For over 10 years, Swicord worked on the screen adaptation of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", based on the short story of the same name from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 collection "Tales of the Jazz Age." The project had been in development by producer Ray Stark for 20 years before she began working on the script. Swicord said that the adaptation was so loose that she felt that her work almost became an original screenplay. The script had a very long development period in Hollywood and was attached to many directors, actors, and studios. The eventual director of the film, David Fincher, hired Eric Roth, who rewrote much of Swicord's script.