Production
Garden State was Braff's feature directing and writing debut. The title of the film was originally intended to be Large's Ark, in reference to Braff's character (note that Albert mentions his own ark in the movie), but he changed it because no one understood what it meant. The title alludes both to the nickname for New Jersey, and to lines from Andrew Marvell's poem "The Garden" ("Such was that happy garden-state,/ While man there walked without a mate").
Garden State was filmed on a budget of $2.5 million. It was filmed over 25 days in April and May 2003. Most of the film was shot on location in Braff's hometown of South Orange, New Jersey, with filming taking place at Cranford, Livingston, Maplewood, Newark, South Orange, Tenafly and Wallington. Although the majority of the filming was done in New Jersey, filming also took place in New York City and Los Angeles.
Braff has cited such films as Harold and Maude, Woody Allen films (specifically Annie Hall and Manhattan), and the films of Alexander Payne as influences on Garden State. Parallels have also been drawn between Braff's film and Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls (1996). Braff wrote the script during his college years when Beautiful Girls was in theatres, and his first choice for the love interest was Natalie Portman, who plays a similar role in Demme's film.
The film is partly autobiographical, depicting Braff's own emotions while he was writing the screenplay. He described that "When I wrote Garden State, I was completely depressed, waiting tables and lonesome as I've ever been in my life. The script was a way for me to articulate what I was feeling; alone, isolated, 'a dime a dozen' and homesick for a place that didn't even exist."
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