Zach Braff’s breakout 2004 directorial debut feature, Garden State, is one of my earliest memories of grief — a subject that, didja know, I think (and write) about a lot (exhibits A, B, C and D). The film, if you’ll recall, isn’t as much about sadness as it is about malaise and the aftershock of losing someone you love and the places you go in search of a way forward.
Now, nearly two decades later, Braff is back in the director’s chair with his latest feature, A Good Person (now available on streaming) — a story of tragedy, forgiveness and hope centering around an aspiring musician, Allison (Florence Pugh), who is involved in a fatal car crash that kills, among others, her future sister-in-law Molly.
Confronted by Molly’s father, Daniel (Morgan Freeman), who Allison was going to call her father-in-law before the accident undid her life, she is forced to reconcile with the accident and the addiction brought on in its wake. It’s an unrelenting look at tragedy’s web and the places one falls into en route to rock bottom.
I’ve been a fan of Braff’s since his film debut in W*ody All*n’s Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993, but I have especially enjoyed watching his trajectory as a writer/director, including his short film In the Time It Takes to Get There and his directing work on Ted Lasso and Shrinking. You get the sense, and I mean this in the most complimentary way, that he enjoys the making of something as much as he does the outcome. In a world increasingly full of creatives who are in it for the fame or the acclaim, Braff seems more keen to have deep discussions about the space between what he was putting down and what audiences picked up. That’s when his eyes light up the most.
I knew I needed to seek out Zach Braff and discuss A Good Person with him. And so I did.
This movie clocks in at 2:08. There’s been a lot of Film Twitter discourse in recent years about film length. The Cut, for instance, did an article a few years back titled “Movies Should Be 97 Minutes Long.” As a filmmaker, and one who has done a movie dangerously close to that 97 minute mark (2004’s Garden State was 104 minutes) and one that far exceeds that with A Good Person, where do you come down on this discussion?
I think that movie length is often, for me, capped at bladder length. With this particular film, I knew that I wanted to have a pace that wasn't rushed. I knew I wanted to tell a very large, emotional story. I didn't know what the timing would be until I cut it. I made sure I was allowed to choose. I knew that I wanted to have a little bit of leeway to be at the two hour mark. With Garden State, I was 26 years old, so I wasn't allowed to go beyond that. I was pretty much told that it needed to be that length. In this day and age, you're fighting attention spans, especially with this TikTok generation. A friend of mine said he watched his teenage daughter watching a show — I think it was Outer Banks — and he saw her just fast forwarding to the high-stakes, intense moments. She didn't want to watch any denouement. [Laughs] So I don't know what to say other than if Scorsese's turning in a movie that's, you know, 3:45 or whatever, I'll watch every second of it. Who won't? It just depends on whether you like the particular film. If you like the filmmaker’s stuff, you will follow them anywhere they go.
People ingest content differently now. Is there any part of you in the writing or directing process that said, “I want to cater to this new way of consuming content”?
Noooo! [Laughing] No way! This is my first film coming out at the height of all of this TikTok-ification. I have friends that are on TikTok and they say, “Did you know your movie is trending on TikTok?” And I said, “That's a good thing, right?” And they showed me and I'm like, “These are the peak emotional moments of the film, and they've been distilled down to TikToks.”
And how do you feel about that?
Of course I want the word of mouth and I want people to be able to see the film. And I realize that because of the way movies are rolled out these days — the movie comes out and you can only buy it — that there are people who don't want to spend that amount of money but they want to see the movie. And then for them, someone will throw important sections of it up on TikTok and they just go, “Okay, I'll just watch that.” Now that the movie is finally rentable (as of 5/3), you can only hope as a creator that that will convert people to now go, “That's affordable. I'll actually watch the whole thing because I like those clips.” What you don't want to have happen is people go, “Oh yeah, I saw all the intense moments. I’m good!”
Right, and it’s hard to know the exact media formula that is enough to gain their attention while also keeping them wanting more.
Exactly.
So this is a story about addiction but it’s really — for me, anyway — a story about grief. Would you agree?
I think it's a film about loneliness, about searching for human connection, and both grief and addiction can come on top of, or in collusion with, loneliness. They both come out of loneliness.
Grief is a topic you’ve explored in your art and spoken about at length before due to your own experiences with the concept. What made you want to explore this topic this time around?
I wrote the film during the pandemic. Florence and I were a couple. We were in lockdown and we had a friend that was living in the small guesthouse behind my home and he got COVID and died. I had lost other people very close to me in the last four years. And I said to Florence, “I gotta write something. I'm gonna use this time to write something. I don't know what it is.” And so when I sat down and I'm staring at the blinking cursor, this is what came out of me. I clearly wanted to write about grief because I had lost four people that I loved. But I also wanted to write about these intense feelings of loneliness I have always felt. I wondered if other people felt the same way and could relate to these feelings of isolation even though you're surrounded by others. And so I wove the story around those questions.
Did this alleviate any of the struggle or answer any of those questions that you had?
When you make something, whatever it is — you write a book, you're a stand-up comedian, you're a painter, you're an artist of any kind — and you create something that represents how you feel, it’s very cathartic to see then if other people see themselves in it. That's really the magical moment. For me, that was the whole national tour of the film, going around different cities and showing it and seeing the audience's response to it. It was just incredible. That’s when it felt like, “Oh, I'm not alone in these feelings.” Of course, I know in the macro that I'm not alone in feeling grief. But when people see it — exactly what happens, happens. Of course, some people tap into the addiction piece. Some people tap into the grief piece. But even more wonderfully, people come to me and they say, “I saw something in myself that I couldn't quite articulate.” And, “I had a conversation with my mother that we've been 10 years overdue in having.” I had people write to me that they're finally going to rehab. I have people write to me that they're finally seeing their grief in a new way. So that's when it's so cathartic and it feels so wonderful because that's the whole goal, right? To create something that is your expression, that hopefully other people can get some catharsis from and can see themselves in.
Do you think you would have written this movie had the pandemic not happened?
Absolutely not. This really came out of all of the feelings of the pandemic in conjunction, especially having lost someone. But it wasn't just that; I felt this great trauma as I'm sure everyone did. Perhaps mine was more acute because someone who lived with me was dying of the disease, but I definitely felt like — how are we going to stand up from this crazy trauma that has befallen Earth? How do we stand back up again? And I was looking at my friend's wife who was dealing with a small child. How is she going to move on from this? And then I was thinking globally, how do humans move on from this? So I think all of that is in this story because the story is about how we stand back up again after tragedy.
New Jersey is a big part of this film and other works of yours. What is it about New Jersey that compels you to bring it to your art vs. just being the place you’re from?
I think it's the ultimate manifestation of writing what you know. I felt that I was going to write something very raw, and I knew that I could get South Orange, New Jersey right. I knew the whole foundation of this story if it was set in my hometown. I know what the dive bar looks like. I know what a random drugged-up person on a child's BMX bike looks like. I know what those houses look like. I know what a church with an AA program might look like. I know the New Jersey transit line. I just had such specifics. All of those textures. If you're doing things like I'm doing, writing personal stories and making them films, you can bring such a specificity to your screenplay if you're folding in all these little details that are so specific to one's experience. That's what I did with Garden State. I went to a neurologist because I was having these horrible headaches, and I was waiting for him and looked at the wall and thought, “God, if this guy has one more diploma, it's gonna have to go on the ceiling.” And so that little weird specific detail was something that I experienced. That's why I like Jersey. Also, one thing I really loved about South Orange (where I grew up) is that there’s this commuter train that brings you to Manhattan in 25 minutes. So you're in the suburbs and you're not in a city of any form — it's a suburb with parks and a public school that I went to and all of the things that go along with suburbs — but you're 25 minutes from one of the centers of Earth. And so I always thought there was some sort of interesting energy in growing up there because it gives you a target. Some people are gonna get on that train and go make their dreams come true and some people aren't. I like the energy of a town like that.
You mentioned writing what you know. I have been writing a ton about grief (I lost my father earlier this year). I know you lost your dad several years ago. As someone newer to the grief of a dead father — specifically in conversation with someone who's a few years into the grief of a dead father — what have you learned about that specific grief? The loss of a father is strange and unique.
I think just keeping them alive with stories. I feel like my family and my friends who knew my father laugh about him all the time. We laugh about things he said. He was a very funny man. There's a way to keep someone you love with you and present in your life by not being afraid to tell those stories and to tell those anecdotes and to use their jokes.
We know and love Florence the actor on screen. I’d love to hear more about Florence from the perspective of directing her. What is she like to work with?
I’ve never really seen anything like it. I really can say that. I know some people would think I'm biased, but I've been doing this for a long time. I was a kid actor. I got my first part at 14 years old. And I've worked with a lot of legends. I've been blessed to direct a few legends now. I've worked with geniuses of all stripes. There's something so new and exciting and thrilling about Florence. She's just living proof that there is this certain thing. They call it star quality because it's like light emanating from who they are. That is something you can't quite put your finger on. That’s being a movie star. Another aspect of it is that she hasn't had an ounce of training. It is 100% natural ability. It's like a young kid walking into a basketball court and just being brilliant. It’s thrilling to watch. And she's very smart. I developed this script with her. I would bring her the script and we would talk through things. She had great notes and great, great thoughts, and definitely helped me make the scripts better and even more bespoke for her.
In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, Florence explained this about your relationship: “We've been trying to do this separation without the world knowing, because it's been a relationship that everybody has an opinion on.” I imagine this is even more complicated when you’re out promoting something you were collaborating on and people are inclined to ask even more questions about your personal life. How did you thread that needle?
It's very simple: We love each other so much that we were both able to really pivot to being incredible friends who still love each other very much. And also, this is like our child, you know? This movie was our child. I think both of us are so proud of it. This was a hard film to make. We shot it during COVID. We only had 26 days. A COVID shutdown would have shut the whole film down because we just didn't have a lot of money. And I think we’re both just so proud of what we made and so we were thrilled to go out and promote it together. We just have an extraordinary friendship.
A bit of a pivot: Your Cheaper By the Dozen remake is amongst the titles set to leave Disney as “part of the maturation process,” as CEO Bob Iger explained. I wonder how you feel about that.
Well, it's horrible. I’m heartbroken. And I have to tell you something: This is the first time in history that you can make something and it will disappear off the face of the earth because there are no physical DVDs. It isn't like they're taking it off the service but you can buy it on iTunes if you want to see it. It’s just gone. And that's never been true in the history of the moving picture. I saw Bryan Cranston posting about a movie he made, and he was saying that this won't exist in any form beyond this date, so if you have any curiosity, you had to check it out before that date. I'm gonna have to post about Cheaper by the Dozen and say it’s now or never. That's really sad, especially because the only reason that these streaming services are getting rid of these films is about having to pay residuals on that title. They would literally rather throw that work away than pay those residuals. I'll be fine, but those young kids in that movie certainly got the biggest check they ever received in their whole young careers and now won’t receive any residuals for their work.
One thing that I love about you is how much you're out there letting people know nuances, not just pushing A Good Person. You're basically taking this film and making people's reaction to it a part of how you're telling this story. For instance, you mentioned the fact that people are coming to you sharing stories of going back to rehab after watching it. Those are things you could just hold on to, but you've chosen to weave that into your public telling of the story of this film.
It's such a competition for people's attention, now more than ever. We all have tons of shows that we want to get to. Audiences have so many options. How do you stand out in the crowd? One thing that was so uniquely special about A Good Person was the audience's insane reaction to it. If I could just get people to watch it, what would happen was extraordinary. The audience score was like 97%. The reactions from anyone who happened to go were just phenomenal. And it hasn’t been until now, where the bulk of the population who doesn't necessarily want to buy a movie or rent a movie for 20 bucks, is going to finally see the movie because they can rent it for cheap on streaming services. So the onus is on me, because no one else is going to promote it. Florence is posting because she’s passionate about it. Morgan's people post for him of course. But MGM and Amazon — they’ve all moved on to other things. So the onus is on me to be like, “Hey, don't forget this is available now for six bucks. Please check this out. Look at some of the reactions that people are having to it. I think you might like it.” It was kind of my way to keep the word about it alive until the time when people are most likely to see it when you can finally rent it for $5.99. I'm really proud of the film and I wanted to have more and more eyes that see it because I think we made something special.