Hasitha Fernando on David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as it turns 15…
Many a collective eyebrow was raised when auteur David Fincher announced that he’d be tackling a rated PG-13 romantic drama cum period piece after his underrated masterpiece Zodiac. But as always, the supremely talented filmmaker proved us all wrong with what he accomplished with the utterly engrossing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Today we look back at the movie and what went on behind-the-scenes as it celebrates its 15th anniversary…
The project languished in development hell before being picked up
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was based on a short story by American literary legend F. Scott Fitzgerald and was given the big screen treatment by director David Fincher headlined by Brad Pitt. However, before Fincher and Pitt came into the picture the project languished in development purgatory for the longest time.
Producer Ray Stark bought the film rights to do The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in the mid-1980s, and it was optioned by Universal Pictures. The first choice to direct it was Frank Oz, with Martin Short attached for the title role, but Oz couldn’t settle on how to make the story work. The project was later optioned in 1991 by Steven Spielberg, with Tom Cruise attached for the lead role, but Spielberg had his hands full with Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List that year, so he passed on the opportunity.
Stark eventually sold the rights to producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, who took the film to Paramount Pictures, with Universal still on as a co-production partner. Ron Howard and John Travolta were the next to be attached to the project with screenwriter Robin Swicord being hired to write a potential draft. But this too didn’t materialize, and the project became a revolving door for filmmakers and writers until May 2004, when director David Fincher entered negotiations to helm the flick.
The film was a loose adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story
Depending on the screenwriter and the vision of the director, a movie’s adaptation can vary. Some are slavishly faithful to the source material while others prefer to deviate from it and put their own spin on the tale, and such is the case with the cinematic adaptation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Adapted by screenwriters Eric Roth and Robin Swicord the screenplay retained the theme of the short story conjured by The Great Gatsby author – a man who is born old and ages backwards.
Where the movie differed from the original story was with some specific details of the narrative. In the film Benjamin’s father despised him for being born different and abandons him as a child, but in the book, he accepts Benjamin despite his rather grotesque appearance. But one of the most significant alterations the film made was the expansion of Benjamin’s love life, where we see how he and Daisy’s romance blossoms and blooms with the passage of time and concludes on a bittersweet note.
A strange career move by filmmaker David Fincher
David Fincher wasn’t someone you’d normally associate with directing a period romantic flick. And so many of Fincher’s fans – including yours truly – was surprised when the critically acclaimed filmmaker took on the responsibility of helming a crowd pleaser like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Now, Fincher’s previous effort had been a period film as well, but it was an urban crime-drama featuring one of America’s notorious serial killers – the Zodiac Killer. And if one looked at the talented auteur’s filmography, they could observe that it’s chock full of very dark, emotionally cold and often violent affairs like Se7en, Fight Club and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Perhaps, the gifted creative wanted a palette cleanse after directing Zodiac but whatever the case maybe, it truly was a strange career move on David Fincher’s part.
Brad Pitt had collaborated with many of his co-stars previously
Hollywood icon Brad Pitt played the titular age reversing Benjamin Button in the movie, and the actor was ably supported by an equally talented ensemble cast; many of whom he’d worked with on previous occasions. Pitt co-starred with Julia Ormond in the 90s classic Legends of the Fall. He also worked with Jason Flemyng in the high-octane crime caper Snatch and with Jared Harris in the snazzy heist flick Ocean’s Twelve. Pitt’s love interests in the film played by Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton had also collaborated with him prior, with Blanchett pairing with him on the psychological drama Babel and Swinton working opposite him on the Coen Brothers’ black comedy Burn After Reading.
Extensive VFX were needed to de-age Brad Pitt
Purely from a VFX artist’s standpoint, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a proverbial nightmare, to say the least. This was because the titular character was aging backwards and the VFX team had to figure out how to convincingly pull it off while retaining the actor’s likeness.
Visual effects house Digital Domain played an instrumental role in the metamorphosis of Brad Pitt’s character from an old man to the infant stage. During a behind-the-scenes interview with NPR Steve Preeg, a character supervisor over at Digital Domain had this to say, “There’s 325 shots — 52 minutes of the film — where there is no actual footage of Brad. He’s not in any of the shots.” So, essentially what the audience was actually seeing in the first third of the movie was a computer-generated facsimile of Pitt’s head, which the studio had aged digitally.
If this digital replication acted like Pitt onscreen, it was because the actor performed all his scenes for the first third of the movie — and the special effects gurus then copied these movements onto the digital head. To capture the aforementioned facial deformation data from the live-action performances, Fincher used a special camera system called Contour which was developed by multimedia wunderkind Steve Perlman. Seven different actors and performers supplied the body for Benjamin Button throughout the film. But it was Pitt’s face that was digitally superimposed upon theirs, at the end of the day.
It was one of the first films to be shot in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit American shores, with 1,836 fatalities and damage estimated between $ 97.4 billion to $ 145.5 billion in late August 2005. New Orleans was one of the worst hit cities by the destructive hurricane, and it was in this backdrop that the production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button commenced. Many of the picturesque locales and beautiful settings featured in the film were shot in this city. The touching romance that blossoms between Benjamin and Daisy starts in the setting of New Orlean’s City Park. And the stately McKnight Marinoni-Nolan House, down Coliseum Street, was used as the senior living facility where Benjamin was raised at the very beginning.
The score drew inspiration from the original short story
French film composer Alexandre Desplat admitted that he took influence from the short story penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald and created a “palindrome-like structure” for the music, that would reflect the age-reversal phenomenon of the title character. The musician intentionally crafted the score in such a way, so that it would compliment Fincher’s visual storytelling, as opposed to overwhelming it.
In an interview with NPR Desplat elaborated, “If I were to show off too much about my reverse thing, it would be disconnected from the picture and the story, and we have to be really, completely overwhelmed by the story before everything.” Because of this instead of using “big swinging jazz bands” Desplat only utilized textures of 30s and 40s jazz flavor to reflect the time period taking inspiration from Duke Ellington’s musical works which led to the creation of “sweeping arrangements of piano, strings and horns”.
Box office success, critical acclaim and some awards love
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was produced on a budget of $ 150 million and went on to make a respectable $335.8 million at the worldwide box-office. Despite the fact that it was released 15 years ago, the film remains David Fincher’s second most profitable effort, behind 2014’s Gone Girl with its box-office haul of $369.3 million, and was also one of the filmmaker’s most accessible, family friendly outputs even touting a rare PG-13 rating which was a first for Fincher.
The movie proved to be a hit with a majority of critics with Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine calling it a “richly satisfying serving of deep-dish Hollywood storytelling.” A. O. Scott of The New York Times also had nothing but good things to say about Fincher’s latest, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, more than two and a half hours long, sighs with longing and simmers with intrigue while investigating the philosophical conundrums and emotional paradoxes of its protagonist’s condition in a spirit that owes more to Jorge Luis Borges than to Fitzgerald.”
The flick went on to receive a whopping 13 Oscar nominations at the 81st Academy Awards but was only able to bag golden nudies in the technical categories. However, the VFX team that worked on the movie were deservingly recognized for their contributions not only by the Academy but also by the BAFTAs and the Visual Effects Society Awards, where it won all four awards it was nominated for.
SEE ALSO: The Enviable “Worst” Films of David Fincher
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Hasitha Fernando is a part-time medical practitioner and full-time cinephile. Follow him on Twitter via @DoctorCinephile for regular updates on the world of entertainment.
