Oscar-nominee Eric Roth: Life, Love and Aging Backwards

Screenwriter Eric Roth has created some of the most popular stories ever told by Hollywood, from the multi-Oscar (and Golden Globe and BAFTA) winning “Forrest Gump” (1994) to "The Horse Whisperer" (1998), "The Insider" (1999) and "Munich" (2005). Even for a writer operating at Roth's level of consummate skill adapting for director David Fincher ("Zodiac") F. Scott Fitzgerald's short fable about a man (Brad Pitt) who is born old and ages backward presented, at the very least, a daunting structural challenge.

(On January 22, 2009, Roth’s screenplay for “Button” was nominated for an Oscar® in the category Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.)

Sheila Roberts spoke with Roth about the technical difficulties of the project — and its surprising emotional resonance.

One of the things I'm sure you've heard and that you probably find frustrating is the comparison of "Benjamin Button" with "Forrest Gump."

ERIC ROTH: I don't find it frustrating. I wrote them both and there are certain ingredients that feel similar — the picaresque nature of the piece, the journey of a man's life. But this one deals with much different subject matter. Some of it is more personal, because both my parents died while I was writing it, so there are things in it about love and life and death.

What about adapting an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story? How closely did you stick to it?

I did some research on what the story was to him, because I didn't want in any way to mess with his legacy. The best I could tell is that this was kind of a whimsical piece for him. He just needed some money. It wasn't something that he took deadly seriously. Mark Twain gave him the idea through his editor, about what it would be like to age backwards. That's the centerpiece of it, and then there's a love story, so those were the things that I left intact to some extent. Beyond that I felt free to take off with my own imagination.

Purely from the perspective of craft and structure, is it especially difficult to stay focused on your themes when you have such a broad swath of a man's life to present?

That's one of the reasons I framed it with the death of Daisy (Cate Blanchett), so I could use that as a place to come back and forth to, so I could have the luxury to jump time. I tried to do it in 5 to 7 year blocks. The biggest complication was making sure I kept his emotional age and physical age straight, along with what year it was. I kept a list as to where we were in time. "Well, if he appears to be 78 that means he's approximately 10 years old or 9 years old." And then we made a structural change that was more about the drama. It wasn't anything that I needed to rewrite per se, but we changed when we were going to reveal something.

What sort of leap of faith was it in the technology to be able to produce on film what you can imagine and put on paper?

I just believed they'd be able to figure out a way to do it. I had no clue as to how to do it. As a matter of fact, when I first finished the screenplay in 2003 they were not ready for it technologically. They were toying with the idea of having maybe 4 or 5 different people play Benjamin – maybe like Redford and then Pitt. In other words, to go down in age. We all felt that it would be better if we were able to do it technologically. The gamble is that if it doesn't work, it will look silly.

It's always Brad. It's Brad in somewhat different incarnations, but he has to play that part and it has to be believable. It's this little creature that has a sense of humor, it has emotions. And from the first test screening that we had not one person mentioned Brad Pitt. What they mentioned was Benjamin Button. So I said, "Well, that's worked." (laughs) In other words, it felt seamless to them, so the technology didn't get in the way.

The director, David Fincher, is known for being incredibly respectful of all craftsmen, from the visual effects all the way down to the writing, but he's also very meticulous and very demanding. Can you talk a little bit about what the process was like working with him.

The process is great with good directors, and David is an incredibly creative man. I think we hit it off right away. I find this about most all the directors I've worked with: they have a great curiosity about all sorts of different things. Most of them don't want to do just the same subject matter. They get bored with it. They ask the right questions. They want to have them answered so they can understand things potentially better than you did when you wrote it. "Why did you do it this way? Can we do it this way?" There's always good give and take.

Any time you're dealing with magical realism there is always a choice, I would imagine, as to how much you acknowledge the strangeness of what's going on. In the movie, it's wonderful the way that very few people do that. Some of them comment on it a little bit, but it's not a focus.

They go right up to it but they don't go, "Oh you really are different!" Everybody seems to accept it. We actually wrote a scene where Benjamin would go to a doctor, but finally decided that if you don't accept that this is a fiction —- I don't really like to call it a fable — then you've separated yourself from the movie, anyway, and you probably won't go with it. I don't think it's necessary to have the traditional kind of expository explanation that you would get on a TV show.

You created in the script the device of the clock going backwards. That in itself suggests that we're in a different realm of reality.

I was afraid the audience wouldn't get into the premise right away. In other words, you have to make a sort of leap of faith. I thought at least maybe I would provide this as a metaphor. Daisy is on morphine and she's dying, so you accept it as someone telling you a story. It may be as true or less true than the clock going backwards. We were going to return to the clock periodically as sort of bookmarks, but we found we didn't really need to, because you were following the story and didn't need to be reminded of what leaps you were making.

Did writing this story make you reflect on your own feelings about aging?

Yeah, every day. I found part of it very emotional because of the deaths of my parents, but also my own stage of life. I have grandchildren, now, and my own children. That's always been sort of part of my work, I think. That would be something maybe similar to "Forrest Gump:" the passage of time. I remember Tom Hanks said, "Gee, your movies are always about loneliness." But I don't think this movie is necessarily about loneliness. It's more about what comforts you. It's about the peacefulness of thinking about the people you love asleep in a hotel room in the middle of the night.

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