Alum’s film right on the button
By Michelle Castillo
Feb. 18, 2009 9:05 p.m.
Frank Marshall might almost have it all. Notably one of Hollywood’s most successful producers, he’s lent his talents to blockbuster movies such as “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “The Color Purple” and “The Sixth Sense.”
Despite being nominated five times, there’s one thing notably missing from his mantle: an Oscar.
“I change (my rituals) every year until I win,” said Marshall, a 1968 UCLA graduate and co-producer of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which is up for 13 Academy Awards. “I don’t want to do the same thing I did for “˜Seabiscuit.’ There will be a new set of cuff links, a new bow tie and some new shoes.”
The quest for Oscar gold had Marshall up at 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 22, eagerly awaiting the best picture category.
“It’s great to be nominated because it’s your peers, and it’s only five movies out of the year that are nominated, so that’s quite a thrill,” Marshall said. “I’m sure I’ll be nervous ““ you can’t help but be nervous.”
While each movie has had its own unique moments, the “Button” film was one that was especially notable to Marshall.
Having read the first script for the movie back in 1990, Marshall was drawn to the unique narrative loosely based off of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, which dealt with the idea of aging and the problems and benefits that come with it. He helped produce the almost three-hour movie, a huge risk because longer movies are typically harder to market in the box office.
“I like to look at it as if you are swept up in the story, it doesn’t matter how long it is,” Marshall said. “”˜Titanic,’ the most successful movie ever, is three hours. I think that if you get really involved in the story that it should be as long as it has to be. We’re telling two full lifetimes of stories. That’s what David Fincher felt was his vision. That is what we as producers support.”
The political science graduate initially chose his major at UCLA because he thought that it was the best for “biding your time until you figure out what you want to do” and because of the turbulent era of the 1960s. Marshall also initially choose to go to Berkeley but was rejected until his sophomore year, when he then decided to go to UCLA instead.
“Sophomore year was when they closed Berkeley down so I decided I don’t want to go there,” Marshall said. “I wanted to have an education. I believe in being active, but I wasn’t that active. It was a rough time in the 1960s: UCLA was little oasis in what was going on.”
After working as a director’s assistant during his junior year on a small independent movie called “Target,” he realized he had a passion for the film industry.
“I felt like I had a baptism by fire,” Marshall said. “I learned so much just from the two months I worked “˜Target,’ because I was able to build some of the sets, I built props, I acted, I filmed some of it, and I really helped in the production. I was 20, so it was great to have a job, something that you liked to do. As I started working, I found out that I had an aptitude for it and kind of got it because I did well.”
Setting his passions aside, Marshall graduated early in December, thinking that he would follow the typical political science route, go to law school in September and travel the world until then. When he returned from his trips, an unexpected message was waiting for him: a call to help make “The Last Picture Show.” Jumping at the opportunity, Marshall decided to skip law school.
“I never thought of going into the movie business,” Marshall said. “I like movies, but I wasn’t majoring in it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I worked on this movie, which I really loved, and I really fell in love with making movies.”
Marshall’s political science background was not completely lost in his chosen career. He feels this connection especially came through during filming “Benjamin Button.”
“As far as “˜Benjamin Button,’ we were telling 85 years of history,” Marshall said. “There’s a lot of politics in what Benjamin was doing, in the things he was experiencing and what he was observing, starting with World War I, and how the effects of war are still the same today as they were back then.”
Utilizing the same negotiation skills and people skills that politicians employ on a daily basis, he sees many parallels to what his career would have been like.
“My job is really a people person job,” Marshall said. “It’s about engaging and trying to solve problems. That’s what foreign policy is; that’s what politics is. It’s really something that is not far from what I thought I would be doing as a lawyer.”
Despite what happens on Oscar Sunday, Marshall will always be proud of “Button,” as he is of all his films.
“We feel that we are entertainers, and we hope that the stories that we like a lot people will like,” Marshall said. “We wanted to make a movie that is emotional, and to get the chance to make an epic love story today that is sort of in the tradition in old Hollywood, that is kind of unusual. (The idea of) what it would be like to have that perfect moment and have it go away, so you couldn’t spend your whole life with them.”
