Original subtitles

FINCHER: It’s easy to be there when they cut the cord.

It's a wonderful experience for anybody.

I mean, the kind of ancillary goodwill...

...that comes from, you know, babies being born.

As beautiful as it is...

...it's so much easier than holding somebody's head or hand while they--

When they get that look in their eye about this--

"That was my last breakfast," you know?

At this point, I think my father had died. And I’d gone through that experience.

I, you know, had that call in the middle of the night...

...and, you know, I really--

He had cancer for almost two years.

Pancreatic cancer, which is-- You know, two years is a long time.

And then one night, you know, you get this call.

And my mom said, you know, "His back's hurting."

And so we went to his house and we had to call the ambulance.

But I really-- You know, it's one of those things where you really think:

"Okay, this is what the next six months is gonna be."

You have to kind of get yourself ready, prepare yourself for this because it's--

And literally that night, we walked in there and they said:

"You need to come back in the room. We've got him in, you know...

...the room where people die."

And they sort of took us down the hall and they said, you know:

"He's got five minutes." And I was like, "Wha--? Uh...."

You know, you kind of go, "I don't have-- I haven't written my speech.

I don't have any-- You know, I'm not ready."

And you go in there and you see somebody who's, you know...

...breathing, and their system's shutting down...

...and their eyes, and they have this look...

...you know, they can barely sort of make you out.

They know now. They finally realize this is it.

You know, and you hold their hand, and you talk to them...

...and you whisper in their ear and you try to sort of soothe them.

But there's this....

You know, there's this....

You know, "What can I do? How can I do more?

What can I--? You know, how do I prove to you...

...you know, what an impact you made, or what a difference you made?"

And it's so...

...you know, impossible.

If you haven't gone through it, it's impossible to sort of describe.

But I thought that...

...was an act of love...

...that's so, um....

It's so much more profound than having a child.

I enjoyed, you know, wholeheartedly the experience of having my daughter.

But it's-- I mean, it's just this outpouring of, you know....

But here's this thing where you just have to be strong for somebody.

You just have to be-- You know, you have to be--

You have to go to this place that you just never--

You know, you want it to be over as quickly as possible...

...and yet, you don't want it to be over.

And I read this script and I thought...

...this is what this is. It's something else.

It's love...

...measured against this graph paper...

...of the thing that we try so desperately to ignore.

CAROLINE: "This is my last will and testament.

I don't have much to leave. All I have is my story...

...and I’m writing it now while I still remember it.

My name is Benjamin.

CAROLINE: Benjamin Button." BENJAMIN: Benjamin Button.

And I was born under unusual circumstances.

While everybody else was aging, I was getting younger...

...all alone.

MAN 1: Stand by. Here we go.

Ready and action.

[EXPLOSIONS]

MAN 1: And cut. You got it?

-Good shot. MAN 2: Everybody all right?

Ray Stark had this project in 1986, 1987.

But we didn't take a look at it until 1990, when Casey Silver brought it to us.

I was an executive at Universal...

...where the project was developed.

Ray brought in a short story--

F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. --which I really loved.

This was, I would say, probably '88 or something like that.

I don't know how long ago.

And we gave it to Frank Oz...

...and Frank Oz wanted to develop it.

And Frank brought a writer in.

They went away and they worked for a number of months on it...

...and finally threw their hands up and said:

"You know, we can't figure it out."

There's no conflict. It just sort of unfolds in a simple, very nice...

...but very undramatic way.

At the core of it, there's a wonderful idea.

Born old, die young.

MARSHALL: And it's just a magical story.

And I think the premise always fascinated us...

...in looking at what it would be like to go the other way.

Casey Silver, who was the president of production at the time...

...lived next door in Santa Monica to Nick Kazan and Robin Swicord.

And Casey said to me:

"You should read this writer, Robin Swicord. She's talented."

So I read her material and I thought she was great.

So I sent her the story and she loved it...

...and we had months and months of discussions...

...and she worked incredibly hard.

And she wrote a script. And it was a great first draft.

Even though it is not the movie that they made...

...a very long time ago, it showed there was this great movie in here.

I think Robin deserves an incredible amount of credit...

...for taking this short story and reinterpreting...

...you know, the thematic ideas behind what it means...

...in terms of a man aging backwards...

...and what that new perception on life might be.

DONEN: The script was given to Steven Spielberg...

...and Steven Spielberg said, "Wow, this is great."

And Robin Swicord and I had a meeting with Steven--

And, uh, it was this really exciting meeting. --very early on.

And Kathy Kennedy was in the room.

And then that, you know, sort of developed into a long working relationship.

And what happened was, Steven got busy doing other things.

Steven gave the project very serious consideration for about a year.

We did some read-throughs with actors.

Tom Cruise was somebody that we were very serious about...

...and he came over to Steven's house for a read-through with several other actors.

And then, um, in the course of that year...

...we were also working on Schindler's List and Jurassic Park...

...obviously, two very different but two very big projects.

And Steven ultimately decided he was gonna do those two projects back to back...

...so he stepped away.

Then for about a year or two, it languished.

And right around '91, '92...

...Frank and I segued out of running Amblin...

...and formed our own company...

...and we set up a deal at Paramount.

And this was the first project...

...under our new banner of Kennedy/Marshall that we set up.

This agent, who is now dead, Jay Moloney...

...introduced me to David's work.

Of course I flipped. Um....

And I met David and we talked about various things.

And I told him about this movie, and I gave him the script right away.

Even though it was still Steven Spielberg's movie...

...you know, he just seemed interested in the idea.

And I sent it to him and he really liked it.

And that was the beginning of a relationship with David...

...where we would talk about material over the years.

The first time I read the script, I think it'd been floating around for a couple years.

I think Spielberg had abandoned it at that point in time.

Tom Cruise had abandoned it.

And Josh Donen took an interest in some of the early stuff that I’d done...

...and sent it to me.

I don't know if he was just, like-- If it was sort of a taste barometer.

But he-- It came highly, highly recommended.

He said, "I want you to read a script. I think it's a beautiful script."

It was written by Robin Swicord, and it was a beautiful script.

But it sort of hinged on the audience's...

...affinity for and knowledge of jazz.

Which I-- As a betting man in Hollywood, I'm not--

That's not something I'm really ready to put it all down on.

So I loved it, I appreciated it, I thought it was, uh, moving and beautiful...

...but I, um....

It wasn't the kind of thing that I’d said, you know, "Before you die...."

I just thought, you know, someone will do really well with this...

...if they could ever figure out how to do it.

The stumbling block for so long...

...with anyone looking at this material...

...was everyone looked at it as though...

...five or six different actors were gonna have to play the part of Benjamin Button.

When you broke it down and you saw how little it was...

...and you might have to have four or five people playing Benjamin...

...it became a big issue about, "Oh, it's really not a movie-star role."

I couldn't figure out how it could be done, to be honest with you.

At the time, this is like 1991, '92?

I mean, I was-- In '92, I was still trying to convince ILM...

...to do the alien for Alien 3 in CG.

And they were saying, "We're years away. That'll never happen."

So you can imagine what the greatest minds that could be brought to bear...

...on this aging problem, you know....

It was basically a handoff between five or six different actors...

...and a lot of rubber work.

We talked to everybody. We talked to Stan Winston.

We talked to a lot of people about how we could do this.

And, you know, my biggest fear was that you had--

I didn't wanna see somebody look like, you know, the kraken...

...from a Ray Harryhausen movie.

You know, where the brow gets really protruded and the cheekbones.

So I was reticent to discuss with anyone the notion of silicone...

...or certainly latex pieces that would be applied...

...because it just seemed like, you know, you'd need a 1000-day schedule with--

As elaborate as the movie was...

...you would need forever to be able to shoot it.

And Frank and I have always had this issue...

...is when production problems start getting in the way, creatively...

...we always step back and go, "Okay, wait a second.

This should not be what's interfering with storytelling."

So there came a time when I seriously thought about--

I don't know, eight or nine years ago. I thought, this is never going to get made.

This is gonna be one of those scripts that everybody writes about and says:

"This is, you know, the wonderful script that never got made...

...and nobody really understood why."

I think that the next time I heard about it, I heard about it through Spike Jonze...

...who had a take on it.

KENNEDY: That was a radically different movie.

That was much quirkier.

I would throw it into sort of the Coen brothers' sensibility. Um....

More of a comedy, a quirky comedy.

He talked about making it a much more intimate movie.

And, um, I think it was at that moment in time...

...that Sherry Lansing, who was running Paramount...

...uh, hired Eric Roth.

And I don't think it was against, uh, Spike's wishes...

...but it certainly was....

I'm not so sure. I’m not so sure he was involved in the decision at all.

And I think he felt like that he couldn't, um, be involved in something...

...that he didn't have sort of-- You know, wasn't charting the course of.

And I remember we had lunch and I said to him:

"You know, Eric Roth's talented. Like, you may wanna wait.

Before you give this up, you may wanna wait till you read the script."

I wasn't really that aware of it except for just sort of, um, vaguely knowing...

...about the project having been around for a long time. Um....

And Paramount-- And Sherry Lansing was, uh, running Paramount at the time.

--and I had done another movie for them, Forrest Gump. Um....

And she asked me to take a look at the project.

You know, read the short story.

Eric has a real affinity...

...for being able to take large, complex ideas...

...and distill them into character-driven pieces.

ROTH: I did some research as to why he wrote it, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Obviously, I wouldn't want to do anything that would besmirch his memory.

And I’ve checked even with a couple of people...

...who are sort of renowned Fitzgerald scholars...

...and said, as best as they could tell, he did it as a...

...just a sort of a fancy.

I mean, there wasn't anything, um.... A little caprice, you know.

Fitzgerald, when he wrote the original short story--

Thematically, he was dealing with something much more cynical.

He was really making a commentary...

...on the fact that youth is wasted on the young.

ROTH: To me, the idea of this guy aging backwards was a lovely conceit.

Other than that, the storytelling was not, to me, as interesting, you know.

Not to knock Fitzgerald, but it just--

It felt-- I felt it didn't lend itself-- It was kind of spoofy...

...and I felt there might be something a little more, um...

...that you could take away from it than that.

I didn't hear about it for a while.

And about a year later, there was a draft that was floating around.

Josh, who's great friends with Eric and a great friend of mine, said:

"I've read it and you need to read this."

And so he gave it to me and I read it over the weekend, and I thought, "Wow."

And I got a call from Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall...

...who I didn't even know were involved in it.

I knew it was at Ray Stark...

...and then I knew Sherry Lansing was somehow involved with it.

And then I got this call from, uh, Kennedy/Marshall, and they said:

"Would you like to come in and meet with us on...

...The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?"

The thing I remember most about the first meeting was...

...the first thing out of everybody's mouth was:

"How do you do this?"

How do you make a guy, you know, who's that tall...

...and he's 4 years old, and he looks like he's 85.

And then how do you take him to being 6 months old...

...and breathing his last breath?

And because my background, initially, was at Industrial Light & Magic...

...I’ve learned that in that situation, you always lie. Ha.

And you always say, "Oh, you know, we'll figure that out.

That's the least of our problems."

So we started to have this conversation about everything else other than that...

...with no one having any kind of real idea of what that would take.

But it was one of these meetings that you sort of always hoped to have...

...when you're discussing a film, or the idea of setting sail on a film.

You hope that you have a conversation with the writer and the producers...

...where you're talking about first kisses.

We ended up talking about, you know, making out for the first time...

...first hangovers.

It was a really interesting sort of round robin...

...of people talking about their lives.

I thought, you know, that's kind of what this movie...

...I think, will do for people.

I think it's the kind of movie that will put you in touch in an odd way...

...with how you defined yourself or how you were defined...

...by certain moments in time and what that stuff really means to us all.

And then on the flip side of that...

...everybody knows that at some point, they're going to shuffle off this mortal coil.

And people-- You know, we spend so much time...

...kind of making our lives busy enough that we don't ever have to think about that.

It was kind of all the most interesting stuff about the movie, you know.

That the technical side of it was either gonna take care of itself or it wasn't.

But that wasn't the discussion to have on the day.

That was gonna be a process.

This thing had been in my periphery for years at this point.

It had come in and gone.

Um....

And I think it was more about, um, the technological hurdles at that time...

...instead of just using different actors.

I think that was getting wearisome at this point.

And then it landed in Fincher's lap...

...and, you know, Fincher and I are always talking about a possible project or two.

And I really didn't think he was serious about this one.

I thought it was a nice idea, um, given the Fincher that I know...

...that is seldom revealed to the outside world.

Um.... But I really didn't think he'd pull the trigger.

He read it and he said, "Ugh.

It's kind of a love story, isn't it?"

And I said, "I don't think so. I think it's a death story.

You should read it with that in mind. This guy grows up in an old folks' home.

Literally, everybody who passes through his life dies."

And I also didn't think this was something that I necessarily should be doing.

Maybe it was a bit obvious for me to do.

And, um, my baggage would just encumber it even more and slow it down.

But it was Fincher coming and explaining what he was after, and that was--

He first described what it wouldn't be, and that was the ballad of codependency.

You know, you, uh, complete me, so to speak.

Which is a nice idea, but it's a young idea.

I love Romeo and Juliet. You know, I love West Side Story.

I love codependent love.

But it can't be the only expression of love in narrative moviemaking.

It can't be-- It can't just be about that.

He was after something else here.

And I have to say I was interested. I thought it felt right to me.

And he read it again and he called me and said:

"I get what you wanna do with this.

I would do this if we can figure out a way...

...that I can play this guy the entire time."

And I said:

"Well, of course. That's just technology. That's just technique. We'll figure that out."

So, ha-ha, I was back to my first meeting.

And I think, um, around 2004, 2005...

...when David seriously started to turn his attention to how to execute the movie...

...the technology had caught up with the story...

...and we could all begin to have very serious discussions about Brad Pitt...

...playing the part from beginning to end.

And that completely changed the dynamic of the development.

And suddenly it got traction, and the movie started to get made.

Somewhere in all of this, I had the fortune...

...of being able to get our script to Cate Blanchett...

...who I’m an ardent admirer of.

And I sent her the script and she read it.

And she responded to it and wanted to meet and we met.

And after, you know, having read the first script 15 years or 16 years ago...

...I was shocked at our first meeting to learn...

...that she could speak more articulately about...

...what this piece of material was about than I could.

I unashamedly loved this film from the moment I read it.

And I think that I-- Once I knew David was going to, you know--

It was gonna be in David's hands, then I was really, really excited by it.

Because love is a very complex, often contradictory, state to be in...

...but David is not afraid of those contradictions.

Um.... And so he is such a cynic...

...that when you have a cynic dealing with matters of the heart...

...then I think you approach something that's really interesting.

I like to joke about this movie-- Because it was co-financed by two studios.

--that it was so great that we were able to find Paramount...

...who loved the first 110 pages of the script...

...and then Warner Bros., who loved the second 110 pages of the script...

...because the first draft of the script was, um....

I mean, it was like this:

It was like a-- You know.

There was no yellow pages, but it was a phone book.

And so we started to kind of go through and cut stuff.

Scripts always change in increments, you know.

The nice part about with David is, I think he always challenges you...

...to maybe do better, you know, which is good.

I mean, that's what you should--

I like to, hopefully, challenge him to do better, you know.

I think we cut the script down to about 200 pages...

...turned it in to Paramount...

...and they read it, and they liked it very much.

And then we convinced them to do a test.

We didn't have access to Brad. He was off making some movie...

...with some other director.

And we got this actor, a friend of mine, who I love, Joel Bissonnette.

And I said, "Joel, we wanna do this old-age test with you.

So we want you to come in and we wanna scan you and we wanna--"

He says, "All right."

And he came in and we took plaster casts of him...

...and sent them off to a sculptor in Canada...

...who did this beautiful casting and painting and sculpture.

Then we took that information and we scanned it into a computer.

And then we cast this body double, what's going to--

Not a body double. I mean, that's--

The breakdown went out. We were looking for a body double.

But, really, we were gonna use their body.

And we met this guy, Robert Towers...

...who, I like to joke, has actually been on this movie longer than I have.

But from the first test, we just had him on a sound stage...

...and we just did this one little camera move on him...

...put up a big wall of soft light, and did a very simple thing where he's--

The first scene that we see of Benjamin in the movie...

...where he's tapping this spoon or fork on the table.

And we put dots all over him.

We didn't know exactly how we were gonna do it, but we brought in...

...three Viper cameras.

Then DD, the guys from Digital Domain, went in. They lopped his head off...

...and they put this sculpture on him.

We played with shaders, hair shaders and skin shaders...

...and we made the eyes, and we made the glasses...

...and we put all this stuff on him and finished this test.

It was very-- It was crude. It was extremely early days.

We showed it to them and they liked it.

But they said it looks very expensive, and indeed they were right.

And it was, uh, more money than they wanted to spend on the movie, by about...

...probably $75 million. Ha-ha.

So Brad went off to do nine other movies and I went off and I did Zodiac.

And while I was doing Zodiac, we were still kind of toing and froing...

...about what it would cost to make Benjamin Button.

What it would really cost.

DOYLE: The original story Fitzgerald wrote was based in Baltimore.

And Eric Roth mimicked that in his version of the screenplay...

...which was Baltimore.

So the first place that I went to when I took on the job--

April 17th, 2004. --was I flew to Baltimore.

We did a feasibility study on the script...

...on what we thought needed to be shot on location...

...what needed to be shot on-stage, and we sort of roughly designed sets...

...and went through a six- or seven-month study on that and put together a budget.

Then it was sort of shelved for a while.

They seemed to have had all the locations and everything.

Um....

But it just wasn't lining up for where the studio wanted it to be.

It just wasn't getting it to a number, you know.

Movies-- They are a business, you know.

They have to be made for a certain amount of money to get out the door.

It became more and more expensive as we looked at it.

So we were really looking for a way to mitigate the cost of the movie.

And so we started looking at other cities.

I kept thinking about it and thinking about it...

...and that's when I came up with the idea that the script could be--

If they were willing to, it could be redone for New Orleans.

I think the only way that this movie was possible...

...was what Louisiana was, uh, doing to foster a new industry...

...um, which were massive tax credits.

And tax credits are basically cash. You can sell them on the open market.

It's literally right off the top of your budget.

I called Ceán up and said, "Ceán, let's have lunch. I’ve got an idea."

And, uh, she's like, "What?"

And I sat down and I kind of gave her my idea and my story.

I had to go to the studio first. I wasn't a producer on the film at that time.

It's just, "Guys, we gotta figure it out. Somebody's gotta come up with an idea."

So I asked them for the right to go speak with them and they said okay.

And I did this all on, like, my own time. I just--

You know, you read the script and you're like:

"This is the man for this movie at this time. You know, it's gotta get done."

And, uh, we made the pitch, and she kind of went:

"Yeah, that sounds great."

And she went and talked with David, and then he went and talked with Sherry.

And then it started back up again.

[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]

We're gonna start on Benjamin in the foreground.

We're gonna track behind him.

And over his shoulder, we see Mr. Daws.

-We had a shot this way. -We don't wanna look this way...

...because you got a fucking magnolia tree in front of the Sheraton.

He's gonna take the baby, he's gonna throw the baby, and he decides not to.

He steps down on the thing, and then a cop comes running along there.

[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]

I like the idea that they're standing in here. There's a bit of a night ambient out there.

And they're silhouettes.

You can put something in here to push back.

Benjamin leaves and Thomas stops and sees him and then goes after him.

I need it on both sides, and I need it to go to where that next street is.

Looking back this way and he comes running up kind of like...trying to--

And then we cut to this.

The trench going back is like 40 feet, 60 feet, something like that?

And we should have smudge pots galore just to have stuff kind of blowing through.

And then I need to put a camera out about 12 feet.

Just to get it out, away from the dock, so that we can be out here...

...and he can kind of row past us when he rows out to sea.

MAN: He's in just a little rowboat? -Yep.

DOYLE: I’d shot a couple of things in New Orleans.

And both New Orleans and Baltimore have a lot of similarities...

...as 200-year-old-plus port cities...

...with those kind of great histories and backgrounds.

And there's a lot of commonality to them.

You could take what had been a ship builder and make it into a cotton factory.

There's a lot of easy conversion, in my opinion...

...and a lot of big parts of the city that still reflected 200 years ago.

FINCHER: It was pretty immediate.

I mean, it was pretty much like we were able to see that...

...not only was New Orleans as good an idea as shooting in Baltimore...

...for all the matte paintings we do of Baltimore...

...and how all the work that we were gonna have to do to change...

...the harbor and the port.

It also just seemed like New Orleans was sort of...

...like, shrink-wrapped in the turn of the century.

It seemed like everywhere you went, you could find at least 90 degrees...

...that was a hundred years ago.

Baltimore is like a Norman Rockwell, everyman town...

...and you go to New Orleans and it's just its own thing.

The city becomes part of the story.

And I don't think I ever felt that when it was in Baltimore.

It takes on a whole different feeling when you say "New Orleans."

All of a sudden it sort of drips, you know.

And, in a nice way, it feels old...

...and there's sort of a texture to it that you don't have with some other places.

So David thought it would be a good idea...

...and Eric started rewriting it for New Orleans...

...which began in earnest in 2005.

And then Katrina hit...

...which put a bit of a damper in everyone's enthusiasm.

The studio sent me there to take a look around...

...and I spent a couple of weeks going back to my old roots as a journalist...

...and interviewing people, locals and different officials...

...and came back and put together, basically, a 40-page report...

...and reported back to the studio on it.

ZOLFO: We were scouting places and driving by the houses...

...with the X symbols on the doors...

...and how many dead. And two dogs dead and people.

And it was really impactful.

And I think it-- You know, in seeing that, it set a tone for us...

...for the sort of melancholy feeling that the whole movie has.

HENSON: I had never been to New Orleans prior to Katrina.

And I just remembered getting off the airplane...

...and I just felt an emptiness.

It just felt hollow. That's the only way I could put it.

Even though some of the natives were able to return and rebuild...

...even when I looked at them, in their eyes, it seemed hollow...

...like a numb gaze.

The state officials got on the phone with us and said:

"We know what you're thinking, but please, please, for the sake of the city...

...could you believe in us and still commit to shooting here?

And we'll do whatever it is that you need...

...to make this still a viable city for shooting."

FINCHER: Everything that we need...

...the Garden District, the Magazine Street and the French Quarter...

...and the periphery of downtown, all that stuff was still there.

We went back to the studio, and we said, "We'd still like to try."

And it was Brad's passion and fervor to go down there...

...and to do this movie there that kind of reignited it.

I'm always amazed at people's back-stories. You had no idea of the loss...

...and even pain the people are carrying with them in some sense...

...or directly.

And I think this is what the film speaks to.

ZOLFO: It was almost a ghost town when we got there.

We would scout places and not see a soul.

It became trying to find people that owned these businesses...

...that we were trying to get reopened.

I think Construction probably more than anybody...

...felt the brunt of that in terms of getting materials...

...and getting labor.

Because a lot of people hadn't come back to the city yet.

ZOLFO: It was life-changing to go there...

...and be there as it kind of rose from the ashes...

...and started to become New Orleans again.

And in the course of the filming, we saw it change from...

...really still gone a year later, after Katrina...

...to pretty much thriving again and alive by the time we were finished.

We were there for 10 months and in those 10 months...

...it totally evolved into, you know, coming back to life.