The victims of the Zodiac's pen and Jack's thousand rivers of feeling for Ennis

In the UK, the September issue of DVD Review has hit the shop shelves and it contains a great feature on Zodiac in anticipation of the film's release on DVD in the UK - with an extra - on 24 September. The review of the DVD itself will be included in next month's issue of the magazine; this edition focuses on the background to David Fincher's 'extraordinary Zodiac'. It is good indeed to see UK critics begin to rave about this excellent film, confident that the DVD will do well with viewers here.


The feature is divided into several parts, beginning with an interview with Fincher recorded on the same day that Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr filmed the Aqua Velva scene. Fincher makes it clear that his interest in the Zodiac is not for the murderer's success as a serial killer, calling him an 'underachiever', but because his fame is due to the pen being mightier than the sword. The Zodiac's compulsion and addiction was not about murder but about 'communicating with the Chronicle. That became far more gratifying and far more seductive than what he started out doing.' And as for the men who pursued this attention seeker, they have the 'glory' that comes with a refusal to give up or to turn away. The film shows that life isn't neat: 'It doesn't tie itself up. It presents itself in complicated ways.'


The second part of the feature looks at Mark Ruffalo and his relationship with 'the real Dave Toschi'. It's sad to hear that Toschi has been too ill to see the finished film, but Ruffalo tells us that 'he did come on set a few times and watched a few scenes and it was one of the real genuine smiles I'd seen from him.' Ruffalo tells us that Toschi's wife didn't want Dave to have anything to do with the movie but 'he really opened up to me and came to trust me.' As Ruffalo points out, the Zodiac case ruined Toschi's career: 'He caught all the shit and it ate him alive, literally. He got bleeding ulcers and ended up in the hopital. At the end of the day he was the face of the failure' of the investigation.


Lastly, the feature interviews producer Brad Fischer who has been working on a documentary for the DVD, which includes interviews with everyone involved with the original case, including survivors Mike Mageau and Bryan Hartnell. It's very sad that, when the producers hired a private investigator to locate Mageau, they found him in a detention centre in Las Vegas because of vagrancy. Later, when they needed him again, they found him living rough under a freeway underpass between LA and Vegas. As Fischer makes clear, it as crucial to everyone involved in the Zodiac project that the victims - whether of the gun, the knife or the pen - are honoured.


Little mention of Jake is made in this feature and therefore I looked to another recent review of the DVD to find praise of Jake: 'Crucial to the success of the film is the casting of the three leads. Each character is pulled into the investigation for very different reasons: intrigue; the chance for fame; professional responsibility. Jake Gyllenhaal has one of the most haunting faces in modern cinema; that of an overgrown child, at once both world-weathered and innocent. As Robert Graysmith (on whose book this is based) his refreshing lack of cynicism—almost inexplicable considering his profession here as a satirical cartoonist—means he has no conception of how the macabre could be perceived as “good business” for those who report on it.'


This article stresses how well Zodiac translates to the small screen and it is all the more remarkable because, on the surface, it appears to go nowhere and takes its own 'sweet time to get there. And yet every moment of its running time is absolutely compelling and stunningly rendered. With the exception of the almost impossible to make-out closing captions (which divulge crucial case-related information), it transfers impeccably to the small screen.'

It is a remarkable feat to make a thriller which starts off energetic and eventful and, as the capture of the killer becomes increasingly less likely and the crimes more infrequent and disconnected, it appositely loses some of that pace, with only Gyllenhaal’s maniacal, all-encompassing, obsession carrying it to its conclusion. This reverse pacing is not to its detriment. Instead of a high-octane thriller, Fincher has given us an oft melancholy piece; reflecting (though it never explicitly considers) the loss of life. Bonds are fleetingly forged then broken, comradeship and honour are largely absent and, like the Zodiac himself, everyone emerges as a rather lost and damaged soul.'


Robert Graysmith has nothing but praise for Jake's interpretation of his life-determining experience. He is asked in this interview if he had to walk Jake through who he was: 'I don't think you have to walk Jake through anything. I was just talking with Mark [Ruffalo] outside the hall. My best friend is Inspector Toschi. We go and have lemon meringue pie and french fries in San Francisco and we talk about the case maybe once every week. But Mark Ruffalo came back as [young] Dave Toschi. He's got the Toschi hair, the voice, and he's really annoying after a while because he follows you around. Jake, he just watches me. I never told a person on this Earth that when I was living in Japan, I was in the boy scouts. But by God, he got that. How he got that I don't know. He got that apparently I was very obsessed about this case. (laughs) I did not know this until I saw Jake's performance and then I thought maybe I was two-fisted like Mark Ruffalo. Everyone went, "No, Jake has got it."'


Jack's thousand rivers of feeling for Ennis

In the comments to the last post, Beckela mentioned an interview in which Jake talked about Ang's direction for Brokeback and that he had been told to find a thousand rivers of feeling for Ennis. Here is a link to the interview. Jake was discussing the direction that he and Heath received as they strove to breath life, love and realism into Brokeback's intimate scenes: 'I think that we have just a chemistry as friends and then I think that we kind of dove into the love scenes, and jumped out as fast as we can. These scenes were written in the script where there were paragraphs of screen direction telling you, as an actor, what your character was actually feeling. I remember reading things where it was like, how do you put into action when Jack looks at Ennis that 'a thousand rivers flow through him'? But it was a guide, we had a pretty incredible guide through it.'


One statement in particular interests me in this interview; Jake says that it is the women of the story who give extra dimension to Brokeback Mountain: 'And it's the women that we have interactions with that actually add and make it the complex story that it becomes. You see us relate and interact with them, and then you see us come back to each other and you see their struggles, and it just adds to the movie that otherwise, without them, would be two dimensional.'


It's pretty clear from Jake's words that he found Ang's direction mystifying at times: 'Well, it was really interesting, he was a man of very few words. He would say things like, 'Do that better','That was okay'. I remember very specifically, I said, 'How was that shot?' And he said, 'Very gay.' Yeah, I think emotionally that was the most I got out of Ang. He was so excited that it was very gay. But yeah, he has a sort of - I hesitate to say manipulation, but he recognizes the role of the actor and the personality of the actor. He plays with that relationship and knows that you're gonna want to please him. So he'll play back and forth on that, and then he recognizes how to do that within the character you're playing and what the character needs. There was a scene where I was herding 500 sheep on my own, it's not in the movie, down this hill at sunset with, like, a horse. I felt so proud of myself, one, that I was actually riding a horse, two, that I was herding 500 sheep. And there were four or five cameras picking it up, and I remember coming down the very end and Ang - I was so excited, and Ang said, 'Kind of sexy.' That was what he said to me. And I said, 'Let's do it again!' He was like, 'Let's move on.' So my performance, really, I'd describe as 'kind of sexy', just kind of. And then the next scene we moved onto, I was eager to please. And I think he likes to keep that type of relationship with his actors.'


Includes pictures from IHJ.

A little bird informs me it's Sass' birthday today - happy birthday, Sass *)