Zodiac Killer Project

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

probably in that spot on the left

and it would've been a California Highway Patrol car

but era-appropriate

so like a 1960s...

black cruiser with a white door

and a kind of...

badge on the side.

This would've all been reenactment, obviously

which is how all these things tend to start now.

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

even when it's documentary.

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

the cop at the center of the story,

and he's just sitting there minding his own business

when in pulls this other car.

And of all the spots in the parking lot,

this car pulls up right next to Lyndon's.

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

but eventually he looks over at the guy

and he sees

that the guy is staring right at him.

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

which would've been taken from the book.

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

So he says:

'He did not drop his eyes or turn away.'

'With his face quivering in spasms,'

'and an unflinching stare of hate,'

'I knew I was looking into the eyes of death.'

So he describes it in these almost...

biblical terms.

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

if we could find an actor

with eyes menacing enough to match that description

and probably cross-cutting between that

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

face-off situation

between these two men in silence in this parking lot.

This feeling of a growing tension

that has to break in some way.

And finally, just when you think

that the worst could happen, that this could...

rupture into violence...

Lyndon leaps into action.

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

lurching for the gearstick,

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

and the hills are whirling through the windows

as the car reverses out of the parking lot

and guns it onto the highway.

And the tension breaks

but there's also this sense of high drama

that has erupted from this confrontation,

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

signifies...

yet.

So we would've followed Lyndon down the highway,

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

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

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

of the Zodiac Killer.

Fuck... it would've been good.

And from there we'd have gone straight into

the title sequence,

which kind of would've made itself.

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

It's lots of layered imagery,

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

bodies and landscapes, all intermingled,

but in a very meaningful way.

What are we, but products of the landscape?

But with a kind of disjointed, scratchy aesthetic,

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

The same sorts of images pop up again and again:

you got like... you know...

birds taking flight

and a shadowy man... walking away

and kind of country-inflected music

but with a dark edge.

And everything's vague and fluid,

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

Lots of tiny text...

that's almost too small for human eyes,

I guess to make it look cinematic.

And over the top of all this,

audio that starts to tell the story of the case.

'You can see that this does not look like grief...'

'... does not read as grief.'

And typically by the end, it gets weirdly talky,

It is almost like you're watching a trailer

for the film you're already watching.

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

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

It kind of sets up everything and nothing.

All the soundbites are just people saying things like:

'The things that went on... were beyond the imagination.'

Or whatever.

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

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

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

So then we'd have gone back to Lyndon

coming back down the highway after this...

unsettling confrontation.

Maybe still stealing the odd glance at the sketch.

And obviously, he's realizing

that he may have just come into contact

with the most wanted man in America.

But for all the adrenaline of that moment,

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

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

as someone who's calm in a crisis.

I should probably give some general background on Lyndon.

So Lyndon was a California Highway Patrol cop

for, I think, 30 years, maybe longer.

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

about his lifelong quest

to bring the Zodiac Killer to justice,

starting that day up at the rest stop.

It's called...

'The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up'

a.k.a. 'The Silenced Badge'.

And it's got this very distinctive cover

with this bright red spider's web

with a little crosshair symbol at the center

because that was the Zodiac Killer's trademark.

And I remember seeing that cover

in thumbnail form on Amazon,

presumably after the algorithm had

exhausted every other true crime book on the market,

and just being very drawn to it.

So I bought the book,

read it kind of absentmindedly at first,

but I remember being struck by how

incredibly cinematic a lot of it was.

It feels like it's been written in the mold

of a true crime documentary.

And so even though I'd never really imagined

making a true crime doc,

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

gravitational pull.

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

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

from Lyndon's family.

And it all seemed to be going well.

We were deep into contract negotiations

and starting pre-production.

I even went out to Vallejo

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

scouting around for locations,

speaking to people I thought might make good interviewees.

So I was actually out there, working on it,

when I got the email to say

that Lyndon's family had pulled out

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

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

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

control over the finished product, or just...

someone else swooping in

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

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

because I really had figured the whole thing out,

right down to the locations for the re-enactments.

The way I was picturing it

the majority of the investigation was going to be

based in Lyndon's home

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

where, unable to put this

confrontation at the rest stop out of his mind,

he starts to mount this kind of freelance investigation.

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

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

across the table

and seeing if the pieces fit together.

But as time goes on and he becomes

more and more immersed in this case,

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

pin boards and photocopies, library books.

Anyway, he's got the license plate number

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

and comes back with the name:

George Russell Tucker.

Classic serial killer name.

Three names.

Apparently that's because the media always uses

people's middle names after they become serial killers,

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

the same first and second name.

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

they sound like a serial killer.

It works both ways.

And then, along with the name,

he gets a photograph of the guy.

We'd have had, inevitably, the moment where

the envelope arrives from the DMV and he pulls out

the photocopy of the driving license,

slides it alongside the police sketch,

and needless to say,

the similarities are striking.

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