5 things zodiac on dvd

5 Things: 'Zodiac' on DVD

It's official: I'm obsessed with "Zodiac." Which makes perfect sense,

since it is a film about nothing less than obsession. I remain

convinced that it's the movie from 2007 that is really going to last.

Director David Fincher freely acknowledges that it was a commercial

flop. But he can live with that. This is what he told critic Scott

Foundas in a recent interview with the "L.A. Weekly":

"The goal here was to make an interesting movie...Five years from now

is more important than five months from now, in my humble opinion.

I'll trade the opening weekend for a movie that can stand scrutiny

five or ten years down the road."

"Zodiac" will be able to stand that scrutiny. I've been making my way

through the wealth of information and documentaries on the new,

two-disc edition. It helps you understand Fincher's obsession,

although he tells Foundas that he doesn't see it as obsession: He sees

it as being given a lot of money to make a film and wanting to do

everything he can to make it right.

I can't do better in explaining the film's themes and visual symbols

and subtext than the penetrating work that has already been done by

Jim Emerson, Manohla Dargis, Nathan Lee, Foundas and even Jeffrey

Wells, who has used his site as a welcome bully pulpit for the film.

But I would like to talk about some of the insights I got from

watching the extras on the film. Like many of Fincher's previous DVD

releases, the features and documentaries actually deepen your

appreciation of the feature film.

1. The extended director's cut. This is sort of a requirement for a

new DVD packaging, but I'm not sure there is anything here that makes

the film substantially different from the original theatrical version.

There is a nice visual blackout scene, some extended beats. The added

scene I like the most is one showing the difficulty of obtaining a

search warrant for Arthur Leigh Allen's trailer. It dovetails with the

movie's great theme of the drudgery of police work. Not the way it is

portrayed on most TV shows and in cop movies: the exploding building,

the car chase, the pithy one-liners, the too-easy apprehension of the

perp. Here, Fincher focuses on the blind alleys, the long waits, the

endless frustrations, the failures to communicate. And as Dargis and

others have said: The thinking, the talking. It's what makes "Zodiac"

stand out: It's all about the hunt, not the capture.

2. The painstaking detail. This comes through in the numerous

featurettes showing how Fincher and his production team prepped the

movie. Basically, Fincher has the hook in deep on "Zodiac" in the same

way James Cameron had the hook in deep on "Titanic." You get a strong

sense of what makes a Hollywood movie so expensive. The animation

pre-work, building an entire San Francisco street corner (where the

cabbie was shot), lots of computer graphic enhancement (even the hair

on Jake Gyllenhaal's knuckles). It's surprising for such a

straightforward drama.

And then Fincher insisted on interviewing witnesses, hiring crime

profilers to essentially reinvestigate the case. Screenwriter James

Vanderbilt explains that the much-lauded overhead shot of cabbie Paul

Stein's fateful trip was developed that way because Fincher didn't

know what Zodiac and Stein might have talked about on the trip. He

didn't know, so he didn't put it in the movie. He was that intent on

not making unnecessary assumptions, and honoring what was on the

record about the cases. But here's my favorite example: Fincher had

entire issues of the "San Francisco Chronicle" remade for the movie.

Not just front pages, but complete editions. If an actor opened a

paper, he could read actual stories from the day his character would

have read it. On the actual page it was on.

3. The two documentaries written and directed by David Prior. As

gripping as "Zodiac" is, Fincher and the producers have made this DVD

edition even more essential with these documentaries, which revisit

the case with the real-life participants. They uncover new details and

question some of the assertions in the books by Robert Graysmith. The

chief suspect in the movie, Arthur Leigh Allen, doesn't seem as

inevitable in real life as he does in the film, which is OK since the

film follows Graysmith's journey. Allen remains the favorite suspect

of most people. But it is the memories that stick with you. It is

deeply unsettling to watch the faces of the police officers who saw

the Zodiac's butchery up close -- they clearly still feel the pain and

horror. Or the police dispatcher who is still unnerved by the sound of

Zodiac's voice.

Naturally, it's even more pronounced with two survivors -- Michael

Mageau, the teenager who was shot multiple times in the parked car,

and Bryan Hartnell, who was stabbed repeatedly at Berrysea Park. Both

lost girl friends in the attacks. Both have riveting stories to tell.

Mageau is damaged, forgetful of details at times. The DVD commentaries

indicate that he has led a drifter's life in the years since the

attacks. You wonder if it's exploitative to question him on camera

since he is clearly in a haze of pain. Hartnell is a very impressive

man. He is one of those amazingly lucid, analytical speakers; he seems

to have an engineer's or an intellectual's precise mind. He very

matter-of-factly takes you through his ordeal with the Zodiac. But you

soon realize that the feature film (in which he, his wife and two sons

are extras) didn't come close to giving the full account of Hartnell's

actions during and after the Zodiac's knifing of him and Cecelia

Shepherd at a lakeside park. The words "heroism" and "courage" are

thrown about a lot these days, but there are no other words to

describe Bryan Hartnell. It's simply beyond my ability to rationalize

how Hartnell can stand to revisit the murder scene to help Fincher

stage it, or go back and look at the car door that Zodiac scrawled one

of his coded messages on. But Hartnell does it. A very strong man. A

very brave man.

4. The commentaries. Screenwriter James Vanderbilt and Fincher give

straightforward insights on the making of the film. Fincher does point

out that the most Fincher-like scene, the montage scene with the

superimposed letters and newspaper fronts, was actually made by an

outside firm before Fincher ever saw it. Still, he approved its use,

so it remains a Fincher touch. The best commentaries come from James

Ellroy, Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., who add a bit of needed

levity to the proceedings. Ellroy calls "Zodiac" an "epic film about

unknowability" and says it's one of the best half-dozen crime movies

ever made. He says real-life cops tell him it's the best film to

capture the deliberate pace of police procedure. Ellroy starts moaning

happily, his pulp juices revving, while watching the scene of the

search through Allen's squirrel-infested trailer. It's like he gets

off on the psychopathy. But Ellroy also cracks jokes about the hirsute

actors, saying they will all get separate chapters in his new book,

"More Hair Than Me."

Downey's arch wit comes through in a few moments, especially when he

views the first slo-mo, bloody killing at the lovers' lane: "This is

when the audience goes, 'Oh, it's a David Fincher movie.' They might

have thought it was 'American Graffitti' for a second." Funny. And

Gyllenhaal gives some insight into Fincher's obsessive ways when he

starts groaning at an insert shot, claiming it took three days for

Fincher to be happy. In one of the featurettes, Gyllenhaal is supposed

to drop a book on a car seat. A person on the set asks him to predict

how many takes it will require. Gyllenhaal guesses 15. It takes more

than 30.

5. And finally, as Ellroy says, the unknowability. That's what sticks

with you after going through the two-disc set. The documentaries leave

you with more questions than answers about the true identity of the

Zodiac killer. Even Graysmith admits he might have got it wrong, which