ago that that is my number one release to cut. so there's 25 minutes extra. No kidding. And apparently another 40 minutes and it's a totally different movie that actually makes sense.

1:07:35Sean Fennessey:Did they reveal who the Zodiac Killer is in that film?

1:07:37Bill Simmons:They don't do that. And there's no sign that that cut even exists in a warehouse. We gotta find out from Walter. Paramount butchered it at the last minute. They decided it needed to be 95 minutes and just cut 25 minutes out.

1:07:50Sean Fennessey:Oh, interesting.

1:07:50Bill Simmons:Okay. What's your number one release to cut?

1:07:54Sean Fennessey:The Snyder cut. No. I... I don't know. Most of the cuts are out there, right? Like the legendary ones like Kingdom of Heaven and Blade Runner and all that stuff's been made available to us, right? Yeah. We were doing this for another 48. I couldn't really think of another one besides.

1:08:10Bill Simmons:The other one I came up with was Eyes Wide Shut. Released the Kubrick right before he died cut.

1:08:15Sean Fennessey:The interview, there was an interview with the editor of that film that came out when the Blu-ray, when the 4K was released at the end of last year. And he said the version that is on the Criterion disc is the version that Kubrick wanted out. that it has not been edited.

1:08:29Bill Simmons:And then when the camera pans back, you can see the gun being pointed at him as he says it. Yeah. By the Illuminati.

1:08:34Sean Fennessey:I mean, it's possible that there's another version of that movie.

1:08:38Bill Simmons:Tell us what happened. He's dead. Watch party is another category for us where we decide what is the best setting for a watch or a rewatch. This is a true solo one for me. This is such a funny... This is a CR solo? Yeah, this is like everybody...

1:08:53Sean Fennessey:T-shirt, no pants? The straight... The tubing, yeah.

1:08:57Bill Simmons:This is my wife went to New York for the weekend.

1:09:03Bill Simmons:I'm Porky Pig in it all day. The tubing. Oh, my God. Roger Ebert, our guy. Yeah. Every rewatchable, we read the Roger Ebert review. Four stars. He said, Zodiac is the all the president's men of serial killer movies. Sign me up. With Woodward and Bernstein played by a cop and a cartoonist. then he says Fincher is an elegant stylist on top of everything else here he is he finds the right place and style for a story about persistence in the face of evil Raj you like this? Checked a lot of boxes characters plot story.

1:09:39Sean Fennessey:You can always count on Raj except when you can't I do think that it's kind of weird to try to have a conversation about evil and the idea of evil but it comes up over and over again in all these Fincher movies and he's like definitely thinks it's a little funny. Oh, yeah. But also is completely terrorized by it and the idea that like these people died, you know? Like it's not a joke.

1:10:04Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:10:04Sean Fennessey:And yet there is this real sense of black humor in the movie and a real acceptance of not knowing, never knowing what really happened. I think his way of showing, his way of showing empathy and sensitivity to the victims is by not making their deaths seductive and not making their deaths. He doesn't romanticize them at all.

1:10:25Bill Simmons:Well, so he has seven guys, the fucking craziest person probably who's ever killed anyone in a movie. But it's like, ooh, this guy would have won Jeopardy. You know what I mean? You have the game, which is the craziest prank anyone's pulled on a family member. Such a mean-spirited movie. That movie's nuts. You have Fight Club, which is just one of the kind of secretly most vicious. Ben was watching the other day. I was like, I forgot how fucking crazy this movie was. Chaos at your fingertips in that movie. Panic Room, which is basically these three burglars just going as far as you could possibly go to torture.

1:11:02Sean Fennessey:Yeah, what if we tortured a single mom and her 12-year-old?

1:11:04Bill Simmons:Yeah. Then you have this movie. Then he kind of cools off a little bit.

1:11:09Sean Fennessey:Gone Girl's pretty perverted.

1:11:11Bill Simmons:Then it goes back to Gone Girl.

1:11:12Sean Fennessey:Dragon Tattoo's crazy. Some of the torture scenes in Dragon Tattoo were so vicious. Benjamin Buttony cools off.

1:11:18Bill Simmons:Comes back with Social Network. the biggest sociopath he's ever done a movie about Mark Zuckerberg Dragon Tattoo and then Gone Girl so for the most part he's really fascinated by what makes somebody kind of break

1:11:33Sean Fennessey:and what encourages them to do things that we know are not in polite society are bad are wrong my favorite Fincher quote is still people are fundamentally perverts and I find that interesting it's paraphrasing

1:11:46Bill Simmons:but you guys have 500 ,000 text words back and forth about Fincher movies. You know,

1:11:52Sean Fennessey:a couple of perverts.

1:11:53Bill Simmons:It would have been funny if during this whole run he just made like one random sports movie like Glory Road. Yeah. It's like, I'm going back to the 1960s, the first all black starting five. Guys getting corrupted by like a betting ring and shooting steroids the entire time. You'd watch it though. It'd be meticulously crafted. Honestly, I'd watch anything Fincher did. Me too. Yeah. I just think there's a style to his stuff that you know immediately. It's like when we always talk about writers when you can cover the byline and you know who the writer is. Like Fincher, you know. All right, most rewatchable scene.

1:12:22Bill Simmons:The lover's lane murder is fucking creepy. I don't like flash. Flashlights as a murder scene gimmick really freak me out. Just putting the flashlight on top of the gun? Just like, when they do this, it never goes well. The hurdy-gurdy man, though, is just an amazing. I love all the Vallejo stuff at the beginning, too. Just like that static tracking shot of the suburbs and the fireworks and stuff. It's a really, really good first six minutes. Like, you're just, you're in.

1:12:51Sean Fennessey:Puts you right in the place at that time. And also, if you think about it through the eyes of Fincher, it's like him just like rebuilding his childhood.

1:13:01Bill Simmons:I want to just mention Gray Smith reading the decoded letter with Roger watching along. We get a little back and forth with them. In the Chronicle. Paul. You keep saying Roger. I'm glad I said Roger. Yeah, because it's Roger Avery from Pulp Fiction. Thank you for correcting me, Paul. Why do I keep saying Roger? Because we know who Roger Avery is. Screenwriter. Paul Avery. Yeah.

1:13:21Sean Fennessey:Paul Avery is the journalist. Thank you, Chris.

1:13:23Bill Simmons:I knew I was going to have name mess ups in this. You got a lot on your minds. You're trying to find the Zodiac killer. And then when we find out he gave himself the name, I am the Zodiac. The bluff murder. Do you have a version of that? When did you say I am the Boston sports guy? Well, that was when there was a Boston movie guy. Were you sending coded messages? Is that true? Is that what it was? This is Boston movie guy doing reviews. You probably hated, you were probably reading them age 12 being like, this guy sucks.

1:13:55Sean Fennessey:On microfiche?

1:13:56Bill Simmons:Like how was I getting access to them? On AOL. The Boston movie guy. Boston movie guy. So I was like, I'll be Boston sports guy. And then maybe me and the movie guy can, no? We might have tried a cross promotion thing. It didn't work out that great. Huh. Interesting. The Bluff murder. in the running for most unsettling murder scene ever. I don't know what, there's no music. You don't know what's coming. All of a sudden you see the knife and then just people getting stabbed and screaming. It's awful. It's such a tough rewatch because you're just like, dude, look up. You know, because his girlfriend is like, hey, there's a guy watching us and he's just like, oh, it's a free country.

1:14:35It's fine.

1:14:35Sean Fennessey:Apparently it was accurate to how that actually happened. Where is it Brian Hartnell, the guy who stabbed but survives tried to disarm the guy. You know, tried to be kind of casual and comfortable so to kind of keep him at peace so he wouldn't attack him. But he's wearing an all-black jumpsuit and a hood. And a necklace. And just a medallion. It looks like the living embodiment of murder.

1:14:57Bill Simmons:Yeah. I think murders in peaceful locations are creepier too.

1:15:03Sean Fennessey:Mm-hmm.

1:15:03Bill Simmons:They're in like this nice idyllic place. In broad daylight.

1:15:06Sean Fennessey:That's the other thing about that murder is everybody's alone and it seems like it should be the most beautiful experience you could possibly have with someone you care about.

1:15:18Bill Simmons:Den of Thieves, Benny Hanna Award, would you go scene-stealing location for the buff or somewhere else? I'd probably go Morty's, the bar, but I like the diner at the end. Diner at the end. There's some great diners in this movie.

1:15:30Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:15:31Bill Simmons:Next rewatchable scene, Logan Roy does a live TV show with fake Zodiac. Sam I need to get back to the Pierce family today are you in or are you out

1:15:42Sean Fennessey:Melvin Belli is such a beautiful 70s figure we don't have people like that anymore yeah where it's like that guy was a famous lawyer who would just show up on TV all the time you know some Melvin Belli knowledge he was the one who suggested to the Rolling Stones that they move the venue to Altamont that's right we might want that one back he's in Gimme Shelter

1:16:00Bill Simmons:he's literally portrayed in Gimme Shelter he had his hands in a lot of things you stop it with that gas chamber shit Sam I need to know well fuck off I can't watch Brian Cox in anything after succession I literally can't I just wait for him to become Logan Roy

1:16:16Sean Fennessey:not even Hannibal Lecter no no Logan Roy ruined him for me in a good way he is also the voice of McDonald's I think about that when he does that too him going ba da ba ba ba that's the craziest thing that's ever happened I think he's actually done like a lot of VO stuff and I'm just like, damn, this guy must just be like, the direct deposit must just be amazing right now.

1:16:38Bill Simmons:He loves money. Eat this filet of fish or fuck off. The Ioni Sky car ride scene. I just have holy fucking shit written down for this. This is a great rewatch because she's so stupid. First of all, she has her kid. It's like, what are you doing? Why are you pulling over? And then he's like, I fixed it. She's like, oh, thank you. And then the terror of realizing he didn't fix it. And then they do kind of It's almost like a No Country for Old Men jump cut ahead of time when you think something horrible has happened. Yes, when she's screaming on the side of the road. She's screaming. Throw the baby out.

1:17:10Bill Simmons:Baby was fine. Just walking with a limp, I guess. I'm going to throw your baby out the window. Yeah. Please don't do that anymore. I just wrote down for the next scene, Downey and Jake just cooking. And it starts with that, does it bother you when people call you shorty? Does it bother you when people call you retard? and then he goes to Downey and it's like, people call me retard? It's like, no. He's like, do people call me names? Do you like retard?

1:17:40Sean Fennessey:No.

1:17:40Bill Simmons:The laugh line when Shorty hits him with that though is really, really funny. Yeah, yeah. And it keeps going and they end up with the Halloween card, the gun range. I just like when they're hanging out. You've been around the block a couple times. What do you think Shorty's comp package was? Coffee guy in the Chronicle newsroom? I think he's doing fine. I'm going to say... Like, what is... Does that get 5 % bumps every year? or what? He's going to say that probably a checkered history for him in his 20s. Sure. Might have spent some time. Had some trouble, yeah. Knows his way around to Switchblade maybe.

1:18:10Might have been incarcerated

1:18:10Bill Simmons:for a couple years there so he's happy to be working. I just love that towards the end of the movie when Downey is getting basically fired and he's like, Shorty, let's go for one. Shorty's like, yeah, sure. He's like, Shorty, you're fucking working here, man.

1:18:22Sean Fennessey:But there's a scene between Avery and Graysmith before that where they go to the bar together, the Aqua Velva scene where they're getting to know each other. Coated. Which is one of my favorite movie and there's a great moment when avery's like asking gray smith about himself and he's like what do you like to do and he's like uh i love to read i enjoy books and everything those are the same thing he's like we could no longer ignore this drink yeah the whole scene where he's just like you wouldn't make fun of it if you tried it and then cut to an hour later avery's drinking them in the bar and he's just doing bumps while gray smith is like look at my code breaker book.

1:18:58They're so good together.

1:19:00Bill Simmons:Interrogating Arthur at work. We talked about this scene. Oh, yeah. I think this is my most rewatchable scene. That's it. I love this scene. Searching Lee's place. The squirrels. Squirrels. The wooden dildo is the fucking grossest thing you could have probably added to this movie. Yep. I like searching. Can we get a search warrant? We can. Oh, we got one. And then we go in in whatever the place is of the person, the bad guy. It's just way worse. It's just way more disturbing and awful than you would ever imagine. Buffalo Bill's still number one most disturbing place. I think if you're gonna, we could build a small Mount Rushmore of disturbing places that get searched.

1:19:40It's definitely Arthur Lee's trailer, Buffalo Bill's basement, the house in the drug dealer house in Gone Baby Gone with all the newspaper on the windows. Something in seven. There's a couple different seven locations.

1:19:54Sean Fennessey:Yeah, there's, I mean, the David Desmeneuchin house in Prisoners. Oh, that's great. That's a top five right there. He opens the suitcase and it's got the snakes in it. That's fucking incredible.

1:20:04Bill Simmons:Second Prisoners reference. Yeah. Interesting. Kind of lurking now. Circling, yeah. The basement scene. Rick didn't draw any posters. I do the posters myself.

1:20:18Sean Fennessey:Jill and I was like... This is the one scene for me that when I saw the movie, I was like, this is one of the most scared I felt in a movie in my entire life seeing it in a movie theater. And now it doesn't work as much. It doesn't hit as hard. I think I have... I don't... I don't know. I feel... I've seen it too many times. It's the only movie... The only part of the movie I feel that way about. Because you feel like it's totally different or because you... It's like... It feels like... He's trying to scare you and I know. He's doing like movie stuff in that scene where he's trying to make you uneasy.

1:20:48Sean Fennessey:The whole movie makes you uneasy because of what really happened.

1:20:50Bill Simmons:I think the worst nightmare you could have as somebody is willingly going into somebody's basement and then realizing you might not get out yeah right that's upsetting yeah and it's the way he shoots it like he's he starts backing up he's like okay i'm gonna get going and the guy just turns the lights off and he's in the dark and it's like all right what's happening i mean yeah so like hearing the footsteps on the top what was going on there i think it's illustrative of gray smith the character in the film finally confronting the stuff that chloe 70s character was so worried about. Yeah. Where she's just like, you're putting yourself out there, you're going on television, you're writing about him.

1:21:28Well, and you're so obsessed. This guy's like, let's just go back to my house. He's like, sure. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he brings his baby at the middle of the night to meet with Toski.

1:21:38Bill Simmons:Also, they get in the house, closes the door, and the guy locks it from the inside and takes the key. And at that point, Graysmith should have been like, wait, what's going on? Yeah.

1:21:47Sean Fennessey:That's kind of what I mean. That's kind of what I mean about the way that the movie's made, where when you're watching the movie for the first time, you're like, this is getting really, really uncomfortable. But then when you watch it with a little bit of distance, you're like, they showed us the key locking, you know, to make you uncomfortable. But it still is really effective. It's also this weird 50-50. I mean, we could talk about this later in the pod, but like that point in the movie, you're experiencing the case the way I think Fincher wants like you to think Graysmith's experiencing. And it's so manic and it's so like, all of a sudden it's like, everything is about Rick Marshall and you're like, wait, what?

1:22:23Like, what happened with...

1:22:24Sean Fennessey:It's a good point. And who is Rick Marshall? Yeah, we don't even know who we're talking about. Weird, random, anonymous phone call and now all of a sudden we've got a new... I have a new suspect. Yeah.

1:22:34Bill Simmons:Jake goes to Ruffalo's house because he figured out the birthday thing. Yep.

1:22:38Sean Fennessey:Mm-hmm. I think this is one of the things

1:22:41Bill Simmons:I miss about the 70s and 80s is you could just show up at somebody's house and it wasn't completely insane. You want to test that out and have me... No, I don't think you can do it anymore. You're just like, I'm just knocking on your door. Bill, did you see him over time? It beats back. CR, it beats back. You have to get out of bed. Your wife goes, I'll make some Folgers. Of the three of us, I think he would like that the least. I don't want to be disturbed. But not any more than that. I don't like when people come over. And yet. Jake, last thing, Jake goes to see Lee at the hardware store, which I think also gets the Fortune 3 clap award for most gifable moment the stare down I think I think what's the John Carroll Lynch great face changes in this movie by him because he has like a nice face right where he's like hey can I help you but then it drops into the evil face it's a really hard thing to do and he does it very subtly

1:23:42Sean Fennessey:he's a really talented actor you mentioned that he's in Fargo where he's just kind of pure warmth, right? He's just supporting Marge throughout that whole movie. He's in Sorry Baby, this movie that came out this year, where he has a very similar thing where he's really empathetic to Ava Victor in the movie in one scene. But in this movie, he seems like he could be the most deranged person in the history of America. So what do you have for most rewatching? Can I just throw one that you didn't mention?

1:24:05Bill Simmons:Yes. Which is... Is it with Roger Avery? It's Toski and Armstrong doing the crime scene for the taxi cab murder. Taxi cab. that's the first Animal Crackers moment and it's also just it's just Fincher making a mini cop movie in the middle of this movie where it's like they shot that in LA and used Bay Area digital backdrops to like recreate the San Francisco street but it's got all the like yeah but you're not dumb because you waited for him to park the car you know like all the recreation and the forensic stuff and the pathology stuff is so awesome and then that last shot of Toski gets out of the cab and he kind of walks right up to the camera and then the David Shire music is really hitting.

1:24:47It's just awesome, awesome. But it's the interrogation.

1:24:50Sean Fennessey:I have two more that we didn't talk about. One is the first time that Graysmith meets with Toski. He's like, I can't allow you to help, but go talk to Narlow, N-A-R-L-O-W. And then the second one is my single favorite scene in the movie other than the interrogation, which is door to door. That final breakfast meeting between Dave and Graysmith. With the salt and pepper shakers. And he says, Darlene worked at the House of Pancakes in Vallejo. I walked it. That scene, while watching the movie the first time, when it felt like they were explaining to you, this movie knows who the Zodiac Killer is.

1:25:27Sean Fennessey:Like, it is so convincing because of the conviction that Gyllenhaal has and the way that Toski reacts where he's like, I was right. We were right. And then he just leaves. He's like, thanks for breakfast. Puts money on the table. Walks out. It's over. and then you do get the Jimmy Simpson moment after that but like it gives you this sense of satisfaction but then the movie doesn't let you have the satisfaction at its conclusion with the title cards like I guess you have to decide whether or not you find Graysmith and Arthur Lee in the hardware store satisfying right

1:25:56Bill Simmons:right what did you have for most rewatchable seeing it first time interviewing the interrogation with Lee and the watch thing and the shoe it felt the most like usual suspects where you're sitting there picking up on things watching people piece things together. Yeah. It's a great scene. May I see it? May I see it? You already did the what's the most 2007 thing about this movie, which is wide-eyed crazy Jake Hill. When we go backwards in movies, it's almost like we have to do what's the most 1970s thing about this movie. And I think it's Folger's Coffee. Because really, that was the only coffee for ever.

1:26:33Sean Fennessey:We did have it in the 80s because I remember it in my house. Yeah, it was in the 80s. My grandmother had it.

1:26:38Bill Simmons:Right until something shifted. I don't really know what but it was basically I don't even know was there another coffee?

1:26:43Sean Fennessey:I think Folgers Crystals was cooking in the 90s too, right? But then for some reason I mean Starbucks really

1:26:47Bill Simmons:And Starbucks killed the Seattle Supersonics and Folgers But would you put Folgers Were people putting Folgers in like a Mr. Coffee or were they putting boiling water in it? It was the old school Because there's instant coffee you just pour the hot water and mix it My mom might have been the first person I knew that anyone knew who had like a nice coffee machine My mom loved coffee still loves coffee but we always had like a nice coffee machine in the 80s and she really cared about grinding it like when's the last time you had I can't even imagine what it tastes like yeah bad I would also say for a 70s thing about the movie just coordinating investigations between cities sure it just would be different now

1:27:27Sean Fennessey:okay can I give you one other 2007 thing

1:27:30Bill Simmons:yeah

1:27:31Sean Fennessey:I do think it's a really interesting example of Gen X art and like Gen X kind of looking back at their childhood. And not to get too high-minded about it, but it's like right before Obama. It's right before this kind of like shift culturally. Sean's cooking. And kind of like reckoning with the end of the summer of love and what the 70s could have been and then how they turned out so toxic and dangerous. And it felt very chaotic to live in that time. This kind of desperation to have like a little bit more peace culturally. Like I'm reaching a little bit, but the movie does feel like him kind of reckoning with some of those feelings.

1:28:05Sean Fennessey:No, because I like it. I had a hottest take that I think I just should say a little bit about here, which is that I think that if you want to, you know, we talked about what would be a good double feature. A good triple feature would be Zodiac, Boogie Nights, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Because it's these three filmmakers doing basically memoirs, but they don't put themselves as the central character. They tell a story about something that was like happening at their childhood that shaped two of their work.

1:28:34Bill Simmons:I'd throw Almost Famous in too. Yeah, totally. Almost Famous. All four of them. Totally. That was good. I felt like I was watching Embiid back somebody down on the foul line there. It's good. Sean was cooking. It's great. Is this before or after you tried to injure Mitchell Robinson? Wow, I love giving this award out. The Steven Seagal Shitting on Himself Award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot. I mean, the takes thing is always the funniest thing about researching a Fincher movie. It's hilarious how much the actors hate it. Gyllenhaal said, quote, you get a take, five takes, ten takes some places, 90 takes there's a stopping point, there's a point at which you go, that's what we have to work with but we would reshoot things and there comes a point when I would say well, what do I do?

1:29:17Bill Simmons:Where's the risk? Downey said I just decided aside from several times I wanted to Garrett him and I was going to give him what he wanted I think I'm a perfect person to work for him because I understand gulags and then Ruffalo said he makes Michael Mann look like he's working on a McDonald's hamburger line during rush hour. Fincher's response, if an actor is going to let the role come to them, they can't resent the fact that I'm willing to wait as long as that takes. You know, the first day of production in San Francisco, we shot 56 takes of Mark and Jake, and it's the 56th take that's in the movie.

1:29:52Yes. I think that one of the reasons why this was breaking their brains is that this is among the first times probably any of them are shooting digitally. And there would be scenes where they'd be on take 22 and Fincher would be like, delete the first 20 takes. Like from the memory chip. And these guys would just be like, what are you talking about? Like, what are we doing? But I think he gets among the three best performances these guys have ever given. And there are different actors, like Chloe Sevigny talks about this. Ben Affleck has talked about this where he's just like, I like it. I like that he's like, I want to work.

1:30:32I want to do takes I don't think we're going for the right thing we're trying different things and he's also making sure that the background extra and the glass on the desk are all where they need to be

1:30:43Bill Simmons:I think if we were all actors Sean would like it because he would really appreciate the craftsmanship I like repetition whatever it takes David Chris would secretly bitch about it but be a good soldier and I'd be the one like this fucking guy this motherfucker I've done 35 takes asshole I think that's right

1:30:59Sean Fennessey:I really like systems he's a systems guy I think there's also something he talked about shooting that door-to-door sequence at the end and they filmed it and they looked at it and they were like this isn't right and Gyllenhaal is not the expert in this scene he's the guy who has to know more than Toski he's the guy who has to have all the information and is explaining it they went back and re-shot it and he explained how when they re-shot it Gyllenhaal brought his dad who's a filmmaker and that his dad's presence psychologically made him do it better and then didn't explain that. And he is one of those filmmakers who, I don't, he's not purposefully torturing actors, but he does think about their psychology and how they work.

1:31:45Sean Fennessey:And I do think that sometimes he gets that reputation because he's like, this is how I can get the best out of you.

1:31:51Bill Simmons:Well, who's the number one guy who did this? Kubrick? And he basically showed him out a nervous breakdown of the shining. And Kubrick, I mean, And there's Legendary just open a door 74 times. There's an amazing moment in the behind-the-scenes or the making of Doc for Zodiac where Gyllenhaal's walking through the Chronicle of the Newsroom and he's taking a bite of a donut. And Fincher's like, cut. And Gyllenhaal's kind of laughing because he's eating a donut. And Fincher's laughing and he's like, yeah, I want you to take a bigger bite. And Gyllenhaal's like, ha ha ha, of course you do. And Fincher's like, yeah, no, go back and eat a bigger bite of it.

1:32:28Sean Fennessey:There's another really funny one in one of the docs where it's a very quick moment, but they're interviewing Gyllenhaal during the making of a scene. And he's like, yeah, I'm like really good at insert shots. Right, David? Like I'm really good at inserts. And David's like, yeah, yeah, you are. It's the masters that are not very good. You know, like the main shot of you acting, you're not good at that. He literally says that to him while they're making the movie. Jesus. And he's giving him shit, but he's giving him shit in like a truthful way.

1:32:54Bill Simmons:Yeah. It's tough. He can be tough. Well, I was going to say this later, but one thing I noticed when I watch adventure movies is when people are eating, it's like Anthony Edwards is eating a turkey club at one point. And there's another part where Ruffalo is eating a burger. And it's hard not to think like, I wonder if he had to eat like 58 burger bites. He takes a real bite of that burger. Yeah, like if he made him do 58 takes of that, did he just have to make himself throw up? I have never seen a man grip a hamburger the way Ruffalo does. I know, he's holding it, right? Because I don't think he wanted to eat it.

1:33:24He's probably like, I'm going to fucking throw up. I don't know if they put like a Boca burger in there or whatever. We didn't have as great Impossible Meats back in 07.

1:33:31Bill Simmons:We're going to take a break and then we're going to do what saves the best. Did you know about one in three people with plaque psoriasis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away.

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1:34:22Bill Simmons:Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphaya, including important safety information. Before we do what's age the best, new category, this is a 2020, 2026er. The Dennis Peck relationship test. Named after Richard Gere in Internal Affairs, who you just wanted to keep away from everybody's relationship. Graysmith and Chloe Seventy's character. I'm going to say Dennis Peck could have broken this one pretty quickly. I think some Dennis Peck out there seems like he did. Yeah. Yeah. I think somebody, I think she got Dennis Peck.

1:35:02Sean Fennessey:The funniest thing about it is from the moment they meet, he's giving you every single sign to run the other way. Not get invested in this guy. I think I like the line that she has where she's like, this was just a first date that went on for a couple of years or that never ended. It's like that, that happens sometimes. It's like you date for a while and then all of them. Oh my wait, we're living. together. That was weird. Honestly, I blame her. He showed you

1:35:27Bill Simmons:all of his cards on date one. This guy's a fucking weirdo. This is because you're just like, I never told you, baby. I always said I'd be watching 12 hours of football every Sunday. I do think... You knew when you signed up with me. Yeah, you knew how much basketball I watch.

1:35:42Sean Fennessey:The movie doesn't explain it, but just through her performance, you can tell she's just a woman who is like, I'm ready to settle down. I'm ready to find somebody and just have a family. She's on a blind date with the guy. She's just such a fox in this movie. Her and the glasses and the long hair Oh my God. Want to start What's Age the Best with her? She's got such a great sense of humor, like Seven. He does because there's an interview with her. She's just like, well, I think they wanted to make Gyllenhaal less hot. So Fincher made me dress really frumpy. Yeah. So you're supposed to seem like very like normal.

1:36:09Sean Fennessey:And Graysmith is a cartoonist, right? He's not a cool guy, but it's undeniable. I mean, both of them are beautiful.

1:36:15Bill Simmons:Another What's Age the Best is just true crime the last two decades. That was my number one. Not just true crime, but the obsession with it. this movie's ahead of the game with that. And then podcasts come, documentaries come, Netflix. I watched the three-part Zodiac thing they did last year. This week, I missed it when it was out. I don't know how I missed it. This is the Zodiac speaking, right? Yeah. As usual with those three-parters, probably could have been just, you know, an hour and 25. Dragged it out a little bit, but it was interesting.

1:36:42Sean Fennessey:There's a couple of... There's one really good one on the Blu-ray that I think is also called This is the Zodiac Speaking, but it's an hour and 40 minutes and features interviews with all of the major figures who are still alive.

1:36:53Bill Simmons:Do you think Zodiac would have been a good nickname for somebody in basketball? Like if Anthony Edwards was just his nickname was Zodiac? Would you have done it? What if it was for Zydrunas Olgowskis? And we were just like, ah, big Zodiac. The post killer. Is that a better football or basketball nickname? The drop step killer. Basketball. Basketball, yeah. Although back in like the Steve Atwater days, it would be great if a free safety was nicknamed Zodiac because he just like kills indiscriminately. I thought you were going to say

1:37:19Sean Fennessey:a quarterback that throws a lot of hospital balls. Yeah.

1:37:22Bill Simmons:That's too much. Too much. Too much. He can't decode his hospital passes. Late 60s, early 70s, San Francisco. Just seeing that in a movie is age the best. Like post-hippie, fall of the hate kind of like. I had this later, but there's something about the city back then that really kicked everybody else's ass.

1:37:45Sean Fennessey:About San Francisco. You've done this before. When we went to San Francisco like six or seven years ago, you were like, this place is the best.

1:37:52Bill Simmons:I think other cities caught up. Like when you see a place like Boston now, Boston is much nicer and more spread out, has more things going than it did in... This is kind of like you saying that the Celtics are doing what the Pacers did even better than the Pacers. Boston built up. San Francisco never had to build up. San Francisco is like, look how fucking cool this is. It's just an unusual place. Alcatraz is over there. We have hills. We have trolleys. It's like, it's just, you know, it's the best movie location of any city. It's not even close. There's also, I mean, obviously it's the cinematography and the music in this movie, but there's something about his version of San Francisco just feels haunted.

1:38:30It's, it seems like it's night 75 % of this movie. And it is also like a little bit of a California thing where you're just like, man, there could just be something behind that fence over there. There's just, there could be something up that hill over there. and it's a weird state too because like you do have like for as much as there's LA and San Francisco there is like super rural parts and like trailer parks and like

1:38:53Sean Fennessey:that's a big part of this movie is the kind of like disconnected various styles of small towns that comprise most of Northern California I mean Northern California is not San Francisco and the Bay it's like it's a lot of different kinds of small cities and towns that are like Santa Rosa or lower middle class and you know have these small police precincts and the fact that the movie spends a lot of time in those places, I think makes it different too.

1:39:17Bill Simmons:There's two, there's three movie locations that I think you just instinctively know where you are as you're watching a movie. And I think San Francisco is one of them. New York, obviously. And then I think LA is the other one if it's certain parts. Otherwise, like Boston, they have to do, they have to show Fenway. You know, Chicago, they have to show the wide shot of the cities. For the most part, cities can be pretty amorphous. I guess Vegas and New Orleans could technically count. Yeah. But San Francisco, you always know you're in San Francisco in these movies. I like the San Francisco building thing, which I know is a big film nerd that he shows the time lapse.

1:39:55Bill Simmons:The transcontinental, yeah. The transcontinental is another What's Sage's Best. What do you have for What's Sage's Best here? All of Downey. Trans-America, sorry. Trans-America. Downey's mutterings to Gyllenhaal, especially his art criticism, but like, sweet mother of Christ, what are you drawing? And Jesus, Harold Christ on rubber crutches, Bobby, what are you doing? you're doing that thing, that thing I don't like that starts with now. Like all of their banter and stuff kind of culminating at Morty's. I also just, on these repeated viewings, like the way that the film changes tonally when the protagonist of the movie switches from Toski to, to, um, the four years later bump and the way it feels different, the way the investigation is not as, um, ordered and documented and it feels way more like a solo album.

1:40:40Like he's got nobody helping him the way that Toski had Armstrong and everybody else. And it's just an incredible shift in the movie.

1:40:48Sean Fennessey:There's two other things that I really like about it that still resonate. One is just the general premise of the movie, which is like the unsolvability of mundane tragedy. Like we have a lot of examples of this over history where you'll never really know what happened even if somebody got convicted of a crime. Then the other thing is, Graysmith represents this idea that I think most people I know are experiencing right now, which is using external problems in the world to kind of divert yourself away from what's going on at home, what's happening in your career, like who you really are in the world and just kind of getting locked in on stuff that isn't about you and doesn't really matter to you, but using it as a portal.

1:41:26Sean Fennessey:You just described the internet for the last 10 years. And that's really what we've all kind of become. We've become kind of trapped by that idea. And this, even just doing the podcast for this movie, I'm not a very big Reddit person, but I was on fucking Zodiac Reddit for like an hour just reading about Donald Chaney and who that person is and how he figures into this story. And it's like, Graysmith is kind of the original poster in a lot of ways, you know? Like, he really does kind of represent a lot of what the kind of attitudes of people who live online now. And he's always an outsider. So he's like, even at the Chronicle, he's doing cartoons.

1:42:00He's like, kind of lurking at those meetings he's probably not supposed to be in. And then when he becomes like the primary investigator, like, nobody takes him seriously because they're like, you're not a cop. You're not a, you're not a journalist. Like, what are you doing? I have a Downey's comeback as a,

1:42:17Bill Simmons:which they should best and what it means in the context of his career, this movie and then Iron Man. That's a really good one. Yeah. The Fincher catalog and just what this movie means. I think his age, the best, I don't want to say he needed it, but he kind of needs it when you think like, Holy shit. Like I think ultimately you're talking about a director. They can make 20 movies, 30, whatever, but there's usually like five to eight that people are going to, it's interesting to think about what his personal passion projects are like it's definitely Zodiac and Mank I wonder what else one for two

1:42:49Sean Fennessey:love Mank but Zodiac and Mank are both clearly about his dad I mean they're just they're obsessions of his dad he talks about his dad a bunch on the commentary and you know his dad was just in this milieu at the time and you know like all people he's kind of haunted by the positives and the negatives of that experience

1:43:08Bill Simmons:I had a Paul Every's water place which I want to give the Amanda Dobbins award for best piece of real estate I don't know how much that place cost but I thought I thought his place was fucking cool houseboat but it's in whatever that was is it supposed to be in Sacramento I don't know where it was but I thought it was cool yeah that seems like a great place to end up if you're an alcoholic who's gonna die pulmonary emphysema what's the commute is he living in like Marin like where is he living that could have been in like Alameda or something I'm not really sure I liked it he's just gonna smoke cigs there and fucking drink till he dies there's more people die in the commute in the east bay than this crazy guy's ever killed and he like points out the window as if so then maybe he is in Alameda or Oakland or something maybe he's in the east bay I had the Chronicle's office and how they recreated it Ebert made a good point about there's a couple scenes where it's just empty or pretty empty and that really is what it's like to work for a newspaper like you go in in the morning there's like five people there my dad would sometimes take me by the Enquirer on Sundays and it was always like, this place is like Disneyland.

1:44:08Yeah, that's like a movie set.

1:44:09Sean Fennessey:And it's always that there's nobody there in the morning and everybody starts showing up around four o 'clock when deadline time starts to come around.

1:44:16Bill Simmons:The soundtrack is effective. Includes Three Dog Night, Donovan, Soul Sacrifice by Santana. Really good. Crystal Blue Persuasion. And then we get, as we move into the late 70s, it turns into a little Yacht Rock. Little Steely Dan. Sorry, Donald Fagan. uh boss skaggs jerry rafferty started sneaking him in all your guys no crisper cross um so downy cruising to the sean penn i brought my own pack award for excellence in on-screen smoking i mean it's it's really it's a higher level i don't think he i think he's smoking filterless so that's like another level you know you mean he's doing where he has the no hands he's talking the cigarettes coming this way he's puffing from it and then blowing out of his knees and nose and still just keeping the scene it's incredible i spent five years trying to perfect that i think that effortless the also my favorite lighting of a cigarette in this movie is when he's reading the lord the letter from the zodiac and he's like and then i will you were driving around on your motor sickles and he's just like clicks his lighter and bites a cigarette and doesn't miss a line.

1:45:27There's a couple of like, the cigarette is halfway into his mouth. Like scenes where I'm just like, this guy is born, born to do it. You know?

1:45:37Sean Fennessey:I felt like I was in like an art seminar. You know? I was learning about, you know, Degas.

1:45:42Bill Simmons:If we did Mount Rushmore and De Niro's got to be in there, obviously. I think Downey might be one of the four. The runner up in this movie is Cleo Duvall. Great smoking scene. Yes. great smoking they do a good job of really making her seem like she's seen a few things in her day yes she's been into

1:46:01Sean Fennessey:a couple of painting that's one of her skills as an actor yeah there's been some yeah yeah uh

1:46:05Bill Simmons:great shock order award what'd you have CR Jesus this is tough how long you got uh opening city fireworks is pretty cool there's too many choices there's a couple of like the just the digitally recreated moments the fireworks the overhead shot of the taxi cab etc I have one that's kind of subtle, but I have just seen pictures of them shooting it where Fincher is kind of like right close to them while they're acting or right when they're about to shoot it. And it's the Gyllenhaal 70 in the phone booth outside of the restaurant. And the way it's lit and the way it looks and it's kind of romantic and it's just, it's a personal favorite.

1:46:44I love that she's in the phone booth with him, which makes no sense. She has that great line. It's really some weird ploy for you to make me go home with you. Yeah. She's like, I'll get the food to go.

1:46:52Bill Simmons:We should mention Great Shot Gordo Award is the most cinematic shot. I guess I have to ID some of these awards if there's a new audience. Named after Gordon Willis. Yes. Our guy Gordo.

1:47:01Sean Fennessey:I just have like three that are all connected. One is the shot of the Zodiac Killer coming over the hill in Lake Berryessa. Yeah. Then the cut to, is it Harnell's face? The way that it holds on his face while he's being stabbed. Oh my God. And then immediately cutting to the woman's torso. When she's being stabbed, which is the most upsetting thing in the movie, is when you see the knife going into her body. And then the choice that they made there, which in most movies now, if you did it, you'd be able to tell and it would be terrible. But all the blood that you see when she's being stabbed is all digital.

1:47:36Sean Fennessey:And the reason that they did that is because they didn't want to have to redo costumes every time they did a take. So if they did 50 takes of that sequence, every time the blood could be digitally recreated. Just like Little's filmmaking stuff there, where maybe that had been done before, but I don't think so. And he's kind of at the forefront of this technology. And you would never for a second when you're watching the movie be like, oh, that's fake blood. It looks good enough. And it's moving fast enough that he's doing the job. Also on the director's commentary, Fincher's like, she was a champ.

1:48:06She was like, we did this like 60 times. And she never complained. Amazing Golden Gate Bridge shot. There's an Ariel looking down that looks like an Apple screen. It's kind of like a vertigo. Yeah, yeah.

1:48:17Sean Fennessey:Even just that first push in on the city. And he talks about rebuilding the Embarcadero Freeway, which doesn't exist anymore because it fell apart during the 89 earthquake. So he's like, just the idea of rebuilding this freeway that I grew up with was interesting to me. He fucking brought trees. He choppered trees into the Lake Berryessa scene. Oh yeah, to recreate the book. Because the trees had changed since the time it had gone. Some producer's like, David, what if we don't have the trees?

1:48:42Bill Simmons:He's like, get the fuck out of here! You're off the set! Kate Cuddy pursued a happiness award for best needle drop. I have inner city blues. I thought Hurdy Gurdie when it kicks in when he starts shooting them I think that's the most memorable one the song's in the background and then it gets loud yeah I have

1:48:59Sean Fennessey:I really like Bernadette in the bar me too that one's great the four top song he also does like a little bit of a Scorsese Thelma Schumacher thing where he moves across starts it midway through and it's just the vocal pops in and then it's like a it's a little bit of like like a DJ thing it's really good new award hmm You excited, Greg? Yeah.

1:49:21Bill Simmons:The David Fincher Award for, wow, this director may have been a fucking lunatic. It goes to David Fincher for this tidbit. He digitally added hair to the close-ups of Jake Gyllenhaal's nickels as he draws or holds letters because Fincher felt Gyllenhaal's hands were, quote, too hairless and pretty. he digitally added hair to his knuckles what a fucking maniac I love it anyway that's the first time we got to hand that a word out

1:49:54Sean Fennessey:congrats to David

1:49:55Bill Simmons:we have the Sean Fennessey award for stealth homage that gives every movie near a criteria orgasm

1:50:01Sean Fennessey:okay so there's obviously a couple of clear ones we've talked about already most dangerous game, all the president's men that's like the blueprint for the movie my favorite tiny little homage is when they're interviewing the kids. One of the kids who's being interrogated by the police officers, when they ask him what did he look like, they say he looked normal. And that is a direct reference to Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder, which is in the 2003 serial killer movie, where someone says that about the killer in the movie. Memories of Murder, which is hugely influenced by Seven, and Fincher and Bong Joon-ho are in this, like, career long back and forth.

1:50:41Zodiac is a total masterpiece. Yes, he's like,

1:50:43Sean Fennessey:Bong Joon-ho is like, my greatest in-theater experience is seeing the social network. These two guys are kind of fascinated with each other. I've never seen them

1:50:50Bill Simmons:talk to each other before. I don't like how Fincher has this many allies. Like, now he's with Tarantino. I like when directors hate each other.

1:50:57Sean Fennessey:Well, he's like, homies with Steven Soderbergh, too. Yeah, I like Feud.

1:51:01Bill Simmons:We need to go back to Feud's. I know, but I like when all the, like... We need to go back to Paul Schrader just lighting everybody up and calling themselves. I know.

1:51:06Sean Fennessey:You don't want it to be bird magic. You don't want LeBron and Steph being friends.

1:51:09Bill Simmons:No, I don't want everybody in the dream team with their arms around each other. Everybody's watching rough cuts. Oh, I love that. The movie was a masterpiece. Let's do, Craig, you do a flex. Can I throw one criteria orgasm in there? Yes, do it. Just because I thought of it was when Graysmith gets the first breather call and he picks it up and it's like on Graysmith and then it pans to the right and closes 70s in the background. It's a little Rosemary's Baby where it's like Ruth Gordon on the phone and you're kind of like looking over there. Like, I kind of like that. Good one. Flex, Craig, go ahead.

1:51:44A lot of options. I want to get one out of the way quickly. Is there a porn parody for this movie? Yes, there is. It's called The Zodiac Killer starring John Holmes. What? Yes.

1:51:56Sean Fennessey:Let's fire it up. Let's watch it together. Did you read?

1:51:59Bill Simmons:What were the details? Was he a killer or was he the cop? He must have been the cop. He was the cop. Okay. And the Zodiac Killer kills and then has sex with women. Wait, after the kill? He has sex with him and then kills him. And then John Holmes is on the hunt. I wonder, was he Johnny Watt in this? It was 63 minutes, so it does pass the Century Award.

1:52:25Sean Fennessey:Imagine if it was three hours. 63 minutes. I saw a clip of it. I prefer the porn fairy world. I saw a clip of it. It's not in 4K. It does not look as good as Finch. It's a real film job. Did you download it on your work computer? No, we kept that on the personal. device. I didn't know John Holmes was going to be in the Zodiac podcast. It's exciting. Great. The other one I'll do is the Vincent Chase Award for Are We Sure This Character Was Good at His Job. I'm going right at Zodiac. Lower kill rate than Drake May's completion percentage. The double murders at the top of this movie, he can't kill either guy.

1:52:55He can't finish the job. He lets both guys live. Crazy. He wore a watch that said Zodiac. Yeah. Kind of a miss there. slipped up, revealed his birthday over the phone, claimed to be a lefty, wore the watch on the wrong wrist. Yes. Wore a giant name tag that said Lee at the hardware shop. It's kind of the Bob Cousy of serial killers. Plumbers. His name tag said Zodiac at the Ace Hardware. This guy was winning MVPs but he couldn't dribble with his left hand. Hey, my name's Zodiac. Can I help you find something?

1:53:25Bill Simmons:That's a great one. You got a painting job coming up? Come on. The Butch's Girlfriend Award for the week link of the film. I think this film's great. It was hard to come up with a weak link. I don't personally understand the Avery trip to Riverside, where he's like, an anonymous tip has told me to go to Riverside. I mean, it works out, but that part of the movie, while awesome, is also a little confusing. It felt like they needed an extra downy scene of us. It's just like, I suppose it's also like this is where Avery is kind of leaving the tracks and is starting to like chase shadows a little bit.

1:54:05But that's where he, you know, when he's like,

1:54:07Bill Simmons:I need to go. I have a tiny one, which is it's fine if you don't show the first Zodiac double murder because they were very like, we only, if we didn't know what happened and both people are dead, we can't show it. But I still think they should have figured out how to mention it in some way for people like Craig who don't know the story, that there was the murder before the murder. And I don't think they do a good enough job of explaining that. It's like very subtle in the dialogue. it assumes the viewer already knows but I don't as the movie ages over time I think I just think they should have figured out a better way to do that

1:54:38Sean Fennessey:I don't know if what I'm going to say is a picking nit or an unanswerable question or what's you know kind of more fits this category but specifically the Donald Chaney character who the guy who gives the performance is totally fine but the guy who gives all this information about Arthur Lee Allen he's like oh yeah and then he said this and said that. Yes, he said this about the kids bopping off the school bus and taking them out. And he had all this specific detail that makes Toski think that, and Armstrong think that it's him. You know, there are a lot of interviews with this guy. He's in all the documentaries.

1:55:15Sean Fennessey:In the wider world of the Zodiac, there's a lot of suspicion about his involvement in this story and whether or not he was more involved or whether or not he's making things up. Right. Was this on the Donald Cheney Reddit? It's all over the Zodiac Reddit. I mean, there's a ton of people who are like, this guy is not credible at all. There's a lot of interviews with him. And so to the point that Craig is making, even about the movie where he's like, all of this shit that just seems so circumstantial that points directly at the guy that makes him seem like a bad serial killer is effectively backed by everything that Donald Cheney has provided.

1:55:50Sean Fennessey:And it makes you, to me. CR's having a great time. Well, you're totally right. CR was just like. And this also happens like 11 times in the Zodiac case where there's like, this guy is the preeminent expert. It turns out he's a con artist or it turns out like he makes his living by going to conventions and peddling theories about stuff like that. Or is that who John Holmes played or no? Was he somebody else? Maybe somebody else. Okay. Or even all the Tosky stuff about the letters to Armistead Maupin and then whether or not he wrote the Zodiac letter and stuff like that, which is like, I've proven to be untrue, I think, but for the most.

1:56:24Bill Simmons:That's a good weak link.

1:56:24Sean Fennessey:They could have at least aroused some suspicion with us. Fincher says that he finds that guy credible. And the reason that he's portrayed in the movie that way is because he doesn't feel the way that a lot of people have looked closely at the story. It's like very, this is kind of like what Pelicanos and David Simon did when we go in the city where they're like, we have decided that this person's version of this is accurate. It's at least worth portraying sincerely, right? And that choice kind of shifts the movie in a direction that makes you feel strongly about it.

1:56:52Bill Simmons:What's aged the worst? I mentioned earlier Him cutting the two minute blackout montage Of hit songs signaling the passage of time From Joni Mitchell to Donna Summer Replaced it for runtime with Four Years Later I just, that's a bad decision. Yeah. That's like when they cut out my favorite Boogie Nights deleted scene of the second ABN Awards when they show all the reactions of everybody and they're like, yeah, we don't need it.

1:57:16Sean Fennessey:I'm surprised to learn that's your favorite deleted scene.

1:57:19Bill Simmons:That's my favorite deleted scene. What do you think my favorite, what did you think it was? It was a very memorable scene with Roller Girl, Luis Guzman. That was another great scene. So I had for what stage the worst, there's that scene when Jack and Downey are at the bar we mentioned earlier just decoding Zodiac shit. I wrote down, I'm five minutes late on these two together. Yeah. That would have been my note as the studio. Like, any more Downey and Gyllenhaal just being weird together scenes? Because put another one in. There is another one deleted. I don't know if you want to say it's age the best or the worst, because it's both, but they weren't real friends.

1:57:54And like Avery and Graysmith were not friends. Right. So that is almost the most movie-ish thing about the movie. And it is by far the most entertaining thing. Yeah. the movie and I definitely would have taken 10 more scenes of the two of them going to a fucking Giants game you know and being like oh yeah you know smoking in this come see the worst

1:58:15Bill Simmons:Clifford Ray is back that would have been good I asked that for what stage is the worst Anthony Edwards with a wig on always throws me off he's just like such like a proven bald guy that anytime I see him with hair in a movie I'm like come on just have him be bald he's bald we know he's bald He's owned the baldness. I think it was probably accurate to Armstrong's haircut. No, I know they had to do it. Any other what's age the worst? No, I had the four-year gap. It's the most abrupt, weird... You have to be like, okay, I got it in my head. I'm making that jump that Avery has washed out, that Graysmith is kind of still on this by himself.

1:58:54Okay.

1:58:55Sean Fennessey:Any for you or no? Just my certainty that it was Arthur Lee Allen for like 10 years after I saw the movie, and now the idea that we're just like... The thing that is haunting the guys in this movie is now what haunts the culture of finding the Zodiac Killer, which is just like there's more info every day. You know, you talked about the special, you know, the expert who was like, this guy's autistic and it was him because of this. Like, that stuff's never going to stop because it's a cold case. Just wait until AI just fully gets its talons into it, you know?

1:59:23Bill Simmons:Oh, yeah. Another category we don't get to give out much, the Rose from Titanic Award. For character who's sneaky sucks. close 70s character no what are you talking about I would say she's actually quite reasonable she's pretty cool man she knows what she's getting into counter get the fuck out after the first date wait why are you you're gonna settle down with this fucking lunatic and be like I'm raising kids with this guy and then she's mad at him and it's like I don't know what you're doing your whole life revolves around this it's like he fucking told you on the first date that he was crazy yeah and you're like blindsided that would be kind of cool if like if Eileen was like you sure do watch a lot of movies yeah she's like what's the deal with all these 4K Blu-rays Sean was there a number they're like what are you trying she's like Sean what are we doing are we going to dinner he's like I gotta watch I gotta do some Spielberg research she's like

2:00:14Sean Fennessey:oh I'm taking the kids I'm going to mom's are you guys surprised this movie resonates with me I just it really bothers me that she signs up for this and then takes it personally I think that there's a lot of relationships where like the thing that makes sense for the first three to nine months of it does not make sense 18 months or two years in.

2:00:31Bill Simmons:Okay, but in this case, it was the first two hours. Yes. They don't even finish dinner on their first date. He's in a fucking phone booth and then she ends up sleeping on his couch. Yeah. He's waiting for a call from his pulmonary emphysema. And she says it's the most exciting date I've ever had. It's like, yeah.

2:00:47Sean Fennessey:I mean, she's the only female character of note in the film. I mean, there's just not, there's no... Except for June Diane Raphael being like, I'm going to make the full dress. But she's also just playing the wife, you know? Like, there's not really any, there are no women in this world. like in the world of you know police departments at this time and newspapers like they were secretaries you know and that's part of the reason why the movie is that way and I think you could make the case that her character is like it's basically an active comment on this world at that time by saying like this woman has infinite patience for her insane cartoonist husband who can't make time to take care of his children because he's trying to solve a crime

2:01:21Bill Simmons:it's really an advertisement for dating services that I don't think we're around yet yeah probably needed a few more yeah thank you Raya Do I have a flex? You can take one right now. I just had the Rick Dalton Award. What is it? For the greatest fucking acting I've ever seen. It's Downey on the houseboat. Being like, somebody should write a book. He's also doing the David Duchovny and Larry Sanders. Am I going to see your balls hanging out here in this scene? Yes, there's a lot of thigh. It's an epic amount of thigh. The whole houseboat scene is just unbelievable. I love the houseboat. I don't need a pong going on in the background.

2:02:00Bill Simmons:The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest take award. I kind of did a little bit of the PTA QT thing, but I will also say that I think the thrill, the dark thrill of the Zodiac were to happen today would be ruined by everybody trying to figure out who he voted for.

2:02:23You know, there would be no like, oh, this is cool. watch out don't go out at night because it would just be like that motherfucker's a Bernie bro you know like it would just be it would suck

2:02:33Sean Fennessey:it would probably be more like this guy did Jan 6 yeah exactly do you have a hottest take? I do this is the greatest American crime film ever made and it's the only crime film that really portrays what it's like to try to solve a crime and no other movie is really interested in that because that's not very cinematic

2:02:49Bill Simmons:who's second?

2:02:51Sean Fennessey:Chiantown? Gone in 60 Seconds probably Death Eves like I I love Heat right that's a great movie I love Manhunter I love the work of Michael Mann all of those movies are about the psychology and obsession that is portrayed in this movie but they're not really about like solving the crimes or even doing the crimes in the same way and this was a real story too do you think that it's because it's more of an act of journalism than it is an act of crime solving it helps it helps and I think the truth is that I made that point about our dads because they're kind of similar jobs you know they require a very similar kind of ethic.

2:03:27Sean Fennessey:You have to be kind of shrewd. You have to be comfortable digging really deep into things. You got to be comfortable being bored by the work that you do sometimes. There's a reason that there's connectivity between these guys at this time in history because they have a very similar approach to the world.

2:03:42Bill Simmons:My hottest take, Craig kind of stepped on it earlier, but in a way maybe he doesn't realize. I'm actually going the opposite way. I think Zodiac was the GOAT. Now, maybe he didn't finish a couple murders. the goat serial killer of all time never caught so good he might have also been the black dahlia killer which was another one who wasn't caught drove detectives and journalists fucking crazy created a world that led to books and movies and is still going on reddit ambidextrous swimmer yeah yeah yeah he's like james hardin great nickname nobody what serial killer has ever given themselves a better nickname than zodiac you like that more than son of sam the best oh easily best gimmick son of Sam was just fucking wacko he was talking to his dog yeah Zodiac very measured yeah Zodiac had his shit together and uh I just think he had just a phenomenal run and the fact that nobody has been able to solve this is unbelievable so I think if you're talking goats or you're talking Mount Rushmore or whatever with serial killers yeah getting away with it is number one you know it is not only getting away with it but then leaving this whole universe behind of theories and it's basically the JFK assassination for a serial killer.

2:04:57Bill Simmons:I had no idea We've solved all the other ones. how thriving the community was. They're still doing incredible work online about this. Every day. Yeah. Every day. When you Google it so many things come up you don't even know like which one to click on. Yeah. There's like subreddits to the subreddits.

2:05:12Sean Fennessey:This case is 55 years old.

2:05:13Bill Simmons:Yeah. Like we don't you don't even And by the way we're not any closer to figuring out who did it. Yeah. Yeah. It's really it's a crazy one But I think Craig made a good point. Like, finish the job. Well, you're going kind of the Bill Russell case here. Like, for his time, what he did. Oh, you think Zodiac just played against plumbers? You know what I mean? Yeah, sure. Yeah, like, they're in the pre-internet, pre-departments, being able to coordinate investigations. Yeah, these police departments didn't have fax machines. Right. Not exactly. It is fair. Playing the Houston defense.

2:05:43Sean Fennessey:Do you have, like, the LeBron of serial killers? They all get caught. Yeah. What's aged the worst is serial killers.

2:05:52Bill Simmons:Yeah. Right. Serial killing has aged the worst. Can't do it. Well, I think it's just too hard. DNA. Have you tried? Cameras. No, I just think, I don't think we're going to see another one, honestly. Yeah. I think it's too hard. There's a camera. Every house has a ring camera. There was a story about there might have been a Houston serial killer because they found all these bodies. Oh, the Bayou guy, yeah. Yeah. They don't know what happened. I don't believe that one. I think we have too much technology now. And he might have coasted off other kills that he took credit for.

2:06:20Sean Fennessey:Which I would argue is clever. Because it completely threw them off the scent in the investigation. It got, you know, like, Mollinax is like, I like this guy. And you're like, well, what does that guy have to do with any other kill? And he's like, yeah, but I have evidence that shows that he's connected to this one. So it creates this distortion effect around the investigation. He's really smart. It doesn't mean the Zodiac is like a brain genius, but he clearly did things with a level of manipulation that does distinguish him from other serial killers.

2:06:46Bill Simmons:I mean, ultimately, the great serial killers have a calling card. Like Dahmer's like, I just like eating people. Like, this is an all-in-end game for me. Eating other humans, that's my thing. I love it.

2:06:59Sean Fennessey:Whenever you do this, you make it sound like he looked into the camera and said those words.

2:07:04Bill Simmons:We're the wet bandits. The wet bandits. Like, Ted Bundy's like, I just love the ladies. Yeah. And there's a dark side to it, but that's my thing.

2:07:12Sean Fennessey:I love the ladies. Zodiac was like, I actually like being in the mix.

2:07:16Bill Simmons:here are my thoughts he was like the first podcaster here are my thoughts on the Dirty Harry movie he liked the attention of what he was doing even things that weren't Zodiac like the call to Melvin Bellay which is a guy in a mental institution making the phone call it goes towards the Zodiac's legacy it's like Steve Kerr building off of Mark Jackson's work you know

2:07:41Sean Fennessey:all that hard work that Mark did who drafted Draymond You know, you get to cast yourself that.

2:07:48Bill Simmons:Casting what ifs. Mark was playing Monta Ellis over Steph Curry. It is true. He was saving him. Casting what ifs. Gary Oldman was supposed to play Melvin Belay, but physically they decided it couldn't work, so they got Logan Roy instead.

2:08:04Sean Fennessey:Ironically, he did go on to play Churchill, who was way fatter than Gary Oldman and won an Academy Award for it.

2:08:10Bill Simmons:Gyllenhaal was the first choice for Graysmith from Fincher, but if he had said no they had Orlando Bloom lined up

2:08:19Sean Fennessey:jeez you know the story right of who it was who tipped Fincher off to the two leads of this movie it was Aniston his best pal Jennifer Aniston who said I really liked working with Jake Gyllenhaal in The Good Girl and Mark Ruffalo in what's the rom-com that they were in together Just Like Heaven or something no Rumor Has It Rumor Has It

2:08:38Bill Simmons:was it from Rumor Has It yeah and then he's like you like them why don't you play the cult Chloe's 17-year-old. She's like, no thanks. Yeah. No thanks. I got a rom-com to do. Fincher wanted Brad Pitt as Avery before settling on Downey. I mean, Pitt was like his guy. Basically would have been Floyd from Drew Amantz as a journalist. Yeah, it would have been a little distracting. Can we talk it out? Sure.

2:09:01Sean Fennessey:Has anyone who looks like Brad Pitt ever been a journalist? Brad Pitt really good at playing down.

2:09:07Bill Simmons:True. True. Is this like Snatch era Brad Pitt? No, this is mid-2000s. 2000s, I've settled down with Angelina and we're adopting kids every nine months. It's like Troy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Yeah. Post Mr. and Mrs. Smith, pre-Benjamin Button.

2:09:20Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

2:09:21Bill Simmons:Pre-Moneyball. I mean, he's in Assassination of Jesse James. If he's just doing Floyd from True Romance in this movie, I'm not necessarily... I'm willing to entertain it.

2:09:30Sean Fennessey:The thing is that Downey brings the fast-talking energy that a guy, a smart-aleck journalist would have. Yes. And I think you need that. And Pitt doesn't really do that. Right. He plays dumb really well. He plays low-key or burnt-out really well. And he's always clever as Rusty in the Oceans movies, but not fast. He has a little bit more stoner, whereas Downey has a little bit more uppers.

2:09:53Bill Simmons:Yeah. Best that guy award. We're saying John Carroll Lynch not eligible? Probably not. At least not for us. Do you know who that was, Craig? Recognize him, don't know his name. There's better ones. I grabbed two guys from the editorial meeting, which is John Goetz and John Terry, the editor-in-chief and the publisher I think John Getz is John Getz I feel like he's been in too many things John Terry's a good one John Terry's really good Charles Fleischer who's the guy in the basement yep he's pretty much that guy I have two big ones one of the cops was the priest from the Sopranos who was trying to get it on with Carmelo but not really yes getting drunk with him father what was his name father can't remember the other night when he goes on the college tour with Meadow and they're at home getting drunk and it seems like something's gonna happen and he throws up that guy he's in this and then one of the cops in the scene you like when they go to location yeah Skippy from Kicking and Screaming yeah who was also Colin the drug dealer in Beverly Hills 90210 who had that great run 10 years later ends up in Zodiac but I think that's a good that guy that's a great that guy I think he's on like Chicago Fire now or one of those

2:11:04Sean Fennessey:okay the problem with doing 500 episodes of this show is that... You know all the people? But just to every normal human being, Zach Greiner, Philip Baker Hall, Elias Koteas, James LeGrow, Donald Logue, John Carroll Lynch, John Terry, June Diane, Raphael, Adam Goldberg, these people are that guys. They are the definitive that guys of their era. But he's not letting me have John Getz. Right. If you can't have John Getz, then part of why the movie is so good is that Fincher has the best taste for supporting players.

2:11:33Bill Simmons:That graduated that guys.

2:11:34Sean Fennessey:Yes.

2:11:34Bill Simmons:The Priest from The Sopranos, I don't know That's a really good one. I don't know what that guy's name is. The Dion Waiters Award for biggest heat check in the movie. John Carroll Lynch eligible. I think he's in two and a half scenes. Basement guy. Charles Fleischer.

2:11:49Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

2:11:50Bill Simmons:Charles Fleischer. One scene. I had Charles Fleischer and Clay Duvall.

2:11:53Sean Fennessey:Clay Duvall to me is the pinnacle of this category because she has one scene. Yes. And the camera like doesn't move off of her. By the originalist document, he is right. I had Cox. he's in two full scenes and has like one of the most like let me put a little bit of seasoning on this was like wow like when he gets out of the cab like you know like all the helicopters are swirling but I Clay Duvall is pretty high up there low key nomination Melvin Belli's housekeeper when she drops the cookies off she's great she's like I spoke to him

2:12:25Bill Simmons:she's really good in that scene yeah she was good was that important? recasting couch director or city can we talk Anthony Edwards for one second can I can I tempt you with a little Michael Keaton too big for that role

2:12:45Sean Fennessey:yeah so you'll enjoy this if you have not listened to the commentary I highly recommend you do because Fincher is constantly using sports references and sounds great he uses the phrase moving without the ball a lot and what kind of actors do that and he described Anthony Edwards as the assist, that he is the living embodiment of the assist. And if you watch him work in movies, even when he's the star, he's making other people seem better. And that was his role on ER in the center of that show. That became George Clooney and Julianna Margulies and Eric LaSalle and all the people who were on that show at that time.

2:13:21Sean Fennessey:And in this movie, he's kind of the most important detective. Toski is not the most important detective. He's the guy who's getting more information, who's getting more stuff down, who's driving the action more who kind of incites more moments you just don't feel it because of the way that Anthony Edwards acts and also Fincher said that his kids went to school together and that's why he's in the movie he's like I knew him from our kids going to school together among the saddest moments in the entire movie is when Armstrong's like you keep the car because you're just like fuck it broke him you know like and you're just like the whole time you're wondering and he's kind of getting more tired and exasperated by it but when he leaves the movie there's like a certain quality of goodness that leaves the movie.

2:14:01It's like, it's been destroyed by this case. Yeah. It's really good.

2:14:05Bill Simmons:Keaton has the Dermot Mulrooney role? Sure. Just trying to work him in here somewhere.

2:14:10Sean Fennessey:He did that in The Other Guys, right?

2:14:13Bill Simmons:Yeah. It would be good if they could just get Special Agent Ray Nicolette. That would be exciting. My other note is, I just don't know why John Slattery is not in this movie, and I don't know who he's going to play.

2:14:22Sean Fennessey:John Terry is kind of playing John Slattery, right?

2:14:24Bill Simmons:The publisher. John Slattery is just... Slattery was in Charlie Wilson's war yelling at Philip Seymour Hoffman. Maybe that's why he was in it.

2:14:30Sean Fennessey:He studied Finnish for four years.

2:14:34Bill Simmons:It feels like that could be on the rewatchables 2028 list, Charlie Wilson's War. There's like six perfect scenes in that movie. I really think Julia's great in that movie. Yeah. The weak link is Hank's. Miscast. Which has happened a few times. Yeah. You have a flex category.

2:14:52Sean Fennessey:I got two really quick ones. One of which we've talked about a lot, but is worth noting, given the intelligence of this category, the Tom Sizemore action is the Juice Award best toe-to-toe moment for a non-star, which is clearly John Carroll Lynch up against Mark Ruffalo and winning that scene. Like him being the most mesmerizing person in that scene, opposite, you know, three really well-known actors, but really Ruffalo coming into his own. And then the Dan Campbell scale for, holy shit, are they really going for it right now is the basement scene. Where you're like, oh my God. Are you making Halloween now?

2:15:24Sean Fennessey:Oh my God. Oh my God. That's good. But like I said at the time, when it came out, I felt like we were going to another level of the movie.

2:15:35Bill Simmons:Half-assener research. We mentioned a lot of this stuff already. They used a lot of the photos to try to figure out what stuff looked like back then, how many VW bugs should be in there. The cars are really good in this movie and how they change over the decade. We talked about the digital Thompson Viper film stream camera, which was the first one, a movie like this. so there was a this guy Ray Cantrell made a Zodiac Killer movie probably not the one with John Holmes in 1972 they made this movie to try to catch Zodiac in the theater did you follow the story? yeah this just did this just get put out by Eureka or something like that?

2:16:14it's been around for a couple years so they make like

2:16:16Bill Simmons:this bad Zodiac movie and the guy funds it because he was friends with one of the people who either got murdered or almost murdered and they show it in San Francisco for like two weeks and they're hiding in some part of the theater like in this freezer that barely had enough oxygen scouting all the people that come in and then they claim at one point they feel like the Zodiac came in and they talked to them in the bathroom but weren't able to like keep them. And it's this whole like weird it's almost like a movie within the movie that probably would be bad. That's kind of like Snake Eyes.

2:16:50Sean Fennessey:They like set up

2:16:51Bill Simmons:this whole sting inside of a huge event. Oh, yeah. Robert Downey Jr.'s four-straw trick that he does with the three straws, picking the fourth, 26 takes. Did he get it right or he made him do it 26 times? He showed Fincher, asked to perform it, and then they kept doing it. You mentioned the blood thing. This is a great Mark Ruffalo quote. I'll never forget when they were negotiating my deal for Zodiac. The student negotiator literally said to my manager, look, we don't give a shit about Mark Ruffalo. we don't even want Mark Ruffalo in this movie so you're gonna take what we're offering or forget it that was his memory of how he got the part yeah that's why you hired Rich Paul that's right and then Robert Grace Smith's cocktail it's vodka gin lemon lime and blue caracow yeah I've never been a big that just feels like the vomit special that's just a Long Island iced tea dyed blue basically yeah that's like I'm throwing up tomorrow I don't even drink blue Gatorade this episode is brought to you buy the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo.

2:17:54Bill Simmons:That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in earn unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game and grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The active cash credit card from Wells Fargo, be a two percenter. Learn more at wells, fargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply apex mountain Fincher. do we need to explain Apex Mountain now that we're on Netflix go ahead yeah controversial category how would you describe it 425 movies in Apex Mountain when somebody was at the peak of their powers career wise had the most use they're ever gonna have in their career was this the moment for that that's technically Apex Mountain even though we've argued about it forever I think it is for Fincher I do not I think it's social network for Fincher but don't you think this is a product of social network no because it's before but isn't this is before social I see what you're saying

2:18:58Sean Fennessey:yeah I this movie comes after a five year break off of a successful but modest movie in panic room and this movie did not do well at the box office and was not it was really well reviewed but was not considered a masterpiece in its time he needed social network

2:19:16Bill Simmons:to have his like okay this guy is also a commercial box office guy

2:19:20Sean Fennessey:social network was another for hire job yeah you know that was with a script from a well-known screenwriter i would creatively and i know that this is not going but i think creatively this is like him no you could go creative fincher as an apex man i think this is him just like combining some of the deep artistry of his early work and like with the brave new world of the digital photography that he's working with and obviously has a personal connection to this material in a way that sometimes it doesn't always feel like he does uh i think he is a he's a re apex candidate because i think fight club is his first apex mountain because he uses the success of the michael jordan yeah and he you know basically makes a movie about how the only way to fix capitalism is to destroy it early 90s bulls version yes the apex and then i think there's there's never been a higher moment for him than gone girl where he's like i can take an airport novel and make it a$500 million movie.

2:20:15Sean Fennessey:And nobody else can do this.

2:20:17Bill Simmons:Then he's like, and next up, a Netflix series that CR is going to love the most. It's true. Serial killer movies. Yes. Silence.

2:20:29Sean Fennessey:That's a tough one.

2:20:31Bill Simmons:Does that count as a serial killer movie though? Yeah. He's got a nickname. He's moving around. He's doing his thing. Yeah, you're right. How's that not a serial killer movie?

2:20:39Sean Fennessey:You think this is better than Manhunter? Yeah. it's a different it's a totally different movie

2:20:46Bill Simmons:CR's right it's silence true crime movies fantasy made the case earlier yes Downey no Ruffalo no Ruffalo as a detective in a movie Apex Mountain this collateral or task the TV show yeah I think it's this he's really he's not in collateral very much I love his look in Colorado Rollo. Me too. It's my favorite Ruffalo. Slick back hair. Yeah, it's fucking great. And then Pete Berg running through the way. Him and Pete Berg, that's a separate movie I wanted. I told you that when I talked to him for task, I basically did Chris Farley on him. Remember that time? Remember in Collateral when you had the goatee?

2:21:30And he was like, yeah. And I was like, that was awesome.

2:21:36Bill Simmons:Gyllenhaal. It's kind of arguable because he's broke back than this. Except the movie didn't do that well. So I don't think this can be his Apex Mountain. Probably later, right?

2:21:48Sean Fennessey:I think his best performance is maybe still Nightcrawler. That's a really good movie. His Apex. Doesn't he do Prince of Persia right before this? Boo. Because that movie stinks, obviously. But that was when he was trying to become…

2:22:04Bill Simmons:He's going to get ripped. Maybe when we're in that end of Watch era. When he starts doing… Prince of Persia 2010. Prince of 2010. Yeah. Prince of 2010. So maybe it's this

2:22:13Sean Fennessey:because this allows him to kind of springboard into that.

2:22:15Bill Simmons:Is it the end of Watch Prisoner's Era where he's like I'm now an established you can put me on a poster in different movies and people will probably go. Yeah probably. San Francisco movies no. What is? 48 Hours? I would say Bullet. No. It's probably the one from the 70s. Bullet. Dirty Harry. Both of which are basically based on this story. Chloe Sevigny? Yeah. Nope. Last Days of Disco? Yeah, we did that on the Rewatchables. This is a good one. Fincher Villains. I'll give you as nominees John Doe in Seven, Mark Zuckerberg in Social Network, or Arthur Lee Allen in this movie. Unless you want to count Sean Penn in the game.

2:23:01Bill Simmons:I'd probably go John Doe. Definitely not Jared Leto with the... With Panic Room? Yeah. the Nepo thief I think it's John Doe when we watched Seven last week that scene when he's in the car with Brad Pitt and he's pushing Brad Pitt and trying to make him mad and Brad Pitt finally says you're a fucking t-shirt and we were just like holy shit Spacey's amazing in that movie he is

2:23:26Sean Fennessey:I guess it's just two different versions of villainy right like the Zuckerberg thing is like the portrayal of Zuckerberg we should have known

2:23:36Bill Simmons:he's trying to Fincher's trying to tell us.

2:23:38Sean Fennessey:So acid, man. Like, so acid. The way that he sees him as this, like, sad, pathetic, ambition monster.

2:23:45Bill Simmons:And Zuckerberg didn't totally realize it. Remember when Jesse Asberg hosted SNL? Zuckerberg's like, yeah, I'll make a cameo. Like, he doesn't realize. He didn't get it.

2:23:52Sean Fennessey:Yeah, he didn't get it.

2:23:53Bill Simmons:San Francisco Chronicle, both in real life and then in a movie, I felt like this was... They were right at the center. They were in the epicenter, everything.

2:24:01Sean Fennessey:Yeah. You know what's interesting about all of his villains, by the way, is he doesn't psychologize any of them. He doesn't say, oh, well, like, this happened to me, and so I'm like this, and I do this. Zuckerberg, John Doe, Arthur Lee Allen. It's not like, oh, well, the way he was his upbringing, or he witnessed a traumatic event. He's not interested in that. For the most part, for a certain period, like, nobody talked like that. Yeah.

2:24:23Bill Simmons:They just did things, yeah. John Carroll Lynch movies? This or Fargo? This. John Carroll Lynch? Right now. Sure. Shout out to JCL.

2:24:35Sean Fennessey:He's doing great.

2:24:36Bill Simmons:He's a great actor. shout out to Joker Donovan music Joker a little close to Joker I think it's a Aquarius and Goodfellas

2:24:48Sean Fennessey:oh see I love the ending of To Die For with Season of the Witch you know the Season of the Witch Nino dropped in To Die For is pretty good Donovan

2:24:56Bill Simmons:secret movie soundtrack

2:24:58Sean Fennessey:force or getting absolutely dunked on and Don't Look Back the Bob Dylan documentary because it's Donovan when Jimmy when Tommy beats up Billy Bats right yeah

2:25:06Bill Simmons:yeah

2:25:06Sean Fennessey:yeah

2:25:07Bill Simmons:That's the answer. Also, the father of Ioni Sky. That's right. Who, of course, is in the house. See our Apex Mountain for wooden dildos? Yeah, I would imagine. I mean, I can't think of any other... They still sell those? It's probably the porn parody, I would say. The Apex Mountain. They still sell those? You still have them or no? You have to go to a specialty store. It's a craftsman item. I just feel like there's a real splinter issue there that we got to examine. Not if you get the right kind of lacquer. High quality, I see. You have to buff it down first

2:25:35Sean Fennessey:and then you can kind of get that grease on it.

2:25:40Bill Simmons:Apex Mountain for actual Fincher movies. What do you mean? Is this the best Fincher movie? Oh, well, this is why I get confused what Apex Mountain is. I just threw that in as a bonus category. I think this is the best Fincher movie, yes.

2:25:54Sean Fennessey:I do too. It's my favorite. I mean, what is best? Watching Seven to this day is still just really fun. It's just really entertaining and it still glides. We've done it. I would read Seven tomorrow.

2:26:05Bill Simmons:I thought Tarantino made a really good case when he was talking about his best movies of the century or whatever and he was talking about how he didn't love Zodiac the first time and every time he watches it, he's just stunned by how amazing it is and each time it gets better which I think is a really rare place for a movie to get to where it's like, it's the 11th time I've watched this holy shit

2:26:26Sean Fennessey:Mank and the Killer do not have strong reputations I would encourage people to revisit them again and look at them and try to give them the same attitude that you were willing to give to Zodiac, to Gone Girl, to Social Network because they are so rewarding. I think people don't like those stories as much and I understand that and some people just watch movies for stories. But if you like to watch movies to understand how a movie is made and what the filmmaker is thinking, there's so much cool shit in both of those movies. Yeah, I agree.

2:26:54Bill Simmons:At least with one of those two movies. All right. Cruise or Hanks? Hanks is Graysmith. It's funny. I thought Cruise is Graysmith. Yeah.

2:27:04Sean Fennessey:I think Cruise as Tosky I would be interested in.

2:27:08Bill Simmons:I could see Hanks as Tosky. Well, we have to pick. Cruise or Hanks? Do you pick Hanks? Yeah. I'm picking Cruise. I think it's fun to have Cruise in this movie. I do, too. Okay. I think it's Cruise. I like Hanks as Tosky. Cruise as Graysmith. Hanks as Tosky is good, but then we lose Ruffalo.

2:27:27Bill Simmons:Yeah. What about like 1988 cocktail era Cruz as Gyllenhaal's character? Yeah, that works.

2:27:35Sean Fennessey:That works. Yeah, good thing this is completely made up. We don't really have to choose.

2:27:40Bill Simmons:No, because he keeps stats. You know, it's analytics. Cruz is like, so when he runs out of the guy's house after he's in the basement, what if my car was parked two streets away and I really had to sprint? In full speed with the puddles. I think that I will say that Cruz having done Eyes Wide Shut would be used to doing a hundred takes of something. I love it, man. Dave keeps telling me to do stuff. I don't know if Hanks has ever done that. I don't know if he's ever had somebody who's like, we're doing it again, we're doing it again. I don't know. He worked with Stan the Man. I mean... Hanks hasn't.

2:28:17Cruz did.

2:28:18Bill Simmons:Right. Yeah. So Hanks were... Didn't Dale Hay, Frank Darabont? Didn't he do this? Oh. I thought he was a... Was he a big take guy for the Green Mile? Freeman's still mad at him for some reason. Is that true? It's like Freeman, you're in one of the most iconic movies of the last 40 years. Can't complain. I mean, that set him up for life. Scorsese or Spielberg? I have either. No, that's not an answer. Okay, so two things.

2:28:45Sean Fennessey:Scorsese has never made a procedural. This is not what he does. Yes. He's not interested in this aspect of the world. He's interested in how people move through the world.

2:28:55Bill Simmons:You know what he is interested in? The Rolling Stones in 1969, 1970, San Francisco. And guys doing bumps and bars. I think it just becomes an Altamont San Francisco. I think it's only set in two years. I don't think he cares what happens after.

2:29:07Sean Fennessey:It would just fundamentally be a different movie. The same way that like, you can tell that James Vanderbilt's script, which I'm sure was very good on First Pass, Fincher changed a lot. You know, like he brought a lot to that. And so, yeah, if Scorsese comes in and he's like, I want to do my version of this. And it's, you know, post-Altamont, were rocking and rolling through this murder time. I mean, he made Summer of Sam, right? Like he made a movie like this, but he didn't make it about the killer. He made it about what was happening to people around this time. So my answer is Spielberg.

2:29:36Bill Simmons:I have Scorsese just because I'd want to see the movie. I would just be worried that the Spielberg version of this turns out like The Post, which isn't a bad movie, but it's just a little bit more like, we just got to work hard to find this guy. I don't think Spielberg's dark enough for this movie. This movie's dark. Maybe. best hang worst hang right uh paul avery clearly best hang best bar night yeah i think zodiac i'm gonna go worst hang want to come back to my house want to come back to my trailer and watch the warriors game by far here let me put the squirrels away laid out a day for us a little bit of skin diving then we're gonna cook up some squirrel i got a bunch of nudie mags well in the zodiac documentary that was on Netflix in 24.

2:30:20Bill Simmons:They interviewed these two kids that he had befriended the family. And at one point, he takes them for a trip, and they end up, both of them don't remember two days because he drugged them. Because I think he needed an alibi. It also might have probably molested one of the kids. But it was during one of the crimes that he committed where he brought the kids with him on location. Or so they said.

2:30:41Sean Fennessey:This is another murder that is not a part of the Zodiac investigation that they talk about where they say he basically like went down to a beach and may have killed someone on a beach. Oh, is this the one where he took a shot into a group of teenagers or something? And then like a day later, there was a murder and they were like, we were just there yesterday and I was asleep in the car.

2:30:58Bill Simmons:And also, I don't remember the last two days. Zodiac, worst hang. Picking Nets. Why is the cartoonist in high-level editorial meetings when they're reading the Zodiac letter, which is probably the most important thing in the city that's happening? Fincher said, he's like, I don't think Avery is in these meetings either. It's just we needed it for the movie to get everybody sort of connected to the letters.

2:31:18Sean Fennessey:Getting the information at the same time.

2:31:20Bill Simmons:Ione Skye's character falling for the your wheel looks loose trick. Come on, honey. You got a kid in the car.

2:31:27Sean Fennessey:Fincher says he definitively does not think that that was the Zodiac. That the Kathleen John story is not the Zodiac. It's just another crazy person on the side of the road. What does he say to her? Like, they don't need much help when I'm done with them or something? God damn it. What other nitpicks do you have? The only thing I had, Sean mentioned it earlier, but Toski being like, I can't help you, but if I were to help you, I'd tell you to call Ken Narlow. It's just like, help or don't help, but we don't have to make this into the Riddler, you know?

2:31:55Bill Simmons:Yeah. It'd be funny if NBA trades worked like that. We got to trade LeBron. Shit's falling apart. St. Preston's like, I can't help you, but if I were to help you, call Orlando.

2:32:09Sean Fennessey:Yeah. They can help. I have a sort of related picking knit just about the insanity of being a police detective where three detectives are in a room. They're talking to the guy they're almost certain is the Zodiac killer. He's wearing, to Craig's point, a Zodiac watch.

2:32:26Bill Simmons:Yeah. And they can't get him.

2:32:29Sean Fennessey:And then Toski's like, I'm going to keep working on this case on and off for the next seven years. I am the sole proprietor of the investigation. But like, he, I don't believe that Toski accepted the handwriting thing. And so what was he actually doing thinking about the case? Well, he makes the point later.

2:32:47Bill Simmons:He's like, there's been 200 murders in the last four years. Those are other families that want answers. So I think they, I think they just got too spread out. Yeah. Would be my guess. I have another one. I saw this on one of the Reddit things. I'm stealing it. Which normally doesn't happen in rewatchables, but we were all reading so much Reddit when the Zodiac thing I stumbled across this one. So apologies to who I'm taking this from. Chloe on the first date orders penne alla vodka but asks to substitute a cream sauce? Yeah. That's fucking stupid. Penne alla vodka is a cream sauce. I don't know how it was made.

2:33:23Bill Simmons:Can you say I don't want vodka can you make it cream sauce instead? So the real picking nit

2:33:28Sean Fennessey:and again this comes from the director's commentary didn't exist yet. Did not exist until the 1980s. Penne alla vodka with the cream sauce was a recipe that was popularized in the 1980s. So what does Fincher say? Like, this is actually a fake order? No. He's like, we fucked up. Fincher, who recreates the San Francisco Chronicle office. That is a cream sauce thing. That is a true picking net. Can I go back to Apex Mountain and knock this down a couple of pegs then?

2:33:53Bill Simmons:If I was on a date and somebody ordered penne alla vodka, but then wanted to substitute it for cream sauce, I would have made, I gotta make a call right back and I'm out. Sorry.

2:34:02Sean Fennessey:Hey, this girl I'm here with has a head injury and I can't date her. I have a small picking net on behalf of my mother-in-law who was there watching the movie with us last night, when Melanie and Graysmith are arguing about how Graysmith is kind of starting to gain notoriety in the paper, he goes, ah, well, no one's, he's not going to read Herb Cain. And my mother-in-law shouts out, everybody read Herb Cain. And then we found out that the Zodiac did read Herb Cain. Yeah. Oh, wow. He actually mentions Herb Cain in a letter, right? Yeah.

2:34:30Bill Simmons:That's a good one. Yeah. Oversight by Graysmith. That's awesome. Wow. Yeah. sequel prequel prestige tv all black cast are untouchable became prestige tv they did mine hunter yeah is this movie better with wayne jenkins fergie the florist buffalo bill doris burke or someone else here uh if fergie wrote one of the zodiac letters you better keep your kids off that school bus or i'll take them out the zodiac way i'll shoot the front tire and then pick the kiddies off as they come bouncing out you're gonna do this for me I don't know what that voice is but it's sort of deep possibly it's become Bono crossed with Edgar the Flores I thought for sure you were gonna do Doris DB yeah Mr.

2:35:17Bill Simmons:Zodiac Mr. Pozodiac we see the patience with all your symbols I'm trying to decipher your game Mr. Zodiac and I cannot just one Oscar who gets it venture yeah probably unanswerable questions I have two good ones do you guys have any? who's the Zodiac? I have the same thing down here in these movies or TV shows why don't cops realize that the serial killers always start with somebody they know this seems to be the big revelation with 20 minutes to go in the movie silence the lamp he knew her he knew what he covets it's like yeah no fucking kidding this is every murder all the stuff with Darlene and Mike kind of being like, we know who this is.

2:36:04It's so creepy in the beginning. Yeah, just go back

2:36:06Bill Simmons:and interview everybody in their life. The recognition of...

2:36:10Sean Fennessey:Okay, so this is kind of, this is related to that. I wanted to ask you both initially if there was ever anything that was not related to the work that you do that you would have been willing to kind of throw your life away to explore the way that Graysmith did. For CR, it's Edie Falco and Copland. I'm not sure if that requires a life's work. It might be a life's fascination. Like, do I have like an obsession that I would take so far that I would get rid of? Well, it depends on like... But it can't be like related to the Sixers or Prestige Television. You know what I mean? That's the problem with what we do is that we get to bring the passions into our professions.

2:36:45That's not the problem. It's the best part about what we do. That's the genius of what we do. What would be something... Like the MCL? But okay, so my follow... The MCL. Just learning about the ligament. What's up with you? Come on, you know?

2:36:59Bill Simmons:I didn't like how the Sixers looked last night.

2:37:02Sean Fennessey:I'm officially threatened. So, did you specifically ever seriously consider criminology?

2:37:08Bill Simmons:No.

2:37:10Sean Fennessey:Forensic science?

2:37:11Bill Simmons:No.

2:37:12Sean Fennessey:Serial killer investigation?

2:37:14Bill Simmons:No. I would do that. I told you guys, I would do these deep dives with like all the president's men and then I'm just like throwing myself in a water gate for three weeks in 1991. But I would always get bored and move on to the next thing. But for what? I don't just for that weird thing that we have. Right, but he's doing this just for fun too. Is it Zodiac? Robert Christmas. No, but at some point he starts seeing dollar signs. He's like, I can turn this. You think that's what it was? I think at some point, I think he was obsessed with it, but then was also like, wait, I can make money from this.

2:37:41Bill Simmons:Wonder if Melanie wishes she hung out. I have a really important unanswerable. Was there an easier job ever than 1970s handwriting expert? What were your qualifications? it's what made somebody better than somebody else basically this guy just brings out a magnifying glass and he's like and a big glass of whiskey but you can't tell like can you tell that like somebody does a K with three strokes or two like would you be able to do this this guy's fucking bombed with a giant Sherlock Holmes thing and he's deciding murder cases never heard of magnifying glass

2:38:21Sean Fennessey:described as a giant Sherlock Holmes thing yeah

2:38:23Bill Simmons:he's like oh

2:38:25Sean Fennessey:Hold on, let me get my monocle. I'll really be able to tell this. I'm going to zag on this. I got a very specific real world reason for that. Woke up early this morning to get ready to come over here to do the pod. My daughter Alice is awake, and she's sitting at what we call the messy table where she draws and colors and stuff, and she's learning how to write. She's got her notebook open. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I get out of bed at 7 o 'clock in the morning. She's already awake sitting at this table by herself drawing in a notebook.

2:38:51Bill Simmons:I was worried you were going to say Zodiac symbols. Well, her drawing does somewhat recall some of the Zodiac cryptography, but you can already see at four and a half that she has like patterns with the way that she draws letters.

2:39:07Sean Fennessey:She has a style. There is like a kind of perverse art to individual handwriting. I've never spent any time studying it. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. But just watching her develop, like literally learning from nothing to I can draw A, I can draw L, I can draw I. You could kind of see. Now, this guy, Phil Baker Hall, he might have been a full-blown alcoholic.

2:39:29Bill Simmons:He's like, could a killer be ambidextrous? No. Not in my 38 years. I've never seen it. Sean's story reminds me of when I was first learning how to draw. And like in kindergarten, one of the first things I kind of learned how to replicate were ninjas. I realized how to draw ninjas. and in kindergarten I did like basically a mural of death of ninjas killing each other and they had to have me talk to like a child oh Jesus you're like the kid in Insidious but it was just because it was the first thing like an older kid was like if you ever want to draw a ninja this is how you do it it was like three triangles and a guy with like blood splurting out of his bed what piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie the I am not Paul Avery button that was a good one yeah I like that houseboat to your point it's not really memorabilia I'll allow it wow I'm going with the not want the wooden dildo okay that just seems like an awful artifact like imagine that behind Sean's head right now what's that it's the wooden dildo from from Zodiac

2:40:34Sean Fennessey:maybe don't put it there

2:40:35Bill Simmons:maybe the house can digitally insert it like Fincher would yeah probably like one of the original letters or all of the original letter recreations that they did for the Zodiac things would be a cool thing to have

2:40:48Sean Fennessey:oh yeah one of the actual letters that were written

2:40:52Bill Simmons:his whole scrapbook of all the newspaper and the murders that would be cool Coach Finstock Mr. Miyagi Award for best or worst life lesson it's really a throwaway line in this movie but it's not finished until you type it up it's a really good life lesson which is basically movies aren't finished they're abandoned I had don't ever give up figuring out a murder investigation even if it costs you your family and your sanity because it might lead to a David Fincher movie just keep going keep pushing Fincher might be waiting for you he loves obsession just keep going did you have a life lesson? can't top that best double feature?

2:41:35all the presents man

2:41:37Bill Simmons:Dirty Harry I had Dirty Harry I want to go after this movie I need a change of pacer I'd go Dirty Harry first

2:41:45Sean Fennessey:then I would do this yes Dirty Harry is the exciting version of this story that is solved Zodiac is the real version of this story that is unsolvable

2:41:55Bill Simmons:it is I never really fully realized that until I was doing the research how much Dirty Harry kind of informed isn't it Scorpio and Dirty Harry yeah so close to Zodiac how they kind of just ripped off Zodiac I can make Dirty Harry with Quinny. It's also such a different, like, you know, there was just so much more local media back then. So the idea that Toski would be like this character in the newspapers and be a character based on him in the Tales from the City columns and that Bullet and Dirty Harry would have like his gun style and stuff like that.

2:42:29Sean Fennessey:So I was watching some interviews with Toski and Ruffalo's performance doesn't really sound like him. You know, Ruffalo does that like, what did you say? What do you mean by that? Like that kind of whispery, kind of chattery style. And Toski talks more like a lot of cops that I knew growing up, which were just like, kind of like, what do you mean, buddy? Come on over here. You know, kind of like Metropolis detective guy. And it sounds like what Ruffalo is doing is like, I haven't had my coffee yet, Dirty Harry. Like he kind of is doing the Clint Eastwood voice. They're like, well, do you punk?

2:43:05Sean Fennessey:In his voice, so it's this weird thing where like those movies are in such harmony together that even in the performance of Toski and he met Toski he like spent time with him for the role but he's not trying to do an impression of him it's really interesting

2:43:18Bill Simmons:it's interesting also that they're police officers but we never see him actually in an action scene or anything yeah sure we never see him like the most cop thing he does is the taxi cab crime scene yeah we never see him like wait who's that and like do a chase scene holding the gun up yeah I don't think he ever holds a gun in the movie no he just has He has it holstered, but it's... Yeah, he's got that easy access holster. Who won the movie? Fincher.

2:43:41Sean Fennessey:Agreed. Right? Pretty easily Fincher. Yes. Okay. I mean, did the Zodiac Killer win the movie? Because he got away? Well, because his myth is burnished by this film.

2:43:56Bill Simmons:I think it's notable how much this movie is still on. I feel like it's been... I know it's leaving Netflix maybe at the end of January. and I'm sure it'll come back. But it feels like people continue to consume this, which was ironically one of my cases with Limitless when we did the 50 most rewatchable. I looked at where Limitless was just streaming right now on that Just Watch app, and it was on Amazon, Paramount. It's literally everywhere because there's a reason people keep clicking on this. I never, when I saw Zodiac in 07, I never thought that would be the destiny of this movie as a rewatchable in your life?

2:44:37I think usually what we would call a rewatchable is something that's like 90 minutes to two hours that has like recognizable peaks and valleys that you can be like, oh, I want to stay for this or I can leave for that. And with Zodiac, it's almost more like prestige television where you could watch this in 40 minute bursts if you wanted to. There are little breaks here to like, you know, with the fade out, you can step away if you want to and start it again the next day. So I wonder whether or not some of its success is its relationship to what would become Mindhunter and the way that Fincher wanted to tell this kind of story.

2:45:10Sean Fennessey:There's something else related to it too that I kind of meant to say at the beginning of the conversation is it's hard to do most rewatchable scene for the movie because the scenes are so short. There are not a lot of scenes where you're like, oh, I was here for 10 minutes. The cutting style of this movie reminds me a little bit of Oppenheimer and later period Nolan where it's like really dense, important scenes that are like 30 seconds long. Yes. it feels like elaborate montage the whole movie it's a funky movie you know it's not like the point you just made about how Ruffalo's never running with a gun like that's obviously a very intentional choice but it's so different from almost any other movie of its kind do we ever see

2:45:51Bill Simmons:Downey typing? yeah we just hit the desk calls him a latent homosexual alright Craig what's your take? you never saw this movie never saw this movie I would argue I know you said you like to watch this with no pants on alone I think this is a decent family watch. I think it's a generational connector. Yeah. Because I watched, I was texting my dad as I watched it. I watched it with Liz's parents. And there's a lot of like, they described to us how things worked back in the day. We were asking questions, but it was made no seven. So there's modern filmmaking to it. I'm more familiar with Fincher films than my parents or her parents.

2:46:22And yet they knew everything about living in California in like the seventies and eighties. So actually, and it's not really as gory as I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Even the deaths, like you said earlier, they're not sensationalized or romantic at all no they're a little tame at least to what i'm used to and what i expected coming into a fincher film yeah i think it's why like you said you were a little bit lukewarm when you first saw it i feel like you do kind of back into this movie because you go in expecting something completely different and then now i mean even hearing you guys talk i'm like this really it felt like creepy all the president's men yeah and you end up respecting that and it's a movie you really want to dig into you have to turn your phone upside down and after the movie was over, we talked about it for 30 minutes and it's almost a puzzle that is not meant to be solved.

2:47:04Family movie, Zodiac. Yeah. It kind of is, I think. It brings the fam together. Because it's not really a puzzle. I mean, half the time, I didn't know what was going on and we kind of discussed how all these names and all these connections were pretty blurry and we had trouble with that and we realized this is more just about the detectives. The turn when it goes to Graysmith and the way that they leap to Marshall is like, you have to really be dialed in on like pieces of paper that they've got or like quick conversations that they have.

2:47:29Sean Fennessey:So since I want to see it again soon, you think I should show it to Alice tonight? What do you think we should do? Not the John Holmes film. Maybe this one. Got it. Yeah.

2:47:37Bill Simmons:But this is totally a movie. Craig's asking his mother-in-law, what's the deal with wooden dildos back then? Did they really have those? Well, one thing I texted my dad, who was a police officer, I was like, there's a moment where they go up to this thing that literally says police telephone on the street. Yeah. That's awesome. And they open it up and there was a phone in there. I've never seen that before in my life. Did he say that those were? He's like, oh yeah, those were things. He's like, right when I started, they basically disappeared when people got cell phones. But yeah, never seen those before.

2:48:01But this movie was great.

2:48:02Bill Simmons:So huge thumbs up. Big thumbs up. And it's something you need to revisit. Like, I already want to go back and now watch this again. All right. So strong. So we had another 48 hours. He liked that one. Just one of the guys was bad. So now we've rallied back.

2:48:15Sean Fennessey:I got the rare, like, panicked text from Craig about just one of the guys on, like, a Friday afternoon where he was like, Hey, man, just, like, level with me. What's going on with this one?

2:48:23Bill Simmons:that's it for the first three watchables on netflix sadly uh these aren't going to be on youtube anymore but happily they're going to be on netflix i think we blasted past the running time of the film we did that running time also uh if you have netflix you can click on the watch list thing for all of our podcasts but especially this one's once a week so anytime we do a new one it'll just pop up on the thing and we're gonna try to do netflix movies over the course of the next like two months at least so follow me on twitter because i will tell you what's coming or my podcast bill simmons podcast what's coming next let you know i don't know what the order is but i know uh we're circling wild things pretty hard ace ventura which we've never done that's on there and then uh two two two two films the recast away is looming but is it going to be a solo recast away will not be a solo because i did cast away by myself during covid which i still feel like was my 81 point game.

2:49:21Bill Simmons:It was your Apex Mountain. Kobe has his 81 point game. I have solo castaway during COVID. Yeah. But we need to redo that one at some point. But we have a lot of good ones. There might be a Michael Mann movie doing live in Los Angeles next month. But that's it for rewatching.

2:49:36Sean Fennessey:The Keep live?

2:49:37Bill Simmons:It's Black Hat actually. Yeah, we're going to explain it. And then Big Picture, which is also going to be on Netflix. Yeah. And then a lot of rumors about live right after the Oscars. So some rumors. could happen.

2:49:49Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Where's it going to be taking place? Am I going to be inside of the Dolby Theater? You literally might be here. Will I be on stage receiving an Oscar live potting?

2:49:56Bill Simmons:I was very upset about Joel Edgerton. I get it. It was a loaded category. You can't be surprised. It just hurt my feelings. You just can't be surprised. That was my number one that I was like, Were you happy about F1 getting best pick? They put the one popcorn movie in, right? Yeah. So that beat, what, Avatar?

2:50:15Sean Fennessey:I thought weapons would have been the choice.

2:50:17Bill Simmons:because it was a little bit more critically acclaimed, but it made sense to me. Yeah, even if it was sacrificial. I'm glad people came around on my side on weapons. Keep it out of the category. I don't think that's what happened.

2:50:28Sean Fennessey:I think people, I think I started it. You think because it wasn't nominated for Best Picture that everyone decided weapons isn't good? Do you think you also got Jesse Buckley nominated? I think I pushed that one. Here's the thing.

2:50:35Bill Simmons:Once I talked about Hamnet a little bit,

2:50:37Sean Fennessey:I think that really helped their campaign. Nice job. Good job. Did you get the check from Focus Features for pushing Hamnet the way that you did? I would actually give you back. I was one of the first ones who said, wow, she was really great in that movie. I'll give you back a month of my salary if you get Jesse Buckley on your pod oh my god

2:50:51Bill Simmons:I would love her yeah she's amazing she's great she's a great actress great job uh Mescal was tough too for supporting what about Mescal and Mescal I call him Mescal it's like he plays second base for the

2:51:05Sean Fennessey:Angel Mescal Luis Mescal he just signed with the Rangers yeah the Padres right fielder did you see Paul Mescal big Red Sox fan I

2:51:13Bill Simmons:is he really actually what Paul Meskel's a big Red Sox fan?

2:51:17Sean Fennessey:He's from fucking England. He's from Ireland. He got obsessed with the Red Sox.

2:51:21Bill Simmons:He said in an interview. It's so lame. What was your number one snub? I didn't hear your pod yet.

2:51:28Sean Fennessey:What was my number one snub? It was just an accident. I mean, it was just an accident. I think it was a movie that people thought was going to go there, but I didn't predict that. No other choice? I never thought I would get it. It's tough because it's like predictions versus movies that I liked. You know, I don't know if there was like a massive overlook. Are you surprised? I mean, Chase Infinity, maybe, for one battle after another, was probably the one that most people thought was going to happen. Loaded category. Pleinens? Loaded category, but also, I thought, just category fraud. She was supporting.

2:51:55I mean, Pleinens was great in Begonia.

2:51:58Sean Fennessey:Did you watch Begonia? I did. Okay.

2:52:03Bill Simmons:That's too bad. What'd you think? There's certain movies that just aren't my kind of movie. You're not a Yorgos guy. Me neither. I am 100 % not. And you're out on Yorgos, too. I do not like your ghost movies. I am in the... I appreciate... I appreciate your ghost exists.

2:52:19Sean Fennessey:You guys, like, you're, like, horny for each other right now. No, it's not that. It's just... I'm glad it exists. We're on three hours and six minutes. Is it because he tends to center women in his films? Is that the issue? I just... No, it's not. No? Okay. It's not. It's not my cup of tea. Got it. Not my cup of tea. So when Emma Stone's character in Poor Things kind of realized her agency as a woman... Do you like your ghost movies? I do. Yeah. I had him on the big picture for Begonia which I thought was a cool movie not like the best movie of the year but I thought it was cool

2:52:51Bill Simmons:CR yeah great to see you as always great to see you man Sean Fennessey great to see you as always thanks Bill you too thanks to Gahau thanks to Craig thanks to Eduardo as well we will see you next week on The Real Watchments

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