On Oscar night, 2009, as the presenter tore into the envelope containing the Academy Award winner for best adapted screenplay, Fitzgerald fans may have been wondering whether they were about to witness another twist in the odd saga of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hollywood. From the frustrating second career that resulted in only one screenwriting credit, the funny but largely forgotten Pat Hobby stories, and the potential masterpiece of a Hollywood novel cut short by an untimely death, to the troubling, if heartfelt, portrait in Budd Schulberg’s The Disenchanted and the string of poor big-screen adaptations of his best works, Fitzgerald never had much luck with Hollywood. But here, out of nowhere, was a chance for Hollywood immortality via an Academy Award—but for “Benjamin Button,” of all things?
The “curiosity” of Fitzgerald’s being back in the Hollywood news for “Button” stems from the great disparity between original and adaptation. Indeed, to call Eric Roth’s screenplay for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button an “adaptation” of Fitzgerald’s story is to stretch the definition of the term more than a little. Fitzgerald’s “Benjamin Button” is a brisk, lightweight comic farce about a man who is born “apparently about seventy years of age,” with full white beard, and ages backward. Though not a great story, it is a funny one, and Fitzgerald mines the comic possibilities of his fanciful concept— from the old man baby complaining about “all this yelling and howling” at the nursery, to the father telling his son he is going to name him Methuselah, to the image of a steel-grey 18-year-old getting laughed off the Yale campus when he tries to matriculate as a freshman.
Roth and director David Fincher’s version, on the other hand, departs entirely from Fitzgerald’s comic tone. Aside from the premise of backward aging, everything about the film is completely different from the story. This is the filmmakers’ right, of course. Unfortunately, what Filcher and Roth come up with, in place of the comedy, is a slack-paced sentimental journey that meanders somewhat aimlessly through much of the twentieth century (in a manner reminiscent of Forrest Gump, another screenplay from Roth’s pen). That a nice looking but emotionally vapid film like this received thirteen Oscar nominations was surprising, to put it mildly, especially when one considers that a very good literary adaptation, Sam Mendes’s film of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, was all but snubbed.
Button did not get the “adapted screenplay” award, or many others, so the next chapter of the Fitzgerald in Hollywood story will have to wait—for now. However, as we were putting this edition of the Newsletter together, whispers were coming out of the film industry that Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, director of the recent big budget flop Australia, was getting ready to embark on his next project (are you sitting down?): The Great Gatsby.
Above from F. Scott Fitzgerald Newsletter, 2009
Anyone interested in the works and life of
F. Scott Fitzgerald is welcome.
