Zach Braff was born in South Orange, New Jersey on April 6, 1975. He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood where he was friends with hip-hop diva-to-be Lauryn Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zach studied film at Northwestern University where he earned a B.A. before heading to Hollywood. As an actor, he\u2019s best known as Dr. John \u201cJ.D.\u201d Dorian on Scrubs, the Emmy-winning sitcom which enjoyed a nine-year run on network TV from 2001 to 2010. As a director, he made an impressive debut in 2004 with Garden State, a semi-autobiographical offering which he also wrote and starred in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Zach, Wish I Was Here is the culmination of personal filmmaking at its best. As the movie\u2019s co-writer, director, star and producer, he was involved in nearly every aspect of the picture\u2019s creative development. A decade ago, in Garden State, he perfectly portrayed the plight of a young man trying to find his place in a crazy world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This go-round, he and his co-writer brother, Adam, examine what it means to have a family today. Zach plays Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor with a wife (Kate Hudson) stuck in a soul-crushing job. The couple have two kids (Joey King and Pierce Gagnon) who are being forced out of private school due to financial constraints, since Aidan\u2019s dad (Mandy Patinkin)is facing life-threatening health issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite such harsh realities, the picture nevertheless poetically weaves a wonderful tapestry of an enchanting world worth living in. This is in no small part thanks to the power of the imagination which has fueled Zach\u2019s own evolution from a wide-eyed kid from New Jersey into a gifted filmmaker capable of connecting with his audience emotionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kam Williams:<\/strong> Hi Zach, thanks for the interview. I\u2019m honored to have this opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zach Braff:<\/strong> Oh, thanks Kam. It\u2019s nice to talk to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> I loved the film. Garden State made my Top Ten List for 2004, and Wish I Was Here is definitely one of my Top Ten favorite films of 2014 so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> Thanks, man. You just put a smile on my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Everybody in the small group I saw it with cried at the end and all the way through the closing credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> That\u2019s a good sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> I told my readers I\u2019d be interviewing you and they sent in more questions than we could ever get to. Let me start with one who just said: He\u2019s incredibly adorable and incredibly talented. Have fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> [LOL] I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Director Kevin Williams asks: Why a decade between movies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> It was just so hard. I tried my best, but I didn\u2019t want to put out a picture that I wouldn\u2019t want to put my name on. I didn\u2019t want to let my fans down, and all the scripts that were coming my way were really commercial and felt like something we\u2019d already seen a thousand times. A couple times I had movies put together, only to have the project fall apart because we lost a star or I lost the money. There are so many pieces that have to line up. And I was also still doing Scrubs, so I just couldn\u2019t work it out with a piece of writing that I was willing to put my name on until I was able to collaborate on this original script with my brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Sangeetha Subramanian says: I watched Garden State almost every night for a year when I was in college. Often we see the final product but aren\u2019t aware of the creative process that goes into a script or filming. What does your scriptwriting process look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> Well, it was different for Garden State, because I wrote that on my own. This one, I wrote with my brother, so we got together for about a month to hammer out the characters and the outline of the story. The main character\u2019s sort of a combination of us. My brother\u2019s about a decade older than I am. We wanted to write about a guy in his mid-thirties, so we were able to attack it from the angle of two men born ten years apart. He\u2019d work on one scene while I\u2019d work on another. Then we\u2019d switch scenes and sort of give each other notes, and debate what was right and where it should go. And little by little, through all these conversations, the whole script took shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> To what extent is this film autobiographical, given that it was written by you and your brother, and it\u2019s in part about their relationship?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> A lot of it is\u2026 the search for spirituality\u2026 the struggle to question how long you\u2019re allowed to pursue a dream, especially when you have mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay. All of those things that my brother and I are asking. It\u2019s also about relationships between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters. We all have those battles with our parents where we want to be our own person but they\u2019re still saying something else. A lot of it is autobiographical, although our father couldn\u2019t be more supportive of our pursuing the arts, whereas the father in the movie is pretty against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Peter Brav says that while watching the film, he thinks he spotted a flaw, namely, a brochure at a Jewish funeral home offering the option of an open casket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> If that\u2019s the case, it would be a prop master mistake, and I apologize for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no option for an open casket at a Jewish funeral. For Peter to have detected that he must be able to speed read and have zeroed in on the pamphlet. The casket is always closed in Judaism, although the family is allowed to view the deceased before the ceremony, if they so choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Harriet Pakula-Teweles was wondering what auteur message this film and Garden State seek to deliver?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> I believe, personally, that this experience we have on Earth is finite, and that there is nothing else. I know not everyone agrees with me, but that is my personal belief. So, I think that the message is both about trying to celebrate the present, trying to get out of our heads, and about being present with the people we love. For me, that\u2019s the great quest of life, the struggle to be in the moment. That\u2019s why the film is called Wish I Was Here, meaning I wish I was here in the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Why the grammatically incorrect title?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> I have a two-fold answer. First, it\u2019s a play off the classic postcard salutation, \u201cWish You Were Here,\u201d but switched around to reflect the perspective of the individual sending it. Second, the premise of the film revolves around a father who\u2019s homeschooling his kids but doesn\u2019t know how to teach them grammar. We see his daughter [Joey King] correct her mom [Kate Hudson] on the proper use of \u201cwho\u201d and \u201cwhom,\u201d and that\u2019s something that he would get wrong as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Hadas Zeilberger asks: How would you compare the experiences of shooting Wish I Was Here and Garden State? How many members of the cast and crew worked on both films?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> I tried to reunite all the top creative heads from Garden State, and I got some of them. Others weren\u2019t available. Both my cinematographer [Lawrence Sher] and my editor [Myron Kerstein], who do amazing work and are really good friends, are back for the film, and that was really crucial to me. And my producers were the same. As far as the cast, Jim Parsons is back and Michael Weston, who played the cop in Garden State, is back. And I tried to find as many cameos as possible for people I like to work with. In terms of the shooting, this one was unique because of the crowdfunding aspect of it. We had our incredible backers visiting us on set, serving as extras, and generally hanging around. That was fun because it gave us a chance to show them how movies are made. Ordinarily, you and the crew just get so caught up in doing it that you don\u2019t ever pause to explain the process to people it\u2019s foreign to. But here, you\u2019d look over and see an electrician showing a backer why we are hanging a light a certain way. Or you\u2019d look over and see Kate [Hudson] saying to someone else, \u201cOh, yeah, this is where my little hidden microphone goes.\u201d The process was very educational for a lot of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Kate Newell and Larry Greenberg had a similar question. They ask: Would you use Kickstarter again for your next film project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> No, this was always meant as an experiment, not as the permanent way in which I plan to finance my films. It was sort of like, \u201cHey, wouldn\u2019t this be a crazy idea if this worked?\u201d The dilemma in holding onto your artistic integrity is removing any corporate or other sort of involvement that might influence the art. The question for us was: What would it be like if we took that out of the equation? That was my vision, and it worked. So, it proved to be a wonderful experience, although it was always conceived as a one-off experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Hadas also asks: Are you friends with Donald Faison in real life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> Yeah, he\u2019s my best friend. He truly is my best friend, and we do everything together. He\u2019s so supportive of me that he\u2019s been promoting the movie and making the rounds even though he only has a smart part in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Lastly, Hadas would like to know how you got your hair like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> [Laughs] My hair? People always like to talk about my hair. It\u2019s just bed head. I often take showers at night. So, when I wake up, my hair\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Environmental activist Grace Sinden says: You\u2019ve had an extraordinarily diverse and interesting career. If you had to choose one or two of your favorite types of work could you do that, or is it the variety of your professional activities that gives you most satisfaction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> That\u2019s a great question, Grace. I always think it\u2019s good to shake things up. You know, I\u2019m doing a big Broadway musical [Bullets over Broadway] right now at the same time that I\u2019m releasing this indie movie. They couldn\u2019t be more different from each other. But that\u2019s what makes being a creator of entertainment so much fun. Shaking it up! I would be incredibly bored if I just did the same thing over and over. I like trying new things and really being brave. Doing the crowdfunding was a brave experiment, and singing on Broadway is another brave experiment. I like to attempt things that I\u2019m fearful of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Grace also asks: Where do you see your career being ten years from now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> Well, I hope it won\u2019t be ten years before I make another movie. My hope is to be making a lot more movies in the next decade. It\u2019s certainly what brings me the most joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Editor\/Legist Patricia Turnier aks: What was the most challenging scene to shoot in Wish I Was Here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> Probably those fantasy sequences, because they were very elaborate and we didn\u2019t have much time. We shot the whole movie in 26 days. The fantasy sequences involved a lot of special f\/x and a costume built by a great company called Legacy Effects, and all sorts of camera toys. Those were the most challenging, especially since I had to direct from inside the suit, which was really hard. But I did have a body double for when my face wasn\u2019t onscreen,<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> Is there any question no one ever asks you, that you wish someone would?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZB:<\/strong> Wow! That\u2019s a great question\u2026 [Pauses to reflect] But I\u2019ve been asked so many questions that I can\u2019t think of one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KW:<\/strong> The bookworm Troy Johnson question: What was the last book you read?<\/p>\n\n\n\n