“Some people take umbrage with the notion that an 80 year-old man should be underneath sheets with a 7 year-old girl. And my response is, that’s the fucking point of the scene.” - David Fincher, Benjamin Button commentary

(via mikbeth)

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.

Brad Pitt stated it took five hours each day to complete the make-up required for the role.

Brad Pitt’s character and indecipherable speech was inspired by many critics’ complaints about the accents of the characters in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Guy Ritchie decided to counter the criticisms by creating a character that not only couldn’t be understood by the audience but the also couldn’t be understood by characters in the movie.

Jason Flemyng joked that the working conditions on this film were so terrible that Brad Pitt’s trailer was picketed by Amnesty International as not being fit for someone to live in.

When Guy Ritchie told Brad Pitt that he would be playing a boxer, Pitt became concerned because he had just finished shooting Fight Club and did not want to play the same type of role again. Pitt took the role anyway because he wanted to work with Ritchie so badly.

Brad Pitt, who was a big fan of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, approached director Guy Ritchie and asked for a role in this film. When Ritchie found Pitt couldn’t master a London accent, he gave him the role of Mickey the Gypsy.

Brad Pitt auditioned for the role of J.D., but was rejected because he was considered “too nice” for the part.

The roles of Russell Hammond and Penny Lane were originally set to go to Brad Pitt and Sarah Polley. Polley dropped out to work on her own project, a low-budget Canadian movie The Law of Enclosures, and Pitt, for whom writer/director Cameron Crowe had written the part of the “guitarist with mystique”, worked with Crowe for months before finally admitting, according to Crowe, “I just don’t get it enough to do it.” Kate Hudson, who took over the role of Penny Lane, had been originally cast as William’s sister.

The ending in the movie is the ending in the original draft of the screenplay. Producer Arnold Kopelson had it rewritten and the ending became a race to save Tracey’s life. When David Fincher, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman read the new ending, they all demanded the that original ending be put back in or they wouldn’t do the movie.