Brad Pitt - Information

Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Taraji P. Henson, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas, Julia Ormond and Donna DuPlantier

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Eric Roth and Robin Swicord

Based on the 1921 short story written by: F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

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In this drama film, Brad Pitt stars as Benjamin Button who is a man with an extraordinary life, the primary unusual aspect of which was his aging backwards. He was born as an old man who was diagnosed with several aging diseases at birth and is therefore given little chance of survival. Benjamin Button survives and gets younger with time.

The elderly Daisy (Cate Blanchett) is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches in August 2005. Her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond) is at her side. Daisy was a lifelong friend of Benjamin Button and asks Caroline to read to her aloud the diary which recounts Benjamin Button’s life.

 

Benjamin was raised by Queene (Taraji P. Henson), a black woman and a caregiver at a seniors home and met Daisy there when she visits her grandmother. Benjamin and Daisy remain in contact throughout their life although separated through years. At 1960 they fall in love and experience in large part a blissful relationship but become increasingly aware of Benjamin growing younger while Daisy grows older.

The movie received thirteen Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Pitt, and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson. It won three Oscars for Art Direction, Makeup, and Visual Effects, and has tied the record for one of the most nominated films not to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

View the trailer

 

 

Scenes from the movie

Introducing Benjamin

A clip where Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) introduces everyone to Benjamin

 

Child of God

A clip where Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) thinks Benjamin is a child of God

 

Daisy Returns

A younger Benjamin (Brad Pitt) discovers an older Daisy (Cate Blanchett) standing outside

 

Thought I Was Like Everyone Else

An older Benjamin (Brad Pitt) can’t figure out why he’s different than the other old folk

 

I Came home

Benjamin (Brad Pitt) tells of his return to the nursing home when he was twenty-six years old to encounter Queenie (Taraji P. Henson)

 

Meeting in the Middle

Benjamin (Brad Pitt) runs into a mature Daisy (Cate Blanchett) and they establish the fact that they are meeting in the middle, at close to the same age

 

 

Never Had a Woman

An aged Benjamin (Brad Pitt) explains to his captain that he’s never had a woman

 

 

Tattoo Artist

A gentlemen in a bar tells Benjamin (Brad Pitt) that he should be an artist,
a tattoo artist

 

Under the Table

Benjamin (Brad Pitt) explains his situation to a young Daisy (Elle Fanning)

 

 

Interview - Julia Ormond

Interview with Julia Ormond on her character Caroline in the movie

 

 

Interview - Taraji Benson

Interview with Taraji P. Henson on her character Queenie in the movie

 

 

Interview - Cate Blanchett

Interview with Cate Blanchett on her character Daisy in the movie

 

 

Interview - Brad Pitt

Interview with Brad Pitt on his character Benjamin in the movie

 

 

And here is a longer interview

with Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and director David Fincher

 

Benjamin Button´s Visual Effects

Digital Domain shows us what it took and all of the technology used to transform Brad Pitt into Benjamin Button

 

 

Visual Effects 2

A second look at what it took and all of the special effects used in the movie. This one focuses on the sets and scenery used in the film

 

 

Visual Effects 3

A third look at what it took and all of the special effects used in the movie. This one focuses on how they were able to transform Brad Pitt into Benjamin Button

 

 

Visual Effects 4

A fourth look at what it took and all of the special effects used in the movie. This one focuses on how they were able to transform Brad Pitt into Benjamin Button

 

 

 

Trivia provided by The Internet Movie Database:

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• Filmmakers worked closely with Levi’s to obtain clothing items from their Levi’s Vintage Clothing collection to authenticate various time periods captured throughout the film.
• Once attached to Tom Cruise as the lead, Steven Spielberg as director in the 1990s.
• Rachel Weisz was considered for the role of Daisy, but turned down because of scheduling conflicts with the different filming dates of the film.
• From a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• The second Hollywood feature film, after Denzel Washington’s Deja Vu (2006), to film in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
• Early development of the film began in 1994.
• Principal photography was targeted to last a total of 150 days, excluding the time it would take to create the visual effects for the metamorphosis of Brad Pitt’s character to the infant stage.
• In May 2004, it was first rumored that David Fincher was set to direct the movie. It was confirmed a year and a month after.
• Danny Boyle pushed his “Solomon Grundy” project back because he thought this story and “Solomon Grundy” were too similar.
• Was originally slated for a May 2008 release.
• Spike Jonze was once in talks to direct this movie.
• In 1998, Ron Howard was set to direct, with John Travolta in the lead.
• Brad Pitt stated it took 5 hours each day to complete the make-up required for the role.
• The original setting for the film was to be Baltimore. David Fincher and Eric Roth changed the location to New Orleans when the studio requested they film there to take advantage of the state’s filming discount.
• The musical in which Daisy performs and that Benjamin watches is Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s ‘Carousel’ The performance is the dream ballet choreographed by Agnes de Mille. Daisy was talking to Benjamin about Agnes de Mille in their previous meeting.
• The look that David Fincher, visual-effects supervisor Eric Barba and special makeup-effects artist Greg Cannom devised for Benjamin as a child resemble the later stages of progeria, a condition technically named Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome, a rare disease that makes its young sufferers appear aged. Those who didn’t attend medical school may be most familiar with it from the Ralph Macchio TV movie The Three Wishes of Billy Grier (1984) (TV). And Robin Williams had a fictional version of progeria in Jack (1996).
• Six of the seven “struck by lightning” stories are shown in black and white.
• David Fincher’s first PG-13 rated film.
• There really was a pygmy man housed in a monkey house. Ota Benga was trapped from the Congo in 1904, and kept on display in a monkey house in the Bronx Zoo. His teeth were chiseled, and he used to shoot arrows at onlookers. In 1916, they released him, realizing they had been “inhumane,” but did little to help him adapt to this new world: he shot himself not long after his release.
• The name of Benjamin’s sailboat is Button Up.
• Director Tarsem Singh was enlisted to shoot the brief handheld montage of Benjamin backpacking through India and Cambodia, after David Fincher learned that Tarsem and Brad Pitt were both already planning to be in Southeast Asia at the same time.
• Donna DuPlantier plays a character named Blanche Devereux, the same character name as Rue McClanahan’s on “The Golden Girls’ (1985)’.
• The silver-blue motorcycle ridden by Button (Brad Pitt) is a 650cc Triumph T110, recognizable as a 1956 model because of it’s alloy head and 4-bar tank badge.
• The movie is banned in Bhutan.
• The character of Daisy was named Hildegarde Moncrief in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original short story. The name change is likely a nod to the female lead in Fitzgerald’s other well-known work, The Great Gatsby.
• When Benjamin is seen reading a novel on “The Chelsea”, a picture from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Winter Dreams” is clearly seen.
• Brad Pitt has already appeared with Cate Blanchett in Babel (2006), with Julia Ormond in Legends of the Fall (1994) and with Tilda Swinton in Burn After Reading (2008).
• When Daisy grew up and met Benjamin for the second time, she talked about “Kismet”, an Arabic word that generally used for “fate” and “fortune”.
• Julia Ormond filmed her scenes last, two weeks before end of shooting. During that period, Cate Blanchett had to undergo 4 hours of daily makeup to play a near-dead Daisy. She could only lie on the hospital bed for a short period of time due to excessive heat generated by studio lights and the blankets.
• Shot using Viper Thomson digital cameras, also used in David Fincher’s previous movie, Zodiac (2007/I). However, the close-ups and the hospital scenes were shot in the Sony F-23 cameras, as Fincher noted that the fan built inside the Viper cameras create too much noise that interferes with the dialog.
• No green was used throughout the movie in form of paint and objects. To augment the visuals, a simple LUT table was designed to remove any possible greens that could be generated from raw footage shot.
• The rights of the story was first bought by Ray Stark, back in the late 70s, with Jack Nicholson to star as Benjamin. Later, the film rights were bought by Steven Spielberg, ‘Kathleen Kennedy’ and Frank Marshall under the Amblin banner. When Kennedy and Marshall left to start their own production company, they also took the rights along and only started developing the movie in 1994. David Fincher admitted that he never read the source short story. He only read the 240-page script that Eric Roth wrote. His agent, who brought the script to Fincher’s attention was a former assistant of Stark. His resolve to make the film came evidently after the death of his father in 2002.
• The short story based on a remark by author Mark Twain. Twain famously remarked that ‘the best part of life was from the beginning and the worst part was the end’.
• The motorcycle that Button rides in India is a 350cc Royal Enfield Bullet, a British-designed motorcycle originally made under licence in Madras, India since 1955.
• >>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<<
• Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you’ve not already seen this title.
• SPOILER: Brad Pitt’s baby daughter Shiloh Jolie-Pitt appears as Benjamin and Daisy’s daughter. Shiloh was approximately 10 months old at the time she filmed her big scene.