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Trailer for "Zodiac"

Warning: rabbit hole ahead.

Like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the unsolved Zodiac killings that horrified America in 1969 have been fiercely discussed and argued by theorists for years. And like Oliver Stone’s JFK, David Fincher’s mesmerizing new film Zodiac throws its weight behind one solution while holding out the possibility that by fueling the debate it may bring new evidence to light, even evidence that disproves its conclusions.

At the center of debates about the identity of Zodiac, who sent taunting encrypted letters to southern California newspapers daring them to find him before his next murder, is Robert Graysmith, author of two books that were the basis for Fincher’s film. A political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle when Zodiac sent his letters there, Graysmith was not directly involved with the investigations by police and reporters, though he did unlock one important clue contained in the letters. But over the years, as he saw the personal declines of those who were frustrated by the endless search, he developed his own unshakable fascination with the case.

More than the murders themselves, Fincher’s film is about the obsession that consumed the lives of Graysmith (played in the film by Jake Gyllenaal), veteran Chronicle crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and San Francisco homicide inspectors Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), to name only the major players.

You don’t have to spend much time Googling Graysmith to learn that a lot of people disagree with his conclusions—along the way learning that a lot of people have devoted an awful lot of time and attention to this case. On the other hand, director Fincher, screenwriter Jamie Vanderbilt and producer Brad Fisher put several years of their own effort into researching the story, and while Graysmith is open to other interpretations, he feels the man he has named as the killer—Arthur Leigh Allen, whose death in 1992 ended a revived investigation—is by far the most likely suspect.

Now a voluble, animated fellow of 70 or so, the six-time Pulitzer Prize nominee for cartooning discussed the case and the film with us recently in Los Angeles.

Artvoice: How confident are you that Allen is actually Zodiac?

Robert Graysmith: There’s a very persuasive physical case to be made for him. One thing as an artist that strikes me is if you look at the ciphers [in his letters to newpapers], they’ve very neat, very clean, no guidelines. So this means you need a drafting table, a light table, t-square, triangle, all the accoutrements to create this, which even a professional artist would have trouble with. And Allen’s father was a draftsman for the city of Vallejo.

There’s an element to this case that nobody’s really tumbled to, a motive or something, that’s going to give us the answer someday. I feel in my heart that it’s Allen. But you know what, if this movie brings out new advances in the case, that’s fine, that’s what last chapters are for.

AV: You spoke to police from different jurisdictions and got information that they weren’t even willing to share with other cops—

PG: They weren’t sure even with me. It was tough even getting dates out of those people. It took ten years of getting their confidence. It’s not like today, you go in, yeah, here’s the file. It was a very hot, live case and there was a lot of ego involved. The Oakland police thought they had the answer—there was this one Oakland cop who was ready to retire, and they wanted to get him the credit so he could retire with his gold star.

AV: One scene in the film shows you going to the place where Allen worked to take a look at him. What were you hoping to get out of that?

PG: A feeling. I’m trained as a painter, and you get a feeling from people. It could be because he was challenged, but you just know. There’s that little moment in time when everything stops and you just know it. He’s an extraordinary individual—he had an IQ of like 169, physically strong, I was told by [a handwriting analyst] that he was a guy who would have applied to be a cop and was rejected. And sure enough he was.

AV: Were you ever afraid for your life while researching the book?

PG: Only in the scene shown in the film with the theater owner. I was too stupid to be afraid the other times. One time I was parked watching Arthur Leigh Allen—I now know how extraordinarily powerful he was, he beat up five Marines once, this guy told me how he threw him across the room. And I’m sitting there in my Rabbit and he pulled up alongside me, I couldn’t even open my door, and gives me this look like you couldn’t believe. So that was probably the most dangerous, though I didn’t realize it until years later.

AV: How obsessed with the case were you?

PG: You’re just so swept up…David Fincher once told me, you see absolutely nothing odd about sitting in front of a house in Vallejo California at three in the morning. And I didn’t—it seemed so natural at the time. If you remember the TV show Columbo, it used to open with a guy on a beach with a flashlight, looking for clues, and I just got the feeling I could be that guy, there something so romantic about that. And at the same time I could do what I do in my political cartoons, to accomplish something—and I think we really did stop this guy. Because three of the main suspects were watched after the book came out, and we never had any more killings, any more letters.

AV: You say it all seemed natural, but some part of you must have realized that you were over the top.

PG: Those were bad times. I was having seizures at one point, my weight was down to nothing, skin and bones. I don’t know what you’d call it that gripped me, compulsion, obsession—I’ve seen it happen to others too.

AV: Have you done other true crime books?

PG: Yes, seven other true crime books. I always try to pick a case that hasn’t been written about, like the Bob Crane case. And you try to get it reopened, and they had a trial with new evidence after 17 years. [Graysmith’s book The Murder of Bob Crane: Who Killed the Star of Hogan’s Heroes? was the basis for Paul Schrader’s film Auto Focus.]

AV: So were you in the wrong career all those years as a cartoonist?

PG: Oh, I like cartooning. I’m not logical enough to be a cop—I just do it over and over again until it makes sense. [Laughs.]

AV: The movie shows how the Zodiac case led to the dissolution of your marriage. Did you ever straighten out your personal life?

PG: No, no personal life, no. That was the price I paid. Never remarried. She did, just got divorced again. She’s thrilled about the movie—she’s an artist, and I think it can be very good for her. Name recognition for an artist is it.

AV: The film shows you at one point enlisting your kids to help you compile information. How did they turn out?

PG: I love my kids! Gotta have kids—if you don’t have any, get some! My daughter works for Fox on The Simpsons and Family Guy, my son Aaron works for Sony, he worked on the Stuart Little movies, Flushed Away. And my other son David is the accountant for the San Francisco Giants.

AV: Do you have another book in the works?

PG: I’ve got 23 books completed. I’m not joking. I have so many books I can never publish them all. And nobody’s seen them, it’s not like publishers have read them and turned them down. I probably just put them away and just paint, and release one of them every once in a while. It’s thrilling, that’s the only word. You get up in the morning, you start at seven, and the next thing you know Letterman’s on and you’ve got all these pages. I’m in a good spot, I’m just a lucky guy.