In an interview in David Prior‘s excellent The Curious Birth of Benjamin Buttondocumentary (which is longer than the movie), Fincher says he was attracted to the project because he wanted to make a movie about death since his father had recently died. He explains that being at his father’s deathbed was so much more profound than having a child. “You want it to be over as quickly as possible,” says Fincher, “and yet you don’t want it to be over.” This led to him wanting to tell a story about “Love measured against this graph paper of something we try so desperately to ignore.”