David Fincher consciously stripped away the sensationalized, blood-soaked tropes of the serial killer genre, looking instead to the meticulous, paper-chasing journalistic thrillers of the 1970s. Fincher demanded his crew study Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men, instructing them to obsess over the unglamorous drudgery of reporting, the harsh fluorescent lighting of newsrooms, and the terrifying weight of institutional silence. He also drew heavily upon the suffocating, analog paranoia established in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation, perfectly capturing the madness of a man losing himself in audio tapes and ciphers. Through this New Hollywood lens, Fincher transformed a murder mystery into a haunting epic about the destructive nature of obsession.
Films That Influenced Zodiac
