David Fincher's Zodiac (2007), written by producer James Vanderbilt and adapted from the true crime works of James Graysmith, remains one of the most respected films of the early 21st century. As the second film featuring a serial killer (and the first based on fact) by Fincher, Zodiac remains a standout in a varied but stylistically unified career. It similarly stands out among a new wave of crime cinema in the early 2000s, including the modern classics Inside Man, Michael Clayton, and Academy Award winner No Country for Old Men. While commonly described as a serial killer film, Zodiac also hybridizes the policier genre and the investigative reporter film. And yet, scholarship has largely ignored the film. This collection, edited by Matthew Sorrento and David Ryan, is the first book-length study dedicated to the film. Section One focuses on early influences, such as serial and spree killer films of the 1960s and 70s and how their treatments helped to shape Fincher's film. The second section analyses the film's unique treatment of narrative with studies of rhetoric onscreen, intertextuality, and gender. The book closes with a section on media studies, including chapters focusing on game theory, data and hegemony, the Zodiac's treatment in music, and the use of sound in cinema. By offering new avenues in Zodiac studies and continuing a few established ones, this book will interest scholars of cinema and true crime along with fans and enthusiasts in these areas.
Matthew Sorrento teaches film studies at Rutgers University-Camden. David Ryan is academic director and faculty chair of the Master of Arts of Professional Communication program at the University of San Francisco.
Foreword: Zodiac, the American Murderer, and the End of Reason By Christopher Sharrett Introduction: The Future of the "Last Serial Killer Movie" By Matthew Sorrento SECTION ONE: BEFORE FINCHER 1: Framing the "Mass" Killer: Horror and Spatiality in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968) By Matthew Sorrento 2: Fear and Exploiting in the Age of Aquarius: Early Representations of the Zodiac Killer in 1970s Film and Television By Christopher Weedman 3: Hacked to Pisces: An Interview with Tom Hanson on The Zodiac Killer (1971) By Rod Lott SECTION TWO: ZODIAC AND NARRATIVE 4: Zodiac and the Melding Criminal Minds of David Fincher By Jeremy Carr 5: Subverting the Investigator as Hero: Masculinity and Failure in David Fincher's Zodiac By Theresa Rodewald 6: Performing the Zodiac: Piffle, Paradox, and Self-Promotion By Daniel R. Frederick 7: Allegories of Obsession: David Fincher's Zodiac and Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat (1934) By George Toles SECTION THREE: ZODIAC AND MEDIA 8: The Dantesque Desires of David Fincher's Zodiac By Martin Kevorkian 9: The Zodiac Strikes a Blue Chord: Evoking Art-Horror in Music By Andrew M. Winters 10: Algorithmic Anxiety: Data Hegemony and Mediated Murder in David Fincher's Zodiac By Jake Rutkowski 11: Gaming the Ripper Coast: Mapping the Radicalized Acts of the Zodiac Killer By David Ryan 12: The Killers Speak: the Sound of Violence in David Fincher's Zodiac and Mindhunter (2017-2019) By Deborah L. Jaramillo
