Trivia / Garden State

• Creator Backlash: Natalie Portman went on record over a decade after the film's release stating that she was unhappy with the contribution to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope that many have taken her character Sam for in hindsight. As per comments she made at Toronto International Film Festival in 2015:
  "When I read it I was like, 'Oh, this is a character that’s wacky and interesting, and no one’s ever given me a chance to play something like this. It’s this sort of unusual girl.' So that was my incentive to make it. But of course I see that trope and I think it’s a good thing to recognize the way those female characters are used. I mean, I appreciate that people are writing characters that are interesting and unusual, rather than some bland female character as the girlfriend in a movie, but when the point of the character in this movie is to, like, help the guy have his arc, that’s sort of the problem, and that’s why it’s good that they’re talking about it, because it certainly is a troubling trope."
• Creator Breakdown: In a 2023 interview, Zach Braff responded to the recurring retrospective criticisms of the film's contributions to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope by stating that the film's approach to romance came from a place that was sincere to who he was and what he was emotionally struggling with when he wrote it.
  "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. And so I wrote that character. [...] I’ve known [I was depressed] 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."
• Creator-Driven Successor: Braff's next directorial effort, released in 2014, was a proper spiritual successor to this film titled Wish I Was Here.
• Descended Creator: Zach Braff directed and wrote the film, along with starring in it as Andrew.
• Enforced Method Acting: Zach Braff held meat in his hands to get the doberman to attack him for the scene outside Sam's house.
• Follow the Leader: It spawned a lot of imitators, most famously Elizabethtown.
• Playing Against Type: Natalie Portman as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
• Referenced by...: In Most Likely to Murder (2018): After Billy's parents sell his car, they tell him to ride around on his electric scooter instead. Billy grumbles, "I'm gonna look like I'm in Garden State."
• What Could Have Been: A longer love scene between Sam and Andrew was filmed, but cut. Word of God is that he wanted to avoid Fanservice, and instead intended for the scene to be sweet.
• Working Title: Zach Braff wrote the script while he was still in college, and the title was Large's Ark. No one he asked liked the title, and they went with Garden State instead.
• Write What You Know: Zach Braff wrote the film partially based on his own childhood growing up in New Jersey. Andrew works in a French-Vietnamese restaurant, just as Zach did when was a struggling actor in Los Angeles. His parents were both psychiatrists and his stepmother was a therapist, too.

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