Zodiac: The Abridged Script
By: Rod Hilton on Aug 13th, 2007 | Movie Rating: 
FADE IN:
INT. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE HEADQUARTERS
ROBERT DOWNEY JR. acts weird, which gives his character the appearance of DEPTH. JAKE GYLLENHAAL, cartoonist, behaves awkwardly, so we know he must either be the hero or the killer.
ROBERT DOWNEY JR.
Weird. Our paper got a secret code from some killer. He wants us to publish it. How extremely cliche.
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
Oh, I like puzzles!
ROBERT DOWNEY JR.
Oh, neat. So this movie is going to be one of those “crack the secret code” chase movies like The Da Vinci Code or National Treas–
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
Nevermind, some middle-aged couple solved it. I guess that didn’t really go anywhere.
The clues are NOT HELPFUL. THE KILLER kills some more, so we start following the story of some cops for a while.
MARK RUFFALO
I really want to catch this killer.
ANTHONY EDWARDS
I also want to catch the killer. We’re basically the same character.
MARK RUFFALO
I will create a difference between us by having a quirk: I like animal crackers. A lot.
ANTHONY EDWARDS
What a stupid and inane character quirk.
DIRECTOR DAVID FINCHER
Hey, I based even the most insipid minutiae on reality. You can’t blame me for including accurate details.
MARK RUFFALO
Sure we can. This is supposed to be a movie, not a documentary.
THE KILLER kills a few more people, as ANTHONY, MARK, and ROBERT DOWNEY all get in each other’s way while uncovering clues.
ROBERT DOWNEY JR.
By killing people in different jurisdictions, the killer has really made it impossible to find him. It’s a good thing that obnoxious red tape makes such compelling drama.
ANTHONY EDWARDS
What’s great about this movie is that you can feel confident that you can go take a leak at any point during the two-and-a-half hour running time without missing anything remotely interesting.
They use library records to figure out who THE KILLER is, just like in Se7en, a far more entertaining movie. They discover the killer is JOHN CARROL LYNCH.
MARK RUFFALO
You? The cross-dressing brother from The Drew Carey Show? Is this movie some kind of bizarre sociology experiment on audience members?
ANTHONY EDWARDS
Well, it looks like we finally found our killer. It’s been a long and boring movie, but at least it’s over.
JOHN CARROL LYNCH
No wait, my handwriting doesn’t match. It can’t be me.
The movie continues, having wasted everyone’s time introducing JOHN CARROL LYNCH. ROBERT DOWNEY JR, overwhelmed by boredom, drinks himself into a stupor and loses his job - his character does the same. Everyone gives up on the case except JAKE GYLLENHAAL and SOME PATIENT AUDIENCE MEMBERS.
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
I will comb through thousands upon thousands of files, finding clues that others have missed.
MARK RUFFALO
Why?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
Um. I like puzzles?
MARK RUFFALO
Seriously, is this as deep as your character gets? Look, I’ll give you a bunch of leads to follow up on. Only a small handful will turn out to be worthwhile, though.
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
I see no reason why the audience shouldn’t be subjected to the details of all of them anyway.
JAKE obsesses over the case, sacrificing his marriage and family. The AUDIENCE is forced to forgive this obnoxious lack of character motivation because it is PAINFULLY ACCURATE.
ROBERT DOWNEY JR.
(drinking)
Why are you obsessing over this case? The Zodiac killer only killed like 10 people. Do you realize how many unsolved murders have taken place since he stopped years ago?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
What an embarrassingly good point that I shall proceed to completely ignore.
JAKE uncovers more clues that mean nothing, until he eventually finds the real killer.
JOHN CARROL LYNCH
It was me after all!
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
Oh. What about the handwriting thing?
JOHN CARROL LYNCH
I used my other hand! Mwa-ha-ha!
JAKE GYLLENHAAL
What a shameful exploitation of audience good will!
END
Thats three hours saved RIGHT THERE.
August 13th, 2007 at 6:49 amRod:
I think you should know there’s a bug in your poll. I voted back when you posted your last script, and now it’s offering to let me vote again. (Current results: 214, 100, 90)
August 13th, 2007 at 7:01 amLoserBoy:
It probably just means your IP address changed on your ISP. Go ahead and vote twice if you want - I know that after a long time passes people can vote again.
August 13th, 2007 at 8:05 amSpot On Mate! Dare i Say, the script reminds me of the general nature of insipidness of the movie, and uh…lack of ‘throw u outta the chair, knock ur balls off’ kinda stuff that Fincher is usually known for…..
Dear God, is this what it has Come to? Hard to believe that this guy directed Se7en, Fight Club and The Game!!!
August 13th, 2007 at 8:21 amI loved Zodiac and sat pretty much transfixed throughout the whole thing. The points made here are definitely valid, but I guess they concern things that just don’t bother me.
Nice to see new scripts coming in so often, by the way.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:19 amRod,
Thank you again for saving 3 hours of my life. I didn’t hear much about this film and quite honestly, I don’t see what all the hubub over Jake Gyllenhaal is about. Is it me or is he one of those people who the media is trying to make it appear more famous (and seemingly more talented) than he really is (a la Sienna Miller)? Your comment about Robert Downey Jr., as well as the character he plays in the film, drinking himself / themselves into a stupor is priceless.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:49 amYes, thank you for saying what I’ve always wanted to say about Downey Jr. So sick of hearing praise for him.
August 13th, 2007 at 12:38 pmAs a sidenote, I wish people would simply spell that film’s title “Seven” again. I mean come on, even the goddamn poster calls it “Seven”. Does spelling it “Se7en” really make the film cooler or better? The film name is Seven, do we really need the actual “7″ figure in the title to remind us that it’s not Eleven or Twenty-Three and a Half? Or are we supposed to pronounce it “Sesevenen” maybe?
August 13th, 2007 at 2:05 pmAnyway. I love your site, thanks for updating it so frequently now!
i saw zodiac in a theater what a borefest.
August 13th, 2007 at 4:41 pmGreat, movie ratings are back!!!!!!!!!
You’re hard to please though, aren’t you.. :)
August 14th, 2007 at 2:55 amwhen i saw this, after the first hour and a half, i started looking around angrily to see if anyone else was as bored as i. i even began looking at my watch in an exagerated manner. but to my suprise (and dismay?) i think i was the only one in the theatre who thought this movie should have been HALF as long as it was.
glad i’m not the only one who felt this way.
August 14th, 2007 at 6:26 amBlasphemy.
Lost points for no tits or slow motion?
Okay, well, it did have slow motion… 1.5/5.0 it is.
August 14th, 2007 at 6:45 amJim:
It was so long and I was so bored. It was like it was intentionally going out of its way to be un-entertaining. Like they would keep showing irrelevant crap all the time, largely because it was supposed to be a “realistic detective story”, go-nowhere clues and all. Real detective stories are fucking boring to watch.
I think I started going crazy during this movie. I started seriously entertaining the idea that maybe the movie running time was listed as 3 hours, but it was actually maybe 10 or something, and there were cameras set up in the theater to record how long it would be before people would just leave. I seriously wondered if everyone sitting there was an unwitting participant in some sociological experiment. I kept looking around at other people and asking them with my eyes “are you going to leave soon?” I just didn’t want to be the first to give up on the movie.
It seemed like absolutely nothing went anywhere. In a way, Zodiac is worse than something like Batman and Robin - as awful as B&R is, it’s entertaining BECAUSE it’s so bad. I can sit through the entire movie with a smile on my face, laughing at how stupid it is. Zodiac commits the worst possible sin - it’s just fucking boring. I couldn’t squeeze even the tiniest enjoyment out of it. I’ve enjoyed many three hour movies - the problem wasn’t that it was long, the problem was that it was long and filled with nothing even slightly interesting. I’d rather stick my penis in a meat grinder before watching Zodiac again.
Then the movie ends by telling me that it probably was the guy they had midway through the movie after all. Fuck you, movie. You’re a dick.
August 14th, 2007 at 6:56 amI would have felt at least a little enjoyment from the show if they would have included a grissly murder or something AND not deliberately tried to simultaneously piss me off and put me to sleep.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:49 pmWow, I’m amazed by all the hatred toward this movie on this page. I suppose you have to be in the right mood for it, but the plain truth you need to accept is that it’s not structured like a normal movie — instead, it’s like a really interesting history lesson. Apparently not interesting to some — but that’s how I looked at the film, and to echo a previous post, I was completely transfixed. Old-fashioned, slow paced, with a lot of details and information to gather that isn’t necessarily presented in the ADD-fashion of a lot of movies - the movie was able to suck me into the case and I admired it for sticking so closely to the facts. And while a lot of that wasn’t necessarily cinematic in the modern sense of the world, I think it came together as an incredibly cohesive film, both as the complete story of a serial killer’s spree, and a really fascinating portrait of obsession from Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal’s characters. You just can’t walk into it expecting Seven 2, which I guess is what most people did.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:17 pm*removes Zodiac from Tivo recording schedule*
August 15th, 2007 at 2:55 pmI actually had this movie from blockbuster a week or so ago. I never did get around to watching it. I was considering renting it again until I read this.
Thanks Rod, you saved me both time and money.
August 15th, 2007 at 7:09 pm“ROBERT DOWNEY JR, overwhelmed by boredom, drinks himself into a stupor and loses his job - his character does the same.”
lol, great work ROD
August 16th, 2007 at 11:18 pmPleased to be doing a Rush Hour 3 script soon, yes?
August 19th, 2007 at 12:22 pmI just want to point out that THE Zodiac is a completely different movie from Zodiac, and is the only one showing on T.V. It sucks, but it’s shorter. Also, I think Zodiac was a very good movie, but was marketed like a horror/thriller like Seven, and it’s more of a drama/thriller with one or two horror sequences. A lot of the things that were mentioned in Rod’s script, like the clues not being important to the plot, or the killer not being caught, wouldn’t have bothered people, or bothered people as much as they did, if they wern’t expecting Seven.
August 21st, 2007 at 3:18 pmMichael -
I have to disagree with you a bit in regard to the film being fascinating. Prior to seeing the film, I found the story interesting and frankly, you could easily get every fact that the film depicts in around 5 minutes of searching on the internet.
I fail to see how watching a story meticulously depicted for over 2 hours on the screen while not being a documentary manages to sustain interest.
Knowing the subject matter on which something is based shouldn’t necessarily diminish one’s appreciation of the narrative, but that happened to be the case with Zodiac particularly because they made certain to labor over every detail and make the story as dull as possible.
August 21st, 2007 at 10:38 pmWell, it sustained my interest because it provided all the facts a documentary would, while at the same time giving us the stories of these three guys as it related to the facts. Plus, we got all the great camera work and cinematography we know we’re going to get out of a Fincher movie. And the soundtrack was pretty great. I can see how knowing the subject matter beforehand would lessen the impact of the film, though.
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:14 pmI really liked this movie… for the first two hours. I thought it was very interesting fort hose interested in the Zodiac. HOWEVER, when this movie started to push 3 hours I began to lose it. Scene after scene after scene after scene of them following leads, the leads not panning out, following other leads, those leads not panning out, going back to previous leads, failing again, etc. Look, I know the director wanted it to be thorough, but that’s what the DVD is for. Cut out some of the random inane scenes that we don’t need to know, reduce it to 3 hours, then release all 3 hours on the DVD for those who are interested in seeing the whole thing. I am a huge history fan and like the Zodiac story, but this was just too long. When the entire audience gets worked up when a scene is over and then groans when there’s yet another one coming on, your movie is too long.
It’s also pretty hard to sit through if you KNOW the killer was never caught, so you’ve been there for two and a half hours knowing that there won’t even be a real ending to the movie. All the investigative scenes these people are putting us through don’t solve the murder. Whoopee.
And Jake Gyllenhaal was “ok.” Basically he just played a normal, average guy. It’s not like it was a huge stretch. I don’t see why people are so impressed. I guess I was pretty happy to not see “Bubble Boy” or a gay cowboy, but it’s still not oscar-worthy.
August 23rd, 2007 at 10:36 amI’m buying the fuck out of the extended director’s cut when it comes out.
August 24th, 2007 at 2:09 pmThe movie was interesting to me up until half way through. Then me and my date just became bored because it was like nothing was happening, just Jake Gyllenhaal chasing after clues that go no where and Mark Ruffalo stuffing his face with animal crackers. It’s too bad because I had been looking forward to the movie for at least 5 years after reading the book.
My date had begged me to go watch this movie with him too, but he made it up to me afterwards at his place. Good times!
I would not watch this movie again, for the record.
ROBERT DOWNEY JR, overwhelmed by boredom, drinks himself into a stupor and loses his job - his character does the same.
August 25th, 2007 at 3:11 pmAhahaha love that line!
You forgot to mention the three teenagers sitting in the front of the theater who were stupid enough to go in thinking that this was a horror movie and they were going to catch the bad guy. I swear they must’ve been in every showing from what people have told me.
August 28th, 2007 at 3:03 pmLook, I really love your scripts (especially your Episode III) one, but you DO realize that most of this movie (how the San Francisco Chronicle was mailed the Zodiac Killer’s letters, how the Zodiac Killer actually did the killings, how the Zodiac Killer wrote in code, etc.) is real?
I live in the Bay Area and my parents were kids while this was happening and they were scared to death to go on the school buses because of the news talking about the bombs and such. Whether or not this is a good movie and if it was done correctly is another subject, but I DO hope you realize that this movie’s plot didn’t just pop into some writer’s head one day and that it did, indeed, actually happen.
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:56 pmNathan,
I make a reference to the fact that the movie is based on reality twice. Twice. As if that somehow justifies how shitty this movie is.
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:12 amRod’s movie philosophy is that it’s much better to watch a retarded kid trying to play basketball than it is to watch a mediocre player drag himself all over the court and never touch the ball, because hey, at least he can laugh at the retarded kid and feel intellectually superior.
The extended director’s cut is going to be badass.
September 4th, 2007 at 4:12 pmRod is right, this script is making fun of the movie, not the historical events. Just because the Zodiac killed a bunch of people doesn’t mean any movie made about it is automatically good. The movie might be about historic events, but it still is a movie, and still requires good directing and scriptwriting to be decent. I’m not going to say, “Gee, normally that would be a huge waste of my time, but since it’s based on historical events I have to enjoy it.” It was too long for most people to care. That’s the gist of it. Cut some of the inane junk out and put it in the director’s cut.
If you disagree and think that the directing was fine, than great, that’s your opinion. But don’t excuse the movie just because this stuff really happened. It’s still just a movie, and this is the editing room, where movies are made fun of. No movie is exempt.
September 7th, 2007 at 10:27 pmSorry rob some movies deserve the critism as they are rubbish eg the phantom menace which even has some lucas apologists saying it is good/great.
This film though was very good and frequently rated 4 or 5 stars out of 5 in most magazines including total film that publishes your scripts.
Also rob have you ever tried actually writing a full length feature film script as its easy to be sarcastic over other people’s work but alot less easy to actually write a good or even great script yourself.
I ask as you have some degree of writing talent and seem reasonsably creative.
How about put a full length (eg 100 pages) script written by you on this site and let others see your genius as surely you can do better?
October 17th, 2007 at 11:09 amSo true. Far too long, and the time skips were too frequent and too annoying. Nobody cares that it’s based on a true story, so stop parading it in the beginning credits. And animal crackers…wtf?
November 13th, 2007 at 7:18 amTo Nico, the guy who said “As a sidenote, I wish people would simply spell that film’s title ‘Seven’ again. I mean come on, even the goddamn poster calls it ‘Seven’.”
Um, Nico, I guess you haven’t been in a Best Buy, Borders, or video store lately, because if you had you would have noticed this New Line Platinum Series 2-Disc Special Edition of “SeVen” where the cover is completely black except for the word written on the middle, “SE7EN” with a 7.
And to answer your statement, “Does spelling it “Se7en” really make the film cooler or better?” Yes, it makes it much cooler and better.
I suppose your next complaint will be “How come the Criterion Edition of ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ has to have the title all splotchy and weirdly written by Ralph Steadman?”
November 20th, 2007 at 8:38 amROD HILTON’S “THE EDITING ROOM” (the Abridged Version)
FADE IN:
INT. ROD HILTON’S BASEMENT
ROD HILTON sits at his computer, his mind racing. Realizing that his subversive wit cannot be contained, he types furiously on his keyboard.
ROD HILTON’S BRAIN
Wow. I hate shitty movies. But what if no one else realizes these movies are shitty? I must inform them and QUICK, before someone mistakes “Night at the Roxbury” or “Spider-Man 3″ as good movies.
(Types furiously. But is not content just to write condensed, moderately amusing versions of shitty movie scripts. He must also write condensed versions of good movie scripts as well. And so he writes GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS: The Abridged Script and THE GODFATHER: The Abridged Script)
GGR: Abridged Script
Bunch of salesmen curse and yell and stuff.
END
THE GODFATHER: Abridged Script
Old Italian crimelord pets a cat and mumbles in a dark room. He gets shot. Fat guy gets garroted. Two guys get shot in a restaurant by AL PACINO. AL PACINO goes to Sicily. His wife gets blowed up real good. AL PACINO comes home. He goes to a baptism. Bunch of guys get shot. Life sucks.
END
Keep up the good work, Rod.
November 20th, 2007 at 5:00 pmSCHINDLER’S LIST: The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
EXT. KRAKOW GHETTO
Bunch of Jewish people are getting shot by Nazis. More Jewish people get shot by Nazis. RALPH FIENNES shoots a Jew with a sniper rifle from his balcony and then takes a piss. BEN KINGSLEY sits at a type-writer. Jewish people get shot. LIAM NEESON starts to feel bad about this whole Holocaust misunderstanding. Jewish people get shipped to concentration camps and…get shot. Jewish people are forced to strip by Nazis. Naked Jewish people get shot. LIAM NEESON tells BEN KINGSLEY to type a list of Jewish people to be shipped to his factory. RALPH FIENNES shoots more Jewish people. LIAM NEESON cries like a pussy. RALPH FIENNES gets hanged.
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Genocide. Total bummer.
END
November 20th, 2007 at 5:56 pmThe director’s cut is coming out in 2008. I can’t wait. Do you think it will be longer? I hope it’s longer. The cover looks all kinds of badass, like it was sent directly from the killer to your hands. If Panic Room gets a three disc set, this surely will be comprehensive as a mother.
I really hope it’s longer. God, I could do with… another hour, at least. Two hours!
December 7th, 2007 at 12:22 amYou’re a sick man, Sean C.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:58 pmOh. The runtime is only increased by seven minutes.
STILL.
January 5th, 2008 at 1:04 pmThe best part of the movie is when the fireworks were going off and ‘Hurdy Gurdy man’ by Donavan starts playing and then he blows the teenagers away. Then the other murders where he stabs the boy and girl one at a time and the film really succeeds in these two scenes. Trouble is I can’t listen to Donavan anymore without the movie going through my mind. All you said is pretty much true but if you read true crime stories as much as I you can stomach the length on the DVD.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:47 amIt’s strange watching Seven after seeing this film. I don’t think I can describe the feeling. Seven is still the superior of the two (in spite of Brad Pitt’s sometimes sketchy acting), and if nothing else the parallels are nice (elusive nature of justice/man’s search for closure).
I don’t think it comes down to liking/reading True Crime stories. I don’t know what it comes down to. The claims that Zodiac is ‘boring’ perplex me, as I saw the film twice in one day on two hours of sleep and it gripped me by the balls. Shit, I’d call the film exhausting, sure, but exhausting like running a marathon or doing two 8balls of coke. It’s a relentless barrage of information, like JFK or All the President’s Men. Information that I found fascinating. Whether or not any of the dramatized events really happened is inconsequential (even if, in Zodiac’s case, most of them did). And Fincher still knows how to use a camera better than anybody, especially when he doesn’t give it the starring role (cough Panic Room cough) or goes about making 4 minute long Apple commericals (cough Only music video cough).
All said and done, I’d defend the film to the death, and I put it in the top three films of 2007, under No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:18 pmGawd, this movie really was a complete waste of two hours of my life. The most entertaining part was when they were searching the guy’s run-down tin-can mobile home and found a bunch of squirrels around. (In the freezer too, for those nights when you just don’t feel like cooking).
Robert was kind of cool in that I’m-a-drunk-and-only-have-depth-because-I’m-inebriated kind of way. Jake is an asshat, don’t even try and deny it. I only watched an hour into this movie before I said ‘fuck it’ and turned to C-span.
Because hellyes, C-span was more exciting than that movie.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:15 amJust want to point out that there were no “useless parts” in Zodiac’s script. “Leads that go nowhere” were there to illustrate the film’s theme about obsession. The dramaturgy of the film was mainly about creating the need for the case to be solved, in the protagonist as well as in the audience, and this is of course easier to do in a longer movie than in a short one. In my opinion they succeeded masterfully at that, and I admire that they stuck to the real events (as a side note I didn’t know about the Zodiac killer beforehand), rather than giving us Se8en.
P.S. Rod, I usually like your Abridged Scripts, but I think you dropped the ball on this one, at least if you meant for it to have some kind of critical merit.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:10 pmMan, we saw this for my buddy’s bday. We were getting drunk in the theatres.
One friend of mine left to pick someone up. And another friend left with some girl to go fool around in his car.
If all that can happen, then the movie is way too god damned long.
If Jack Daniels can’t make the movie exciting, it is way too fucking boring.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:35 pm