Zodiac stands to Se7en very much the way Inland Empire stands to Mulholland Falls. It’s auto-critique. It takes an artist’s admirable if relatively conventional accomplishment and smashes it deliberately into several oddly shaped but ultimately connected pieces.
The most important disturbing, disconcerting aspect of the film is that, despite competent dialogue, and an excellent cast, it is not character centered, but structure and theme centred
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
“Zodiac stands to Se7en very much the way Inland Empire stands to Mulholland Falls.”
David, regarding your above Fincher/Lynch reference: did you mean to write Mulholland Drive?
Sorry, I mean Gross’s Fincher/Lynch reference.
Can someone correct these things, ’cause all I remember about Mulholland Falls was lots of guys wearing hats.
The mistake has been corrected.
Dig that Nick Nolte lesbian scene…
Sigh…before Jennifer Connelly went under the knife. [Daydreams]
Dave, I’m curious if Gross’ piece made you rethink your review of Zodiac at all. In your review, you central criticism of Zodiac is that it say nothing and that the actors in the film (as good as they are) just float along with nothing to define them. Gross says that’s the point – there’s not supposed to be any depth to these characters – the themes exist outside of them.
Now, having read you for about 6 or 7 years, the absence of any depth to the characters seems to be the reason you dislike the movie. Looking back at the films you give raves all have really strong character work. But does Gross’ piece make you think any differently? While I liked Zodiac, I didn’t love it but turning it over in my mind and with some of the insights laid out here, I think my perception is slowly changing. Just wondering if you think this piece is full of shit or not.
I agree with Larry (and Manohla D) on what this movie is… we disagree strongly on what the value of that is.
I think Larry’s piece speaks to that fact that Zodiac is film school fodder and not a commercial movie. And like it or not, a $90 million better have some commercial value – though it need not be crap: see Silence of the Lambs and Pan’s Labyrinth – if you are going to take the money.
I am willing to like Zodiac the way I like Inland Empire. But I think the movie is, ultimately, a lot more conventional and not as demanding of the viewer. I think the response has a lot to do with the film’s place in the studio system and Fincher “getting away with one.” And I think that this movie is going to cost every talented auteurist out there, since studios will be far more careful about funding them for more than $10 million.
Thing is, I don’t think anyone is really arguing greatness here. I think they are arguing and applauding its self-indulgence. I don’t buy that self-reflection in filmmaking is a win. It is a footnote. You still need to make a movie. If you want to argue that boring an audience is the virtue of the film, you probably lose my support for your argument.
DP, some of your favorite movies are self-indulgent and bore the audiences. I can’t help but think of your constant refrain, ‘critics always want filmmakers to give them something different, and the when they do they crap on them for it.’
Let me just elaborate a little – I recall that DP loves The New World and The Thin Red Line. Neither of those are conventional narratives and both could be said to fail the ‘you still need to make a movie’ test on that level. Yet both are great films in the sense of being filmic art objects. I don’t know what marks the difference between high art and ‘self-indulgence’ and ‘boring the audience’ but as far as I’m concerned, it is not a convincing argument at this stage.
One of the earliest films I remember Dave championing online (and which was pretty much ignored by the rest of the world) was Julie Taymor’s TITUS. That one was loaded to the gills with self-indulgence, style for style’s sake and practically no real compelling character development (the shallowest of Shakespeare’s canon). Even though it was relentlessly driven by a pretty single-minded (and occasionally gore-splattered) plot, it bored the bejesus out of most people. And it was my (and as I recall, his) favorite film of that year. Go figure.
In Titus, the style was the message.
I don’t think that it is the message of Zodiac so much as it is a complete self-indulgence in an effort to “stretch.”
I didn’t think Taymor was as successful with Frida, though like Fincher, I look forward to all of her future work.
I think you’re going to have to elaborate on the difference between ‘the style was the message’ and ‘complete self-indulgence’ if you want to be convincing.