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Downloaded from
YTS.BZ

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.BZ

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If we’d made the film,
there would’ve been a car here

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probably in that
spot on the left

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and it would’ve been a
California Highway Patrol car

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but era-appropriate

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so like a 1960s...

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black cruiser with a white door

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and a kind of...

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badge on the side.

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This would’ve all been
reenactment, obviously

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which is how all these things
tend to start now.

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Like, everything’s got to have
that rhythm of drama...

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even when it's documentary.

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So inside the cruiser, we'd
have an actor playing Lyndon,

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the cop at the center
of the story,

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and he's just sitting there
minding his own business

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when in pulls this other car.

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And of all the spots in
the parking lot,

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this car pulls up
right next to Lyndon’s.

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And so at first, Lyndon doesn't
necessarily think much of it.

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but eventually he
looks over at the guy

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and he sees

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that the guy is
staring right at him.

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And we’d have heard Lyndon's
inner monologue throughout this

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which would’ve been
taken from the book.

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I’ll just read a
little bit of that now.

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So he says:

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‘He did not drop his
eyes or turn away.’

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‘With his face
quivering in spasms,’

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‘and an unflinching
stare of hate,’

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‘I knew I was looking
into the eyes of death.’

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So he describes it
in these almost...

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biblical terms.

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And obviously we'd have had
a close-up of these eyes...

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if we could find an actor

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with eyes menacing enough
to match that description

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and probably cross-cutting
between that

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and Lyndon's eyes,
and it's this kind of...

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face-off situation

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between these two men
in silence in this parking lot.

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This feeling of
a growing tension

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that has to break in some way.

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And finally,
just when you think

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that the worst could happen,
that this could…

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rupture into violence...

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Lyndon leaps into action.

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I had it so clear in my mind:
this shot of Lyndon’s hand,

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lurching for the gearstick,

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pulling it into reverse and
then he’s out of there

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and the hills are whirling
through the windows

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as the car reverses out
of the parking lot

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and guns it onto the highway.

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And the tension breaks

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but there's also this
sense of high drama

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that has erupted
from this confrontation,

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even if we don't necessarily
know what any of it

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signifies...

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yet.

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So we would’ve followed
Lyndon down the highway,

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until he finds a place to
pull over and get his bearings

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and then he would have
lowered his... sun visor

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and pinned to the back of it
is the famous police sketch

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of the Zodiac Killer.

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Fuck... it would’ve been good.

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And from there we'd have
gone straight into

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the title sequence,

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which kind of
would’ve made itself.

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All these things are basically
built to the same model now.

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It's lots of layered imagery,

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so you can never quite tell
what you're looking at...

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bodies and landscapes,
all intermingled,

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but in a very meaningful way.

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What are we,
but products of the landscape?

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But with a kind of disjointed,
scratchy aesthetic,

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as though it’s been made by
the serial killer themselves.

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The same sorts of images
pop up again and again:

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you got like...
you know...

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birds taking flight

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and a shadowy man...
walking away

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and kind of
country-inflected music

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but with a dark edge.

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And everything's
vague and fluid,

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like it's being viewed through
the fog of a dream.

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Lots of tiny text...

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that's almost
too small for human eyes,

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I guess to make
it look cinematic.

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And over the top of all this,

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audio that starts to
tell the story of the case.

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‘You can see that this
does not look like grief...’

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‘... does not read as grief.’

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And typically by the end,
it gets weirdly talky,

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It is almost like you’re
watching a trailer

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for the film you're
already watching.

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‘It was the case that goes
to the heart of our democracy.’

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‘This is a murder which, unless
solved, won't be forgotten.’

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It kind of sets up
everything and nothing.

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All the soundbites are just
people saying things like:

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‘The things that went on...
were beyond the imagination.’

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Or whatever.

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Like, it doesn’t really
tell you anything...

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but at the same time,
it gives you the general vibe

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in case you’ve got one
eye on your phone.

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So then we'd have
gone back to Lyndon

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coming back down
the highway after this...

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unsettling confrontation.

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Maybe still stealing the
odd glance at the sketch.

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And obviously, he's realizing

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that he may have
just come into contact

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with the most
wanted man in America.

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But for all the adrenaline
of that moment,

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he also managed to take down
the guy's license plate.

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So right from the off, we're
getting this sense of Lyndon

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as someone who's
calm in a crisis.

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I should probably give some
general background on Lyndon.

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So Lyndon was a California
Highway Patrol cop

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for, I think, 30 years,
maybe longer.

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And towards the end of his
life, he published this book,

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about his lifelong quest

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to bring the
Zodiac Killer to justice,

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starting that day
up at the rest stop.

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It's called...

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‘The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up’

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a.k.a. ‘The Silenced Badge’.

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And it's got this
very distinctive cover

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with this bright red
spider's web

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with a little crosshair symbol
at the center

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because that was the
Zodiac Killer's trademark.

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And I remember
seeing that cover

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in thumbnail form on Amazon,

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presumably after
the algorithm had

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exhausted every other
true crime book on the market,

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and just being
very drawn to it.

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So I bought the book,

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read it kind of
absentmindedly at first,

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but I remember
being struck by how

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incredibly cinematic
a lot of it was.

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It feels like it's been
written in the mold

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of a true crime documentary.

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And so even though I’d
never really imagined

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making a true crime doc,

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working in documentary these
days, true crime’s got this...

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gravitational pull.

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Eventually, you just...
give in to it.

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So I started trying to get
the rights to the book,

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from Lyndon’s family.

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And it all seemed
to be going well.

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We were deep into
contract negotiations

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and starting pre-production.

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I even went out to Vallejo

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in the Bay Area, where it
all took place, and started...

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scouting around for locations,

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speaking to people I thought
might make good interviewees.

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So I was actually out there,
working on it,

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when I got the email to say

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that Lyndon’s family
had pulled out

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and that we weren’t
getting the rights to the book.

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And I still don't know
entirely why...

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whether it was a case of them
wanting more money or more...

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control over the
finished product, or just...

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someone else swooping in

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promising to make it the next
Tiger King, or whatever.

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But it was honestly kind of
devastating, by that point,

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because I really had
figured the whole thing out,

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right down to the locations
for the re-enactments.

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The way I was picturing it

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the majority of the
investigation was going to be

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based in Lyndon’s home

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or what we would’ve been
passing off as Lyndon’s home,

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where, unable to put this

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confrontation at the rest
stop out of his mind,

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he starts to mount this kind of
freelance investigation.

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And at first, he's just
laying it all out,

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and I think we could have had
him literally laying it all out

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across the table

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and seeing if
the pieces fit together.

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But as time goes on
and he becomes

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more and more
immersed in this case,

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we'd have filled the space
with more and more stuff:

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pin boards and photocopies,
library books.

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Anyway, he's got the
license plate number

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so the first thing he does
is run a check on that

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and comes back with the name:

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George Russell Tucker.

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Classic serial killer name.

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Three names.

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Apparently that's because
the media always uses

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people's middle names after
they become serial killers,

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so they don't get confused with
anyone else with the same name,

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the same first and second name.

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But as a result, the second
you say someone's middle name,

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they sound like
a serial killer.

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It works both ways.

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And then, along with the name,

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he gets a photograph
of the guy.

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We'd have had, inevitably,
the moment where

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the envelope arrives from the
DMV and he pulls out

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the photocopy of
the driving license,

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slides it alongside
the police sketch,

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and needless to say,

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the similarities are striking.

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And again, we'd be hearing
Lyndon’s words from the book,

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which capture that sense
that he's kind of

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approaching this
with a degree of skepticism

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and it's only actually the
sheer weight of the evidence

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that means he's duty bound
to look further.

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00:14:04,927 --> 00:14:06,387
So he says:

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00:14:08,764 --> 00:14:11,767
‘The horn-rimmed glasses
were very prominent.’

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00:14:13,477 --> 00:14:15,229
‘The shape of his hair...

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00:14:15,729 --> 00:14:18,232
‘was nearly a perfect match.’

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00:14:19,859 --> 00:14:22,611
‘A mad dog killer
was on the loose’

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00:14:23,863 --> 00:14:26,115
‘and apparently living nearby.’

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00:14:27,408 --> 00:14:29,827
‘Very close indeed.’

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00:14:40,713 --> 00:14:44,008
It wouldn’t have been me
reading all of this, obviously.

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00:14:45,050 --> 00:14:48,679
We'd have hired an actor with a
voice more similar to Lyndon’s.

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00:14:51,307 --> 00:14:54,518
But actually, we probably would
have left it kind of ambiguous

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00:14:54,810 --> 00:14:57,396
as to whether it was an actor,
or Lyndon himself.

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00:14:59,982 --> 00:15:04,069
If you show a tape player the
first time you hear the voice,

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00:15:04,570 --> 00:15:07,698
you can kind of just let people
draw their own conclusions.

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00:15:11,201 --> 00:15:13,245
Apparently in the industry,
they call those shots...

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00:15:13,621 --> 00:15:15,456
‘evocative B-roll’

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00:15:17,583 --> 00:15:21,754
You know, like those
standalone images

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00:15:22,922 --> 00:15:25,174
that sort of evoke a scene

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00:15:25,299 --> 00:15:27,217
without actually
showing much of it.

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00:15:29,345 --> 00:15:30,804
Like sometimes
they'll have people in them,

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00:15:30,930 --> 00:15:33,849
but they're always
just at the edge of frame

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00:15:33,974 --> 00:15:36,769
or kind of falling out of focus

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00:15:36,894 --> 00:15:38,771
in some improbable way.

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00:15:41,148 --> 00:15:42,066
‘Bactors’.

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00:15:42,858 --> 00:15:44,401
That's what someone
told me they’re called.

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Because you can only
ever see their backs.

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00:15:49,156 --> 00:15:51,742
But I see why they do it:
it is almost like the more...

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00:15:52,076 --> 00:15:54,453
generic the image...

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00:15:55,162 --> 00:15:59,625
the more effective it is
as visual shorthand.

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00:16:04,838 --> 00:16:08,634
Like there was this other bit
of evidence against Tucker,

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00:16:09,218 --> 00:16:12,137
related to a boot print

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00:16:12,388 --> 00:16:15,099
that was found at one
of the Zodiac crime scenes,

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00:16:15,891 --> 00:16:17,685
and if that's the
only relevant detail,

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00:16:17,768 --> 00:16:20,270
you don't really need
the whole crime scene.

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00:16:20,479 --> 00:16:25,484
You just need that one shot
of the boot print...

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00:16:27,319 --> 00:16:28,320
in the mud.

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00:16:31,740 --> 00:16:34,076
Maybe even like a flashbulb...

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00:16:35,452 --> 00:16:37,871
like it's a crime scene
photograph being taken.

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00:16:39,373 --> 00:16:40,791
Did they use flashbulbs...

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00:16:41,792 --> 00:16:43,377
in the 60s?

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00:16:44,211 --> 00:16:46,714
We'd have gone with it anyway,
it’s very dramatic.

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Like, the big flash
of the bulb,

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00:16:49,591 --> 00:16:50,426
we see the boot print,

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00:16:51,051 --> 00:16:52,970
and maybe the bulb
falls to the ground

250
00:16:53,220 --> 00:16:55,347
and smashes next
to the boot print.

251
00:16:56,724 --> 00:16:58,058
You can see it, can’t you?

252
00:17:02,771 --> 00:17:05,232
And then the next scene
would have been Lyndon

253
00:17:05,649 --> 00:17:09,069
bringing his findings
to his superiors

254
00:17:09,737 --> 00:17:14,158
or to the team leading the
Zodiac investigation in Vallejo

255
00:17:17,619 --> 00:17:21,999
and they agree to
call Tucker in for questioning.

256
00:17:29,298 --> 00:17:30,841
This is actually a library,

257
00:17:31,341 --> 00:17:32,760
not a police station.

258
00:17:33,594 --> 00:17:35,345
It’s much easier to
film at a library

259
00:17:35,763 --> 00:17:37,598
so we were gonna do
the exteriors

260
00:17:37,723 --> 00:17:39,183
and some of the interiors here.

261
00:17:41,685 --> 00:17:45,022
And the way this works in
the book is a little convoluted

262
00:17:45,230 --> 00:17:49,026
because obviously this wasn't
Lyndon's jurisdiction.

263
00:17:49,610 --> 00:17:51,487
I don't think he was
actually present

264
00:17:51,904 --> 00:17:53,864
when Tucker was brought in
for questioning.

265
00:17:54,615 --> 00:17:58,702
But dramatically,
we would have wanted him there.

266
00:17:59,953 --> 00:18:02,372
So I think we would have at
least implied that he was there

267
00:18:02,623 --> 00:18:05,417
without going so far
as to actually state it.

268
00:18:07,169 --> 00:18:09,171
In fact, I always
imagined Lyndon

269
00:18:09,338 --> 00:18:10,631
behind a two-way mirror

270
00:18:14,009 --> 00:18:18,639
and that he would be
monitoring this interrogation

271
00:18:19,056 --> 00:18:22,726
from the relative security
of the next room.

272
00:18:26,230 --> 00:18:28,232
So they bring Tucker in

273
00:18:28,482 --> 00:18:34,113
and they ask him for a series
of basic personal details:

274
00:18:34,613 --> 00:18:36,406
full name, address...

275
00:18:37,116 --> 00:18:39,493
But for our purposes, this
is just an excuse for Lyndon

276
00:18:39,618 --> 00:18:43,539
to finally get like a real
close up look at the guy,

277
00:18:44,081 --> 00:18:48,418
not in a moment of heightened
tension like at the rest area,

278
00:18:48,669 --> 00:18:51,588
but now in a cool and collected
way, where he can actually

279
00:18:51,797 --> 00:18:55,384
scrutinize the man who's
physically sat in front of him.

280
00:18:57,970 --> 00:19:00,597
And at the same time,
we'd have tried to

281
00:19:00,848 --> 00:19:03,809
fill in some of who
Tucker actually was.

282
00:19:07,146 --> 00:19:09,731
As far as I could tell, there's
no actual footage of him,

283
00:19:09,773 --> 00:19:10,816
unfortunately,

284
00:19:11,441 --> 00:19:11,859
but

285
00:19:12,985 --> 00:19:17,781
there's those 4 or 5 bits
of home movie footage

286
00:19:18,031 --> 00:19:20,534
of American families
in suburbia of that era

287
00:19:20,784 --> 00:19:22,369
that you see in
every documentary

288
00:19:22,369 --> 00:19:23,912
because they can
stand in for...

289
00:19:24,413 --> 00:19:26,665
the whole idea
of American childhood.

290
00:19:27,583 --> 00:19:28,750
So that would have
done the job.

291
00:19:33,005 --> 00:19:35,632
But the point here is that
Lyndon’s actually getting

292
00:19:35,883 --> 00:19:37,676
a real sense of the guy

293
00:19:38,385 --> 00:19:39,761
and asking,

294
00:19:40,429 --> 00:19:43,515
could this actually
be the Zodiac Killer?

295
00:19:45,976 --> 00:19:47,978
And of course, the answer
would have been yes

296
00:19:48,896 --> 00:19:50,355
because we would’ve

297
00:19:50,522 --> 00:19:54,443
staged this entirely to
confirm those suspicions

298
00:19:54,651 --> 00:20:00,032
so all the classic
interrogative signifiers:

299
00:20:01,491 --> 00:20:03,785
cigarette perched
on an ashtray,

300
00:20:04,745 --> 00:20:06,538
reel-to-reel tape recorder,

301
00:20:07,915 --> 00:20:10,000
ticking clock on the wall,

302
00:20:11,877 --> 00:20:13,545
the interrogation lamp.

303
00:20:15,422 --> 00:20:17,341
Do you picture an
interrogation lamp

304
00:20:17,507 --> 00:20:19,426
like a desk lamp
or a hanging lamp?

305
00:20:20,135 --> 00:20:21,094
A hanging lamp.

306
00:20:22,262 --> 00:20:23,430
And they're always swinging.

307
00:20:25,682 --> 00:20:26,767
Why are they swinging?

308
00:20:27,309 --> 00:20:29,061
Is the implication
that it's got tense?

309
00:20:29,269 --> 00:20:30,395
Someone's knocked the lamp.

310
00:20:30,812 --> 00:20:32,773
The bad cop stood to his feet

311
00:20:32,898 --> 00:20:34,733
and knocked the lamp
and it's gone swinging.

312
00:20:38,320 --> 00:20:41,031
See, I'm not saying that having
seen a lot of these things

313
00:20:41,198 --> 00:20:43,450
is all the training I would
have needed to make one,

314
00:20:43,617 --> 00:20:45,369
but I do think it would have
got me pretty far.

315
00:20:57,339 --> 00:21:01,635
What happened next would
have taken things up a notch,

316
00:21:02,761 --> 00:21:04,263
dramatically speaking.

317
00:21:07,891 --> 00:21:10,352
But actually, it's kind of...

318
00:21:11,520 --> 00:21:14,314
hard to know what I can

319
00:21:14,523 --> 00:21:17,192
and can't talk about here.

320
00:21:19,069 --> 00:21:20,112
Legally.

321
00:21:22,823 --> 00:21:25,659
A lot of what I've
described thus far,

322
00:21:26,576 --> 00:21:28,495
there's multiple sources for.

323
00:21:28,704 --> 00:21:32,499
So like, the scene at the
beginning in the rest area...

324
00:21:33,500 --> 00:21:35,627
Lyndon filed a police report

325
00:21:36,128 --> 00:21:38,964
so some of the details of
that are in there.

326
00:21:39,923 --> 00:21:41,133
He gave interviews

327
00:21:41,258 --> 00:21:44,136
over the course of his life,
where he talked about it.

328
00:21:44,928 --> 00:21:47,597
So there's these
various sources

329
00:21:48,390 --> 00:21:51,727
diluting the extent to which
we're drawing from...

330
00:21:52,185 --> 00:21:53,186
Lyndon’s book

331
00:21:53,937 --> 00:21:56,398
which obviously,
we don't have the rights to.

332
00:21:59,860 --> 00:22:02,571
The tricky thing is when
you get to sections like this

333
00:22:02,738 --> 00:22:06,366
where the book really
is the only source.

334
00:22:08,660 --> 00:22:10,162
And so there's kind of a limit

335
00:22:11,288 --> 00:22:12,622
to what I can say.

336
00:22:17,502 --> 00:22:19,713
But without getting
into it too much,

337
00:22:20,630 --> 00:22:22,674
essentially, Lyndon alleges

338
00:22:22,841 --> 00:22:25,177
a kind of conspiracy

339
00:22:26,178 --> 00:22:28,930
in which Tucker was able

340
00:22:29,181 --> 00:22:34,561
to exert influence within the
Solano County Sheriff's Office

341
00:22:35,771 --> 00:22:39,024
and basically get the
investigation shut down.

342
00:22:42,694 --> 00:22:45,405
So this would have been a
kind of montage

343
00:22:45,697 --> 00:22:50,035
where word is making its way
through the corridors of power.

344
00:22:52,079 --> 00:22:53,121
You know, like...

345
00:22:53,413 --> 00:22:56,458
phone call begets
phone call begets phone call

346
00:22:57,125 --> 00:23:01,546
until it reaches
the highest authority,

347
00:23:01,755 --> 00:23:03,840
the sheriff of the county.

348
00:23:05,759 --> 00:23:07,761
And we'd throw in
a few interview moments

349
00:23:07,969 --> 00:23:11,431
where people are like,
‘oh, power in Vallejo...’

350
00:23:12,140 --> 00:23:12,974
‘it's all about...’

351
00:23:13,850 --> 00:23:14,851
‘who you know.’

352
00:23:18,939 --> 00:23:22,859
Finally, Lyndon hears that word
has come down from the sheriff,

353
00:23:24,111 --> 00:23:26,947
and obviously it's
not what he wants to hear.

354
00:23:27,614 --> 00:23:30,117
I'll read the actual quote
from the book...

355
00:23:32,244 --> 00:23:34,246
because it gives
you a sense of the

356
00:23:35,372 --> 00:23:37,999
conspiratorial tone
of the thing.

357
00:23:43,839 --> 00:23:45,257
The sheriff's message is:

358
00:23:48,677 --> 00:23:50,554
‘Belay all such orders’

359
00:23:52,347 --> 00:23:55,142
‘and forget about
George Tucker completely.’

360
00:23:57,352 --> 00:23:58,854
‘I don't care who he is.’

361
00:24:00,147 --> 00:24:02,524
‘I am telling you to
destroy your notes’

362
00:24:03,191 --> 00:24:04,568
‘and burn your files.’

363
00:24:06,236 --> 00:24:08,447
‘I never want to hear
the man's name again.’

364
00:24:10,115 --> 00:24:10,657
‘Ever.’

365
00:24:43,607 --> 00:24:46,818
So that’s good...
dramatic stuff, right?

366
00:24:47,944 --> 00:24:52,240
I presume the ‘burn your files’
thing was not literal

367
00:24:53,325 --> 00:24:55,744
but obviously we'd have
had to make it literal.

368
00:24:55,911 --> 00:24:58,622
That’s too good to pass up on.

369
00:25:00,499 --> 00:25:03,710
I'm imagining all this stuff
that we've seen earlier,

370
00:25:03,877 --> 00:25:06,338
like the printout of Tucker's
name

371
00:25:06,421 --> 00:25:08,757
or the Zodiac police sketch,

372
00:25:09,633 --> 00:25:12,344
all of this stuff,
all of this key evidence

373
00:25:12,594 --> 00:25:14,971
being swallowed up by flames

374
00:25:15,347 --> 00:25:20,769
as we see the scale of the
perversion of justice at hand.

375
00:25:23,522 --> 00:25:25,815
And through it all,
there’s this sense that

376
00:25:26,024 --> 00:25:26,608
you know

377
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:29,402
not only was Lyndon
on to something,

378
00:25:31,071 --> 00:25:33,573
but he actually got
too close to the truth.

379
00:25:37,911 --> 00:25:39,329
Alright, end of act one.

380
00:25:46,878 --> 00:25:50,382
So the next sequence would
have been a kind of...

381
00:25:51,132 --> 00:25:54,010
dust-settling moment.

382
00:25:54,511 --> 00:25:56,555
Lyndon’s off the case

383
00:25:56,805 --> 00:26:02,143
and so by default,
he's back to the daily grind:

384
00:26:03,144 --> 00:26:05,105
routine traffic stops,

385
00:26:05,689 --> 00:26:11,194
seeing the normality - the
banality - of life in Vallejo.

386
00:26:12,070 --> 00:26:13,154
Oh, wait, this is amazing.

387
00:26:23,290 --> 00:26:27,836
But for him it's instilled with
a real sense of of anti-climax.

388
00:26:28,128 --> 00:26:31,381
He's gone from being the cop
who's going to solve

389
00:26:31,673 --> 00:26:34,009
the most high-profile murder
case in the world

390
00:26:34,259 --> 00:26:37,387
to being the cop who
hands out parking tickets.

391
00:26:40,932 --> 00:26:42,183
But the point would have been,

392
00:26:42,392 --> 00:26:46,396
and maybe we'd have had some of
our interviewees spell it out:

393
00:26:46,896 --> 00:26:50,567
that that banality is
really just a veneer,

394
00:26:50,942 --> 00:26:53,570
masking something
more sinister.

395
00:26:57,282 --> 00:26:59,200
And actually, getting people
to say that, doesn’t really

396
00:26:59,409 --> 00:27:00,577
take much work.

397
00:27:01,953 --> 00:27:04,080
There’s two things
people ever say about

398
00:27:04,289 --> 00:27:06,541
the places where these
sorts of crimes happened.

399
00:27:07,792 --> 00:27:10,045
Like, oh, it was idyllic.

400
00:27:10,545 --> 00:27:11,921
‘Waterloo was a great place.’

401
00:27:12,255 --> 00:27:14,507
Kids played out in the street.
You didn't lock your doors.

402
00:27:14,799 --> 00:27:16,384
‘Kids rode their bikes.’

403
00:27:17,010 --> 00:27:19,721
‘It's just a very
quiet neighborhood.’

404
00:27:20,013 --> 00:27:22,432
‘It's a very isolated
little community.’

405
00:27:22,891 --> 00:27:24,601
‘It's a beautiful place...’

406
00:27:25,894 --> 00:27:26,811
‘but...’

407
00:27:28,146 --> 00:27:29,564
But it had a dark side.

408
00:27:30,649 --> 00:27:32,359
‘... there's a dark side.’

409
00:27:36,321 --> 00:27:38,281
And so that shift
would have led us

410
00:27:38,782 --> 00:27:40,742
inexorably towards...

411
00:27:41,201 --> 00:27:42,577
Tucker's house.

412
00:28:02,472 --> 00:28:05,684
I think we would have had it so
the first time he drives by,

413
00:28:05,892 --> 00:28:07,686
it's almost by accident.

414
00:28:07,686 --> 00:28:08,269
Like he’s...

415
00:28:08,645 --> 00:28:12,023
He is driving by on
one of these routine calls

416
00:28:12,273 --> 00:28:15,068
and happens to see Tucker...

417
00:28:15,068 --> 00:28:15,902
maybe like...

418
00:28:16,820 --> 00:28:18,113
emptying his trash or...

419
00:28:19,072 --> 00:28:20,323
parking his car.

420
00:28:27,789 --> 00:28:31,042
And is reminded,
like, oh...

421
00:28:31,251 --> 00:28:33,128
as long as I do nothing,

422
00:28:33,545 --> 00:28:36,047
this guy is still
out in the world

423
00:28:36,339 --> 00:28:38,842
potentially committing
further crimes.

424
00:28:41,970 --> 00:28:46,224
But what’s more, the way he
describes the house is like

425
00:28:46,599 --> 00:28:49,602
this perfect villain's lair.

426
00:28:52,230 --> 00:28:53,565
He says its...

427
00:28:53,815 --> 00:28:57,819
‘surrounded by an unusual
grove of whispering pines’

428
00:28:58,319 --> 00:29:00,196
and that...

429
00:29:00,613 --> 00:29:04,701
‘no stranger’s eye can pierce
its foreboding veil’.

430
00:29:08,580 --> 00:29:11,082
And the sense would’ve been
that his suspicions were

431
00:29:11,332 --> 00:29:14,127
really starting to
solidify here,

432
00:29:16,671 --> 00:29:19,090
really just based
on seeing this...

433
00:29:20,341 --> 00:29:21,926
fucking creepy house.

434
00:29:23,386 --> 00:29:26,639
It's intuition more
than anything else.

435
00:29:31,019 --> 00:29:33,730
This isn't the actual
house, incidentally.

436
00:29:34,314 --> 00:29:36,483
The actual house isn’t
anywhere near spooky enough.

437
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:43,698
Anyway, I don't know if we
would’ve needed some moment

438
00:29:43,948 --> 00:29:48,369
that it crossed into...
actually sinister.

439
00:29:48,828 --> 00:29:50,914
Oh, in fact I tell you what
it would have been...

440
00:29:52,081 --> 00:29:56,294
After a few days of staking
the place out,

441
00:29:56,461 --> 00:29:59,047
Lyndon discovered these...

442
00:30:01,090 --> 00:30:03,218
bits of graffiti
around the house.

443
00:30:03,426 --> 00:30:05,053
Let me read
from the book again.

444
00:30:11,684 --> 00:30:15,814
‘One day, I noticed
something very strange.’

445
00:30:17,190 --> 00:30:19,609
‘Someone had taken white paint’

446
00:30:20,068 --> 00:30:22,946
‘and painted an inverted
cross with arrows’

447
00:30:23,363 --> 00:30:26,324
‘on the telephone pole on
the right side of the house.’

448
00:30:28,451 --> 00:30:30,078
‘Then lo and behold,’

449
00:30:30,495 --> 00:30:33,623
‘on a concrete water cistern
to the left of the house,’

450
00:30:34,332 --> 00:30:36,876
‘was painted a large hatchet.’

451
00:30:40,630 --> 00:30:43,132
And because he describes
finding these symbols

452
00:30:43,258 --> 00:30:48,513
as though he's unearthing
some dark, occult mystery,

453
00:30:49,389 --> 00:30:52,725
I always imagined them hidden
behind reeds, or something,

454
00:30:53,101 --> 00:30:55,645
like Lyndon had to
pull back something

455
00:30:56,271 --> 00:30:59,107
to see these ominous symbols

456
00:30:59,774 --> 00:31:02,068
painted around
this creepy house.

457
00:31:09,242 --> 00:31:10,410
Um...

458
00:31:10,994 --> 00:31:14,247
I mean, there is a third one,
that we would have had to lose,

459
00:31:14,455 --> 00:31:16,291
because the
third one depicts...

460
00:31:16,833 --> 00:31:21,254
‘two nude males engaged in
explicit homosexual activity’

461
00:31:22,630 --> 00:31:27,260
and the photograph of this
in the book is...

462
00:31:29,596 --> 00:31:31,806
to Lyndon, I think,
very sinister.

463
00:31:32,223 --> 00:31:37,103
To a contemporary viewer,
I think, slightly less ominous

464
00:31:37,312 --> 00:31:38,646
than the hatchet.

465
00:31:41,065 --> 00:31:43,610
We probably would have
taken it out, in the interest

466
00:31:43,776 --> 00:31:46,321
of trying to make
the theory convincing.

467
00:31:49,782 --> 00:31:51,910
You can still deploy

468
00:31:52,076 --> 00:31:53,786
someone just having a bad vibe

469
00:31:54,287 --> 00:31:55,914
and living in a creepy house

470
00:31:57,081 --> 00:31:59,667
but today's Netflix viewers

471
00:31:59,876 --> 00:32:04,672
don’t get as worked up about
someone being gay, potentially.

472
00:32:05,882 --> 00:32:08,051
Or bi, actually.
He doesn't say he was gay.

473
00:32:08,259 --> 00:32:12,305
He says that Tucker was bi.

474
00:32:12,639 --> 00:32:16,809
Although adorably, he actually
says that he was ‘AC/DC’,

475
00:32:18,394 --> 00:32:21,314
which is a wonderfully 1950s
way of putting it.

476
00:32:35,286 --> 00:32:38,623
So next Lyndon
starts to build this...

477
00:32:38,915 --> 00:32:40,041
crack team

478
00:32:41,501 --> 00:32:46,005
assembled from across
Vallejo society

479
00:32:47,006 --> 00:32:50,301
in order to aid his
investigation into Tucker

480
00:32:52,261 --> 00:32:54,347
which is kind of amazing
for our purposes,

481
00:32:54,555 --> 00:32:56,683
because that’s already like
something out of a film.

482
00:32:58,267 --> 00:33:01,813
And this group consists
of him, obviously,

483
00:33:02,146 --> 00:33:05,900
and a few of his friends
from law enforcement,

484
00:33:06,150 --> 00:33:09,404
from the California Highway
Patrol and other agencies,

485
00:33:10,363 --> 00:33:13,199
as well as various people
from local government,

486
00:33:14,784 --> 00:33:18,246
and then, weirdly,
Lyndon's minister...

487
00:33:20,039 --> 00:33:21,416
a guy called Ernie,

488
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,086
who was the minister at the
local United Methodist Church.

489
00:33:25,670 --> 00:33:29,132
And in my head, I pictured
them meeting in a diner,

490
00:33:29,799 --> 00:33:32,552
somewhere unremarkable,
somewhere everyday,

491
00:33:33,344 --> 00:33:35,722
where they can slowly
start to build

492
00:33:35,888 --> 00:33:37,974
this case against Tucker.

493
00:33:39,934 --> 00:33:42,020
And a few of them
are still alive,

494
00:33:42,437 --> 00:33:43,396
so I was imagining

495
00:33:43,563 --> 00:33:46,858
getting them down to the diner
and filming them...

496
00:33:47,316 --> 00:33:48,776
getting out of their cars,

497
00:33:49,235 --> 00:33:50,820
their boots coming
down on the tarmac,

498
00:33:52,321 --> 00:33:55,533
sitting them down in a booth
and getting them to

499
00:33:55,908 --> 00:33:59,787
play the role of
the hot-shot detective.

500
00:34:01,039 --> 00:34:01,998
You know what I mean?

501
00:34:02,165 --> 00:34:06,169
I feel like all these
figures of authority,

502
00:34:07,128 --> 00:34:08,296
the second you point
a camera at them,

503
00:34:08,504 --> 00:34:09,714
they just know what to do.

504
00:34:10,173 --> 00:34:13,009
You know, they
know the image of a cop

505
00:34:13,176 --> 00:34:14,469
in a true crime show.

506
00:34:16,304 --> 00:34:18,639
And so without prompting,
they walk in the right way

507
00:34:18,806 --> 00:34:21,392
and they talk about themselves
in the right way.

508
00:34:21,893 --> 00:34:24,854
‘What I figured out at an
early age in the Bureau is...’

509
00:34:25,229 --> 00:34:28,649
‘you push it, and then...
you keep pushing.’

510
00:34:29,358 --> 00:34:31,027
Even just the nicknames!

511
00:34:31,527 --> 00:34:35,615
They all have these
clearly self-anointed nicknames

512
00:34:35,990 --> 00:34:38,367
and about half of them
seem to be ‘the bulldog’.

513
00:34:38,659 --> 00:34:39,660
‘What was your nickname?’

514
00:34:39,869 --> 00:34:40,495
‘The Bulldog’

515
00:34:40,745 --> 00:34:41,287
‘Bulldog’

516
00:34:41,496 --> 00:34:42,205
‘The Bulldogs’

517
00:34:46,084 --> 00:34:48,544
It’s like there's
no direction required.

518
00:34:55,468 --> 00:34:59,680
And I was imagining these
interviews as a springboard

519
00:35:00,223 --> 00:35:03,976
for discussing each of the
killings in more detail.

520
00:35:06,354 --> 00:35:09,398
You know, someone ominously
references one of the crimes,

521
00:35:09,607 --> 00:35:13,778
and we cut to the microfiche in
the archive, whizzing back to

522
00:35:14,987 --> 00:35:17,156
‘July 4th, 1969’.

523
00:35:19,492 --> 00:35:20,493
I think that actually is...

524
00:35:20,660 --> 00:35:22,036
the date of one of
the Zodiac crimes.

525
00:35:22,328 --> 00:35:24,872
This is how embedded
it is in my head.

526
00:35:27,959 --> 00:35:30,086
And then they discuss
the facts of the crime

527
00:35:30,294 --> 00:35:32,380
and how Tucker
might be implicated.

528
00:35:38,094 --> 00:35:39,095
And meanwhile,

529
00:35:39,345 --> 00:35:42,849
our ‘evocative B-roll’
is going into overdrive.

530
00:35:43,141 --> 00:35:45,393
All the classic staples:

531
00:35:45,977 --> 00:35:47,103
the gun...

532
00:35:47,603 --> 00:35:49,730
rising up towards the camera,

533
00:35:50,481 --> 00:35:53,734
shell casings
clattering to the ground,

534
00:35:56,070 --> 00:35:58,072
crime scene tape...

535
00:35:58,573 --> 00:36:01,159
stretching out into
the distance,

536
00:36:02,952 --> 00:36:03,870
Or...

537
00:36:04,787 --> 00:36:05,830
blood,

538
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:07,748
pooling on the ground.

539
00:36:09,292 --> 00:36:12,420
Maybe a hand
reaching in to touch it,

540
00:36:13,462 --> 00:36:16,007
as though to check
it's actually blood.

541
00:36:20,595 --> 00:36:25,099
Plus all the actual police
photographs of the crime scene.

542
00:36:26,350 --> 00:36:26,726
Which now

543
00:36:27,018 --> 00:36:30,062
I feel like, even recently,
you could just show those,

544
00:36:30,062 --> 00:36:31,772
and now everything's so jazzy.

545
00:36:33,274 --> 00:36:34,984
Like, at the very least,
now they have to be placed

546
00:36:34,984 --> 00:36:38,154
in a kind of 3D environment

547
00:36:39,864 --> 00:36:42,825
or be falling in and
out of focus

548
00:36:43,159 --> 00:36:46,787
with a bit of dust
dancing across their surface,

549
00:36:48,247 --> 00:36:49,999
and the thing I increasingly
see now is

550
00:36:50,166 --> 00:36:52,668
they've taken the crime
scene photograph and they've...

551
00:36:53,252 --> 00:36:56,380
created a three-dimensional
image from it.

552
00:36:57,048 --> 00:36:58,799
You know, it'll be like
a layered thing.

553
00:37:00,134 --> 00:37:02,386
It's like you're moving
through the space

554
00:37:02,762 --> 00:37:06,015
so you can be not just

555
00:37:06,432 --> 00:37:10,019
at the place where a horrific,
brutal murder took place,

556
00:37:10,311 --> 00:37:15,358
but actually traveling through
it, like on Google Street View.

557
00:37:17,026 --> 00:37:18,152
It's probably good work

558
00:37:18,319 --> 00:37:21,614
for some graphic
artist somewhere,

559
00:37:22,281 --> 00:37:24,033
someone who knows
After Effects.

560
00:37:27,954 --> 00:37:29,163
You must just...

561
00:37:29,330 --> 00:37:30,665
forget what you're looking at.

562
00:37:36,003 --> 00:37:37,880
And so between
all of that, we'd...

563
00:37:38,381 --> 00:37:41,467
fill in the general
contours of the case.

564
00:37:45,471 --> 00:37:47,848
Do you wanna
fill in some of that now?

565
00:37:50,518 --> 00:37:51,769
Uh...

566
00:37:52,770 --> 00:37:53,813
No.

567
00:37:55,439 --> 00:37:56,899
Okay.

568
00:37:58,776 --> 00:38:00,278
No, not at all.

569
00:38:00,569 --> 00:38:02,446
I feel like that's...

570
00:38:03,281 --> 00:38:06,284
the only saving grace of not
getting to make the film,

571
00:38:07,451 --> 00:38:09,412
is that we don't have to...

572
00:38:09,954 --> 00:38:13,040
re-tell the story
of the Zodiac Killer

573
00:38:14,625 --> 00:38:16,669
for the thousandth time.

574
00:38:20,756 --> 00:38:22,383
Anyway, they're
doing all this work

575
00:38:22,550 --> 00:38:27,179
to link Tucker to
each of the crimes

576
00:38:28,222 --> 00:38:30,808
but obviously, this is
all off the books

577
00:38:31,350 --> 00:38:34,437
because Lyndon’s been told
not to pursue the case.

578
00:38:36,772 --> 00:38:38,316
So next, him and his team

579
00:38:38,524 --> 00:38:43,779
have to take their theory
and get it in front of someone

580
00:38:44,030 --> 00:38:46,198
higher up the chain of command.

581
00:38:49,618 --> 00:38:51,746
He puts together a dossier

582
00:38:53,789 --> 00:38:56,042
of his and
his colleagues’ findings,

583
00:38:56,167 --> 00:38:58,085
and then together
they go into these

584
00:38:58,336 --> 00:39:01,130
centers of investigative power,

585
00:39:01,881 --> 00:39:03,382
slam down the dossier,

586
00:39:03,382 --> 00:39:05,384
and they think that's
all they need to show,

587
00:39:05,551 --> 00:39:08,763
but instead, these agencies
just don't seem to care.

588
00:39:08,929 --> 00:39:12,600
They have their own suspect,
their own theories of the case,

589
00:39:12,683 --> 00:39:13,934
and they don’t want
some outsider

590
00:39:14,060 --> 00:39:16,020
telling them how
to do their job.

591
00:39:19,357 --> 00:39:21,901
So the main challenge
for Lyndon becomes

592
00:39:22,526 --> 00:39:25,613
getting anyone to hear him out.

593
00:39:30,201 --> 00:39:32,286
But then at the same time,
he kind of doesn't

594
00:39:32,328 --> 00:39:34,080
want too many people
to hear him out,

595
00:39:34,622 --> 00:39:36,332
because if you get too
many people on board,

596
00:39:36,707 --> 00:39:40,252
it kind of ceases to be
your suspect anymore,

597
00:39:40,461 --> 00:39:42,046
ceases to be your theory.

598
00:39:44,423 --> 00:39:47,426
So much of what's making it
possible for me to talk about

599
00:39:47,802 --> 00:39:50,763
Lyndon and his suspect
without the rights to the book,

600
00:39:50,930 --> 00:39:53,974
is the fact that he wasn't
terribly discreet.

601
00:39:53,974 --> 00:39:56,685
Like, he went on the radio
and talked about his suspect.

602
00:39:56,811 --> 00:39:58,979
He gave interviews
to newspapers.

603
00:40:00,356 --> 00:40:03,109
Like, in one sense, he really
would have been better

604
00:40:03,317 --> 00:40:05,069
just keeping it to himself.

605
00:40:08,906 --> 00:40:11,617
Like, it's not just the
quality of the evidence.

606
00:40:12,451 --> 00:40:14,078
It's the...

607
00:40:14,578 --> 00:40:16,122
exclusivity.

608
00:40:19,333 --> 00:40:20,709
Like, did you watch The Jinx

609
00:40:20,918 --> 00:40:22,044
when it went out?

610
00:40:23,629 --> 00:40:24,672
No.

611
00:40:25,548 --> 00:40:28,634
The final episode of that
is unbelievable.

612
00:40:29,718 --> 00:40:31,720
So for six episodes or
whatever, they've been pursuing

613
00:40:31,971 --> 00:40:33,681
this guy called Robert Durst,

614
00:40:34,056 --> 00:40:37,560
who is this eccentric heir

615
00:40:37,810 --> 00:40:39,937
to a real estate fortune,

616
00:40:40,354 --> 00:40:43,524
who's suspected
of murdering three people.

617
00:40:44,567 --> 00:40:48,320
And he's interviewed in this
show and always kind of

618
00:40:48,654 --> 00:40:50,614
dodges their questions

619
00:40:50,823 --> 00:40:53,742
and skillfully evades
incriminating himself

620
00:40:53,951 --> 00:40:55,953
right up until
this final episode,

621
00:40:56,370 --> 00:40:59,290
where, at the end
of his final interview,

622
00:40:59,373 --> 00:41:00,791
with the filmmakers

623
00:41:01,542 --> 00:41:06,088
he goes to the bathroom
and unknowingly,

624
00:41:06,422 --> 00:41:11,260
still wearing his microphone,
confesses to himself...

625
00:41:31,155 --> 00:41:33,157
It's unbelievably chilling.

626
00:41:33,407 --> 00:41:35,201
Just incredible television.

627
00:41:35,826 --> 00:41:37,828
And the timing was just unreal.

628
00:41:37,995 --> 00:41:41,415
I think Durst was arrested
the day before the airing,

629
00:41:42,124 --> 00:41:43,292
and then in the finale,

630
00:41:43,667 --> 00:41:46,837
you see exactly how and
why he was caught,

631
00:41:47,671 --> 00:41:50,382
but it did beg the question:
how did this ever line up?

632
00:41:50,925 --> 00:41:54,803
Because obviously
that interview was conducted

633
00:41:55,012 --> 00:41:58,432
I think years before the
broadcast of the show,

634
00:41:59,350 --> 00:42:02,353
and so whatever
the legality of it,

635
00:42:02,436 --> 00:42:05,564
it would seem quite ethically
dubious if the filmmakers had

636
00:42:05,814 --> 00:42:09,026
left this murderer
to be walking the streets

637
00:42:09,235 --> 00:42:12,029
for two years,
just in the interest of

638
00:42:12,321 --> 00:42:15,449
holding back a big reveal
for their final episode.

639
00:42:16,867 --> 00:42:19,119
And the story that they told

640
00:42:19,370 --> 00:42:22,081
was that they hadn't
actually known

641
00:42:22,623 --> 00:42:24,792
that they had
captured the confession.

642
00:42:26,168 --> 00:42:28,963
That that tape
went unlistened to

643
00:42:29,338 --> 00:42:32,800
for months or years
after it was recorded,

644
00:42:33,425 --> 00:42:35,386
and that they realized
like a week before

645
00:42:35,553 --> 00:42:38,597
the final episode was gonna
air, just in time to edit it in

646
00:42:38,722 --> 00:42:40,808
and the fact that he was
therefore arrested

647
00:42:41,058 --> 00:42:43,310
the day of the airing
or the day before or whatever,

648
00:42:43,561 --> 00:42:44,979
is just a happy accident,

649
00:42:45,688 --> 00:42:46,438
slash…

650
00:42:46,814 --> 00:42:48,190
the greatest thing that’s
ever happened to them

651
00:42:48,315 --> 00:42:49,358
in their filmmaking lives.

652
00:42:59,201 --> 00:43:01,120
But anyway,
in Lyndon's telling,

653
00:43:02,037 --> 00:43:06,125
any secrecy is very
much foisted upon him

654
00:43:06,917 --> 00:43:10,504
by the incompetence of
these various agencies,

655
00:43:13,007 --> 00:43:14,925
and from that, he concludes
that if he’s ever going to

656
00:43:15,134 --> 00:43:17,177
bring Tucker to justice,

657
00:43:18,137 --> 00:43:20,180
he's gonna have to
go it alone.

658
00:43:24,518 --> 00:43:26,145
And there's a great...

659
00:43:26,645 --> 00:43:28,814
caustic line about this
in the book.

660
00:43:28,897 --> 00:43:30,065
Let me just find it.

661
00:43:35,446 --> 00:43:36,363
He says:

662
00:43:39,158 --> 00:43:40,534
‘Do you think
I’m going to trust…’

663
00:43:40,659 --> 00:43:42,661
‘a bunch of
badge-toting clowns...’

664
00:43:42,786 --> 00:43:44,580
‘with additional information?’

665
00:43:46,081 --> 00:43:46,832
‘Not me.’

666
00:43:48,083 --> 00:43:49,001
‘Never again.’

667
00:43:58,052 --> 00:44:00,429
I'm trying to keep
all these quotes brief

668
00:44:00,554 --> 00:44:04,016
because I have to justify
each one to our lawyer,

669
00:44:06,810 --> 00:44:10,606
but there’s 400 pages of this.

670
00:44:17,321 --> 00:44:18,822
Anyway, under cover of night,

671
00:44:19,073 --> 00:44:21,325
they begin pursuing Tucker,

672
00:44:22,701 --> 00:44:25,204
tailing his car
wherever he goes,

673
00:44:25,954 --> 00:44:30,959
arranging a series of shadowy
meetings with witnesses,

674
00:44:31,877 --> 00:44:35,839
informants, people who know him
in one way or another.

675
00:44:38,258 --> 00:44:40,552
They go through
his trash at one point

676
00:44:40,803 --> 00:44:43,138
and try and find incriminating
evidence in there.

677
00:44:46,475 --> 00:44:48,977
And ultimately,
they stage this...

678
00:44:49,353 --> 00:44:52,856
show-stopping sting operation.

679
00:45:01,907 --> 00:45:05,035
Basically, they found out
Tucker was in AA,

680
00:45:06,870 --> 00:45:09,623
and I'm not entirely
sure how, actually,

681
00:45:09,873 --> 00:45:12,084
but the way I always imagined
it playing out was

682
00:45:12,418 --> 00:45:14,128
they’re tailing Tucker

683
00:45:14,586 --> 00:45:17,047
around Northern California
one evening.

684
00:45:17,965 --> 00:45:19,925
Eventually they see his car

685
00:45:20,342 --> 00:45:22,720
pull up outside a church.

686
00:45:25,305 --> 00:45:26,557
Not this church,

687
00:45:26,682 --> 00:45:28,976
but a church,

688
00:45:29,184 --> 00:45:30,894
and this one would have done.

689
00:45:34,148 --> 00:45:36,400
And so Lyndon's
maybe across the street,

690
00:45:36,984 --> 00:45:39,111
watching Tucker as he
gets out of his car

691
00:45:39,153 --> 00:45:40,988
and makes his way
into this church.

692
00:45:43,574 --> 00:45:44,241
Um...

693
00:45:44,241 --> 00:45:47,536
Eventually, maybe,
he sneaks in and realizes

694
00:45:48,912 --> 00:45:50,748
that it's an AA meeting.

695
00:45:52,416 --> 00:45:55,210
And so this is like
hitting paydirt,

696
00:45:55,669 --> 00:45:58,714
because what do people do
at an AA meeting?

697
00:46:00,799 --> 00:46:02,176
They confess.

698
00:46:04,011 --> 00:46:07,222
And so immediately, Lyndon and
his team start discussing

699
00:46:07,639 --> 00:46:09,475
how to get someone inside,

700
00:46:10,100 --> 00:46:11,852
but also who to get inside,

701
00:46:11,935 --> 00:46:13,854
because obviously
a lot of them are...

702
00:46:14,146 --> 00:46:16,482
too high-profile, in one
way or another,

703
00:46:16,899 --> 00:46:19,610
would be too easily
recognized by Tucker.

704
00:46:20,027 --> 00:46:24,031
And so eventually,
all eyes fall on Ernie...

705
00:46:24,823 --> 00:46:26,033
the minister.

706
00:46:27,826 --> 00:46:31,663
And maybe we'd have set up
earlier in the film that

707
00:46:32,039 --> 00:46:35,751
Ernie is a bit of a redundant
member of the group,

708
00:46:36,001 --> 00:46:39,505
like it's nice to have him,
but he's not the big guns

709
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:42,299
of this investigative team.

710
00:46:43,300 --> 00:46:46,720
But lo and behold,
now it falls to Ernie

711
00:46:47,054 --> 00:46:48,931
to do what the others cannot.

712
00:46:51,725 --> 00:46:55,521
So Ernie begins driving up
to the church every week,

713
00:46:56,438 --> 00:46:58,899
takes his collar off...

714
00:47:00,776 --> 00:47:03,237
I’m imagining the
dramatic scene of him

715
00:47:03,821 --> 00:47:05,823
putting the collar
on the bedside table

716
00:47:06,114 --> 00:47:09,618
to go out and deceive a man
he doesn’t even know,

717
00:47:09,993 --> 00:47:11,161
in a church.

718
00:47:12,454 --> 00:47:14,081
And then at the end
of each meeting,

719
00:47:14,331 --> 00:47:16,959
Ernie would record these tapes

720
00:47:17,292 --> 00:47:20,504
reciting back everything
that Tucker had said.

721
00:47:21,713 --> 00:47:23,799
And apparently
the tapes still exist,

722
00:47:23,966 --> 00:47:27,219
so we would have played
them over this sequence.

723
00:47:29,972 --> 00:47:31,265
Here's a quote from it.

724
00:47:31,723 --> 00:47:34,685
This is Ernie on one
of these tapes, saying:

725
00:47:38,105 --> 00:47:40,357
‘I felt like he was
trying to say,’

726
00:47:40,691 --> 00:47:42,609
‘I am a rotten S.O.B.’

727
00:47:43,777 --> 00:47:45,904
‘but I can't tell you
what I have done.’

728
00:47:47,322 --> 00:47:50,784
‘I've done things I'm not proud
of, and would never tell you.’

729
00:47:51,910 --> 00:47:53,120
‘Terrible things.’

730
00:47:54,454 --> 00:47:55,831
‘If only you knew.’

731
00:47:57,124 --> 00:47:58,375
‘But you will never know,’

732
00:47:59,668 --> 00:48:01,086
‘and I don't care anymore.’

733
00:48:02,504 --> 00:48:03,881
‘It's in the past now.’

734
00:48:12,097 --> 00:48:13,807
Imagine going
to an AA meeting...

735
00:48:14,099 --> 00:48:16,602
... and then what you say
being published in a book.

736
00:48:19,479 --> 00:48:20,647
Well, yeah.

737
00:48:21,231 --> 00:48:22,065
Not great.

738
00:48:23,567 --> 00:48:24,234
Um...

739
00:48:25,193 --> 00:48:26,528
You know, invading

740
00:48:27,446 --> 00:48:30,282
the sanctity of an AA meeting

741
00:48:30,532 --> 00:48:33,535
to listen in on
someone's confessions,

742
00:48:33,702 --> 00:48:37,331
hoping they admit to
committing the Zodiac killings.

743
00:48:39,583 --> 00:48:40,876
That's the thing, though.

744
00:48:41,001 --> 00:48:43,211
If he did...

745
00:48:43,879 --> 00:48:44,671
it's fine.

746
00:48:45,505 --> 00:48:48,133
Right? If he did,
it's absolutely fine.

747
00:48:48,258 --> 00:48:49,760
You could go much further.

748
00:48:50,260 --> 00:48:53,847
It's only if he didn't, that
you start to feel a bit...

749
00:48:54,389 --> 00:48:56,016
sweaty about it.

750
00:48:57,517 --> 00:48:59,394
And I feel like that's what

751
00:48:59,478 --> 00:49:02,648
we would have been
trading on with this.

752
00:49:02,898 --> 00:49:06,860
You need people
to be fully convinced

753
00:49:07,027 --> 00:49:12,282
going into this sequence, or it
just seems way beyond the pale.

754
00:49:14,618 --> 00:49:17,537
I always think back
to that scene in...

755
00:49:18,163 --> 00:49:19,289
Paradise Lost.

756
00:49:19,289 --> 00:49:22,417
I think it's the second
Paradise Lost film, where...

757
00:49:23,961 --> 00:49:26,171
It’s like...
Have you seen Paradise Lost?

758
00:49:27,047 --> 00:49:27,923
No.

759
00:49:28,256 --> 00:49:31,969
It was a trilogy of
documentaries about this...

760
00:49:32,886 --> 00:49:35,681
miscarriage of justice where
these teenage boys were...

761
00:49:36,723 --> 00:49:40,936
sent to prison for
the murders of some children

762
00:49:41,186 --> 00:49:43,313
that they clearly
hadn't committed.

763
00:49:44,189 --> 00:49:47,317
And in the second
of the three films,

764
00:49:47,859 --> 00:49:51,405
they start sniffing
around the possibility

765
00:49:51,780 --> 00:49:54,908
that the dad of
one of the dead kids

766
00:49:55,242 --> 00:49:57,953
could have been responsible
for these deaths.

767
00:49:58,537 --> 00:50:01,540
And in the interests of
exploring this idea,

768
00:50:01,748 --> 00:50:05,585
they film him out in the woods

769
00:50:06,211 --> 00:50:11,466
performing some sort of
commemorative ritual,

770
00:50:12,175 --> 00:50:13,010
um...

771
00:50:13,218 --> 00:50:15,804
which is admittedly...

772
00:50:16,054 --> 00:50:18,056
incredibly weird and creepy

773
00:50:18,849 --> 00:50:22,102
and the takeaway
of the scene is clearly:

774
00:50:22,185 --> 00:50:24,813
oh my God,
this guy is guilty as sin.

775
00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:28,942
And he wasn’t.
He had nothing to do with it.

776
00:50:29,609 --> 00:50:32,154
And I think even at the time,
they got a bit of stick for...

777
00:50:32,154 --> 00:50:33,780
having kind of...

778
00:50:33,780 --> 00:50:35,866
exploiting his grief
in this way,

779
00:50:35,991 --> 00:50:36,742
um...

780
00:50:37,784 --> 00:50:39,286
but if it had been him,

781
00:50:40,537 --> 00:50:42,873
no one would have cared
about exploiting the grief.

782
00:50:44,958 --> 00:50:47,377
If you're convinced it's
for the greater good,

783
00:50:48,253 --> 00:50:51,506
there are very few
ethical lines

784
00:50:52,299 --> 00:50:53,383
as far as...

785
00:50:54,092 --> 00:50:56,219
HBO execs are concerned.

786
00:51:00,724 --> 00:51:05,520
So Tucker is saying all this
creepy stuff in these meetings,

787
00:51:05,687 --> 00:51:09,858
but obviously he’s
not about to confess

788
00:51:10,192 --> 00:51:11,902
to being the Zodiac Killer.

789
00:51:12,569 --> 00:51:16,490
And so they realize they
need to go one step further.

790
00:51:16,573 --> 00:51:19,076
They need something undeniable.

791
00:51:20,035 --> 00:51:22,204
And what he
arrives at is...

792
00:51:22,871 --> 00:51:24,664
this palm print.

793
00:51:28,251 --> 00:51:30,420
Basically, after
one of the crimes,

794
00:51:31,254 --> 00:51:34,716
the Zodiac Killer himself
called the police

795
00:51:35,092 --> 00:51:36,968
to report what he had done,

796
00:51:37,803 --> 00:51:41,139
and they managed to get to
the phone booth that he used

797
00:51:41,223 --> 00:51:42,307
quite quickly

798
00:51:42,808 --> 00:51:45,852
and so they found on it,
a palm print

799
00:51:46,895 --> 00:51:51,024
that was considered
to be definitively his.

800
00:51:52,984 --> 00:51:55,195
And so Lyndon seizes upon this

801
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:59,825
as the ultimate test
of Tucker's guilt.

802
00:52:04,871 --> 00:52:08,583
And so, from here, we'd have
been straight into our scheme,

803
00:52:09,084 --> 00:52:12,045
and I think we'd have done it
a little bit like a heist film,

804
00:52:12,671 --> 00:52:14,923
showing it step by step
and piece by piece,

805
00:52:14,965 --> 00:52:19,469
before people have a chance to
make sense of what the plan is.

806
00:52:19,761 --> 00:52:22,639
You feel it coming together
like this jigsaw puzzle,

807
00:52:22,764 --> 00:52:23,765
until at the end,

808
00:52:24,224 --> 00:52:25,892
the picture reveals itself.

809
00:52:27,853 --> 00:52:30,021
So the first step is that
a friend of Lyndon's

810
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:33,817
bandaged Ernie's arm
into a cast,

811
00:52:34,693 --> 00:52:36,611
and he wore this cast

812
00:52:36,945 --> 00:52:40,699
every week at this AA meeting
where he was undercover,

813
00:52:40,949 --> 00:52:44,327
getting Tucker used to the idea
of him in an arm cast.

814
00:52:45,912 --> 00:52:48,331
And then Lyndon...

815
00:52:48,665 --> 00:52:50,333
gives Ernie a gun.

816
00:52:50,834 --> 00:52:53,587
He arms him, with a revolver.

817
00:52:53,962 --> 00:52:57,007
And I could just imagine
the inserts of all of this:

818
00:52:57,132 --> 00:53:00,760
the gun tucked into
the ceremonial robes...

819
00:53:02,220 --> 00:53:04,472
Does a Methodist
minister wear robes?

820
00:53:05,015 --> 00:53:06,683
We would’ve had him wear robes.

821
00:53:07,392 --> 00:53:09,978
Just, that image of...

822
00:53:10,729 --> 00:53:14,316
the gun going into
the religious garb

823
00:53:14,608 --> 00:53:17,027
and then maybe
the bandaged arm…

824
00:53:17,277 --> 00:53:19,988
swinging back in front
to hide the gun

825
00:53:20,780 --> 00:53:23,491
and then the...

826
00:53:24,242 --> 00:53:27,537
In fact, I have to hand this
one over to Lyndon

827
00:53:27,537 --> 00:53:31,958
because the way he describes it
is so perfectly understated.

828
00:53:33,210 --> 00:53:33,877
Let me find it.

829
00:53:36,004 --> 00:53:36,880
He says:

830
00:53:37,881 --> 00:53:41,509
‘As March 1st, 1977,
approached,’

831
00:53:42,010 --> 00:53:44,137
‘our plan was
right on schedule.’

832
00:53:45,639 --> 00:53:47,974
‘I bought the
fishbowl required.’

833
00:53:52,604 --> 00:53:55,106
I mean, as a cliffhanger...
just incredible.

834
00:53:55,398 --> 00:53:56,524
If this was a series,

835
00:53:56,650 --> 00:53:58,318
that's where you’d
put the episode break,

836
00:53:58,485 --> 00:54:00,946
and then there's no way
people are stopping watching.

837
00:54:03,698 --> 00:54:06,451
And so Lyndon
gives Ernie this fishbowl,

838
00:54:06,993 --> 00:54:08,703
and he drives up the highway

839
00:54:09,287 --> 00:54:11,706
to this fateful AA meeting.

840
00:54:12,874 --> 00:54:14,376
He’s sitting outside,

841
00:54:14,501 --> 00:54:17,254
thinking about whether his
grand plan is going to work.

842
00:54:18,797 --> 00:54:23,385
Eventually, he
sees Tucker arrive,

843
00:54:24,302 --> 00:54:26,304
and so he gets out of the car,

844
00:54:26,805 --> 00:54:31,977
walks to his trunk, pops
it open, and there it is:

845
00:54:33,395 --> 00:54:34,562
the fishbowl.

846
00:54:37,148 --> 00:54:38,275
So he says,

847
00:54:38,316 --> 00:54:40,944
could you carry this
into the meeting for me?

848
00:54:41,319 --> 00:54:42,946
Because of my broken arm.

849
00:54:44,155 --> 00:54:46,283
And I guess he explained
that he was gonna

850
00:54:46,449 --> 00:54:48,576
give a presentation
to the group

851
00:54:48,785 --> 00:54:50,954
and use the fishbowl as a prop.

852
00:54:52,330 --> 00:54:54,791
And so this is our
make or break moment.

853
00:54:55,792 --> 00:55:00,547
Is Tucker gonna reach
his hands into the trunk,

854
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:03,258
plant them on the sides
of this fishbowl,

855
00:55:03,842 --> 00:55:05,510
leaving, presumably...

856
00:55:05,885 --> 00:55:08,763
the platonic ideal
of two handprints

857
00:55:08,888 --> 00:55:10,807
on the side of this glass bowl.

858
00:55:13,601 --> 00:55:14,644
And lo and behold,

859
00:55:15,729 --> 00:55:16,896
that's exactly what happens.

860
00:55:18,106 --> 00:55:19,899
And I can only
imagine the triumph

861
00:55:19,941 --> 00:55:22,944
of that moment, as this bowl
is carried into the meeting,

862
00:55:23,403 --> 00:55:26,281
and we’re caught up
on this wave of energy,

863
00:55:26,448 --> 00:55:27,782
thrust into the building,

864
00:55:28,408 --> 00:55:31,578
albeit obviously, that momentum
immediately interrupted

865
00:55:31,578 --> 00:55:33,621
by a two-hour AA meeting

866
00:55:34,039 --> 00:55:36,416
and whatever Ernie's
presentation was.

867
00:55:39,586 --> 00:55:42,839
My assumption is it would've
been some kind of metaphor,

868
00:55:43,340 --> 00:55:46,926
like, take life
one day at a time,

869
00:55:47,552 --> 00:55:48,762
like a goldfish.

870
00:55:50,430 --> 00:55:52,182
Because of the short memory.

871
00:55:52,349 --> 00:55:53,600
Maybe? I don't know.

872
00:55:53,850 --> 00:55:54,726
Uh...

873
00:55:55,310 --> 00:55:58,021
So, at the end of the meeting,

874
00:55:58,980 --> 00:56:01,983
Ernie has Tucker carry the
fishbowl back to the car,

875
00:56:03,318 --> 00:56:04,694
pops the trunk...

876
00:56:05,362 --> 00:56:06,946
I'm imagining this...

877
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:11,534
this empty trunk of
this car opened up,

878
00:56:11,743 --> 00:56:15,497
the little interior light
just perfectly illuminating

879
00:56:15,622 --> 00:56:17,457
the spot where this
bowl is gonna go,

880
00:56:17,582 --> 00:56:19,209
and presumably from there,
be whisked...

881
00:56:19,334 --> 00:56:21,336
straight to whatever
expert is gonna

882
00:56:21,503 --> 00:56:24,881
painstakingly extract
these palm prints,

883
00:56:25,006 --> 00:56:26,841
which can then
be matched to the...

884
00:56:26,966 --> 00:56:28,843
file print of the Zodiac Killer

885
00:56:29,010 --> 00:56:31,554
and the whole thing is
gonna be wrapped up

886
00:56:31,721 --> 00:56:33,306
in this perfect, neat bow,

887
00:56:33,681 --> 00:56:36,393
as soon as Tucker
places this bowl

888
00:56:36,684 --> 00:56:39,854
back down into
the trunk of the car.

889
00:56:44,067 --> 00:56:45,110
But then...

890
00:56:45,735 --> 00:56:48,196
Actually, let me read
the version in the book,

891
00:56:48,321 --> 00:56:53,410
because Lyndon describes it in
such exquisitely tragic terms.

892
00:56:57,455 --> 00:57:00,458
‘But then, for
some strange reason,’

893
00:57:00,708 --> 00:57:03,586
‘our suspect did
something totally bizarre.’

894
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:07,924
‘After the bowl
was set securely...’

895
00:57:08,007 --> 00:57:09,801
‘in the trunk of Ernie's car,’

896
00:57:10,927 --> 00:57:13,346
‘Tucker slapped the bowl
with his palms’

897
00:57:13,888 --> 00:57:15,265
‘several times’

898
00:57:17,016 --> 00:57:18,268
‘and then rubbed the bowl’

899
00:57:18,309 --> 00:57:20,311
‘several times as well.’

900
00:57:22,772 --> 00:57:24,149
‘Ernie said,’

901
00:57:24,774 --> 00:57:26,860
‘I could not believe
my eyes, Lyndon.’

902
00:57:29,404 --> 00:57:31,072
‘It was like he knew.’

903
00:57:40,707 --> 00:57:42,876
Pretty good, right?

904
00:57:45,420 --> 00:57:47,255
And I think we would’ve
tried to play it

905
00:57:47,422 --> 00:57:51,843
right down the middle of either
an intentional act of sabotage,

906
00:57:53,052 --> 00:57:55,638
or just about plausibly,

907
00:57:56,306 --> 00:57:58,349
an innocent action.

908
00:57:59,684 --> 00:58:01,436
That's a fun knife edge.

909
00:58:01,728 --> 00:58:05,231
Either it's like the wily
behavior of a serial killer,

910
00:58:05,773 --> 00:58:07,025
or it's like your dad,

911
00:58:07,108 --> 00:58:07,567
kind of

912
00:58:07,567 --> 00:58:11,404
patting the sides of something
to show you how robust it is.

913
00:58:14,824 --> 00:58:16,659
And I think by
shooting it slow motion,

914
00:58:16,743 --> 00:58:18,703
we would have really extracted

915
00:58:19,329 --> 00:58:24,209
every agonizing clap of
the hands against the bowl

916
00:58:24,375 --> 00:58:28,630
and then that terrible,
dreadful rubbing of the sides.

917
00:58:28,713 --> 00:58:29,380
Like this...

918
00:58:29,506 --> 00:58:30,757
I could just imagine...

919
00:58:30,798 --> 00:58:32,884
Oh god, I was so excited
about shooting this sequence.

920
00:58:33,927 --> 00:58:38,264
The feeling of agonizing loss

921
00:58:38,806 --> 00:58:40,433
in that moment.

922
00:58:56,950 --> 00:58:58,868
And so it's
that feeling of loss

923
00:58:59,160 --> 00:59:01,829
that would’ve set the stage

924
00:59:01,913 --> 00:59:03,998
for the final third
of the film,

925
00:59:05,124 --> 00:59:08,878
which begins with
a real error of judgment

926
00:59:09,337 --> 00:59:10,755
on Lyndon's part,

927
00:59:13,550 --> 00:59:16,928
and that's that he agrees
to meet with another man

928
00:59:16,970 --> 00:59:21,641
who's been on his own parallel
hunt for the Zodiac:

929
00:59:22,559 --> 00:59:24,310
Robert Graysmith.

930
00:59:26,729 --> 00:59:29,232
Will that land, do you think?
Or should I explain who he is?

931
00:59:31,067 --> 00:59:33,486
So, Graysmith is the author

932
00:59:33,945 --> 00:59:37,699
of the most successful book
about the Zodiac Killer,

933
00:59:38,575 --> 00:59:40,743
so successful, in fact,
that in Zodiac circles,

934
00:59:40,868 --> 00:59:43,204
it's often just called
‘the Yellow Book,’

935
00:59:44,497 --> 00:59:46,249
like it's Macbeth or something,

936
00:59:46,833 --> 00:59:50,962
because it's got this very
distinctive yellow cover

937
00:59:51,462 --> 00:59:54,549
with ‘Zodiac’ written
down the center.

938
00:59:57,135 --> 00:59:58,344
But at this point,

939
00:59:58,469 --> 01:00:01,222
he's still chasing
the story down

940
01:00:01,222 --> 01:00:02,932
and so him and Lyndon have been

941
01:00:03,349 --> 01:00:07,228
speaking to the same sources,
following up on the same leads,

942
01:00:07,979 --> 01:00:10,982
but it's only now,
at this low ebb,

943
01:00:11,608 --> 01:00:13,526
that Lyndon agrees to meet,

944
01:00:15,153 --> 01:00:16,237
figuring, I guess,

945
01:00:16,321 --> 01:00:17,822
what do I have to lose?

946
01:00:20,283 --> 01:00:22,493
And pretty soon
he gets his answer.

947
01:00:26,664 --> 01:00:27,624
I think we could have gone

948
01:00:27,624 --> 01:00:29,417
pretty swiftly from that to...

949
01:00:30,501 --> 01:00:34,130
Well, what I was imagining
was Lyndon wandering innocently

950
01:00:34,172 --> 01:00:36,424
around his local bookstore

951
01:00:37,884 --> 01:00:39,218
and then spying

952
01:00:39,344 --> 01:00:42,555
in the new releases
or the bestsellers section,

953
01:00:42,597 --> 01:00:44,849
this bright yellow...

954
01:00:45,933 --> 01:00:48,186
Actually, I think the first
edition was black, but...

955
01:00:48,811 --> 01:00:50,647
it's got that
crosshair symbol on it

956
01:00:51,105 --> 01:00:52,690
and ‘Zodiac’
in massive writing,

957
01:00:53,107 --> 01:00:54,359
and so I was imagining him

958
01:00:54,776 --> 01:00:56,694
feverishly searching
through the pages

959
01:00:56,736 --> 01:00:59,072
to see if it
favors his suspect,

960
01:00:59,864 --> 01:01:02,867
and instead, not only
does it present

961
01:01:03,368 --> 01:01:07,163
an entirely different suspect,
but it also includes

962
01:01:07,288 --> 01:01:11,793
some of the juiciest details
from Lyndon’s story

963
01:01:11,959 --> 01:01:15,046
almost as this, kind of,
funny aside.

964
01:01:19,092 --> 01:01:22,261
And one of the main reasons
I was able to describe

965
01:01:22,637 --> 01:01:26,099
the fishbowl story in such
detail a minute ago

966
01:01:26,099 --> 01:01:28,518
is that the story got out

967
01:01:29,352 --> 01:01:31,771
20 years before Lyndon
wrote his book,

968
01:01:32,980 --> 01:01:34,524
which must have been...

969
01:01:35,608 --> 01:01:36,442
annoying.

970
01:01:40,154 --> 01:01:41,906
But then he can't
really make it about that

971
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:43,991
because that seems
sort of vain,

972
01:01:44,701 --> 01:01:50,415
so the version in Lyndon’s book
is all about how this was...

973
01:01:50,415 --> 01:01:50,998
You know,

974
01:01:51,207 --> 01:01:53,793
a threat to
his family's safety,

975
01:01:53,960 --> 01:01:56,295
and how this was putting lives
in jeopardy and all this stuff.

976
01:01:56,379 --> 01:01:57,463
Let me find the thing.

977
01:01:58,172 --> 01:01:59,382
He says:

978
01:02:02,885 --> 01:02:05,638
‘Graysmith, a complete novice,’

979
01:02:06,389 --> 01:02:07,807
‘went on to disseminate...’

980
01:02:07,890 --> 01:02:11,436
‘sensitive investigative
findings to the entire world,’

981
01:02:12,895 --> 01:02:15,440
‘things which could place
my family members...’

982
01:02:15,523 --> 01:02:17,525
‘in a great deal of danger.’

983
01:02:20,737 --> 01:02:25,408
So he frames it as an
ethical concern, essentially,

984
01:02:26,325 --> 01:02:28,661
and we would have run
with that in the film, but...

985
01:02:29,537 --> 01:02:31,414
but I think the real
violation was that...

986
01:02:31,539 --> 01:02:33,833
not only was this book
hugely successful,

987
01:02:33,875 --> 01:02:36,794
and made Graysmith
a very wealthy man,

988
01:02:38,629 --> 01:02:39,922
it also made him...

989
01:02:40,173 --> 01:02:42,925
the de facto authority.

990
01:02:49,849 --> 01:02:53,728
It’s very hard to be the
second true crime book,

991
01:02:53,936 --> 01:02:56,939
or the second true crime film
about any given subject,

992
01:02:57,899 --> 01:03:00,318
because as soon as
one is a hit,

993
01:03:01,110 --> 01:03:03,070
that kind of sets
the terms by which

994
01:03:03,112 --> 01:03:04,572
the thing is understood.

995
01:03:07,450 --> 01:03:09,452
It assigns the guilt,

996
01:03:10,953 --> 01:03:14,665
I think, more powerfully
really than even the...

997
01:03:15,708 --> 01:03:19,253
law enforcement agencies
directly working on the case.

998
01:03:27,386 --> 01:03:29,472
Anyway, my plan
had been to bounce

999
01:03:29,680 --> 01:03:31,307
straight from
the Graysmith stuff

1000
01:03:31,974 --> 01:03:37,271
into some of Lyndon's more
out-there detective work,

1001
01:03:38,648 --> 01:03:41,108
as he becomes
increasingly desperate

1002
01:03:41,234 --> 01:03:44,028
to get his own investigation
moving again.

1003
01:03:48,032 --> 01:03:51,494
I imagined it like that
classic cop movie thing

1004
01:03:51,536 --> 01:03:54,413
where they go back
to the drawing board,

1005
01:03:54,747 --> 01:03:58,000
start re-examining all the old
evidence to see if they can...

1006
01:03:58,835 --> 01:04:00,127
shake something loose.

1007
01:04:00,711 --> 01:04:05,132
So he'd be re-reading
interview transcripts,

1008
01:04:05,758 --> 01:04:09,428
going back and meeting
with witnesses again,

1009
01:04:11,514 --> 01:04:14,642
trying to see if there's
something that he missed

1010
01:04:14,642 --> 01:04:16,143
first time around.

1011
01:04:21,566 --> 01:04:23,317
There's an ice cream truck

1012
01:04:23,609 --> 01:04:25,027
just out of shot here.

1013
01:04:28,781 --> 01:04:31,534
But as Lyndon looks
closer and closer,

1014
01:04:31,868 --> 01:04:34,245
and obsesses over
every little detail,

1015
01:04:34,912 --> 01:04:36,998
we would’ve been trying
to build this sense of

1016
01:04:36,998 --> 01:04:37,665
kind of...

1017
01:04:37,748 --> 01:04:39,375
growing paranoia.

1018
01:04:42,253 --> 01:04:45,339
Like, maybe the leads start
off fairly reasonable,

1019
01:04:45,756 --> 01:04:50,720
like there was this thing about
him buying Tucker's old car,

1020
01:04:52,138 --> 01:04:54,932
the one that he'd been driving
that day at the rest stop.

1021
01:04:56,893 --> 01:04:59,854
Lyndon buys it, and he
searches through it,

1022
01:04:59,854 --> 01:05:04,358
looking for any old discarded
items that might...

1023
01:05:04,984 --> 01:05:06,736
have evidentiary value.

1024
01:05:09,447 --> 01:05:12,241
But as he starts to look
at each of these things closer,

1025
01:05:12,241 --> 01:05:16,996
there's kind of a
mania that sets in,

1026
01:05:18,039 --> 01:05:18,414
you know,

1027
01:05:18,456 --> 01:05:19,373
and in particular,

1028
01:05:19,415 --> 01:05:22,960
there was this whole thing
where he found a button,

1029
01:05:24,670 --> 01:05:26,005
in the car

1030
01:05:26,380 --> 01:05:29,133
and became convinced
that this button

1031
01:05:29,258 --> 01:05:32,762
had some sort of massive
significance to the case.

1032
01:05:35,306 --> 01:05:38,142
And so I think we could’ve
taken little things like that,

1033
01:05:38,184 --> 01:05:41,520
and used them to create
this sense that we’re…

1034
01:05:41,687 --> 01:05:44,190
delving deeper and deeper
into Lyndon's...

1035
01:05:44,857 --> 01:05:45,942
psyche.

1036
01:05:49,946 --> 01:05:50,738
Like...

1037
01:05:53,658 --> 01:05:56,202
We're falling down the
rabbit hole with him,

1038
01:06:00,539 --> 01:06:03,167
not knowing how deep it goes.

1039
01:06:19,517 --> 01:06:24,855
But because Lyndon was such
a lone wolf by this point,

1040
01:06:26,732 --> 01:06:28,985
almost by definition,
this is where we have...

1041
01:06:29,110 --> 01:06:30,569
the fewest sources

1042
01:06:30,820 --> 01:06:32,446
outside of his book.

1043
01:06:34,824 --> 01:06:36,784
So people just have to...

1044
01:06:37,034 --> 01:06:39,870
take my word for it
that there would’ve been...

1045
01:06:39,870 --> 01:06:41,288
you know...

1046
01:06:41,914 --> 01:06:44,041
some great
twists and turns here.

1047
01:06:49,672 --> 01:06:51,465
Like, have I even...
I haven't even mentioned...

1048
01:06:51,674 --> 01:06:53,050
the building yet, have I?

1049
01:06:56,012 --> 01:06:59,557
Basically, there would’ve been
a key scene here,

1050
01:07:02,435 --> 01:07:05,438
where there's an explosion,

1051
01:07:06,564 --> 01:07:07,648
uh...

1052
01:07:08,399 --> 01:07:12,069
with narrative significance.

1053
01:07:21,037 --> 01:07:22,788
But the purpose of all
this would’ve been

1054
01:07:23,122 --> 01:07:28,210
getting Lyndon to a more
reckless state of mind,

1055
01:07:30,296 --> 01:07:35,176
where he’s ready to make
the kinds of rash decisions

1056
01:07:35,384 --> 01:07:38,387
that he wouldn't
have made a few years earlier,

1057
01:07:39,513 --> 01:07:41,182
or half an hour earlier,

1058
01:07:41,223 --> 01:07:42,391
for our purposes.

1059
01:07:46,771 --> 01:07:50,691
And again I can't get
into the intricate...

1060
01:07:50,900 --> 01:07:52,526
plot mechanics of this,

1061
01:07:54,320 --> 01:07:57,531
but basically in a bizarre
twist of fate,

1062
01:07:58,282 --> 01:08:02,203
Lyndon finds himself presented
with the opportunity...

1063
01:08:02,328 --> 01:08:03,913
for him and his wife…

1064
01:08:04,371 --> 01:08:08,542
to go to dinner with
Tucker and his wife

1065
01:08:10,086 --> 01:08:10,920
as friends.

1066
01:08:11,128 --> 01:08:13,756
Like, they’ve fallen into
the same social circle

1067
01:08:13,964 --> 01:08:16,967
through this very strange
series of events

1068
01:08:17,218 --> 01:08:21,347
and now, the situation is such

1069
01:08:21,514 --> 01:08:23,808
that it could make
sense for them to…

1070
01:08:23,974 --> 01:08:26,268
essentially double date.

1071
01:08:29,438 --> 01:08:32,149
So Lyndon writes in the book
about them preparing

1072
01:08:32,483 --> 01:08:36,070
to go to dinner
with Tucker and his wife,

1073
01:08:37,113 --> 01:08:40,241
and he writes about it
like they're preparing

1074
01:08:40,616 --> 01:08:42,701
for a military operation.

1075
01:08:48,541 --> 01:08:49,333
So he says:

1076
01:08:52,086 --> 01:08:55,089
‘The evening before
this arranged dinner,’

1077
01:08:55,464 --> 01:08:57,842
‘I retrieved my
.38 five-shot...’

1078
01:08:58,008 --> 01:09:00,761
‘Centennial Smith and
Wesson hammerless,’

1079
01:09:01,929 --> 01:09:03,430
‘cleaned and lubricated it,’

1080
01:09:04,181 --> 01:09:06,058
‘and loaded it
with high-velocity,’

1081
01:09:06,183 --> 01:09:08,102
‘light-grain hollow points.’

1082
01:09:10,771 --> 01:09:13,190
‘Next, I checked my small...'

1083
01:09:13,357 --> 01:09:16,443
‘palm-sized .22
Magnum Derringer,’

1084
01:09:17,653 --> 01:09:21,157
‘the dynamite stick,
which holds two bullets.’

1085
01:09:22,825 --> 01:09:25,494
‘I called my wife into
the kitchen and asked her,’

1086
01:09:26,453 --> 01:09:29,665
‘do you remember how to load
and shoot the Derringer?’

1087
01:09:32,084 --> 01:09:34,420
And so, with the guns
tucked into the...

1088
01:09:34,753 --> 01:09:38,757
the pocket of Lyndon's
jeans and his wife's purse,

1089
01:09:39,758 --> 01:09:41,093
they set out...

1090
01:09:42,761 --> 01:09:44,763
for a date with justice.

1091
01:09:49,059 --> 01:09:50,436
I think
‘double date with justice’.

1092
01:09:50,644 --> 01:09:52,521
A double date with justice.

1093
01:09:57,193 --> 01:09:59,111
See, this is why it's a bit...

1094
01:09:59,653 --> 01:10:00,905
bittersweet doing this.

1095
01:10:00,988 --> 01:10:03,866
Like, this is the fun
of this genre, right?

1096
01:10:04,074 --> 01:10:08,204
Getting to that point where
things that would have seemed

1097
01:10:08,412 --> 01:10:10,789
impossibly outlandish
at the outset

1098
01:10:11,165 --> 01:10:14,543
now start to seem
perfectly reasonable.

1099
01:10:15,794 --> 01:10:18,047
Like, you watched
Making a Murderer, right?

1100
01:10:20,424 --> 01:10:23,886
That first season, even
though it was built around this

1101
01:10:23,928 --> 01:10:26,055
very dramatic story of this...

1102
01:10:26,222 --> 01:10:27,973
possible miscarriage
of justice,

1103
01:10:28,557 --> 01:10:31,560
the actual content of the show

1104
01:10:32,061 --> 01:10:33,938
was pretty restrained.

1105
01:10:35,064 --> 01:10:37,066
Most of what you were
looking at was just...

1106
01:10:37,483 --> 01:10:40,110
grainy interrogation footage

1107
01:10:40,361 --> 01:10:44,073
and shots of people
standing about in courtrooms.

1108
01:10:46,242 --> 01:10:48,369
But then they made
a second season,

1109
01:10:49,620 --> 01:10:53,290
and you can just feel
this inevitable slide

1110
01:10:53,457 --> 01:10:56,043
into sensationalism,

1111
01:10:56,418 --> 01:10:59,838
from the off-from episode
one of season two,

1112
01:11:00,172 --> 01:11:03,509
they are taking a mannequin,
putting a wig on it,

1113
01:11:03,592 --> 01:11:06,470
and covering it in red paint
to simulate blood splatter.

1114
01:11:07,096 --> 01:11:10,015
‘I wanted to re-enact it.’

1115
01:11:11,350 --> 01:11:13,060
And you look back
at the previous season

1116
01:11:13,060 --> 01:11:15,312
where it was all basically
men in dusty suits

1117
01:11:15,354 --> 01:11:17,773
sitting around discussing
legal precedent,

1118
01:11:19,441 --> 01:11:20,276
and you think,

1119
01:11:20,526 --> 01:11:21,860
how did we get here?

1120
01:11:23,320 --> 01:11:27,366
Like, the bounds of
rational behavior

1121
01:11:27,449 --> 01:11:29,618
are just ever-expanding.

1122
01:11:35,374 --> 01:11:37,960
So if you accepted
Lyndon and his team

1123
01:11:39,086 --> 01:11:41,547
searching through
Tucker's trash,

1124
01:11:42,339 --> 01:11:44,174
then why wouldn't
you accept them...

1125
01:11:44,425 --> 01:11:46,302
eavesdropping on
the AA meeting?

1126
01:11:47,886 --> 01:11:50,222
And if you accept them
eavesdropping on the AA meeting

1127
01:11:50,431 --> 01:11:52,057
then why wouldn't you
accept the whole...

1128
01:11:52,725 --> 01:11:54,435
fishbowl caper?

1129
01:11:58,480 --> 01:12:01,233
And yeah, here we are,
at a steakhouse,

1130
01:12:01,358 --> 01:12:02,860
with the Zodiac Killer.

1131
01:12:08,449 --> 01:12:11,452
So this is
the actual steakhouse

1132
01:12:11,702 --> 01:12:15,539
that they went to,
up in Winters, California,

1133
01:12:18,625 --> 01:12:20,836
and I think from the moment
they would’ve met,

1134
01:12:21,003 --> 01:12:25,049
we would have had this
question of recognition.

1135
01:12:28,093 --> 01:12:31,555
Like, does Tucker remember
Lyndon from the rest stop?

1136
01:12:32,890 --> 01:12:36,393
Or did he somehow
sense his presence...

1137
01:12:36,727 --> 01:12:38,771
at the police interrogation?

1138
01:12:39,772 --> 01:12:42,399
To what extent
does this man know

1139
01:12:42,900 --> 01:12:46,070
that this meeting
is not a first encounter,

1140
01:12:46,111 --> 01:12:47,780
it's the culmination

1141
01:12:48,405 --> 01:12:50,866
of years of police work.

1142
01:13:02,211 --> 01:13:04,380
So in the book, Lyndon writes:

1143
01:13:06,965 --> 01:13:08,217
‘The next hour…’

1144
01:13:08,467 --> 01:13:11,470
‘was one of the most
bizarre in my entire life.’

1145
01:13:13,847 --> 01:13:17,226
‘Staring straight out
at about a 30-degree angle,’

1146
01:13:18,519 --> 01:13:20,813
‘Tucker appeared to be
in another dimension,’

1147
01:13:21,939 --> 01:13:23,607
‘some kind of Twilight Zone.’

1148
01:13:29,238 --> 01:13:31,407
And in the context
of all of the suspicions

1149
01:13:31,532 --> 01:13:33,617
that we would have built up
by this point in the film,

1150
01:13:33,617 --> 01:13:38,705
I think Tucker just
seeming kind of detached

1151
01:13:40,082 --> 01:13:41,583
would have become a kind of

1152
01:13:41,875 --> 01:13:44,294
absorbent surface,

1153
01:13:45,963 --> 01:13:48,424
for anything we wanted
to throw at it.

1154
01:13:52,594 --> 01:13:55,180
And that's even before the...

1155
01:13:56,056 --> 01:13:57,391
the drive home.

1156
01:14:04,481 --> 01:14:08,444
So they’re driving back along
the I-80, down to Vallejo,

1157
01:14:09,695 --> 01:14:14,575
and I was imagining this as
already a tense scenario:

1158
01:14:14,825 --> 01:14:16,827
the road stretching out
before them,

1159
01:14:17,077 --> 01:14:19,830
and we're packed
into this tight space

1160
01:14:20,038 --> 01:14:22,416
with our hero

1161
01:14:23,333 --> 01:14:24,418
and our villain.

1162
01:14:29,047 --> 01:14:31,049
And then that tension

1163
01:14:31,592 --> 01:14:33,969
would have ratcheted up
even higher

1164
01:14:34,303 --> 01:14:37,848
once Tucker takes
an unexpected turn

1165
01:14:38,557 --> 01:14:42,394
off the highway and onto
this little side road called

1166
01:14:43,353 --> 01:14:45,189
Cherry Glen Road.

1167
01:14:55,407 --> 01:14:59,912
And I think if we’d charted
that rising tension effectively

1168
01:15:00,037 --> 01:15:02,080
it would have
all felt inevitable.

1169
01:15:02,289 --> 01:15:06,460
We would’ve felt Lyndon’s hand
reaching into his pocket

1170
01:15:06,627 --> 01:15:08,420
to grab the gun
before he even did it.

1171
01:15:08,504 --> 01:15:12,549
We'd have seen the Derringer
coming out of the purse

1172
01:15:13,592 --> 01:15:15,886
a split second
before it's on screen.

1173
01:15:19,181 --> 01:15:22,726
And the audience is becoming
convinced that this is it.

1174
01:15:22,809 --> 01:15:24,228
This is the moment

1175
01:15:25,521 --> 01:15:29,650
where all of the latent threat
and violence of the film

1176
01:15:29,816 --> 01:15:33,320
is about to
suddenly burst forth.

1177
01:15:38,325 --> 01:15:40,077
And we're pushing the tension

1178
01:15:40,577 --> 01:15:42,454
as far as it will go,

1179
01:15:44,581 --> 01:15:47,084
but we know it can only sustain

1180
01:15:47,376 --> 01:15:49,836
for so long before it has to...

1181
01:15:51,296 --> 01:15:52,548
break....

1182
01:15:53,215 --> 01:15:54,591
somehow.

1183
01:16:21,451 --> 01:16:22,911
But instead...

1184
01:16:25,789 --> 01:16:27,249
nothing happens.

1185
01:16:28,542 --> 01:16:29,710
They return home.

1186
01:16:30,669 --> 01:16:31,962
They're dropped off.

1187
01:16:33,046 --> 01:16:34,464
The air clears.

1188
01:16:37,634 --> 01:16:39,094
But now there's no mistaking

1189
01:16:39,344 --> 01:16:41,054
who has the upper hand.

1190
01:16:44,016 --> 01:16:44,308
You know, like

1191
01:16:44,308 --> 01:16:47,936
Like so many Zodiac
victims before them,

1192
01:16:48,604 --> 01:16:52,441
he’s showing them
that they're at his mercy.

1193
01:16:56,111 --> 01:16:57,946
By driving home.

1194
01:17:02,618 --> 01:17:04,870
Yeah, but on an
unconventional route!

1195
01:17:06,955 --> 01:17:09,082
See, if we'd
done it right, though,

1196
01:17:09,458 --> 01:17:12,336
you wouldn't be
thinking like that.

1197
01:17:13,337 --> 01:17:14,921
You haven't seen enough
of these things,

1198
01:17:15,005 --> 01:17:17,966
but when they work,
you just kind of go with it.

1199
01:17:18,800 --> 01:17:22,971
The internal logic of the film
just pulls you through.

1200
01:17:24,931 --> 01:17:30,395
And I think we'd have got the
audience there by this point

1201
01:17:31,438 --> 01:17:34,107
and then we would’ve been
on the home straight.

1202
01:17:34,566 --> 01:17:37,194
We’re at an hour and 15 now.

1203
01:17:39,988 --> 01:17:42,199
So next, we
would have gone to...

1204
01:17:42,991 --> 01:17:43,992
the letter.

1205
01:17:48,497 --> 01:17:51,792
Basically, as a
sort of last resort,

1206
01:17:53,085 --> 01:17:56,046
Lyndon wrote a letter
to the president,

1207
01:17:57,547 --> 01:18:00,550
and it's quite somber,
quite serious,

1208
01:18:00,801 --> 01:18:03,720
all about duty and honor.

1209
01:18:07,849 --> 01:18:09,309
He says:

1210
01:18:12,354 --> 01:18:13,897
'Mr. President,'

1211
01:18:14,940 --> 01:18:19,611
'after a devoted and dedicated
32 years of investigation,'

1212
01:18:20,696 --> 01:18:23,699
'into the infamous
Zodiac Killer case,'

1213
01:18:25,701 --> 01:18:29,204
'I am in fact writing
my last letter of appeal.'

1214
01:18:31,081 --> 01:18:34,084
'My request is
not really about me.'

1215
01:18:35,669 --> 01:18:38,714
So he does that maneuver you
see in a lot of these things,

1216
01:18:38,922 --> 01:18:41,883
which is that he reframes it...

1217
01:18:42,509 --> 01:18:46,430
as being...
really about the victims,

1218
01:18:47,180 --> 01:18:48,932
and their families.

1219
01:18:50,308 --> 01:18:52,561
About seeking closure for them.

1220
01:18:57,816 --> 01:18:59,526
And, you know...

1221
01:19:01,361 --> 01:19:02,738
Sure.

1222
01:19:05,490 --> 01:19:06,867
But…

1223
01:19:08,243 --> 01:19:11,079
as true crime's got bigger and
bigger and people have got...

1224
01:19:11,079 --> 01:19:12,122
like maybe...

1225
01:19:12,789 --> 01:19:15,792
10% more squeamish about it,

1226
01:19:16,793 --> 01:19:18,754
that little disclaimer
has become

1227
01:19:19,254 --> 01:19:20,797
even more ubiquitous.

1228
01:19:24,134 --> 01:19:27,804
Like, did you watch that
Netflix Dahmer show?

1229
01:19:29,264 --> 01:19:32,768
I've never seen anything
with such an outsized

1230
01:19:33,018 --> 01:19:36,480
sense of its own
moral righteousness.

1231
01:19:37,898 --> 01:19:39,274
It's like ten episodes long,

1232
01:19:39,524 --> 01:19:41,276
and the first nine
episodes are just...

1233
01:19:41,651 --> 01:19:44,279
Jeffrey Dahmer drilling
into people's skulls,

1234
01:19:44,988 --> 01:19:49,284
and then the tenth episode
is this lecture, about how...

1235
01:19:49,785 --> 01:19:51,328
we shouldn't really focus on...

1236
01:19:51,536 --> 01:19:53,789
Jeffrey Dahmer drilling
into people's skulls…

1237
01:19:54,289 --> 01:19:56,708
'Just when you thought folks
couldn't stoop any lower.'

1238
01:19:56,917 --> 01:19:57,834
'It's sick.'

1239
01:19:58,043 --> 01:20:02,130
Obviously they do
the final grid.

1240
01:20:03,173 --> 01:20:05,759
That's when you know these
shows really care, right?

1241
01:20:05,884 --> 01:20:09,513
When they end with a
photo grid of all the victims.

1242
01:20:10,680 --> 01:20:13,391
Eight and a half cumulative
hours of violent gore,

1243
01:20:13,517 --> 01:20:17,395
and now a single passport photo
of each of the victims

1244
01:20:17,562 --> 01:20:19,356
to remind us
what really matters.

1245
01:20:21,900 --> 01:20:23,026
You watched it though.

1246
01:20:23,318 --> 01:20:24,611
Yeah, it was good.

1247
01:20:24,861 --> 01:20:26,321
Evan Peters.

1248
01:20:33,787 --> 01:20:35,997
So Lyndon sent his letter,

1249
01:20:37,040 --> 01:20:40,043
and then it would have been
a case of waiting

1250
01:20:41,127 --> 01:20:44,005
to see if it's going to lead
to anything at all.

1251
01:20:46,842 --> 01:20:48,593
And so I figured we'd have him

1252
01:20:48,844 --> 01:20:51,847
drive out to the
outskirts of town,

1253
01:20:52,722 --> 01:20:55,725
where he finally
has time to reflect

1254
01:20:58,270 --> 01:21:01,231
on everything he's
given over to this,

1255
01:21:04,484 --> 01:21:06,152
on all the years lost

1256
01:21:07,112 --> 01:21:08,738
to the pursuit of Tucker,

1257
01:21:09,114 --> 01:21:12,617
that could all be for naught
if nothing comes of it.

1258
01:21:21,251 --> 01:21:22,961
It's just so beautiful.

1259
01:21:23,503 --> 01:21:24,588
Uh...

1260
01:21:28,341 --> 01:21:30,510
We would've shot a less...

1261
01:21:30,635 --> 01:21:35,515
distractingly beautiful sunset
for the actual thing, but...

1262
01:21:36,099 --> 01:21:36,808
good job,

1263
01:21:37,976 --> 01:21:38,977
nonetheless,

1264
01:21:39,895 --> 01:21:40,896
camera team.

1265
01:21:53,491 --> 01:21:55,327
And then finally,
the word comes back

1266
01:21:56,578 --> 01:21:57,704
from the FBI

1267
01:21:58,830 --> 01:22:00,999
that they're not going
to take up the case.

1268
01:22:03,835 --> 01:22:06,087
And Lyndon writes quite

1269
01:22:06,421 --> 01:22:08,465
strikingly about it
in the book,

1270
01:22:10,926 --> 01:22:14,220
as almost like,
the end of hope,

1271
01:22:17,057 --> 01:22:18,850
where he says:

1272
01:22:21,811 --> 01:22:24,814
'So now I tell the world
there is no justice,'

1273
01:22:26,316 --> 01:22:27,817
'there is no integrity,'

1274
01:22:28,693 --> 01:22:32,280
'and there are no existing laws
that morality can supersede.'

1275
01:22:34,324 --> 01:22:37,744
'There is no agency
and not one individual'

1276
01:22:38,703 --> 01:22:40,455
'who will step forward
to intervene'

1277
01:22:40,580 --> 01:22:42,958
'in this noble
cause of justice.'

1278
01:23:11,695 --> 01:23:13,405
I definitely haven't quite...

1279
01:23:13,863 --> 01:23:15,824
made my peace...

1280
01:23:16,825 --> 01:23:17,951
with this.

1281
01:23:19,828 --> 01:23:21,621
With not getting
to make the film.

1282
01:23:25,208 --> 01:23:29,421
Like, obviously, I'm happy
with what we've done instead,

1283
01:23:33,466 --> 01:23:35,635
but how many people
are ever going to watch this?

1284
01:23:38,013 --> 01:23:39,347
Realistically.

1285
01:23:59,492 --> 01:24:01,494
So in this final stretch,

1286
01:24:02,037 --> 01:24:03,872
the question would have become,

1287
01:24:04,372 --> 01:24:06,249
what is the closure

1288
01:24:07,000 --> 01:24:09,294
that the audience now needs?

1289
01:24:12,589 --> 01:24:14,090
Once it becomes clear that

1290
01:24:14,340 --> 01:24:17,343
Lyndon isn't going
to definitively prove

1291
01:24:17,719 --> 01:24:19,721
that Tucker was
the Zodiac Killer.

1292
01:24:22,849 --> 01:24:25,226
Not least because
he wasn't, obviously.

1293
01:24:25,393 --> 01:24:27,854
But, that's...

1294
01:24:28,897 --> 01:24:30,315
parenthetical.

1295
01:24:32,650 --> 01:24:34,360
Like, he definitely wasn't?

1296
01:24:35,153 --> 01:24:36,404
I mean...

1297
01:24:37,572 --> 01:24:38,698
no?

1298
01:24:40,241 --> 01:24:41,618
I mean, maybe.

1299
01:24:43,119 --> 01:24:45,330
But no, probably not.

1300
01:24:51,002 --> 01:24:52,253
But yeah, either way...

1301
01:24:53,088 --> 01:24:56,758
we know now that Lyndon isn’t
gonna get it over the line,

1302
01:24:57,634 --> 01:25:00,178
at least in a legal sense.

1303
01:25:01,387 --> 01:25:04,474
And so the stakes
become much more about

1304
01:25:05,225 --> 01:25:08,103
the internal drama of the film

1305
01:25:08,520 --> 01:25:11,106
and the ending that
the film demands.

1306
01:25:13,775 --> 01:25:17,862
And, the book
doesn't necessarily

1307
01:25:18,238 --> 01:25:21,616
offer an obvious one, but
I think that the closest one

1308
01:25:22,492 --> 01:25:26,246
I found in it, and how I was
planning to end the film...

1309
01:25:27,622 --> 01:25:31,417
was with this party
at Tucker's house.

1310
01:25:34,838 --> 01:25:37,841
Basically, Tucker threw
a summer barbecue

1311
01:25:38,383 --> 01:25:41,386
and invited Lyndon
and his wife.

1312
01:25:42,846 --> 01:25:45,598
And so they drive up
there, they go inside,

1313
01:25:45,974 --> 01:25:48,726
and he describes Tucker...

1314
01:25:49,102 --> 01:25:51,271
at the bar, mixing cocktails,

1315
01:25:52,105 --> 01:25:55,483
which is a wonderfully...
innocent action.

1316
01:25:55,483 --> 01:25:56,025
I don't know if we'd

1317
01:25:56,025 --> 01:25:56,901
try and like...

1318
01:25:57,569 --> 01:25:59,445
make that seem more
sinister in some way.

1319
01:25:59,487 --> 01:26:02,824
Maybe he's mixing
blood red cocktails.

1320
01:26:05,368 --> 01:26:09,247
The book's description of this
encounter is fairly minimal.

1321
01:26:09,914 --> 01:26:10,915
He says:

1322
01:26:12,250 --> 01:26:14,627
'He looked at my wife
and said, thank you,'

1323
01:26:15,170 --> 01:26:17,839
'but never made the slightest
eye contact with me.'

1324
01:26:19,215 --> 01:26:20,592
'It was very awkward,'

1325
01:26:20,842 --> 01:26:23,261
'but I extended my arm
for a handshake...'

1326
01:26:23,511 --> 01:26:25,221
‘and felt like
a complete idiot.'

1327
01:26:25,722 --> 01:26:29,350
So in Lyndon's own telling,
it's an emasculating moment,

1328
01:26:30,226 --> 01:26:33,646
but I think it could've been
made into the moment we needed

1329
01:26:34,147 --> 01:26:38,902
of Lyndon finally holding
his own against Tucker.

1330
01:26:39,694 --> 01:26:42,071
And in particular, the thing he
says about eye contact...

1331
01:26:42,697 --> 01:26:45,325
that he never made
the slightest eye contact,

1332
01:26:46,326 --> 01:26:47,952
even when they're
shaking hands,

1333
01:26:48,494 --> 01:26:51,372
because eye contact was
how we began down this road...

1334
01:26:52,207 --> 01:26:55,335
They were in these adjoining
cars, they locked eyes...

1335
01:26:56,628 --> 01:27:00,423
and then Lyndon feels
that he lost face

1336
01:27:00,715 --> 01:27:03,968
by letting himself be
stared down by this stranger...

1337
01:27:06,054 --> 01:27:07,805
I think this could've
been the moment

1338
01:27:08,556 --> 01:27:10,558
where he reverses the dynamic:

1339
01:27:14,354 --> 01:27:17,232
Where he goes in for
the handshake with Tucker,

1340
01:27:18,233 --> 01:27:20,318
realizes he doesn't want
to meet his eyeline,

1341
01:27:23,404 --> 01:27:25,365
but he just holds him there.

1342
01:27:26,532 --> 01:27:28,368
Maybe he won't let his hand go,

1343
01:27:30,495 --> 01:27:31,746
until Tucker...

1344
01:27:32,247 --> 01:27:34,749
raises his eyes to Lyndon's,

1345
01:27:37,210 --> 01:27:38,836
in acknowledgment,

1346
01:27:41,589 --> 01:27:44,550
and there's a sense
that even if

1347
01:27:44,842 --> 01:27:47,845
he knows he's never going
to see Tucker put away,

1348
01:27:49,013 --> 01:27:51,349
he's forced Tucker to recognize

1349
01:27:52,725 --> 01:27:54,852
that he is a worthy match.

1350
01:28:03,236 --> 01:28:04,862
That's actually quite
good, isn't it?

1351
01:28:09,492 --> 01:28:13,371
And I think it would have been
a good cue for us to

1352
01:28:14,372 --> 01:28:17,333
swerve towards
a larger takeaway.

1353
01:28:21,170 --> 01:28:25,466
You know, what is it in all
of us that makes us want to...

1354
01:28:25,717 --> 01:28:27,844
revisit these terrible crimes?

1355
01:28:28,011 --> 01:28:30,972
Why can't we let the past
be in the past?

1356
01:28:31,973 --> 01:28:35,476
And I think we'd be building
a rhythm up by this point.

1357
01:28:35,643 --> 01:28:37,228
It's almost becoming
like a montage

1358
01:28:37,353 --> 01:28:39,522
as we revisit these
little moments from the film.

1359
01:28:39,647 --> 01:28:42,066
We'd have little snapshots of
each crime scene,

1360
01:28:42,775 --> 01:28:45,737
and interviewees coming
back to the fore to...

1361
01:28:45,945 --> 01:28:47,697
give their final thought.

1362
01:28:48,990 --> 01:28:52,285
We'd re-run our
'evocative B-roll' of...

1363
01:28:52,869 --> 01:28:53,870
bullet casings,

1364
01:28:54,120 --> 01:28:55,538
dropping to the floor and...

1365
01:28:56,247 --> 01:28:58,333
the paperwork consumed by fire.

1366
01:29:00,877 --> 01:29:02,795
And the sense you get
is that there's something

1367
01:29:03,004 --> 01:29:05,465
tying all of this together,
as though...

1368
01:29:05,965 --> 01:29:07,842
everything we've
seen thus far was...

1369
01:29:08,009 --> 01:29:10,595
speaking ultimately
to the same idea,

1370
01:29:11,095 --> 01:29:13,598
something sort of universal...

1371
01:29:13,848 --> 01:29:16,851
something profound
and open-ended.

1372
01:29:20,730 --> 01:29:22,190
And you can kind of...

1373
01:29:22,607 --> 01:29:25,234
you know, at that point,
re-wrap...

1374
01:29:25,735 --> 01:29:29,155
this lack of a conclusion
as almost a moral virtue.

1375
01:29:31,366 --> 01:29:34,994
That actually, it would be
simplistic to have an ending,

1376
01:29:35,536 --> 01:29:37,246
to give an easy answer,

1377
01:29:38,664 --> 01:29:41,667
because, what is life,

1378
01:29:42,251 --> 01:29:48,257
if not accepting
the chaos of reality,

1379
01:29:49,592 --> 01:29:50,968
and the mysteries

1380
01:29:51,219 --> 01:29:53,638
at the heart
of human existence?

1381
01:30:00,978 --> 01:30:03,731
It's funny, you
build up the rhythm...

1382
01:30:04,065 --> 01:30:06,859
and the feel of closure...

1383
01:30:07,735 --> 01:30:10,071
and you almost just get it.

1384
01:31:46,334 --> 01:31:54,509
Captions by Eleanor McDowall
and Charlie Shackleton