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Button' Reimagines F. Scott Fitzgerald: Film Uses Fresh Canvas To Capture Writer's Magic

This document summarizes the development of the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. [1] The short story was considered a "doodle" or "whimsy" by Fitzgerald and presented challenges in adapting it into a feature film. [2] Screenwriter Eric Roth drew from themes in Fitzgerald's major works like "The Great Gatsby" to develop the love story and idea of lost time. [3] Roth also drew from his own experiences to help bring more emotion to the unusual premise of a man who ages backwards.

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Santiago Woollands
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39 views

Button' Reimagines F. Scott Fitzgerald: Film Uses Fresh Canvas To Capture Writer's Magic

This document summarizes the development of the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. [1] The short story was considered a "doodle" or "whimsy" by Fitzgerald and presented challenges in adapting it into a feature film. [2] Screenwriter Eric Roth drew from themes in Fitzgerald's major works like "The Great Gatsby" to develop the love story and idea of lost time. [3] Roth also drew from his own experiences to help bring more emotion to the unusual premise of a man who ages backwards.

Uploaded by

Santiago Woollands
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Button reimagines F.

Scott Fitzgerald
Robert Koehler

December 15, 2008 | 04:39PM PT

Film uses fresh canvas to capture writer's magic


A curious case, this Benjamin Button. Far afield from his sublime novels, such as The Great
Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, or his finest short stories, from The Diamond as Big as the
Ritz and Winter Dreams to The Last of the Belles, F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button is a doodle a snarky little tale about a man born old who ages
backward that Fitzgerald whipped out, probably mainly for the cash.

To build a Movie as Big as the Ritz out of such a trifle is only part of the reason why the
development of Benjamin Button consumed two decades and involved at least two
screenwriters best efforts, more than a few directors and the patience of producers Kathleen
Kennedy and Frank Marshall, as well as former Paramount topper Sherry Lansing, for whom
this might represent her last major legacy to the studio she oversaw.

But this being Fitzgerald, a true American treasure, screenwriter Eric Roth says that its a
tightrope talking about the merits or demerits of his original story, because I dont want to be
disrespectful to an artist whos 100 times the writer that Ill ever be.

Once Roth was onboard with the long-

gestating project and consulted with Fitzgerald scholars such as A. Scott Berg, he learned that,
in fact, the tale was a whimsy of no consequence, but that isnt to impugn Fitzgeralds
motives.

Underneath this surface of a cynical, goofy yarn, theres a feeling of time lost, of a doomed
life, that runs through so much of his major fiction, Roth says. When I first read it, I wasnt
sure what I could do with it, because it didnt seem solid enough. But as I spoke more with
Kathleen and Sherry, things changed, my perceptions changed.

Kennedy reflects that from the start, when we first read the story in the mid-80s when Frank
and I were with Steven (Spielberg) at Amblin, the primary premise was the idea of a man and
a woman meeting in the middle of the story, sharing some time and love together, and then
times passage taking it away. Eric was able to make that emotionally resonant.

Since the original story treats Benjamins love life briefly in passing, and without any of the
heartbreaking sense of romantic loss that lies at the heart of the best Fitzgerald, this key premise
had to be invented for the film a surprising fact for those viewers familiar with the authors
work but unacquainted with the story. With a work this obscure, Roth notes, you have far
more liberties, since a fanbase isnt looking over your shoulder. So nobody was likely to object
when the object of Benjamins affections, Hildegarde, was turned into Daisy for the film.

1
Daisy, incidentally, was also the name of Benjamins love in the script version previous to
Roths involvement, written by Robin Swicord. Roth is struck by this coincidence Robin
and I were both clearly thinking about Gatsby, and his lost love, Daisy though Kennedy
wonders if perhaps the idea was floating around during the endless hours of discussions across
the years.

When you work on something this long, and you have the shadow of Fitzgerald in the room,
which we talked about constantly, says Kennedy, various people get various ideas, and they
evolve over time and discussion, and you can actually lose track of who had what idea.

What is even more fascinating than the presence of a character named Daisy in Button is how
the movies Benjamin makes a choice thats utterly different from the storys Benjamin. While
Hildegarde, who meets Benjamin when hes in his prime, stays with him for years, gives birth
to a son and grows old and bitter as Benjamin grows younger, the movie Benjamin makes the
deliberate decision to tell Daisy to leave him even while theyre still deeply in love, knowing
that a future with him is impossible.

Its almost as if our Benjamin had read Fitzgeralds story and received a warning, says Roth.
This was also a way of giving tribute to Fitzgerald. Certain themes keep popping up in writers
work, whether its good or bad, and many of my scripts deal with doomed lovers, the passage
of time, the temporality of life.

The choice to leave Daisy also makes Benjamin a bit more active. Kennedy acknowledges that
the universal, classic note that we received from everybody who read the script was, Hes so
passive. I think more than any other single thing, even the technical challenges of visualizing
his reverse aging process, this sense of his passivity was the biggest roadblock for the movie
getting made. But the reality remains that this is a central character whos the observer of his
own life as it passes him by.

For Roth, getting past the medical questions of the odd little Benjamin an issue that
Fitzgerald simply leaped over in the grand American style of the tall tale was a real problem
to be cracked. Solution: Create the fable of the clock that tick-tocks backward, a device just
fantastic enough to posit a cause for Benjamins freakish condition.

I think most of all, I was writing this as my mother was in the course of dying, Roth recalls,
and this just made everything so much less abstract, and far more personal. It would seem
impossible to get inside this tale in a directly personal way, but thats what happened, and it let
me insert more emotion than I had expected.

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