The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

[MacGuffin]

Get David Fincher rewrite! And a director!

A surprisingly clunky Q&A session took place last night after the screening of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Three times director David Fincher was asked what theme in the film attracted him to devote five years to making "Button" — twice by the moderator and once by an audience member.

"I dunno," Fincher replied. "I made the movie because I read the script and liked it. I don't have an answer to that question." The moderator tried to help Fincher along by rephrasing the question a bit, give him another chance to sound a bit more thoughtful and articulate, but Fincher shrugged off the inquiry with a similar cavalier reply.

Later, a timid gal in the audience, awestruck by the film, told Fincher how moved she was emotionally by its epic themes of shifting time and doomed romance and asked him if they were reasons he wanted to make "Benjamin Button." "No," he said. "I just liked the script."

Fincher didn't seem to care at all about what inspired the film, not even the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald short story upon which it was based. When asked about differences between the two versions, Fincher said he doesn't know and, basically, doesn't care. He confessed that he didn't bother reading the story until two years into making the movie version and now can't remember it.

Each time Fincher gave such startling replies, he giggled and shrugged his shoulders, as if the questions were utterly ridiculous. Afterward, in the lobby, you could hear lots of attendees express shock at how poorly he came off.

[matt35mm]

See, that's why he's a good director.  THEMES???  Fug dat shit.  HOW CLOSE THE FILM ADHERES TO THE SHORT STORY???  Double fug dat shit.  HOW HE COMES OFF AT A Q&A???  Triple fug dat shit!

This movie's gonna be great!

[picolas]

i really want a bootleg of that for his delivery. it's the only way to know if he was being genuine or a jerk.

[MacGuffin]

[modage]

i saw this amazing tv spot for this with Arcade Fire "My Body Is A Cage" playing and i can't find it anywhere online!

[MacGuffin]

i saw this amazing tv spot for this with Arcade Fire "My Body Is A Cage" playing and i can't find it anywhere online!

I saw it during Heroes tonight.

[JG]

[Stefen]

This was great and exactly how I imagined it when Mod mentioned it. Thanks.

[picolas]

WOW. that's exactly what the ad campaign for this needs. it's getting too predictable and mushy.

[Satcho9]

Went to the BAFTA screening last night at WB.

Movie was excellent, although there were some things in the film that were very un-fincher-esque. Not that they were bad, but it does show the guy can tell a whole different kind of story. I can't wait to see all of the special effects work that went into this on the DVD (or BLu-Ray). Only once in the opening framing device did something look terrible and stylistically just bomb IMO. A few times the sentimentality just went overboard, nothing to be worried about though.

Jeffrey Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere describes it as "Forrest Gump without all of the fat"...which is a pretty accurate description and while watching the film it's hard not to use the comparisson when it follows a similar structure and Benjamin is sort of an observer like Forrest Gump or Peter Sellers in Being There.

For what it's worth i'd give it a 8.5 to 9 out of 10.

The cool thing was Eric Roth, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy introduced the film. Eric Roth seemed like he hated life, probably just sick of introducing the film at free industry screenings maybe? Frank Marshall said to stick around for Fincher who would come and answer some questions after the screening.

After the film, our Scottish moderator announced Fincher came with some special guests: So out comes Fincher, Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Jared Harris, Jayson Fleming and Taraji P. Henson.

I hate screenings like this because people usually ask fairly dumb obvious questions (How long did you shoot for? Was it hard to wear all that make-up?) to the dick measuring contest questions (So tell me, i noticed this type of film stock look you were going for although you shot on digital, blah blah fucking blah, was this serendipitous or a choice you made?)

Fincher, as claimed to be in his NYC screenings, wasn't so shitty as he was reported to be then. He gave in depth answers about certain things (actors, rehearsals etc.) but when asked about the SFX, he clammed up and just said  "Head shrinking and voodoo". A funny moment happened when someone asked (not the first time for this film I imagine) why he does so many takes. Fincher just sighs, puts his head down and snappily says "Well, I do a lot of takes because I'm going for something. Okay? People always bring this up and I have no idea why you care."

Brad Pitt was gracious and gave canned answers about the "company you keep" and how it's due to his co-stars and fincher his performance was good and so on. (He was still in Inglorious Bastards mode/look). He did tell one funny story about being at a table read and Fincher elbowing him and whispering "Look, (Eric) Roth's got a prose boner" and seeing Eric Roth sitting on the other side of Fincher with tears streaming down his face. Cate Blanchett was very gracious and had only seen the film the night before and seemed geniunely blown away by it still.

Taraji P. Henson, who was excellent in the film in a role that could have been too overly sentimental, gave great answers about how she researched the role by following her grandmother around for a month watching her mannerisms and what not. Julia Ormond looked like she had a stick up her ass about something.

Then to wrap up the Q&A they asked everyone what they were doing next...when it came to Brad Pitt..."*sigh*I'm doing a WWII movie in Berlin..." he sounded dejected...maybe he hates it now that he is involved with Tarantino or maybe he didnt want to come off as bragging? I don't know. Thought it was interesting.

When it came to Fincher; "I have nothing yet, but if this movie opens big, I will have something interesting"

Chef? Rendezvous With Rama?

Overall, I liked it very very much with some minor nit picky bullshit exceptions. Go pay to see it so Fincher can make something more interesting in the future. (No that this wasn't interesting)

[JG]

man, i was disappointed. i can't remember the last time i was so into a movie for the first half only to be so let down by the end. right about when brad pitt starts getting handsome this thing begins to fall apart. i'm sure some of you will agree. dramatic moments just weren't hitting, people were laughing when they weren't suppose to. also, some of you complained about bale's batman voice, but blanchett's old person voice is the worst thing ever. i have no idea why they even needed flashbacks to tell this story.

i really wanted to like this

[w/o horse]

man, i was disappointed. i can't remember the last time i was so into a movie for the first half only to be so let down by the end. right about when brad pitt starts getting handsome this thing begins to fall apart. i'm sure some of you will agree. dramatic moments just weren't hitting, people were laughing when they weren't suppose to. also, some of you complained about bale's batman voice, but blanchett's old person voice is the worst thing ever. i have no idea why they even needed flashbacks to tell this story.

i really wanted to like this

Were you at the Egyptian?  Or do you live in NY and it played there?

I don't think the movie was very honest, but I think its intentions were.  I think that because Fincher came out after the movie and said he wanted to make a movie about life that you could connect to for at least a 43 minute chunk, one that reflected reality, and so I know he honestly wanted to reach the audience in a personal way.  He admitted it was stylized, the camera and the dialogue, and his 43 minute quote reveals that he knows what kind of film he made.  I thought Fincher was a great speaker by the way, and he was very candid, not at all like what the report earlier in this thread would lead you to think.  Other things he said:  it was like making 10 independent films back-to-back, he brought up the $140million budget repeatedly for some reason, even breaking it down to $240K a day, and he said he matured from two word film titles to six word film titles but his process is exactly the same and "come on, how many thrillers can you make?"

I'm talking more about Fincher than the film.  I probably liked Fincher more than I liked his film.  Everyone at my screening laughed appropriately.  There's perspective in the film, and the characters are developed in intriguing ways, so depending on how you feel about the film and read into the film you might really like it.  I kind of thought it was some Hollywood bullshit overall, with a few key moments that were so touching, and a few key moments that were so beautiful.  I won't see it again, but I'll cherish what it gave me.

For example I woke up this morning, and surprisingly one scene was in my thoughts.  It was a scene that I didn't even know I had liked until I woke up this morning sort of missing the moment like it was a moment from my past that I couldn't reenter.  But it was the film, and not many films can give you that feeling.

[MacGuffin]

Filmmakers on the 'Curious Case'
Fincher, Roth talk about 'Benjamin Button'
Source: Variety

Initially troubled with issues of casting, special effects and location, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" took almost seven years to move from script to theaters.

Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 short story about a man who ages in reverse, the story demanded special effects but as screenwriter Eric Roth pointed out, "This isn't 'Jurassic Park.' It's a living, breathing character."

However, director David Fincher says he didn't question whether the film was feasible. "In the first five minutes of discussion of the film (with Roth), we dispensed with 'Could this be done,'" said Fincher. "With my background in special effects, I knew we could."

Casting Brad Pitt was something less of a sure thing.

"Brad has a process. It's like clockwork. He gets excited and about six weeks out you get the phone call: 'I'm the wrong guy for this,'" remembered Fincher. "His big caveat was: 'If I play the guy, I want to play the whole guy.' I thought it would be six or seven actors that would hand over the role like a relay. Brad said, 'I don't want to play seven years of a man's life. I want to play the whole thing."

Aging Pitt accordingly required subtle Hollywood wizardry to avoid looking hokey, especially when it came to have the 45-year-old actor revert to his teens.

"That's the biggest special effect of it all," Fincher said. "We have never seen (Pitt) as an 85-year-old, but we all saw 'Thelma and Louise.'"

[modage]

ATTN: NYC

David Fincher on the Making of Benjamin Button
Sunday, January 4, 2009 at 7:30pm
Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of at Jazz at Lincoln Center

The filmmaker joins Kent Jones on stage to discuss his work, with a special emphasis on the technical processes behind the creation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

On Sunday, January 4 at 3pm there will be a screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center.

http://www.jalc.org/concerts/details.asp?EventID=1869

[MacGuffin]

"Benjamin Button" took decades to reach big screen

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – It's a pity that the best parts of life come at the beginning, the worst parts at the end.

That notion of Mark Twain's -- as related to F. Scott Fitzgerald by his editor, Maxwell Perkins -- was the genesis of Fitzgerald's 1922 short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and, in turn, the genesis of the acclaimed film that finally opens on Christmas Day after decades in development.

When Fitzgerald conceived his fantastical tale of a man who ages backward, it was a trifle, nothing that could compare to works like "The Great Gatsby" or "Tender is the Night." But the story generated interest almost immediately.

Fitzgerald was working as a screenwriter when "Button" was initially developed as a movie, but he never got to adapt it. That was left to his contemporary William Faulkner, who began a script while a contract writer at Warner Bros. in 1943. But Warners never obtained the rights, and when Faulkner asked the studio to acquire them, studio chief Jack Warner killed the project.

It would be four decades before "Button" came to life again thanks to Ray Stark, a former agent and studio executive who was one of Hollywood's most successful producers. Stark brought "Button" to Ron Howard, recalls his longtime collaborator Marykay Powell, believing that the director of "Splash" might be right for the project.

Howard agreed, and discussed such actors as John Travolta, Johnny Depp and Martin Short for the lead. He even did tests using Digital Domain for effects. But the projected budget was so high nobody wanted to make it.

"There was also the question of how many actors would be needed to play the (title) role," recalls Powell. "That was the key thing that kept it locked in development hell."

Howard left the project, but Stark kept going and convinced then-executive Josh Donen at Universal to finance a screenplay. Writer Robin Swicord ("Little Women") was hired to adapt.

"I decided to make it a story that would encompass a whole American life," she notes. "It would concentrate more or less on what it feels like to be the outsider. I also came up with the love story that's still at the core."

After some to-and-fro over rights, in February 1990 Swicord turned in her first draft. Over the following decade, she would do many more drafts.

The script eventually landed at Amblin Entertainment, where Steven Spielberg expressed interest, as did his then-executives Kathleen Kennedy and her husband Frank Marshall.

"Spielberg began to develop it," Swicord recalls, noting that the filmmaker considered Tom Cruise as the lead and even held a table reading at his home. But when Cruise dropped out and Spielberg went off to do "Hook" and "Jurassic Park" -- sparking a furious memo from Stark, demanding to know if Spielberg was going to do "that dinosaur picture" instead -- the project landed with Kennedy and Marshall, who never let go.

The pair took "Button" to Paramount when they made their first producing deal in 1992.

"(Kennedy) had a real passion," says Powell. "She kept it alive even when Ray couldn't do it any more."

Stark died in 2004, but Kennedy stayed with the movie. Along the way, other directors came and went like some of the characters in the picture itself -- from Agnieszka Holland ("Europa Europa") to Phil Alden Robinson ("Field of Dreams") to Spike Jonze ("Being John Malkovich").

Eventually, Swicord exited the movie over creative issues with Paramount. Other writers tried to tackle the story, including Oscar winners Charlie Kaufman ("Adaptation") and Jim Taylor ("Sideways"), but it was not until Eric Roth, the Oscar-winning writer of "Forrest Gump," reconceived the project that "Button" once again came back to life.

"My goal was to talk about the shape of a man's life, which has this odd distinction of going backward," he says. "How would that affect him? The conclusion was that it is about the quality of life one leads, going forward or backward."

It was Roth's script that hooked director David Fincher. Fincher had read Swicord's script in the early 1990s, but was not then at a point in his career where he could be considered for such an ambitious movie. By 2002, all that had changed. Even so, with movies like "Fight Club" to his name, Fincher seemed unlikely for a romantic love story.

"From my body of work I wasn't the most obvious choice," he admits.

But Fincher brought one crucially important element to the project: Where other directors had wanted to use several actors to play the lead at various ages, Fincher believed one could do it alone. The former visual effects artist showed Paramount how the story could work with one star and characters aged over decades using digital effects.

"They couldn't understand how we would accomplish the aging, so we did a test in about five weeks and we showed them," he remembers.

"When David Fincher came in and knew how to do this with the technology, that was really a breakthrough," Kennedy acknowledges. "When you are dealing with a story that's this emotional, it's very difficult to change actors."

Executives at Paramount still had issues -- the biggest of which was the projected budget, well over $150 million.

"When we priced out the whole movie," says Fincher, "it was too high."

For a while, Fincher exited the project, frustrated by budget restrictions. But he agreed to return when Brad Pitt signed on and wanted to reteam with his "Fight Club" and "Seven" director. Now, however, there was another hitch: Fincher had agreed to make "Zodiac" for Warners -- the very studio where "Button" was first mooted.

But when Warners and Paramount agreed to split the cost of both films -- and even agreed to shoot "Zodiac" first so that Pitt could make "Babel" -- it seemed as if the movie would finally get made. Paramount even stayed committed when studio chief Sherry Lansing was replaced by Brad Grey.

Both studios wanted to bring down the budget, then at $180 million. That meant considering a shoot in Louisiana, where they could benefit from a tax rebate worth just over $27 million.

"We had money issues," says Cean Chaffin, Fincher's longtime producing partner. "We discussed the rebate in Louisiana and, lucky for us, the location made the movie better." Pitt, she says, "was a big advocate of the switch (to Louisiana). All of us were."

And then disaster struck: Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana in August 2005.

"When Katrina hit, we wondered if we could continue to shoot in New Orleans," says Kennedy. "And the city officials called us two or three days after the hurricane and asked us to stay involved. They recognized they needed projects like 'Benjamin Button' to come into the city and create jobs."

Katrina woes inflated the budget by about $3 million, Chaffin says, but they pushed ahead.

Another hitch delayed shooting, when a production services company doing the complicated makeup effects went bankrupt, leaving some crew members owed back pay. But on November 6, 2006, the shoot at last got under way, and 148 days later, the images had been captured on a hard drive.

"This is a movie that had a real difficult time getting off the ground because it was expensive, it's a drama, it's about death," Fincher says. "It's one of those things where if it doesn't have a group of people behind it, and everybody down to the set decorators and Teamsters are enthusiastic about being part of it, it would not have been possible to make it."