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2008 |
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FORGET ONE CLASSIC |
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How could they fail to give
a nomination to 'Zodiac'?
of TheColumnists.com
It happens every
Oscar season, and 2008 is no exception. I bet movie fans across
the nation would agree that Hollywood has once again failed to
include all five of /their choices for 2007’s Best Picture
of the Year. Moviedom certainly omitted one of my favorites.
What we probably don’t agree on is precisely which film
was unjustly ignored; therefore, I propose we dump two nominees
that really don’t belong among the five elite and replace
them with one of yours--and, of course, one of mine.
Mine is “Zodiac,” about the serial killer who tagged
himself with that moniker while terrorizing the northern San
Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. If you’re over 55
and from Northern California, you probably remember the case
vividly.
What set Zodiac apart from other serial killers is how he taunted
law enforcement and the public with his letters to newspapers
claiming responsibility for the murders and implying that the
key to his identity lay in accompanying cryptograms.
Although the killer asserted he had killed more than 30 people,
only five murders have ever been confirmed by law enforcement
officials. The first two were a teenage couple, 17 and 16, shot
and killed in December 1968 in Benicia (pop. 7,000 in 1970),
about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco.
Zodiac’s next victims were a woman, 22, and a man, 19, who
were shot on the outskirts of Vallejo (pop. 72,000 in 1970),
about 10 miles from Benicia, in July 1969. The man survived.
“Everyone in our community was terrified,“ according
to my cousin Pat, who graduated from Benicia High School in 1954
and was living in Vallejo, where she worked for the Solano County
Mental Health Department, running group therapy classes for mentally
disordered sex offenders.
What sets “Zodiac“ (the movie) apart from other films
of the crime genre is not only its focus on the painstaking procedures
police went through in their exhaustive hunt for the killer but
also on the wear and tear that their frustratingly unsuccessful
hunt had on them, particularly detectives David Toschi (played
by Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (played by Anthony Edwards).
Also evident is the lack of cooperation between various law enforcement
agencies at the time, perhaps due more to the lack of electronic
devices to share information efficiently than to any deliberate
attempt to, so to speak, protect one’s own turf in order
to take credit eventually for solving the crimes.
The movie is based on a book by Robert Graysmith (played by Jake
Gyllenhaal), a young, naive San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist
at the time. The Chronicle was one of the three newspapers to
receive Zodiac’s missives, and Graysmith became obsessed
with the case. He befriends Chronicle crime reporter Paul Avery
(Robert Downey, Jr.) and takes it upon himself to try to help
uncover the killer.
Long after the case had cooled down, the single-minded Graysmith
continued to pursue his goal of uncovering the killer’s
identity, often placing himself in what appears to be dangerous
situations.
Despite the complexities involved in the drawn-out case and the
multitude of characters that appear and re-appear in the film,
director David Fincher manages to keep the suspense clipping
along throughout the movie without ever losing the audience.
Every member of the cast is superb, including the leading Zodiac
suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen (played by John Carroll Lynch), and
famed San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli (played by Brian Cox).
Downey, in my opinion, should have received an Oscar nod as Best
Supporting Actor.
Why Zodiac received no Oscar nomination as Best Picture is difficult
to understand. Perhaps it was released at the wrong time of year--March.
All of this year’s Best Picture nominees seemed to have
been released toward the end of ‘07.
Or perhaps it was because there was no definitive conclusion.
American moviegoers seem to want all the loose ends tied up at
the conclusion. Perhaps because it wasn’t a box office hit.
I recommend that all film buffs who want to see one of the most
suspenseful films of recent years rent “Zodiac.” And,
if you like it as much as I did, buy it. But make sure you get
the director’s cut version because of the insightful commentary
from cast and crew. In addition, the director’s cut features
a documentary with some of the actual
participants, both investigators and victims.
By the way, Arthur Leigh Allen was one of those sex offenders
who took part in my cousin’s therapy sessions in the 1970s.
“One day Jack (her husband) came home from work and casually
mentioned that a Leigh Allen had shown up at Vallejo High School
to volunteer to help coach the school’s swim team,”
Pat said.
Jack, who was the school’s athletic
director, only mentioned Allen to her because it was unusual
then for non-school personnel to volunteer their time with athletic
programs, Pat added. Jack had been acquainted with Allen because
they both attended Vallejo High School in the 1950s, where Jack
was a star football player and Allen had been a star on the diving
team.
“I was torn between my loyalty to the county’s mental
health program to maintain confidentiality and my fear for the
kids,” explained Pat, who wasn‘t aware of any Zodiac
connection with Allen at the time. “I decided the kids were
more important than confidentiality and informed Jack that I
had a Leigh Allen in my sex offenders class.”
When Allen showed up in the personnel office to sign up for the
volunteer job, he was told that he would have to be fingerprinted,
which, incidentally, was not required at the time. Allen left
and never returned.
©2008 by Len Klempnauer. This column first posted Feb. 18, 2008.
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