USA: Actors Robert Downey Jr. , Chloe Sevigny, and Mark Ruffalo premiered the true-crime thriller "Zodiac" about a story of a murderer who terrorized the Bay Area for a decade in Los Angeles, California

Record ID: 220430

  • Title: USA: Actors Robert Downey Jr. , Chloe Sevigny, and Mark Ruffalo premiered the true-crime thriller "Zodiac" about a story of a murderer who terrorized the Bay Area for a decade in Los Angeles, California
  • Date: 7th March 2007
  • Summary: MOVIE POSTER
  • Embargoed: 22nd March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA3OCSHTMYNWZRNM3Y8LUG5RKA6
  • Story Text: The notorious San Francisco Bay Area serial killer might have eluded law enforcement agencies for decades, but the compelling cat-and-mouse story that is "Zodiac" never escapes the virtuoso grip of director David Fincher.
    "He is an American treasure, really, you know," said actor Robert Downer Jr. at the Los Angeles, California, premiere of the film on Thursday (March 1).
    "I have known him for ages I remember asking him to direct a video for the version of 'Smile" I did for "Chaplin" and back in the Propaganda days. There is no one like him, he is a very American creation and particularly if you think of the Bay area and the time he was coming up and the innovations he made and what he did to music television and the whole stuff and all those videos and stuff. But working with him on this film you felt like you were in very capable hands and you were a sponge and he was going to ring you out everyday," Downey Jr. added.
    The film's co-stars braved the chilly evening to premiere the movie on the Paramount Pictures lot. Director David Fincher could not attend the premiere because he is filming "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" with Brad Pitt in New Orleans and the film's star Jake Gyllenhaal was absent because he is filming in Morocco.
    However, that did not stop their cast mates from talking about their fiery chemistry on set.
    "I think, yeah, I think their relationship was a little tumultuous. They were butting heads now and again but that often happens with directors and actors, you know, it's par for the course when you are making the movie," actress Chloe Sevigny told Reuters.
    Firing on all cylinders as a creepy thriller, police procedural and "All the President's Men"-style investigative newsroom drama, the smart, extremely vivid production oozes period authenticity.
    Time and place are effectively established the first time audiences see the man known as Zodiac strike, during 1969 Fourth of July celebrations on a secluded lover's lane in Vallejo, California, where he walks up to a car and matter-of-factly fires at its occupants, fatally killing the driver and seriously injuring her male passenger.
    Cut to the newsroom of the San Francisco Chronicle, where, a month later, a crudely written letter to the editor arrives in the mail from the man claiming responsibility for that shooting and an additional two murders.
    His knowledge of certain details that only the police would know captures the attention of the paper's star crime reporter Paul Avery (Downey Jr.), while an enclosed portion of a cipher that purportedly offered clues to the killer's identity triggers what would become a lifelong obsession for Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal), a shy but intrepid editorial cartoonist who isn't content to live life on the sidelines. Graysmith uses his not-so-spare time to work on cracking the code, when not hovering over the colourful Avery's desk trying to pick up additional shreds of information about the case.
    "David Fincher became such an astonishing detective, they have actually have uncovered so much information that is not in the film just for the sheer, well maybe they are hooked too I don't know. They have found out a lot of great stuff and I am hoping it will be on his DVD. I am stunned by some of it, he has got 3,100 pounds of documents I have never seen anything like it," said Robert Graysmith, who wrote "Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity Of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed" on which the film is based and who is played by Gyllenhaal in the film. Meanwhile, despite the dogged efforts of the San Francisco Police Department's high-profile homicide inspector, Dave Toschi (Ruffalo) and his partner, Inspector William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), the murders mount and the letters keep coming as the years continue to pass without an arrest.
    "It's the culture, we love the bogey man you know it goes all the way back to like Beowulf we love to have that dark manifestation of our fears lurking out there. The amazing thing about this movie is that you go along for the ride you know we don't catch the guy at the end but you are totally committed to the entire investigation. People say 'I sat through that movie I looked at my watch I couldn't believe it not one minute did I get bored or tired' and for a movie of this length that's huge. I have sat through a lot shorter movies and had the living day lights bored out of me," Ruffalo said at the premiere. Fincher, who, as a child growing up in the Bay Area in the early 70s was well aware of the bogey man known as the Zodiac killer, has transformed those primal childhood fears into this film. Fincher has a long respected history including such films as 1995's "Seven" With Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow and 1999's "Fight Club" but this graphic and detail-oriented director actually gained early fame directing iconic music videos like Madonna's "Express Yourself" and "Vogue".
    Fincher, know for making actors re-do takes numerous times, went to great lengths to get every aspect of the case correct. After closing the case in April 2004 because they had run out of viable leads, the San Francisco Police Department recently reopened the case. The SFPD is working with the Vallejo Police Department to get old evidence tested again using current DNA analysis.
    Vallejo Lt. Rick Nichelman said the SFPD returned a number of envelopes - possibly those tested in 2002 during the investigation of one suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992 - to Vallejo for further testing.
    "This week if the first week in 35 years that I have spoken to anybody about it. I have hide under a rock, if you will, there is no need it wasn't news. It's news now only because it's almost like a docu-drama in the sense that it's incredibly accurate. David Fincher filmed this film that week in September (like when I was originally attacked) to make sure that our scene that the lighting was the same , the grass was the same height, he is just an incredible detailed person," said Bryan Hartnell, who was attacked by the Zodiac killer in 1972 and whose girlfriend didnt survive and was murdered.
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