Zach Braff swept young audiences off their feet in Scrubs and Garden State. This week, Braff - starring in the new romantic drama The Last Kiss, opening tomorrow - discussed music, marriage and his latest film with the editors.
Street: As a director from Garden State, was it a relief to go back to acting on film? Did you have to restrain yourself from giving directing pointers?
Zach Braff: Kind of. Inherent in being a director is having a very strong opinion about things. It's not necessarily always right by any means but I think part of it is having a strong opinion about things. When I started making this movie with Tony [Goldwyn], I was very lucky that he liked Garden State and respected me a lot and was a really collaborative director because otherwise, I think we would have driven each other crazy. I'm sure there were times when I put in my two cents and he wished I would just shut up but we worked really well together. He's an actor himself, so he was really interested in having a dialogue with me. There were times we didn't agree always, but I always yielded to him because it's his movie.
Street: There's a rumor that you read the script for The Last Kiss and tweaked the dialogue a little bit.
ZB: Well, first of all, Paul Haggis wrote the script, so the script by no means needed anything. I mean, he's Paul Haggis, for God's sake. But I do feel that I was in a unique position because I am a writer and I feel like I almost can tweak things and tailor-make them for me. I think I write pretty good dialogue and I also knew these guys. I'm 31 years old, I have a group of friends that are just like these guys and I just felt like I could contribute something to it. So I did do a little tinkering with some of the dialogue, but not because it needed it, just because I wanted to, you know, urinate on it like a dog on a fire hydrant and make it my own.
Street: Are there parallels between your character Michael in this film and yourself?
ZB: Not necessarily parallels. I can relate to the themes that the movie's about, but I don't live in the Midwest and I'm not an architect and all that stuff. I can relate to the societal pressures to think about getting married and that fear of saying goodbye to your youth, that surprises are going to stop coming.
Street: Have you seen the movie that The Last Kiss is based on?
ZB: It's based on an Italian movie called L'Ultimo Bacio. It's great, there are lots of things about that that played well for an Italian audience that we need to Americanize, things that wouldn't necessarily work with an American audience. Paul Haggis, who did Million Dollar Baby and Crash, he wrote the script. He definitely tweaked it a little bit and Americanized it in a bunch of ways.
Street: Do you find TV or movies more rewarding to work in?
ZB: They're both really cool, they both have different benefits. Scrubs has become such a family; we've been doing it for five-and-a-half years so you really get to know people and you really get so comfortable with each other that you will try things you wouldn't necessarily try in a movie where you're working with strangers. When you do a TV show for five-and-a-half years, it's like the equivalent of hanging out with all your best friends, so you could be just as goofy and silly as you'd be around them. You can do that in front of the camera and feel safe and so I think you're more willing to try bigger and broader, more risky things. And a movie's great because you're always doing something new; one month you're playing a completely different character than the next. I think they're both great. I love TV, I'm a big fan of TV and I'm sure that I'll do more TV in my life.
Street: What's going on with Scrubs?
ZB: There's just a lot of speculation, no one really knows. The seventh year would be the first year that I'm not under contract, so the only thing to discuss is the fact that I'm not legally obligated to come back. I'm not sure how that will all play out. I might come back, I might not, the show might go on without me. I don't know, there are lots of different things that we're in talks about.
Street: How did you avoid just remaking [Garden State]?
ZB: I'm on the web and I'm on MySpace and I'm very honest with my fans in saying that this isn't Garden State 2 and I'm not going make Garden State 2. It was a rare thing and I was way shocked at how people responded to it so amazingly. I can't set out to make seminal movies about our mental evolution. I'm so psyched that [Garden State] hit a note with people. This movie coincidentally does happen to be about a next crisis in your life. But it's a very different movie, totally, and the next thing I'm going to direct is a really dark drama. There's a chance I might do a broad comedy with Bill Lawrence [creator of Scrubs]. So I'm always going to try and do something differently. The one thing I will say is if you like Garden State, then there's a chance we have similar tastes in movies, and this is a movie that I really like and would recommend to people even if I wasn't in it.
For an extended edition of this interview, as well as an interview with Rachel Bilson, check out www.34st.com.
