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The Curious Case of the Curious Case of Benjamin Button
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON....Apropos of nothing in particular, I decided to read Fitzgerald's short story 
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" after seeing the movie, and it's curious indeed. Aside from not being a very good story (working in the dark ages before the rise of sf, Fitzgerald pretty clearly had no idea what to do with the concept), it's notable that the film doesn't contain even one single element from the story. Not one. Aside from the title, the only thing they have in common is the basic idea of a man aging backward, and even that's treated entirely differently in the film than in the story.
Now, I don't have any problem with this. Screenwriters should write whatever screenplay they want. But what I'm curious about is why the filmmakers even bothered to pretend their movie was based on the Fitzgerald story. If it were, say, I, Robot, I'd get it: the association with Isaac Asimov would be considered good for the box office. Ditto for all the bestsellers made into movies. But the association with Fitzgerald wasn't really played up much in the publicity for the movie, and Fitzgerald is hardly a huge draw for modern audiences anyway. So why bother? Oscar bait of some kind? Or what?
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Kevin wrote: "... working in the dark ages before the rise of sf, Fitzgerald pretty clearly had no idea what to do with the concept ..."
Funny how Jules Verne and HG Wells seemed to do OK in the "dark ages before the rise of sf".
It's a good title?
Lawyers.
Howard: I don't see how lawyers would come into it. The concept itself wasn't original to Fitzgerald, and in any case it's been used many times since. So they could have just made up a story and called it something else. Why bother giving it the Fitzgerald title?
Also, I just checked and the story was written in 1921, so it's not covered by copyright anymore. Must be some other reason. Maybe they just thought it made the film seem classier.
Ditto simplicio. Why make up something good when you can steal it? Plus, the title alone rings bells in the right circles (Hollywood, where Fitzgerald worked, and literature, where reviewers come from).
I thought the basic story of the movie was taken from a recent book, "Confessions of Max Tivoli" by Andrew Sean Greer.
From Amazon's description:
"With a premise straight out of science fiction (or F. Scott Fitzgerald), Greer's second novel plumbs the agonies of misdirected love and the pleasures of nostalgia with gratifying richness. Max Tivoli has aged backwards: born in San Francisco in 1871 looking like a 70-year-old man, he's now nearly 60 and looks 11. Other than this "deformity," the defining feature of Max's life is his epic love for Alice Levy, whom he meets when they are both teens (though he looks 53). Max's middle-aged gentility endears him to Alice's mother and, like an innocent Humbert Humbert, he allows Mrs. Levy to seduce him so that he might be near his love. When he steals a kiss from Alice, the Levys flee. But heartbroken Max gets another chance: when he encounters Alice years later, she does not recognize him, and he lies shamelessly and repeatedly to be near her again."
Why? A pair of bewildered English majors kicked the idea around while bemoaning the fact that nobody was ever going to pick up another boring version (theirs) of ''Gatsby.''
Like a few others said:
Steal from the best.
Nothing wrong with that.
In a mature industry everything is recycled.
Okay, Kevin, while you're at it, why not look into the weird similarities between Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and the Karel Capek short story "Vertigo"?
The Capek story was written a couple of decades earlier. You can find a brief summary here:
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12367
There are a lot of odd similarities, but I've not been able to find anyone anywhere who's ever remarked on this.
I believe the real question is: why did Fitzgerald crib the title from a movie from the future?
Tripp: Sure, but what I don't get is that they didn't actually steal anything except the title. And the title isn't that good.
Fitzgerald association may have came about in treatment stage, before much of the story had been written, and they just never changed the title again. Also may have helped sell the film to a studio, I don't know.
The backwards-time gimmick always makes me think of Philip K. Dicks Counter-Clock World.
Food!
Kevin, this is not actually that uncommon. Look at two fairly recent, fairly popular movie adaptations: Stuart Little and Cheaper by the Dozen. Both share the title, some characters, and the central premise of the books on which they are based--a talking mouse in one case, a family with 12 children in the latter. But the similarities end there; not a single plot point is shared.
As for why this is done, I suspect it's a combination of lazy writing, copyright issues, and money.
And RBM, yeah, when I saw the trailer for CCBB I thought it was going to be an adaptation of that book, which I've read (it's pretty good). I also agree with Kevin that Fitzgerald's short story is strange and poorly fleshed out.
Kevin,
I believe that Fitzgerald originally wrote tCCoBB as a screenplay.
Kevin,
Oh. I think they are having trouble feeding the monster and some of the meals are coming out mediocre.
Kevin, the title is good. It's Fitzgerald. It works. I think you are a bit jaded on the national film scene. Pitt + Fitzgerald +MOVIE = money maker.
The title appeals to movie reviews and other "intellectual" types who are pleased with themselves for knowing the refernce, and going to see the movie makes them feel smart. They then create buzz and review it well, which as you say is an oscar ploy and a more general box office receipt ploy. that's my guess.
It may have been done before, Kevin, but there's a legal defense in stating that it's based on one particular version (or so I've been told before). Basically it raises the bar in lawsuits so that the plaintiff has to not only show it's similar to plaintiff's work X, but it's something that could not have been inspired by claimed sourcework Y.
Licensing written works is cheap compared with movie budgets, even if the story weren't in the public domain.
OK. I'll one-up you on movie BS vis-a-vis the original book. I read "Bridge on the River Kwai" as a small boy. In the days before VCR you had to wait and hope to see a movie that had exhausted its theatrical run. Anyway, one evening the 9PM movie was just such movie. Oh happy day! The book fascinated my mind, the adventure, the explosions! I couldn't wait. Take that you cruel, heartless Japs. Oooh, if it wasn't for the fact your damn bridge survives the Allied troops best efforts to blow it up this would be the bestest movie ever! But then, right before my eyes, the guy falls on the plunger, the bridge explodes and cascades as a billion little toothpicks into the river below. Hey, wait a minute, that's not the way it happened! Says right here in the book the bridge survives. WTF? Didn't the goddamn people that filmed this movie read the book? Who the hell said they could just change the ending? I think I've been jaded, distrustful and pretty much a cynic since that night in front of the telly. How the hell do you change the end of a classic (in my 8 year old mind) as if the author hadn't even written it?
Did you ever see the movie "To Have and Have Not?" Probably. Ever read the book? Probably not. There's no relation between the two. They have one scene in common. The project started out as a film adaptation of Hemingway and then changed over the course of many rewrites. Good chance the same thing happened here.
If one were to adapt "...Max Tivoli" 's superior story, while titling and crediting CCoBB from the public domain, one might have a win-win situation, for the producers of the film.
Consider that, while the public in general may not give a damn about F. Scot Fitzgerald, the people the producers had to pitch to have pretensions of being intellectual enough to care. After that, everything that happened was pretty much too many cooks spoiling the broth, as happens in many big movie projects.
I watched Ms Pettigrew Lives for a Day last night and liked the film. In the documentary they talked about the book of the same title that it was based on. One thing they read from the book which did not make it to the movie is mention of Delysia LaFosse, the starlet, having cocaine in her possession. It struck me as odd in a way that she wouldn't have cocaine in a production made now but it would have been part of a book published in 1939 by a novelist who had primarily written soft, uncontroversial women's farm novels. Funny how we think we're more sophisticated, but obviously the studio was afraid Delysia would be less sympathetic because of the coke thing.
Gone with the Wind, one of my favorite movies and a really good book, is another example of this kind of disparaty. I've often thought you could make one hell of a film with the scenes and the characters that DIDN'T make it into the movie. There is a whole other story, compelling and more hardscrabble, in the unused parts.
CHILDREN OF MEN was another that had nothing to do with the book. And Harold Pintur's screenplay of Margart Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE might as well be two different works.
I actually think the Fitzgerald name does have a bit of pull- at least to the Denbys in the audience.
Also, Brad Pitt was first announced as to the project like almost a decade ago. I wouldn't be surprised if the original screenplay had a greater resemblance to the story.
And, though this assumption might be the misguided result of having been a lit major, I think that lots and lots of people have at least heard of the story, if not actually having read it. It's a pretty famous story, one that is also ripe for adaptation because it is so short.
For scifi source stories that got completely gutted in their film versions, nobody comes close to Philip K. Dick. Blade Runner. Total Recall. Minority Report. None of these movies has anything but a passing relationship to their source stories. Two examples that are better are Imposter and A Scanner Darkly.
Like Kevin, I just read Fitzgerald's short story. Nice short read, but no great shakes. However, a few months ago I listened to the audible.com version of THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The writing is wonderful and the reader makes the experience sublime.
I am embarrassed to know this, but the premise was also central to Mork and Mindy (remember the Jonathan Winters reverse baby schtick?). Ouch. I would use the Fitzgerald tie for that reason alone. . .
if it wasn't for the fact your damn bridge survives the Allied troops best efforts to blow it up this would be the bestest movie ever! But then, right before my eyes, the guy falls on the plunger, the bridge explodes and cascades as a billion little toothpicks into the river below. Hey, wait a minute, that's not the way it happened! Says right here in the book the bridge survives.
The bridge is still there:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jamienat/2003THAILAND#5223821627186197922
And if you think what the movies did to Bridge over the River Kwai was bad, consider what they did to the same author's Planet of the Apes
Don't feel too bad for Pierre Boulle, though--he won an Oscar for the Bridgescreeplay, despite not having written a word of it (he didn't speak English, and the real authors were blacklisted leftists)
the simple truth is that long movie titles attract Brad Pitt
steve duncan,
Yeah, my "Bridge on the River Kwai" was "Starship Troopers."
Bummer.
On the other hand the movie of "Battlefield Earth" was even more dismal than the book, so that was a bright light for my dreary soul.
I'm with TheOldMole. Probably the project originally began as an adaptation but moved away from there. Titles are hard to come up with, and I'm guessing everyone got used to this one, and the marketing people liked it.
The movie is actually based on the book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer. The Amazon summary is found at: http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Tivoli-Today-Show-Book/dp/0374128715
Happy Reading!