Making one for the ages
By Genevieve Loh, TODAY | Posted: 06 February 2009 1247 hrs

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SINGAPORE - About a decade ago, just about when Fight Club was first released, its director David Fincher reportedly explained to Film Comment magazine how he decided on what films to make: “You are always looking for that one pervert story.” And if that is anything to go by in 2009, then Fincher’s contender for the Best Picture Oscar, a film about a man who ages in reverse, must be one heck of a “pervert story”.

Which, as it turns out, suits the taste of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just fine, seeing as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the most nominated film this year with 13 nods. Not bad for a film that has changed hands and floated around Hollywood as far back as 1991.

“When I first heard about it, around 1991 or 1992, Steven Spielberg controlled the film and was going to shoot it with Tom Cruise. Later, I lost track of the movie, but I heard about it again when my friend Spike Jonze was attached to direct, though he walked away from the project,” said Fincher, 46. “Then Eric Roth came in and wrote a first draft of the screenplay, my agent sent it to me and I loved it.”

But the man who made his feature debut with Alien 3 — at the time the most expensive picture made by a first-time director — knew that it wasn’t going to be easy bringing to life the epic story of a backward-aging man. “The ageing was always the main concern, but as I come from visual effects, I told (the producers) not to worry ... I wasn’t scared by it.”

Another thing he wasn’t scared by? Working with Brad Pitt. This is his third collaboration with the pretty one, after Se7en (1995) and Fight Club (1999). “Because of other interests people have in him, they tend to maybe forget how good an actor he is until they see him again on the screen and think, ‘Wow!’” said the former music video director.

“Brad Pitt is first on every studio’s list, so they didn’t offer any resistance to my idea of having him in the lead role; but I was asked if I thought he could play an ‘everyman’, because it is kind of a Jimmy Stewart role in an odd way.

“The notion of taking the face of someone who is very popular and sculpting it though time was interesting, and to me that was important.”

And so, with a Best Director nomination at the Oscars, ends this curious tale of how the “pervert” found his “one pervert story”. “I felt I understood (the story) at a certain level. And I think I would have kicked myself if anyone else had done it.”

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is in cinemas now. - TODAY/ar