Reports On "Zodiac" Director's Cut Screening

November 19th saw the screening of David Fincher's Director's Cut for "Zodiac" at the sold out Walter Reade Theater in New York. And as everyone who reads this has probably wished and wanted to be there themselves, the least this blog can provide you with is two reports of how this evening went. One by THE REELER "New York City Cinema". The other by our fellow Fincher fanatic and frequent contributor Kevin!

While the "Reeler" article sports a nice photo of the event, the account from Kevin is a lot closer to the fan-base and in my opinion answers a few more questions. It sure sounds like the perfect way to spend that night (and 30 bucks) and I so wish I could have been there myself.

You can find the link to the Reeler article at the bottom.
And for your pleasure and information I will reprint Kevin's summary of the evening right here. (You can find Kevin's original post in the comments section of THIS POST.)

"I saw the director's cut on monday with Fincher in attendance.
I have to say that it doesn't feel that much different. The most notable change is the 45sec blackout transition. I actually wished that was longer than 45 sec, it's really kind of eerie.
The addtional scene with Downy is great and so is the warrant scene.

What was MOST notable was that the film was shown directly off the harddrive and it was fucking beautiful.

Fincher is a really cool guy. He's very funny and not at all some infant terrible as he is sometimes portrayed. If anything he seemed a little bit uncomfortable about being in the spotlight. He is extremely articulate and honest.

One of the funniest moments from the night is when he asked "Do you know the best way to get an actor to stop fucking around? Stop giving them direction. Say 'Do another one'. 'Ok going again'. 'Ok one more'. 'And another'. Three takes of that, they're done. 'What do you want me to do?' -- 'I want you to come through the elevator and turn and say the line like this'."

On why he dropped out of MI3 and he said "I made myself a promise never to do movies without a finished script and a 3 in the title."

He then talked a bit about the script Robert Towne had penned but it was only 45 pages and he "didn't want to shoot a start date, he wanted to shot a great script."

I asked him what his take on RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA was. And he said he wanted to make a space movie that would inspire kids to go out and buy a telescope not an action figure. He said the movie is too expensive to make right now but in three years maybe.

Other things he talked about was the VFX work in Zodiac. He said the way the murder scenes were done with air canons and then the blood and wounds were done by DD. He said "it's not cost effective, at least not yet, but we were just looking for a way to make it more production friendly." He didn't want to spend hours redressing everything when they could just keep rolling.

On his actors he said. For Jake it was about making it believable, making the situations and the circumstances real for him. Ruffalo he said went away and spent a couple days with Toschi and came back as Toschi. Fincher said "I was truly amazed because Toschi really is a guy who's ego was sort of out of check and it was his undoing, his hubris. Because he kind of wanted the attention but it got in the way of him being able to do his job".

On why he wanted to do ZODIAC: "I can remember being a kid and it being this big deal, it was constantly in the news and then it wasn't." When his parents moved to Oregon, he recalled looking out the back of the car as they were driving, thinking "whatever happened to Zodiac?"

So when he got the script he didn't want to just make a movie about Zodiac "that exploited it. I wanted to turn over every rock."

He also said the script was very different. "It was more of a straight line and I'm to be blame for the length." The original version focused on Graysmith alone, so it didn't have all the digressions"

He also talked about how ZODIAC changed the landscape of SF because [the Zodiac Killer] chose to communicate through the SF Chronical and sort of upped the circulation, making it a more read paper there.

I really wished the Q and A lasted longer and he seemed game to answer more question but he was quickly cut off by the host.

It was really cool to see Finch in person and really inspiring to hear him talk about his movies in terms of me moving forwards with my own directing.

Couldn't have spent a better 30 bucks."

Sounds like an awesome evening. Thanks a lot for your report, Kevin.
Also check out Vadim Rizov's account (in THE REELER):

http://www.thereeler.com/.../fincher_kills_at_special_zodiac.php

1 comment:

  1. amazing guys!

    more inspiring than ever.

    keep it up!

    ReplyDelete