Wednesday, December 24, 2008

the curious case of this hollywood film

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will be showing in theaters tomorrow, Christmas Day, and when the trailers, advertising/marketing ads came out a couple months ago, I thought, WOW! Hollywood made a movie based off one of my favorite novels, Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. I got excited and told everyone I knew that this film is from Greer's novel.

But, oddly enough, this Hollywood movie is supposedly based on one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories written back in the 1920s. I went to the library yesterday, found Fitzgerald's short story, which is about 20 or so pages long, and his story doesn't match the film at all. The film is largely based on Greer's novel. Did Hollywood take an idea from Fitzgerald, find Greer's novel, a bestseller since 2004, and write the script to match Greer's storyline?

Here's an interesting podcast of Albom interviewing Greer and you can decide if Hollywood took liberties with Greer's novel and falsely credited Fitzgerald.

Oh, and Happy HOLIDAYS!

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