David Fincher names ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ his most demanding movie: “It took for-fucking-ever”
Many famous filmmakers get accused of demanding too much out of their actors, but few have had this claim levelled against them as frequently as David Fincher. The infamously stubborn director regularly requires several dozen takes of a single shot, which has led to numerous performers refusing to work with him more than once. The thing is, you can’t argue with the results he gets.
Zodiac, Se7en, Mank, The Social Network, Fight Club, the list of Fincher’s great contributions to cinema is lengthy and impressive. Even Alien 3, his directorial debut that is regularly cited as a low point in the series, has its fans, including Christopher Nolan. Even the most hardened of Fincher fans would take a while to name The Curious Case of Benjamin Button when asked for a rundown of his career. This tale of a man who ages backwards isn’t readily associated with the director, and, as it turns out, it was a pain in the backside to make.
“It took for-fucking-ever,” the auteur told Film Comment. “We were supposed to make it before Zodiac. Sherry Lansing was running the studio, and I think it was just too big a bite. It’s funny, you say to people $140million or $150m dollars and Hollywood is so screwed up that three years later, it sounds like a bargain. I think it was just that the number was too daunting, and also, what is it? Is it an action movie? Is it Forrest Gump? When you say you’re making a movie about life and death for anyone who has had children or anyone who has had parents, Hollywood is not going to beat down your door.”
The movie, inspired by a story by F Scott Fitzgerald, was shot between 2006 and 2007 in various locations, including New Orleans and Los Angeles. Tom Cruise was the original first choice for the main role, but the part eventually went to Brad Pitt instead. It was released in 2008, one year after Zodiac.
Even when filming was done, Fincher still had a hard time pitching his new creation to studios. “I made it with the idea in mind that it showed the fallacy in the idea that youth is wasted on the young,” he revealed. “But some people come out of it saying, ‘You made the best case for youth is wasted on the young.’”
Confusion over the message of the film and how to market it delayed the release of Benjamin Button even further. Eventually, it was released by Warner Bros (Paramount Pictures in North America) on Christmas Day 2008. When all was said and done, it turned a tidy profit at the box office, received relatively good reviews, and was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, the most of any picture that year. Some would say that made it worth the wait.
Fincher admitted that, after sitting with the project for so long, he was “completely inert to it” and just wanted to put it out into the world. “This is the part where you just want to hibernate and wake up eight months later,” he said of the release window. “How did it all turn out? Am I persona non grata?” The answer to that last question turned out to be a resounding ‘no’.
