Curious case of friendship for ‘Button’ star Pitt, director Fincher

Here’s the buzz roundup on the latest collaboration between star Brad Bitt and director David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

David Fincher spent five years making the soon-to-be released, Oscar-hyped film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” but he had little use for the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which it is based.

In a question and answer session following an advance screening of the film at the Museum of Modern Art, the director said he didn’t even read Fitzgerald’s 1922 story until two years into working on the film.

“I started out with a 240-age script, so it wasn’t like we were looking for new ideas,” Fincher said, referring to Eric Roth’s screenplay. “I just read a script and thought it was really moving.”

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a highly anticipated release expected to draw several Academy Awards nominations, still weighs in at 167 minutes in length and cost an estimated $150 million to make. – from Washpost

Since Pitt and the director met 15 years ago, they have become close friends — and crucial components in each other’s professional lives.

Fincher provides Pitt gravitas. He may have received an Oscar nomination for his role in Twelve Monkeys, but Pitt is the first to acknowledge that his dramatic chops are more recognized in Fincher’s Se7en and Fight Club.

Pitt, in return, bestows Fincher inordinate clout. For a guy who has never made a blockbuster, Fincher is able to make the movies he wants, glum endings and all, thanks in part to his friendship with the most famous actor on the planet.

Soon, they could be introducing a new dynamic to their relationship: Oscar consideration. Their latest venture, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which opens Christmas Day, has topped many prognosticators’ Academy Awards lists, including for acting and directing.

- from USAToday

Wistful, melancholic, steeped in a sense of impermanence and looming mortality, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is not a movie one could have predicted from the maker of “Se7en,” “Fight Club” and “Zodiac.” David Fincher’s haunting and uneven picaresque fable is a radical reimagining of a fanciful, minor F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. It tells the tall tale of an infant who is born as an old man—tiny but suffering all the infirmities of an 80-year-old—who lives his life in reverse, becoming younger with each passing year until he achieves real infancy at the end of his life. – from Newsweek