"Thirteen Academy Award nominations - this is amazing for a Fitzgerald film," said David Page, who teaches writing not far from Fitzgerald's native St. Paul. "No matter if it wins or not, it will make people sit up a little and say, 'Wow, this is F. Scott Fitzgerald."'
Some successful TV versions have been made of Fitzgerald short stories, said Page, who teaches at Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights. His 1925 classic novel, "The Great Gatsby," has been remade several times, most notably in 1974 with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow as star-crossed lovers Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan (Australian director Baz Luhrmann is reportedly planning another remake).
But "Benjamin Button" - with its gimmick of aging in reverse - may be the most difficult of Fitzgerald's stories to translate to the screen.
"Benjamin Button" stars Brad Pitt as the title character, who is born an old man and dies a baby. Pitt is nominated for best actor, and the movie's other Academy Award nominations include best picture, director (David Fincher), supporting actress (Taraji P. Henson), original score, makeup and visual effects.
As a property, "Benjamin Button" has been kicking around Hollywood since the 1980s. Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Spike Jonze are among directors who showed interest before Fincher ("Seven," "Fight Club") took it on. But it took time for technology to evolve to allow the convincing computer-generated special effect of Pitt's head grafted onto the shriveled, stunted body of the old-at-birth Benjamin.
Fitzgerald's short story appeared in Collier's magazine in 1922 and was among his handful of fantasy stories, such as "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." It was inspired by Mark Twain's remark that it's a shame that man has to suffer the indignities of age, said "Benjamin Button" screenwriter Eric Roth, who is up for a best adapted screenplay Oscar - the same award he won for 1994's "Forrest Gump."
Roth, 63, came onto the project around 2000. He says he set aside the Fitzgerald story except for its core, which he said is "what happens when a man ages backward - what are the detriments and what are the pluses."
Roth, who shares screen story credit with Robin Swicord, moved up the timeline of "Benjamin Button." Fitzgerald's story opens with Button's birth in 1860; the movie's chronology begins with the end of World War I in 1918 and features Button's adventures in World War II and his romance with Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a ballerina who grows older as Button grows younger.
"I wanted to make it contemporary, so we ended in a modern era. I wanted some way to be able to trace the history of their lives," Roth explained. At the movies, a short story that totals only two dozen pages runs about 2 hours and 45 minutes.
The setting also was changed to New Orleans from Baltimore to take advantage of Louisiana's tax incentive for movies. Filming was supposed to start before Hurricane Katrina but was delayed until after the 2005 storm. Roth worked in Katrina as a framing device, with the aged Daisy in her hospital bed as the hurricane hits.
In the 1920s Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were "a media couple," known for their escapades of jumping into a fountain or riding on the top of a taxi, said Page, the teacher. But the Great Depression forced Fitzgerald to turn to Hollywood, where he wrote dialogue for "Gone With the Wind" and other films but struggled, Page said.
"He had a really difficult time working in groups. It was hard for him to make that transition from the solitary writer to working on a team. And that did him in. Also the drinking," Page said.
In 1940, Fitzgerald collapsed and died at the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. He was 44.
St. Paul, where Fitzgerald was born in 1896, celebrates his legacy. Humorist Garrison Keillor led efforts to rename the downtown theater that hosts "A Prairie Home Companion" after Fitzgerald, and the author is immortalized in a couple of statues. Richard McDermott, 81, who has lived since 1976 in the apartment where Fitzgerald was born, said he gets visitors from around the world who want to see the writer's birthplace.
"He would absolutely love it," McDermott said of Fitzgerald's posthumous success. "I think that he would be just tremendously delighted to know that some of his work still echoes down all of these decades."
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