Monday Minute
No. 192 | November 8, 2010

Out of Print

Another film today about a serial killer, but no, not a leftover from our Halloween week theme.  This week we feature films set in the world of one of our great institutions—the newspaper business.  You may have read the news that newspapers may not be around much longer.  I’d say that obituary is a bit premature, but even if rumors of the death of the newspaper have been exaggerated, the challenges to the business are nonetheless real.

I grew up reading the paper every day—the dead-tree edition (though we never called it that then).  I still do.  It’s hardly the only (or even primary) source of news anymore, but I like to think I’ll always be able to get my fingers dirty with news ink while I sip my morning coffee.  I prefer print, and not just because it’s a habit or for sentimental reasons.  There’s value in reading the paper that you miss on a computer screen.  I hope readers continue to have the choice (though that may not be in the cards).

Whatever the future may hold, newspapers have a storied past, and the movie business has taken some of those stories and made them into memorable films.  We’ll look at five of those movies this week.  Even if newspapers’ days do turn out to be numbered, we’ll always have the movies to remember them by.

Our theme this week
Films about the newspaper biz

Zodiac (2007)

Is David Fincher the best film director working today?  The quick answer to that question is no, but there may be other ways to look at it.  Of course, some masters of an earlier generation (Scorsese, Coppola père, Polanski, Lumet, Allen, Eastwood, et al.) are still here, still making movies, and some first-rate movies at that.  They may have a few surprises left, but I’d say most likely their best work is behind them.  You can add a few names from world cinema and let them battle it out for title of greatest living director.  Among the younger generation, English-language wing, those directors who seem to get the most ink include Tarantino, the Coens, and in certain circles, Nolan.  Distinctive talents, with great energy and ambition, and very good at what they do—yet for my taste they still have some growing up to do.

Which brings me to Fincher.  He’s got all the talent in the world to show off, and he certainly does at times, but when he gets down to telling his story he is a voice you can trust.  That for me is more key than anything else in an auteur’s box of tricks, and more exciting.  If there’s one director whose new work I most look forward to seeing right now, it’s probably Fincher.  That may not necessarily make him the “best,” but it’s something.

Fincher made his name with a couple of violent and stylish films during the ’90s, Se7en and Fight Club.  I like them but don’t admire them quite as some others do.  I’m more a fan of his recent work.  We’ll get to his newest, The Social Network, later this month, but let’s talk about Zodiac, his film about the famous serial killer that terrorized the Bay Area a few decades ago.

Zodiac was one of the best films of 2007.  It’s a crime drama that unfolds very much in police procedural fashion, though the more prominent investigation is conducted by an enterprising newspaper cartoonist who adopts the case as his pet hobby.  The cartoonist is Robert Graysmith, whose nonfiction book was the basis for the film, and the story follows Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) from the summer of 1969 through the early years of the 1970s, and finally into the ’80s and ’90s as he attempts to track down the killer.  Graysmith is an unlikely sleuth, but his fascination with puzzles turns into an obsession, and his interest in the case outlasts that of his colleague at the San Francisco Chronicle, crime reporter Paul Avery (a terrific Robert Downey Jr.), and even of lead S.F.P.D. detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo).  During the film’s two and a half hours, we witness a few of the Zodiac murders, the accumulation of evidence that leads in one direction or another, but more than anything, the toll that the case takes on the men who are determined to solve the case.  Avery, once the smart, cynical reporter, ends up an out-of-work drunk.  Toschi is frustrated by the case, never catching his man.  Graysmith, the onetime eagle scout, straight as an arrow, eventually loses his wife and kids.

The case is never officially solved.  If Graysmith is to be believed, the killer was a man named Arthur Leigh Allen.  But conflicting evidence pointed towards his innocence.  So what kind of a murder mystery is this?

Fincher is interested in the mystery not as a puzzle to be solved, but as an obsession for his characters.  This isn’t a whodunit.  This is a what-happens-when-you-can’t-get-who-done-it.  It’s not a typical story, but a real one—and a superior film.

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Zodiac (2007)
David Fincher, director
Robert Graysmith (book), James Vanderbilt (screenplay), writers
Harris Savides, cinematographer
Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo
Trailer

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Quote of note
Graysmith:  So?
Toschi:  The prints, the handwriting—?
Graysmith:  I’m not asking you as a cop.
Toschi:  But I am a cop.  I can’t prove this.
Graysmith:  Just because you can’t prove it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Toschi:  Easy, Dirty Harry.  Finish your book.
—Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), Zodiac (2007)

…58…59…60.