A question about how he navigated the transition from music videos to films brought him to actors, who, he says, "give you an enormous gift and an enormous responsibility." He paused, and his voice went up a notch.

"Do you know the best way to get an actor to stop fucking around? Stop giving them direction. Say 'Just do another one.' Three takes of that, they're done. 'What do you want me to do?' 'I want you to come through the elevator and turn and say the line like this." Suddenly you could see the perfectionist's killer instinct that led many smart-ass critics to say Zodiac feels like a movie not just about a serial killer, but that feels like it was made by one as well.

Back in Los Angeles, Fincher's mere utterance of that accursed phrase—even an entire continent away—immediately reduced a still-scarred Jake Gyllenhaal to the fetal position, a scene particularly disturbing to a concerned Starbucks barista who, no matter how many times she stroked his hair, looked into his now-distant-but-still-dreamy eyes, and told him that everything was going to be OK, couldn't snap the actor out of the trancelike state in which murmured ominously, Just do another one...just do another one.

• Fincher Kills at Special Zodiac Screening [The Reeler]
• Previously: Jake Gyllenhaal Still Working Through His David Fincher Issues [Defamer]

[Images: Digital Variety]

"Yeah, you hear stories about him being so hard and intense," Ruffalo said. "And then I met him, and I immediately just loved the guy and was thinking , 'Well, when is he going to change? When is this guy that you keep hearing about going to pop up?' And my relationship and friendship with him got deeper as we went along. I think Fincher, what he has no patience for is incompetence or just a casual attitude toward the work. If you come in and you don't know your lines and you're not prepared, Fincher's going to eat you for breakfast. You know? And so the actors who complain about Fincher are usually the ones who don't show up knowing their shit, kind of."

Ah. So that whole thing last week with Jake Gyllenhaal's thinly-veiled Fincher critiques ("So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where's the risk?") last week in The New York Times — was that blown out of proportion?

"Like I said," Ruffalo replied, "Fincher only has a problem with people if they're not prepared — if they're not ready to work when they show up. Whatever form that takes — whether it's a prop person, an actor or whatever. I thought there were a lot of weird sour grapes in that New York Times article. We're actors, man; we get paid way too much. It's like 'Wah, wah, wah' to me to hear an actor bitching and moaning when they get paid as much as they do and we have a pretty great life. I don't have much sympathy for it."

Let's give Ruffalo credit for having the sensitivity not to mention by name any of the unprepared cast members whose tears Fincher used to wash down his morning repast of unprofessional talent; spending so much time with his co-star on the set must have made him realize that being publicly called out as a whiner might cause a still-fragile Gyllenhaal to curtail the artistically ambitious part of his career in favor of the less emotionally demanding world of Nancy Meyers films.

[Photo: zodiacmovie.com]

• "Fincher's Going to Eat You For Breakfast" [The Reeler]
• Previously: Jake Gyllenhaal Still Working Through His David Fincher Issues [Defamer]

Mr. Gyllenhaal said he came from a collaborative filmmaking family: "We share ideas, and we incorporate those ideas." He added: "David knows what he wants, and he's very clear about what he wants, and he's very, very, very smart. But sometimes we'd do a lot of takes, and he'd turn, and he would say, because he had a computer there" — the movie was shot digitally — " 'Delete the last 10 takes.' And as an actor that's very hard to hear."

Mr. Gyllenhaal, 26, partly blamed culture shock; he'd just finished "Jarhead" for Sam Mendes, who gave him a much freer rein. Mr. Gyllenhaal stressed that he admired and liked Mr. Fincher personally. And he noted that other members of the "Zodiac" cast had far more experience, adding: "I wish I could've had the maturity to be like: 'I know what he wants. He wants the best out of me.' "

That said, Mr. Gyllenhaal spoke candidly about his frustration with Mr. Fincher's degree of control over his performance.

"What's so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot," he said. "They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There's a point at which you go, 'That's what we have to work with.' But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where's the risk?"

Told of Mr. Gyllenhaal's comments, Mr. Fincher half-jokingly said, "I hate earnestness in performance," adding, "Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone." But half-joking aside, he said that collaboration "has to come from a place of deep knowledge." While he had no objections to having fun, he said, "When you go to your job, is it supposed to be fun, or are you supposed to get stuff done?"

Fincher later conceded that he might have been a little tough on his sensitive, dreamy-eyed star, admitting that his "delete the last 10 takes" game was nothing more than a Pavlovian experiment in talent manipulation, as the director found himself curious to discover how long it would take for him to induce involuntary tears of frustration in Gyllenhaal by merely placing his finger above the button that would erase hours of the actor's hard work.

• Lights, Bogeyman, Action [NY Times]