Just a Chat with Zach Braff
Discussing soundtracks, scores, and a song that will change your life
I am not totally sure I believe in the power of manifestation or karma, but it’s hard not to think that there’s at least some truth to the idea that you get back what you put into the world. In December, I wrote a brief reflection on this newsletter with a promise that “2023 was better.”
And now, as the new year approaches, my goal is to put more into it. This is a blank canvas for Justin and me to do more [...] Guest features, some interviews with cool people we know and admire, spicier takes... Essentially, I think it’s time for us to break the format a bit.
Continuing our record-setting two-year streak of not breaking a promise made to our readers, this week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Zach Braff (not sure if it’s still considered “sitting down” on Zoom) to discuss his new movie, A Good Person, starring Florence Pugh, Morgan Freeman, and Molly Shannon. (There is a link to the trailer at the end of this piece, but I don’t believe in watching trailers, unless I’m at the theater and see it against my will. I hope this conversation will be enough to get you to see it.)
I have been a fan of Zach’s since Scrubs, but I’ve come to admire him and his work for something we seem to have in common: a deep appreciation for music. Of course, the Garden State soundtrack has transcended cult-status into an objective classic. And if I had to bet, A Good Person’s eventual musical legacy will be having shown the world that Florence Pugh is a generational talent.
—Andrew
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Just a Thought: First of all congratulations — the movie is fantastic. Thank you for making it. I saw it on my second day back in NYC, at Angelika.
Zach Braff: That’s the perfect place to see it. That’s where it was made to be seen.
JAT: I believe that playlist curation is art, but that’s because I don’t have hard artistic skills like writing or directing a movie. With soundtracks you have to consider plot and characters. It becomes a whole different game. Does the script drive the song selection?
ZB: Back in the early 2000s a screenwriter friend was sending out his screenplay with a CD. And when it got to a certain place in the screenplay, he would write, “Now play track four.” I thought that was so clever. So when I wrote Garden State, I stole the idea. Willingly.
I learned early on that you can daydream what you want the track to be. But either because of money or access, or because the song just doesn't work, it all ends up changing in editorial. I always load in my ideas, my editor’s ideas, my friends’ ideas, in this case, Florence's ideas. We had two incredible music supervisors. We have just a giant mass of songs. We'll try them, and sometimes you get in there and there's just no alchemy. You don't have the goosebumps. There’s so much trial and error, but when you stumble across the right song, you just feel it in your body. You feel it in your heart; you feel your eyes well;you feel goosebumps down your thighs. You just know it. That's the only science to it. And you feel it because what I've found in doing this now for a long time, is that if you feel it, others will, too.
JAT: Florence Pugh is terrific in this movie. She’s already a star, but this performance will convince anyone who didn’t know it yet.
ZB: I don’t know that anyone wasn’t convinced. I think there are people who haven't seen enough of her work. Maybe more will now. Someone like her doesn't come around very often.
JAT: Florence wrote and performed two original songs in the film. What was that process like?
ZB: All her. I had nothing to do with it. We were dating at the time and I knew that she is a singer-songwriter. She loves writing music. She has said that she thinks of it almost like other people write in a diary. It helps her to fiddle on the piano or guitar and make up lyrics. So when I was writing this for her, I thought, Wow, I don't want to make her [character] famous, like a known artist. I didn't even want it to be her [character’s] passion. I liked the idea of someone who just does it as a hobby, because there’s so many who just get pleasure and joy from playing an instrument and writing music. I wanted to make her someone like that. So I went to Florence with the script and said, “You know, these are the two moments I think would have a song. Would you write them as the main character, Allison?” And she did.
JAT: Those tracks are going to have a life of their own. I'm sure you can find out pretty early on how quickly they start to have some sort of catch on streaming.
ZB: We just landed on on rental this week. So most people will see it on their televisions at home in 2023. I really do think that [the songs] will take off and have a life of their own because they're really, really beautiful songs. It's unique. I think of A Star is Born with Lady Gaga as a rare example. But it's not too often that the lead of the movie can get into character and then write a song that the character would write.
JAT: I'm sure the word “sad” gets thrown around a lot. And maybe it has connotations, but I reject them. We all feel sad sometimes. The movie is sad, but in a good way, in an impressive way. How do you pair a sad song with a sad moment in a way that's not cheesy?
ZB: I don't like things to be too lyrically right on the nose. Occasionally, something will be so perfect and goosebumpy that you're like, alright I'll let it slide, just because it's such a good match. You know, the movie is sad, of course. But there's also humor in it. And I think there's hope in it, really. I mean, I didn't just dump this tragedy on the audience's laps. It is tragic at times, but I think the goal was that the audience would see themselves in their own life experience, feel that pain and hurt that we've all felt as human beings, feel that grief, feel that moment, and then root for the protagonist because we see ourselves in her. And then hopefully by the end, we see the shimmer of hope that she sees.
JAT: The scenes between Morgan and Florence are powerful. But you’re rooting for every character, despite their quirks and struggles.
ZB: They're all flawed. All human beings are flawed, and I really set out to make a film where the people felt real. Everyone in the film makes choices we wish they wouldn't make.
JAT: Bryce Dessner did the score for the movie — he has had quite a run the last few years. Given the subject and mix of sadness with glimmers of hope, score feels as important as soundtrack. Soundtracks, conceptually, I understand. But scores, that’s above my paygrade.
ZB: I always dream I'm going to be able to afford an orchestra. And then that dream goes away. Except for one studio movie called Going in Style, we got the huge 100-person Hollywood orchestra. I'm sure some mega directors go to the composer and say, “Oh, just ruminate with me.” What we do is use scores from other films as temp music in our score locations, to really help set the tone of the movie. The score really affects tone massively, more than most people realize. When Bryce comes aboard, you go, “Okay, here's what I liked. I want you to make it yours. But here's what I liked about it.” It's so tricky because you're using all these adjectives to describe music, which is always so hard, but you just do it because it's part of the process. Then he goes off on his own, and he writes music and sometimes you're like, “Oh my God, that's brilliant.” Other times, you're like, “That's brilliant, but it's not quite what I want.” It's always a frustrating thing for composers. That's the dance you do, and when someone is as talented as Bryce, you can move through it pretty quickly. He has such a beautiful sense of melody. This movie has a couple of recurring [melodic] themes in the score. And I love revisiting the themes in different ways. And his score is being released. There are two vinyls coming out. Both the soundtrack and Bryce's score.
JAT: There's an official Spotify playlist, which includes music from the movie, and then music inspired by the movie. What is “music inspired by the movie?”
ZB: What happened there is Spotify has a minimum number of songs that they can have in a playlist. Initially I just wanted to have the soundtrack, but then I said, “Oh, this is kind of cool. There’s dozens of songs that didn't make the movie. Let me add some of those so we could get up to what their minimum was.” And now I've been driving around listening to it going, “I should keep adding to it.” I heard some song the other day and thought, “This is such a song in the spirit of A Good Person,” so I think as time goes along, I may add to it as well.
JAT: There's a pretty iconic meme from Garden State about one song that will change your life. Is there a last song that comes to mind that changed your life?
ZB: It hasn't changed my life, but I've been listening to “Thinkin Bout You” by Frank Ocean nonstop lately. I never really listened to much Frank Ocean, but someone played me “Thinkin Bout You” last weekend, and it's currently the song on a loop in my car.
A Good Person is available now for rental. You should watch it. I promise you won’t regret it. And, as you know, we haven’t broken a promise to our readers in a record-setting two years.
If you enjoyed this interview, you might like my essay on rejecting the algorithm and intentional listening:
