Zach Braff Responds to Criticism of His 2004 Movie 'Garden State'

Zach Braff was always aware of the criticism of his 2004 movie Garden State.

The 47-year-old actor is now clarifying why he created the characters for the movie and what he was being influenced by.

Zach has acknowledged that the movie is based on his real life experiences.

Keep reading to find out more…

The movie follows his character Andrew Largeman, a struggling actor, who returns to his New Jersey home for his mother’s death. Shortly thereafter, he meets Sam, played by Natalie Portman.

Some have considered her the original “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” – a term coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in 2007 “to describe female love interests with no discernible inner life but for some reason a desperate need to make sad leading men feel better about themselves.”

Sam is an eccentric epileptic and compulsive liar in the movie and over the years has been criticized as a character.

“I was just copying Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude,” Zach told The Independent.

“Those were my two favorite movies growing up, and I was kind of taking those two female protagonists and melding them into Natalie Portman. Of course I’ve heard and respect the criticism, but…I was a very depressed young man who had this fantasy of a dream girl coming along and saving me from myself,” Zach said. “And so I wrote that character.”

Asked if he knew he was depressed while writing Garden State, he said “Oh, I’ve known my whole life. I had OCD as a child. I knew I was battling something. That’s what writing Garden State was about. I wasn’t as extreme as Andy, but I was certainly battling my own demons. As I was writing it, I was hoping I could survive what became known as the quarter-life crisis, and depression, and fantasising that the perfect woman would come along and rescue me.”

Although Zach Braff and Florence Pugh are no longer together, the were able to collaborate on their new movie A Good Person.