Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

From cartoonist to ‘Zodiac,’ author Robert Graysmith has prominent role in film

The movie is never as good as the book.

We’ve heard it a thousand times, but author Robert Graysmith doesn’t believe it.

Graysmith’s last book-turned-film, “Auto Focus,” details the murder of “Hogan’s Heroes” star Bob Crane, and he loved what director Paul Schrader did with it.

His latest, “Zodiac,” was helmed by “Se7en” director David Fincher, and with an estimated budget of $85 million, it has the potential to become a blockbuster.

Although Graysmith already had been through the adaptation process, “Zodiac” was a different animal because he is portrayed as a major character in the film.

The movie details the murders the self-named Zodiac serial killer was responsible for, and it captures the terror that gripped the San Francisco Bay area during the height of his 1970s killing spree. The material is approached from the perspectives of two San Francisco homicide investigators — played by Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards — and several San Francisco Chronicle employees, including Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) who was then an editorial cartoonist.

Fincher, who also directed “Fight Club,” “The Game” and “Panic Room,” has a reputation for perfectionism, and Graysmith said it was amazing to be on his sets. (Co-star Chloe Sevigny told DC magazine that the director had her shoot one scene more than 80 times).

“He recreated, on a block long set, the Chronicle of 1969,” Graysmith says. “It literally took my breath away. ... I open a drawer and it’s a phone directory for all the reporters. There’s an actual Chronicle (directory), all the extensions are correct. Nobody’s going to see in that drawer. They have Eagle pencils like I used to use, they have grease pencils, the phones worked, the pneumatic tubes worked, and across the ceiling they have this lighting pattern that was sort of unique that I had forgotten about and certainly probably doesn’t show in the film. It was exact. And I asked Brad Fischer, one of the producers, ‘Well, who would know, Brad?’ And he said, ‘David Fincher would.”’

Although Graysmith appreciated the attention to detail, he wasn’t always on board with it, particularly since he was a fledgling cartoonist at the time.

“There were some I just hated,” he says of his cartoons. “David Fincher wouldn’t pick one of the good ones to have Jake pretending to draw. It had to be the one of that day, and of course it was just awful.”

So, Graysmith, who has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize six times, was asked to recreate some of his least favorite cartoons in various stages of production, and they will forever be seen in the movie.

“That’s the only downside to this accuracy,” he says.

Although “Zodiac” is a movie about a serial killer, Graysmith likens it to “All the President’s Men” because he sees it as a newspaper film. Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), who followed the case for the paper, is also a major player. And many sequences take place inside the Chronicle after staffers have received one of the Zodiac’s trademark ciphers.

Graysmith, who admits to becoming obsessed by the Zodiac killings, says the fact that Zodiac would announce his murders with complex cryptograms and puzzles made the case particularly intriguing.

“You’ve got to remember this type of individual such as Zodiac was totally rare to us,” Graysmith says. “We had the Son of Sam, perhaps, and the Boston Strangler but nobody truly understood them. You know, they’d had them in Europe, but Jack the Ripper was the only other frame of reference.”

As depicted in the film, Graysmith becomes so fixated on the case that it leads his wife, Melanie (played by Sevigny), to leave him.

Graysmith says that’s accurate and that it was difficult for him to remove himself from the investigation.

“I’ll be honest with you. I am frightened of the case,” he says. “I don’t want to get sucked into that again.”

So, Graysmith has tucked himself into his work. He’s published several books, including “Zodiac,” “Zodiac Unmasked,” and “Unabomber: A Desire to Kill.”

He still lives in the same apartment he’s had since the Zodiac days and he’s working on dozens of other books, most of which he’s never shown anyone.

“I literally can’t remember all the books I’ve worked on, and this is over years and years,” he says. “I really think if I started publishing one a year I don’t think I’d even live to see them all published. I mean, I’ve just been a whirlwind of work, and it could be because I’m taking all the energy from Zodiac and transposing it to art.”

Forrest Hartman writes for the Reno Gazette-Journal.

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Our reviewer gives ‘Zodiac’ 3 ½ stars