By his own rules

By Tim Hunter
December 4, 2004
Zach Braff in Australia.

Zach Braff in Australia.
Photo: Fiona Morris

Publicity tours for actors sound glamorous: five-star hotels, food and refreshments on tap, meeting local celebrities, appearances on television and radio. What could be better or more fun? But it's not all it's cracked up to be; it's hard work, with little chance to see the cities they visit.

"I haven't seen much of Melbourne," says actor Zach Braff, who is on such a tour for his new film, Garden State. In his Park Hyatt Hotel suite, he glances out the window. "But I saw this beautiful church across this street!" He pulls the curtain aside and indicates a cathedral. "I'm going to see that church."

Having written, directed and starred in Garden State, there's a lot for the 29-year-old to talk about, and with a full day of media interviews, thankfully, this is his first for the morning. "So you've got me bright and perky," he says.

Braff isn't your average Hollywood star. In fact, there's very little Hollywood about him. Best known for his role as J.D. in the TV satirical sitcom Scrubs and for his role as Benji, the gay gym junkie in The Broken Hearts Club, Braff's debut was in Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993. He's casual, relaxed and not at all pretentious, but pleasantly left-of-centre.

"I was never a big fan of the Hollywood blockbuster," he says. "It was probably the influence of my father. He took us to see movies and theatre in New York City, commuting from New Jersey. Even before I knew what the concept of independent cinema was, my father would bring us to see films that weren't coming to New Jersey, like The Gods Must Be Crazy. It just blew my mind, and I never laughed so hard in a movie.

"And as teenagers, when you want to rent that same movie for the fifth time, he would instead come back from the store with a classic. So instead of Sixteen Candles for the hundredth time, he would bring back Harold and Maude. At first, we'd complain, but then we'd watch, and our eyes were opened up to things that most kids didn't see."

Garden State is the story of Andrew Largeman (Braff), or Large, who has returned home to New Jersey after nine years for his mother's funeral. His relationship with his psychiatrist father (Ian Holm) is strained, and his reconnection with old school friends surreal. Along the way, he meets a young woman, Sam (Natalie Portman), and slowly, Large starts taking more control of his life.

It's a very intimate and familiar story, and one that has its roots in Braff's own experiences. "I started collecting stories and anecdotes from growing up," he says. "I always had journals and wrote on scraps of paper, things that made me laugh, things that struck me as interesting. When I went to film school, I started beginning to think what shape all that might take. I began free-writing, and characters begin to form."

In the end, it was before shooting for Scrubs began in 2001 that Braff thought, 'I have four months, this is the time to write this script.' And so he did.

"I've always been climbing both ladders at once, aspiring to be an actor and aspiring to be a director," he says when talking about how he came to write, direct and star in Garden State. "I debated it being someone else, but as an actor on a television show, I would never have even got an audition for this part. I guess in my mind I thought, this is a script I would kill to get a chance to be in, and obviously it's ludicrous for me to try and star in the first film I direct, but am I giving away what could be my huge break? And it turns out I'm so glad I made that choice."

Garden State is about lost souls, damaged people and dysfunctional relationships. It doesn't sound too appealing, but Braff brings to it an honesty and vulnerability that has struck a chord with audiences here and in the US. It's about needing a home when our original home has become irrelevant.

"As human beings, we need a touchstone, we need a place we can call home plate. I remember being at college, I was really depressed and lonesome, and had this longing, but I couldn't figure out what it was for. It was for home, but home wasn't home any more. My friends had all gone away, my parents had moved, and I was longing for this place that doesn't exist, and God that's a lonely feeling!"

Being about relationships, interestingly, one of Garden State's scenes between Large and his father is not a cathartic mess. "One of the notes I kept getting from people was 'That scene needs to be an all-out screaming match'. I said, 'Have you ever had an all-out screaming match with your father, because I certainly haven't.' "

In fact, Large and his father spend most of the film avoiding eye and physical contact, so that when Large meets Sam's mother, who is affectionate and tactile and hugs him, it's a different story.

"It's awkward at first, but once he's in there I wanted the audience to feel, when was the last time this guy was hugged, particularly by someone maternal? The look on his face says I don't want this hug to end.

"I was poking fun at this ridiculous concept of what traditional family values are, and what a traditional family is supposed to be. I never saw that, where is that?"

The cast Braff assembled became a family of its own - and one Braff had only dreamt about, with Natalie Portman, Ian Holm and Peter Skarsgaard.

"When I was writing, I couldn't help but daydream about who was going to play the love interest or the father. When we got to that exciting stage when someone actually asks you, who do you have in mind for the part, we did have lists of people, and we said, someone like Natalie Portman, someone like Peter Skarsgaard, someone like Ian Holm. It was shocking, surprising, but thrilling as one by one they said yes."

The whole film was shot in 25 days. "My only experience in film making is student film, serial television and independent movies," says Braff, "and in all three of those, there is no time to sit around and talk. It's all extremely fast-paced, and there's an adrenaline to it that I really thrive on. It reminds me of the theatre, which is where I started. I like that.

"I've never done a big studio movie, but from what I hear from my friends, they tell me stories of spending two weeks on one scene. As a director, I'd be going crazy.

"I was so 'in it', so inside this dream come true, I didn't really stop and think about it until it was all over. And by over, I mean seeing in the cinema and taking a breath and thinking, I can't believe I had the balls to do that. There was so much rejection involved with it, that by the time we got down to the line and making it, I had assembled such a cavalier confidence that eventually faded as I landed back on my feet.

"Of all the ridiculous things I was trying to do, from getting a Simon and Garfunkel song to be in the movie, through to getting a 70-foot camera crane that a $2.5 million movie shouldn't have, every step of the way, someone said, 'It's never going to happen, you should move on.' "But we always found a way to make it happen."

Garden State is now screening.