Synopsis:

Zach Braff’s charming Garden State is retold with a more serious, emotional undertone. This edit uses deleted material and a new soundtrack to create a more intimate and revealing view of Large’s journey.

Intentions:

This edit is designed to explore the emotional turmoil of Large’s character. I greatly enjoyed the original theatrical version which is quirky, charming, funny, and tender, but I always felt that the movie lacked the emotional punch that the Large’s character arc suggests or hints to. Although it is stated that his character has been medicated for the better part of 13-15 years, he comes out of the haze quickly and seems to have little emotional ill-affects, while making an incredible leap of personal insight. I’m drawn to stories of redemption, personal growth and reconciliation of father/son relationships, so I wanted to explore that thrust of this film. The result is a version which holds true to the theatrical; it is still charming and quirky, but now has a more serious tone and exposed emotional vulnerability which helps the viewer experience Large’s journey through to the end, which I have drastically changed to remove the stereotypical Hollywood ending.

Change List:

- Replaced opening Logo sequence with L8wrtr logo and new music (Soggy Noodle by Paul McCartney) - Replaced music during opening airplane sequence (St. Agnes and the Burning Train by Sting) - Overlaid dialogue of Large talking to Sam from their final conversation in the Airport (this scene is cut in this version, so the purpose of the dialogue is ambiguous) - Replaced song when Large gets out of bed (Save Me by Aimee Mann) - Cut Large driving in L.A. and his job entirely - New title card - Cut audio of Aunt singing as the Save me continues to play, inserted ambient outdoor sounds - Cut shot of Aunt clearly singing, fade song out as Large goes to see his friends. - Swap scenes of Large getting his shirt from his Aunt and Large talking to his father. - Replaced song played while Large uncovers motorcycle and drives to the party (Sometime around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event) - Cut the entire scene of Large getting pulled over - Cut brief line of dialogue by Large during pet burial scene “Oh yeah, I guess I haven’t told you why I’m here yet” - Replaced scene where Large is looking into the fridge and surprised by his father. This scene is clearly intended as the beginning of Large’s last day as he A) States it is last day, and B) is wearing the shirt that he wears throughout his last day. This scene is replaced by a combination of existing footage; Large looking at photos and then walking into his parents, and then the deleted scene of his father surprising him and them then discussing her death. The deleted scene has a few minutes are cut, primarily the awkward exchange of Large implying she killed herself, they both pretend to not be saying it, now when Large insinuates it, his father immediately gets it and Large doesn’t pretend to be not saying it. Also cut the portion of his father talking about his dream and wanting everyone to be happy. Again, too on-the-nose. (also added in audio of continuous dripping of water) - Cut sene of Large not being able to swim. - Replaced song played as Sam ‘tap dances’ (January Rain by David Gray) - Replaced Andrew looking at photos and then walking into parents bathroom, with the scene of him looking into his fridge and being surprised by his father - Replaced song while Large and company ride around (Indefinitely by Travis) - Replace music during the end of the Ark scene (Singalong Junk by Paul McCartney - Cut the screaming into the Abyss scene - Restore deleted bathtub scene - Replace song played as Large leaves Sam and heads to plane (One by Aimee Mann) - Cut everything after Large stares into camera while sitting in the plane. Role credits (with new credits inserted)

Additional Notes:

The DVD has a ton of deleted material and in my opinion, most of it was correctly left out, however there were 3 scenes which speak directly to Large’s journey: - A confrontation between Large and his father in the bathroom where his mother died. - An extended version of he conversation in the Ark - An extended version of the conversation between Large and Sam in the bathtub I elected to stick with only the scenes in the bathroom. While the material of the Ark scene clearly helps give direction to Large, the dialogue is too on-the-nose and doesn’t feel natural. These characters for which we’ve never met say exactly the right metaphysical comments, opening their intimate views to a total stranger; it is clearly the screenwriter talking, and not the characters, so it felt false to me. My goal was to make this movie feel as real as possible, so I elected to leave the ark scene as it played theatrically. Unfortunately all of the deleted scenes were in letterbox, so had to be blown-up and distorted in order to match the A/R of the rest of the film. These scenes do stick out visually, particularly the scene between Large and his father, but the emotional content was critical to the story I set out to tell. Because the 5.1 audio keept all dialog on the center, and only in a few instances allowed the music to bleed into center, I was able to replace a significant amount of the soundtrack. I love the original soundtrack, each song is wonderful, but as I crafted the story, trimmed scenes and rearranged them, the tone of the film went more serious and I wanted more introverted songs to match the tone at each point in the journey for Large.

Other Sources:

Special Thanks:

DwightFry 78, Herowithoutacause and Elbarto1 each provided invaluable feedback. In particular Dwight provided some keen story observations, and Elbarto was a great inspiration for some replacement tracks which were giving me fits.