Creating an Epic: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

by Angela Walker

Christian Cinema.Com

Creating an epic is never an easy task, even if you have a script from an Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Eric Roth, Forrest Gump), producers responsible for some of the biggest box office hits in history (Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall, E.T., Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, Indiana Jones series), and box office stars Brad Pitt (Ocean’s 11, 12, 13 and Babel) and Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, The Aviator).

Based on a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the early 1900s, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has been floating around Hollywood for nearly 40 years. Robin Swicord wrote a first draft of the script in 1992, but it was another 16 years, multiple drafts and an estimated $150 million before the movie was produced.

Developing the Story

Kennedy and Marshall came into the process almost 18 years ago, before Roth was attached. “In creating a story told about a man’s life going forward or backward, you decide what are the moments that everybody could relate to and that cumulatively make you who you are.

“This story sort of posed that question in a way that, once Eric Roth came on board, he was uniquely suited due to past screenplays, Forrest Gump being one of them. He could put together the sort of episodic structure that actually builds to something that is a whole.”

Creating the episodes and choosing what ages to represent presented a challenge to Roth. He described the process of creating a timeline for the characters: “I kept a scoreboard on the side about where people were and where Benjamin was at the time. Who was going forward and who was going backward?

“At first it was approximately five-year leaps. He was an infant, then five, then 10. When he’s 16 he goes to work on the tugboat, then he leaves to go to sea, telling people he’s 17.

“When it was placed against history, it became easier in the sense that World War II started in 1941, so I just needed to figure out his age. How long had he been at sea, how old would he be in 1941 if he was born in 1918, so do the math. I knew he’d be coming home after the war, so that could be 1945 or 44.

Then these eras started unfolding. We did it subtly without doing big huge changes and having big billboards. We did the Beatles in the 60s, but made most other things very subtle. Then at some point I had to discard it again because we had to make big leaps in time.”

Setting

Choosing a location that could serve as the main setting for the entire film, which spans 80 years, proved to be a challenge in several ways. Fitzgerald’s story is set in Baltimore, but due to reconstruction in Chesapeake Bay several years ago, the expense of recreating proper time periods would have been prohibitive. Director David Fincher was attracted to Louisiana for a few reasons, one that Louisiana offers rebates to encourage people to come and spend dollars in the state, as well as create jobs.
“David went down and took some location photographs,” said Roth. “He sent them to me asking if I thought they would work. I said, ‘Yeah, I think it could.’ And as soon as I wrote ‘ext., New Orleans street – day,’ it was like a character jumped out at me.

“You don’t have to write a lot about the city,” he explained, “because it’s such a part of our fabric: the people, the food, the places. So it was a great found thing. After the hurricane came we talked about what we should do. Should we end the movie before the hurricane comes or afterward? I thought we should try to keep it in and see if it could be meaningful.

“It helps give the sense of the transitory nature of things, which is part of the theme of the movie. So it became part and parcel of the movie, but not really because of a conscious choice until we decided about that end image with the water.”

Special Effects

With multiple characters aging and de-aging over the course of 80 years, the filmmakers had to be very inventive. Marshall remembers multiple discussions about the technology required and whether or not it existed. “David invented the process. He comes from ILM (Industrial Light & Magic), and had a couple of off-the-shelf programs that he thought could work together. We said, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said, ‘Aw, I can do this.’”

“He didn’t really know,” said Kennedy, and Marshall agreed: “He didn’t know. But that’s how ILM is: ‘Oh, sure we can do this!’ We couldn’t have done the film earlier without [the visual special effects].”

Telling a Story

At two hours and forty-seven minutes, the film is considerably longer than most movies in theaters today. When asked about the length, producer Kathy Kennedy responded that she and producing partner/husband Frank Marshall knew it was going to be long. “Before we ever started shooting the film, there was the obvious discussion about how long David (Fincher, the director) was going to make the movie. The last few movies he’s done have been relatively long, and I’m not even sure what that means any more.

“I was really influenced early in my career by David Lean movies (Lawrence of Arabia) and the epic journey, to me, was always about 2 ½ - 3 hours, so I don’t know why the issue of length has become such an overriding issue other than that theaters want to move people in and out as quickly as possible.”

“True,” Marshall said, “But Titanic is 3 hours long, and they were happy with that. Sold a lot of popcorn!

“I have to say that I think the story is getting short shrift now. It’s all about the action scenes and how fantastic the stunts are. I think the technique and craft of filmmaking is getting a little bit shortsighted. Up and coming filmmakers really need to look back to the masters. There’s a lot to learn and there’s a filmmaking language.
 
“Look at John Ford movies and Howard Hawkes movies and David Lean movies. Not that you have to make a sweeping epic, but there is a story language of how to go from A to B to C and tell that story, and you can’t just wing it all the time. That seems to be happening more and more.”

Kennedy and Marshall attempt to keep the craft from drifting away from storytelling by continuing to make movies in the way they know how. They acknowledge that the audience is getting used to really fast cutting and special effects, which make films more like music videos than great stories.

Creative storytelling also affects the ability to attract financing to a film. Marshall says, “It makes our jobs as producers easier if the creative elements have a vision that they can talk about, and it helps us as producers get the vision up on the screen. It also helps from a financial perspective because if you don’t know what you’re doing and aren’t prepared, it’s going to cost more. Knowing how the movie goes together and what you want is an important thing.”

Filmmaking is what Kennedy describes as a “benevolent dictatorship,” and she’s fine with that. “It’s not a democracy, and shouldn’t be a democracy. When it becomes something else, then it loses its focus and becomes more generic.

“There’s a committee approach in Hollywood today. But I’m a big believer that the creative process is completely dictated by point of view. So if you don’t have a point of view, if you don’t have somebody at the helm that’s got a very strong opinion that they’re following through on and everybody else is in service to that.”

All three agreed that the story works because it’s a very rich subject matter, and they stuck with it. Benjamin’s life expresses certain things we all feel about our lives. Themes like the passage of time; meeting people along the journey, watching people we love leave, saying hellos and goodbyes.