Interview: 'Zodiac' Author Robert Graysmith

by Kim Voynar Mar 2nd 2007 // 10:31AM

Filed under: Drama, Mystery & Suspense, Paramount, Interviews





Zodiac, about four men who became obsessed with finding the Zodiac Killer, who terrorized San Francisco for two decades, opens this weekend. The film is based on the books Zodiac and Zodiac Unleashed, by Robert Graysmith. Graysmith was in town recently to talk about the film, and sat down with Cinematical for a chat.

(WARNING: There are minor spoilers in this interview. If you don't know anything about the Zodiac case, and you don't want to before you see the film, then please stop reading now.)

Cinematical: Let's talk about what it's like to see your book made into a film.

Robert Graysmith: The first draft of Zodiac was 1,200 pages long, and my editor would say, well that's a wasted page, and there would be an "X". Unfortunately, I took it literally – if there was an "X" on the page, I wouldn't use it, even it was good. Now that the movie's coming out, people ask me if there's going to be a reissue of the book with the movie; the book's never been out of print, it never stopped selling.

Cinematical: How was it working with David Fincher?

RG: Fincher – he was one of those kids in San Francisco during Zodiac, when Zodiac was threatening to blow up school buses. So he has a great love for that area. And he wanted to lovingly recreate San Francisco. I think in a lot of ways that David Fincher was so transformed by the school bus threats. I don't know if you read this recent article with him where he talked about feeling betrayed by his father for putting him on a school bus, where he could be blown up, when his dad freelanced and could have driven him. So this has been a long time percolating.

I used to sit there and watch him (Fincher) and think he should have been an artist, a painter. I got to sit there and watch sometimes, and he'd do like 35, 36 takes – that's very common for him. He doesn't move the camera, which I love, so all the actors are walking through the scene, and he's watching, watching. There's just something about it, he's not even sure what it is himself. But I got to where I could spot it, I'd say, yup, it's 14. And then he's say, okay, 14's a keeper. But then he'd shoot another 19 after that. He's a perfectionist, he's looking at the light, at the dust in the air, everything.

Much more after the jump ...

Cinematical: Can you give me a sense of what it was like I the Chronicle newsroom back in those days?

RG: I loved that old newsroom there. They had old phone booths against the wall, and the floor was all bumpy. It was a mean paper. They are one heck of a newspaper to please.

I was over there recently, I was filming America's Most Wanted. And I ran into this woman, this reporter, who had known Paul Avery. And I wondered what she was going to think of this movie. I had a friend of mine with me who wanted to meet Robert Downey Jr., so I was like, sure, I can get him over here. So I just said, hey, I new Paul Avery. And he practically back-flipped over there and was like, "Yeah? Tell me all about him."

Now Downey Jr looks nothing like Avery, Avery was tall and blond, Downey is not. But this woman says, the movie, it was okay – that's about the best you're gonna get out of those tough guys – but then she says, "But Downy Jr, it's like Avery's alive again! I've know Paul for decades and its him!" So he totally transcended the physical. It was like Avery was alive again.

Now we had Gary Oldman at one point, to play Melvin Belli. He went to a lot of trouble, they had appliances, but just physically it wasn't going to work, he just didn't have the girth. But I'm glad they went with Brian Cox. The rattlesnake skin boots he's wearing, those are Melvin Belli's boots. In fact, the jacket worn by the guy playing Captain Narlow, that's really Narlow's jacket. I provided most of this stuff.

Cinematical: You can tell there's this real attention to detail with everything in the film.

RG: Now I've got to be honest here, I have not seen the completed film, I promised Dave Toschi I wouldn't see it without him, but I understand there's something about a blue drink in there, I don't know. I talked to Fincher and he said, we decided to have a little fun with you.

Now I spent a few days with Jake Gyllenhaal (who plays Graysmith in the film) – he was just off of filming Jarhead, and his cell phone was all scratched up from being dropped in the sand so much. Now, I think he must act a lot internally, because I never told him I was a Boy Scout., but that's in the film. But anyway, he's so different from Mark Ruffalo, and from Downey too. They really got three different kinds of actors. But Jake, he isn't doing an impersonation, although somehow they got the same clothes I used to wear, the same car -- not the exact one, but the same make and model, and even the license plate number.

But what I was really impressed with was the newsroom. It was like literally going back in time. It's a block-long set – the original Chronicle office is, I don't know, an insurance company or something now. But I went on the set, and I opened a desk, and there in the drawer they have a Chronicle notepad, the office directory, and the phone numbers were even correct, paperclips, pencils. The phones are working. Up across the top there's this lighting system, very unusual. You never even see it in the film, but it's there. I think they're going to keep it as a newspaper set.

Cinematical: Any interesting set stories?

RG: So one of the things is that Ruffalo, he's a very good actor – he plays Inspector Toschi, who's been my friend for many years. And Ruffalo, he is Toschi all the way, it gets a little annoying after awhile, because he is Toschi, he's got the hair and everything. But one of the things he doesn't have is Toschi's way with a gun. So he's got this one scene where he's supposed to cock this gun expertly and do something with it. And Ruffalo just couldn't get it. So they only shot him from here up (indicates his chest), and they dub in the sound of the gun cocking. That's the only way that scene was ever gonna get done. So you've got Downey who transcends the physical, and Jake who does everything internally, and then you've got Ruffalo who is Toschi. So it's a good mix.

Cinematical: I wanted to ask you about one scene, where you're with your kids at the table and you have them going through Zodiac evidence. Did that really happen?

RG: I went through some old photos and I found one of that so yeah, I guess it really did. I'm very close, and we did have that kind of relationship. But I found this photograph, and Margot's drawing a map, and Aaron's looking up an astrology thing, so I guess we got into it.

Cinematical: When you started out with the Zodiac case, you were not an investigative journalist.

RG: I wasn't even a writer! I was a political cartoonist, I wanted to have a career as a painter and a sculptor. All the really great American painters were also all newspaper artists. And the thing about a newspaper artist is you have to be fast and work on deadline and still be good. Back in those days they'd send you out – there's a parade! Go draw it, quick! That's how they did it in those days. But you could afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. You could change in the world -- get a bill overthrown, get a bad guy kicked out of office. You really could make a difference with a picture.

So then Carol Fisher, who was our long-suffering letters-to-the editor person, brings in these letters. She was just always in the midst of it. And I saw the (Zodiac) letter and I was really drawn to the symbols. And he was very artistic. He did this one, a 320-character cipher that was perfectly aligned, with no ruler marks and it was perfect. The guy who did that had a light table, a t-square, drafting materials.

Basically, he's doing cartoons and symbols. See, he's trying to scare us with symbols, and I'm trying to fix things with symbols. And there were all these police jurisdictions and nobody was cooperating. And so I got the idea, I'll make this book that has the effect of a political cartoon, organize all the material from all the jurisdictions in one place, lay it all out, and then maybe it will make a difference, help solve the case.

Cinematical: Your character in the film keeps getting sucked into the Zodiac story, and you're obviously attracted to what Paul Avery is doing.

RG: Oh yeah, just imagine. I was 24, he's a star and he's right across the room and he's got the silk shirt and the scarf and the TV cameras. Then in comes Trenchcoat Dave, supercop Dave Toschi, with his Eddie Fischer bowtie, looks like Regis Philbin and sounds like Tony Bennett. He's got this amazing holster -- they modeled Dirty Harry after him, you know, he worked with Michael Douglas on Streets of San Francisco, and he's a really nice guy.

Cinematical: After decades of research, are you personally convinced that Arthur Leigh Allen was Zodiac?

RG: I am, yes. There were just too many things: he talked about killing people and calling himself Zodiac before the murders started; he got the Zodiac watch on his birthday from his mother; he was the same height and weight as Zodiac, with the same shoe size, and he had Wing Walkers. That and a lot more – too many things. But in truth, yeah. There were some 2,500 Zodiac suspects interviewed. Is is possible – possible – that one slipped through the cracks, maybe someone who wasn't even interviewed? Sure.

If Zodiac is still alive, if he's still out there, we'll hear from him again. We will.

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