Merrick Morton/Paramount Pictures
In the London Times, screenwriter Eric Roth discusses "The curious case of the making of Benjamin Button" with Kevin Maher:
"'In 1922 F.Scott Fitzgerald had a baby girl,' continues the 63-year-old Oscar-winner Roth (Forrest Gump). 'And when she was three months old he wrote a short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.' The tale, about a man who was born at 70 and slowly aged backwards towards infancy, reflected Fitzgerald's newly altered views on mortality, Roth says, adding: 'But it was very broad and whimsical.' However, the basic idea would eventually evolve into the story of an 86-year-old man, Benjamin ([Brad] Pitt), who is born as a wizened homunculus in a New Orleans hospital in 1918, and who nonetheless gets younger and stronger as the decades pass, while those around him are ravaged by old age. His one chance at love, with a young dancer called Daisy (Cate Blanchett), is realised only with a tragic, fleeting bliss.
"The story was picked up, Roth says, by the Hollywood heavyweight producer Ray Stark (The Night of the Iguana; Funny Girl) in the late 1950s. Stark sat on it until the early 1980s, when 'various writers' started attempting adaptations. 'The most predominant writer attached was Robin Swicord (Little Women) and she was probably on it for 12 years, on and off,' Roth says."
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is up for 13 Academy Awards, including best film, best actor (Pitt), best supporting actress (Taraji P. Henson), best direction (David Fincher), and best adapted screenplay (Roth and Swicord).