Mark Ruffalo Versus The Zodiac Killer

Cute, friendly, talented actor Mark Ruffalo has played romantic lead to Reese Witherspoon in Just Like Heaven and Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 and he was a tough cop in Collateral. Now, Mark is taking on the role of a real life cop made famous already by Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. San Francisco police inspector Dave Toschi was eccentric, he loved munching on animal crackers while solving a case, and was very good at his job. The one case he couldn't solve obsessed him. Toschi was after the Zodiac, the San Francisco Bay Area serial killer of the 1960's who, some think, remains free today.

We sat down with Mark in Westwood near UCLA recently to chat about his role, his research with the real Toschi, working with director David Fincher who likes to do many, many takes of each scene, Mark's own feelings about who Zodiac was, the fact that real serial killers really scare him and what's coming up for the actor...

TeenHollywood: Did you personally know about the Zodiac? What kinds of research did you do?

Mark: It's like one of those names that you've heard all your life, 'the Zodiac killer' but you're mistaking him for 'The Hillside Strangler'. I didn't really know where he fell in that whole iconography. I read the script and then the research started and there's a mind-boggling amount of material around this case. I have the entire investigation sitting at home in a murder book and I probably have more information than any one particular police department has because, the one thing we were able to do was to get all of them to cooperate with me for the movie but [laughs] none of them cooperated with catching the guy.

TeenHollywood: What does that tell you about justice in America?

Mark: Well, nothing that we didn't already probably know. I think, in that time period, they weren't set up for this in any way. The word 'serial killer' hadn't been invented yet. Certainly there were serial killers but they hadn't popped up into the culture the way this guy did. He's the first dude who sort of hopped up into the minds of the culture and used the media to make himself important in the world.

TeenHollywood: So police got obsessed with catching him to the point of ruining their personal lives?

Mark: Yeah. They hadn't been desensitized to the idea. We're used to serial killers. They weren't. It really was 'this is a monster. We have to get this guy'.

TeenHollywood: Didn't Toschi think he knew who it was?

Mark: Dave Toschi told me, the second he saw Arthur Leigh Allen walking into the room he said in his heart, 'That's our guy'. That's what he said, but the cop in him said, 'there's not a single piece of evidence'. All we really have in the end, is the law. If you don't follow the law and you go and kill the guy, how do you know that you got the right guy? Even if someone believes so deeply in their heart of hearts that that is the guy, if they don't follow the law then we live in a world of chaos.

TeenHollywood: Without catching the guy, where's the payoff in the movie?

Mark: The [payoff] is the mystery. That's what people walk away from the film feeling. That's what their terror is coming from. That's where their imaginations blossom, in the mystery that is the finale of the film. That's what they are responding to.

TeenHollywood: Several actors have played characters based on Toschi (Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, Michael Douglas in "Streets of San Francisco", Steve McQueen in Bullitt). Did you have to block those performances out of your mind or did you not even think about that?

Mark: I'm the type of actor, I want to go and see the real deal. So, first thing I said is 'how do I get to talk to Dave Toschi? How do I get to go up and meet him? I want to spend time, a few days with him'.

TeenHollywood: Was he cooperative?

Mark: Totally. The first thing he said to me was [in whispery Toschi voice] 'Uh, Mark, why are you here? Why do you want to talk to me?' He talks just like that or I hope he talks just like that. And so, I got to spend time with him and, all of a sudden, all of that other stuff just fades away when you're sitting there with the real McCoy. He did tell me that he was the inspiration for Bullitt, played by Steve McQueen. He's got a picture of he and Steve McQueen together.

TeenHollywood: Is there one particular thing in your research that you really wanted to get in?

Mark: Dave Toschi's relationship to his family. He just adored his family; his three daughters and that wasn't really in the script. I think it gives him another dimension so I was always trying to bring them in. I even added a line at one point, 'shhhh, my daughters are upstairs'. That wasn't in there. The guy was a beautiful family man too.

TeenHollywood: And his family remained intact unlike Graysmith's marriage [journalist Graysmith is played by Jake Gyllenhaal and his wife by Chloe Sevigny]?

Mark: Yes. His family handled it incredibly gracefully. It still is that one thing that destroys your life. It really did take its toll on him. He's gone on and he's not bitter but it is something in him that hurts.

TeenHollywood: Does it help him that he thinks Arthur Leigh Allen did it and Allen is dead now?

Mark: I think it helps that there are no more murders, or that the murders have seemed to stop although Graysmith presupposes that he just became quiet about it and that's what the Zodiac said he was going to do; he was going to start doing it in a way that nobody knew who was doing it. It's an open wound I think for all of these guys who put so much time and energy into it that they never caught him.

TeenHollywood: That's so creepy; that he may still be out there. Did Toschi really walk out of an early screening of Dirty Harry? Why?

Mark: He couldn't take it. It was so simplified. He was in the middle of one of the biggest cases in the United States at the time and they were having no movement on it and he knew they had a mountain of evidence and it took them nine months to get a search warrant to toss the guy's trailer. He was just crawling out of his skin and the guy [Dirty Harry] just walks up and he's like 'I don't care. If you're going to walk free, I'm gonna blow your brains out' and the audience just [he starts clapping] 'yeah! All right!' We all did it, right? I think that was frustrating for him because he would like to do that.

TeenHollywood: We hear that Toschi hasn't seen the movie yet. Are you a little antsy about that? Does it mean at lot to you that he likes it?

Mark: Yeah. The first thing I said to him, he was like 'why are you here'? And I said, 'I'm here to honor you, man. I here to be as honest as I can about playing you'. That family doesn't want to reopen this. His wife was adamant that we couldn't use her name in the movie. They don't want it. It's a painful time for them and they have no idea what Hollywood intends to do with it. So, I made sure he got the script before I went to see him and I asked him if there was anything in there that was prickly or that he felt uncomfortable with and he said 'no', he felt good about it. Slowly but surely, he started to reveal himself to me. I feel like it was a fair portrayal of Dave Toschi in the little time I had to do it in.

TeenHollywood: The relationship between he and his partner [played by "E.R."'s Anthony Edwards] the two seem so different. Were the real people that different from one another?

Mark: Totally different. Dave Toschi was an anomaly. They were all dressed like G-Men. They had their G-Men jackets and the ties and the G-Men glasses. That was the prototype cop at the time. Then you have this very flamboyant dude who wears bow ties and bright clothes and is very laizzes faire and so they had an interesting relationship. It was contentious at times.

TeenHollywood: Did you meet the real Robert Graysmith or any of the other real life cops or survivors of a Zodiac attack?

Mark: Yeah. I spent a lot of time with Robert. Then, I met Narlow (Det. Ken Narlow). People were coming around as we were shooting; people who weren't in the movie were coming around. I met the guy who was stabbed at Lake Berryessa [Bryan Hartnell]. I met him and his kids. There were a lot of people who were attached and part of this time. Fincher and [producer] Brad Fischer were doing their best to get all of their stories and really make it an open place for them to come.

TeenHollywood: Has this experience made you want to solve contemporary murder mysteries? Do you look at the paper and say 'Wow, it happened again. Wonder who did it'?

Mark: No. I'm too sensitive to it. It's too scary to me. The astronaut who went across the U.S. in a diaper, now that's hilarious. It's weird.

TeenHollywood: What's coming up next for you?

Mark: I just wrapped a movie called Reservation Road that Terry George directed with Joaquin Phoenix. It's about a hit and run, two fathers. I play a guy who hits his son and kills him and runs; a light, jaunty, romantic comedy [we laugh].

TeenHollywood: Final Zodiac question. Do you think it was Arthur Leigh Allen?

Mark: I keep flopping back and forth. I know they did this genetic test but we don't know that it was his saliva on the back of the stamp. I have seen this guy. He was a bad, bad dude. He was a sociopath. He also wanted people to believe that he was Zodiac. Is it beyond a shadow of a doubt? That's where I'm stuck because there are those little things that don't quite jibe but I want to believe it's him too. I really do want to think it was him.

TeenHollywood: Yeah, me too. Otherwise, the guy may still be out there...

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.