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more anguished; the Jewish Andrew
Largeman reflects the kind of malaise
Braff says he experienced after graduat-
ing from Northwestern University and
while struggling to make it as an actor.
Of course, it's hard to imagine Braff as
angst-ridden, given that by age 26 he
had become the star of the hit sitcom
Scrubs and didn't have to wait tables any-
more.
This year, he hit Hollywood gold.
again when his debut film, Garden State,
sold for $5 million in an unprecedented
team distribution deal with Miramax
and Fox Searchlight. In fact, Braff is such
a "celebrity" that it took months for this
interviewer to secure a 15-minute tele-
phone interview with him during a
crowded press junket day.
Sounding weary but friendly, he says
he wanted Garden State to describe
"what it felt like for me going home to
New Jersey" when he was drifting, in his
early 20s. "Man, I was so excited to get
out of Jersey and to go off to college, but
when I got there I was incredibly lone-
some and scared and confused," he
recalls.
"That was the first time I realized I
was homesick for a place that no longer
existed, because my mother had moved
to a new house, and all my friends had
gone off to college, and nothing was the
way it used to be."

The meandering film eschews the tra-
ditional, three-act screenplay structure to
enhance this sense of youthful aimless-
ness and alienation. "If I had submitted
it to one of my screenwriting classes, I
would have received an F," Braff says.
That, apparently, was the grade the
studios gave Garden State when it first
made the rounds; every one of them
rejected the movie, which was eventually
financed by former Detroiter Gary
Gilbert (he and the film were profiled in
the May 7 issue of the Detroit Jewish
News, Gilbert brought the film, and its
two top stars, Braff and Jewish actress
Natalie Portman, to a screening that
raised funds for JARC).
Variety called the film "a sort of The
Graduate-lite for a generation unac-
quainted with the original," but Braff
feels it offers a unique message for 20-
somethings at the millennium.
"It explores how that comforting con-
cept of home disappears when you grow
up, and how it won't be in your life
again until you create it from scratch,"
he says. ❑

Harold and Kumar, rated R, is
currently in theaters. Garden
State, rated R, opens Friday, Aug.
13, in Detroit.

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What if we brought those guys into the
fold, and he went to high school with
them?"'
It's not a surprise to learn that pok-
ing fun was a regular activity in Bran
family. Never much of a temple-goer,
Braff say his "closest connection to
Judaism is Jewish humor, and my con-
nection to the holidays is when I go
home."
Asked to define Jewish humor, he
has a ready reply. "I'm sure it's different
for different generations, but for me
the seed of it in my life is Woody
Allen."
Braff played Allen's son in
Manhattan Murder Mysteg, and more
than a decade later he still remembers
the one-liners Allen cracked on the set.
Asked if he swapped quips with his
idol, Braff recoils.
"Are you kidding? I was 18 years old
and my palms were dripping with
sweat. I was lucky I got my lines out. I
was just watching him with wide eyes.
It was quite a once-in-a lifetime experi-
ence." ❑

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minute. His dad, along with the rest of
us, will have to wait for the DVD to
savor the performance.
Another bit that didn't make the cut
is the electronic mezuzah in the
Largeman manor that beeps the Shema
when someone passes by. "It's funny,
it'll be on the DVD, but it wasn't driv-
ing the story at all," Braff relates. "It
was just a gag."
Braff the writer even finds laughs in
the funeral scene, which kicks off with a
hilariously grotesque performance of a
mourner singing "Three Times a Lady."
Then it takes an unexpected turn.
"There's one thing I did experience at
every Jewish funeral I've been to, which
really bothers me," he says. "There's the
people around the grave, mourning the
person they lost, and then 20 yards
away are two guys on a tractor waiting
for the whole thing to get wrapped up
so they can go to lunch.
"Not their fault, it's just their job,
but that always upset me and I wished
they weren't there right in front of me.
So when I started writing the script, I
thought, What if he knew those guys?

Molly Abraham, Detroit News 1/2/04

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8/ 6

2004

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