Zach Braff calls “Garden State,” his cinematic writing and directorial debut, “an awakening.”
“I think everyone can relate to that feeling where you’re getting anxious and going, `I’m due for a new chapter in my life to open up,'” Braff says during a recent interview in San Francisco. “And this is about a guy who’s long overdue for that.”
Best known for his role as J.D. on the critically acclaimed NBC series “Scrubs,” Braff stars in “Garden State” as Andrew Largeman, a lost twentysomething actor/waiter living in L.A. who returns to New Jersey for the first time in nine years for the funeral of his mother. While home, Largeman reconnects with old friends (including the superb Peter Sarsgaard) and his psychiatrist father (Ian Holm), with whom he doesn’t know how to communicate. He also falls in love with the quirky Samantha (Natalie Portman), an epileptic prone to lying and then confessing the truth shortly thereafter out of guilt.
Though “Garden State” is both a comedy and a love story, the film shares more in common with indie auteurs such as Jim Jarmusch and Alan Rudolph than with most current Hollywood romantic comedies. Braff draws much of his humor from a series of bizarre interconnected slice-of-life moments: waking up the morning after a huge party and seeing a man dressed in full knight’s armor walking through the living room; a friend who made millions by selling his patent for silent Velcro and now has no idea what to do with his free time; a hotel employee (rapper Method Man in a memorable cameo) offering peep shows to the hotel guests in a sleazy underworld.
Everyday events
For Portman, who was the first to sign on to the project, those little strange but true moments are what make the movie so endearing.
“It’s a lot of everyday events that could happen and do happen that are really bizarre,” she says in a phone interview. “It’s estranging the normal that makes art, and so I just think it’s attending to all the little moments — from the pet cemetery to the people who live in an ark on the edge of an abyss — that creates this sort of vision of the world that Zach has.”
Going into “Garden State” Braff had a clear idea of what that vision was, down to each song.
With the aid of music supervisors Amanda Scheer Demme and Buck Damon, Braff put together a soundtrack that mixes indie rock acts the Shins with classic rockers Simon & Garfunkel and alternative superstars Coldplay. By Braff’s own admission it’s a soundtrack that well exceeds a film with a $2.5 million budget. Braff, who put together a mix CD of the songs he wanted in the movie and sent it out with the script, went to the artists themselves to get the music he wanted.
“I wrote Paul Simon a letter,” Braff says. “We played his entire team the scene on the crane where [Andrew and Sam] kiss for the first time, and they were like, `All right, you got it.’ I appealed to him. I said, `Look, your music has scored my childhood.’ I couldn’t not have a Simon & Garfunkel song in this movie.”
Braff, who began working on the script to “Garden State” while still at Northwestern University film school in 1996, had a steely resolve when it came to knowing what he wanted and getting the film made. But both Portman and Sarsgaard say that for a first-time director, he was remarkably calm.
Fun atmosphere on set
“He really just kept his cool the whole time,” Portman says. “He was really kind to everyone and relaxed and created this atmosphere of loose fun, people hanging out who were also very focused.”
That relaxed atmosphere allowed Sarsgaard to imbue Largeman’s slacker friend Mark with more heart than even Braff envisioned.
“The interpretation was totally up to me. He completely and totally let me play it as I wanted to,” Sarsgaard says during a recent phone interview.
“I think he sort of saw it as maybe a little bit more menacing. I remember he wanted me to get a tattoo at one point. And it was because I don’t think he knew that I was going to play it more schlumpy and less menacing.”
Braff says that his concept of what the movie was about changed during the editing.
“When I set out to make the movie I would’ve told you, `It’s a movie about a guy who comes home and in being able to fall in love for the first time is finally able to open up and talk to his father,'” he says. “When I got in the editing room, started shaping it and piecing it together, I was like, `You know what? It’s a movie about [a guy] who comes home and in being able to deal with his father is able to fall in love for the first time.’ So I didn’t really know it was a love story until I finished it.”
A modern journey
“Garden State,” which Braff describes as a sort of “`Wizard of Oz’-like journey through suburbia,” is many things: a comedy, a drama, a love story, a film about relationships, about family. As a recent college graduate entering the real world, Portman sees it ultimately as a coming-of-age story.
“When you’re on the brink of being an adult you have all these choices that can be almost overwhelming,” she says.
“Obviously luckier than having no choices, but just as scary because you’re always worried making one choice will eliminate all the others. Or what if you make a mistake and five years from now you’re going to have less time ahead of you to make a better choice and find your unique place in the world and your unique voice?
“I think you feel that fear and confusion in the film.”
