Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story.

Yes, but I am not sure to what extent, because it’s really based on Eric Roth’s version of it. And the truth is that I didn’t read the short story until 2005, just before we started making the movie.

How did you get involved in the movie?

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 the direction; though he walked away from the project (I remember telling him to think about it). Then Eric Roth came in and wrote a first draft of the screenplay, my agent sent it to me and I loved it. After that I started having meetings with Eric and with the producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, and the big question came out: ‘How will we do this?’

At that point, what was the main concern?

The aging; but, as I come from visual effects, I told them not to worry. And they had been involved in a lot of groundbreaking visual effect movies too, so they believed me — especially as I wasn’t scared by it.

Were they concerned about the backward-aging process, as you wanted the same actor to be Benjamin Button throughout?

Yes, and that’s what Brad Pitt said when he read the script — that he didn’t want to play Benjamin from 30 to 50, but his whole life.

You have worked with Brad Pitt several times now.

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. And you have to be able to recognise that the actor behind the character that is being introduced as five years old on the inside, but 85 on the outside, is the person you came to see. So, the notion of taking the face of someone who is very popular and sculpting it through time was interesting, and to me that was important.

How did you see the movie?

I saw it as a meditation on death (this being an extension of life more than a loss) with a powerful love story, because I believe great love stories always end in death. I think that for the last 400 years, since Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet really, most love stories have been defined by co-dependence — being two halves of one whole. And one of the things that drew me to Roth’s script was his consistent reassertion of the notion that these were two complete individuals who together made a union, but spent a lot of the movie apart and kept re-meeting throughout their lives.

I remember having conversations with Eric Roth about those big questions, like how people are defined more so by regret than by opportunity. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button deals with the universal subject of aging. And what could be more universal than mortality. Our obsession with aging has to do with the thing we are most afraid of, which is death.

But the fact that Benjamin Button grows younger as he gets older: Is it an affliction or a curse?

We treat it more as a curse than an affliction.

And the film has humour too.

Yes, because if you have a place for irony in your heart, you can have those moments.

How was your relationship with the screenwriter Eric Roth?

When I met Eric I felt I was with a kindred spirit and with someone who was open to other ideas and to accepting different ways of getting to the same place he wanted to go to. It was a nice kind of marriage.

What was the shoot like in post-Katrina Louisiana?

We first went there before the hurricane, and then returned to make the film. The story initially took place in Baltimore, but there wasn’t much of the old city left. And these photos kept on coming from New Orleans that were perfect, so we changed the script to make it work. Then Katrina hit, but we still went back to do it there. We spent a good seven months in Louisiana and it was great, because New Orleans offered a whole different kind of feeling and gave you something back. And the extras were amazing and so grateful. I feel we got something there we couldn’t have found anywhere else.

So, how did the weather treat you?

It’s funny because, for instance, during the revival tent sequence at night, it was only 36 degrees, in what we portray as a hot, sweaty New Orleans summer, and it was freezing. Then we went to Montreal to shoot some scenes that took place during the winter in Murmansk, and we ended up having to blow ice and snow all over the place because it was 80 degrees. It had never been that hot there.

How does aging affect his relationship with Daisy?

The first time they are together we see them as friends, but he looks like he is 80 and she looks like she is 8. And later, when she tries to seduce him, he is in his 50s and she is in her 20s, which makes him feel kind of terrible. And then there is a beautiful moment in the movie, and my favourite in Brad Pitt’s career, when she is hurt and he goes to Paris to visit her. He sits down in a chair next to her, and when you see Brad absorb how perfect she thinks he looks, it is a whole different thing.

What did you think of Brad Pitt’s performance as Benjamin Button?

We cast him in The Fight Club because he is great, and was capable of making an incredibly seductive character become this incredibly dangerous guy. But, 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!’

And what do you think Cate Blanchett brought to Daisy?

Cate is also great, and she has been so good for so long. I remember seeing Elizabeth for the first time and wondering how she could be so riveting, powerful, stunning, confident and fully realised without anyone hardly knowing who she was.

And the rest of cast is extraordinary too, with names like Tilda Swinton, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Taraji P. Henson…

The luck of having really good material is that you get to choose. And Tilda was actually Brad’s idea!

How would you describe yourself as a filmmaker?

I am not one of those people who second-guesses a direction, because once I’ve made a decision I commit to it. And I often feel that the most valuable times in pre-production are more about deciding what you don’t want to do than what you want to do.

Then, why did you want to make this film?

Because I felt I understood it at a certain level. And I think I would have kicked myself if anyone else had done it.