The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Story to Screenplay

F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the great voices in the history of American literature, is best known today for his novels, but during his lifetime his fame stemmed primarily from his prolific achievements as one of America's most gifted short story writers. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is one of his most memorable creations.

"I was born under unusual circumstances." And so begins the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man whois born in his eighties and ages backwards. A man, like any of us, unable to stop time. We follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the twenty-first century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man's life can be. Directed by David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a time traveler's tale of the people and places Benjamin Button bumps into along the way, the loves he loses and finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.

Included in this volume is F. Scott Fitzgerald's provocative story, as well as Eric Roth's stunning screenplay, a bold re-imagining of this classic tale.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, attended Princeton University, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and the couple divided their time among New York, Paris, and the Riviera, becoming a part of the American expatriate circle that included Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos. Fitzgerald was a major new literary voice, and his masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died of a heart attack in 1940 at the age of forty-four, while working on The Love of the Last Tycoon. For his sharp social insight and breathtaking lyricism, Fitzgerald is known as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.