Guy Love Returns

The ultimate bromance: Scrubs duo reunite in new film — and it feels so good

Longtime fans of Scrubs had lots to talk about las year when Zach Braff started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the film Wish I Was Here.

While diehard fans of Braff were excited to help fund the movie — especially one that would reunite him with his on-screen (and real life) best friend Donald Faison — others debated whether an established actor and Hollywood director should take advantage of crowdfunding instead of using traditional funding methods.

Despite heated debates, Braff produced Wish I Was Here, which opened in Houston today. And in a way, the alternative route Braff sought to fund the movie mirrors its plot.

“Working with (Braff) is like hanging out with him,” says Faison. “And it’s easy for him to direct me, because he just has to go, ‘Do that thing that you do!’ And that’s it.”

In the film, Mandy Patinkin plays an aging father who chastises his sons, played by Braff, and Josh Gad, for not adhering to the traditional lifestyle of a man being the breadwinner of the family. Playing a 35-year-old father struggling to become an actor, Braff's character has to decide between his dreams or sacrificing them to provide for his wife and kids when money's tight.

Similarly, Braff explains that making the film without sacrificing its soul is what pushed him to seek alternate funding in the first place.

“People said, ‘Yeah, we’ll make it if you do this, but maybe if you change that,’ so I was ready to just throw it on the shelf. But then the Veronica Mars Kickstarter took off and I thought that was interesting. I have an amazing and loyal Internet fanbase, so I thought it might work.”

And it did. Within three days of the campaign launch, fans contributed $2 million, meeting the initial goal. After a full month, the Kickstarter campaign closed with a total of $3 million raised to fund the movie.

The fun part

Now, pleasing — and thanking — those fans is a primary focus of Braff’s. For the past few months, he's been on tour, screening the film for many of its backers.

“This is the fun part. I get to share it with the people who believed in me,” Braff tells CultureMap. “Making it was extremely hard: editing it, finishing it and getting it ready for the Sundance Film Festival. It was all harrowing, but now is the fun part. I get to travel the country and show it to the people who backed it, do Q&A’s with them and meet them.”

"No studio wants to pay to make this film, but every actor I go to says, 'Yes!' Actors love these films," Braff says.

“Everything that he promised he would do in the Kickstarter is in the movie,” echoes Faison, who helped promote the Kickstarter campaign before knowing what his role would be in the film. “I knew that in some way I was going to be in the movie, but I had no clue what the part was going to be,” explains Faison. “When I did the Kickstarter thing, that was just doing my buddy a favor because I didn’t know if the movie was going to get made.”

In Wish I Was Here, Braff and Faison are reunited for the first time since Scrubs ended its run in 2010. While Braff's character attempts to connect with his kids, he takes them to an Aston Martin dealership where Faison plays a salesman reluctant to give them a test drive.

“Working with him is like hanging out with him,” says Faison. “And it’s easy for him to direct me, because he just has to go, ‘Do that thing that you do!’ And that’s it. It’s great to get to work with a friend. I’m one of the luckiest actors in Hollywood because I have a friend who also directs.”

Braff didn’t have trouble attracting the rest of the film's all-star cast, which includes Patinkin, Gad and Kate Hudson. “No studio wants to pay to make this film, but every actor I go to says, 'Yes!' Actors love these films. No one wants to pay to make them, but actors love doing them because you get a chance to act and not just look at a green screen and watch things blow up,” says Braff.

“No one is making these films anymore. If you like personal art films, they’re dying a quick death. If it’s not crowdfunding, we need to quickly come up with a way for some of these stories to be told or they’ll be gone.”

Wish I Was Here, written, directed and starring Zach Braff, enters theaters this Friday.

Pierce Gagnon, Zach Braff and Joey King in Wish I Was Here

Photo byMerie Weismiller Wallace, SMPSP Focus Features

Wish I Was Here, written, directed and starring Zach Braff, enters theaters this Friday.

unspecified

Movie review

Adam Scott explores creepy Irish hotel in moody horror movie Hokum

Photo courtesy of Neon

Adam Scott in Hokum.

There are relatively few actors who can switch back and forth between comedy and drama easily, but Adam Scott is the rare exception. He’s equally as well known for starring in comedy projects like Parks & Recreation, Party Down, and Step Brothers as he is for dramas like Big Little Lies and Severance. He’s going the latter route again in the new horror film, Hokum.

Scott plays author Ohm Bauman, who’s trying to finish his latest book. In an effort to avoid distractions and also pay tribute to his parents, he retreats to an Irish hotel where his mom and dad spent their honeymoon. Bauman, who is about as stand-offish as you can get, and the staff of the hotel are at odds almost right away, although Bauman finds a kind of kinship with Jerry (David Wilmot), a seemingly-homeless man he meets in a nearby forest.

Bauman becomes intrigued with the story of the hotel’s closed-off honeymoon suite, which is said to be haunted. His curiosity, though, seems to trigger a variety of strange things, one of which ends with him in an extended stay at the hospital. He returns to the hotel determined more than ever to discover what’s really happening in the honeymoon suite, with things both normal and supernatural blocking his way at every turn.

Written and directed by Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy, the film’s approach to horror is both subtle and overt. On the good side is Bauman’s story, which gradually gets deeper as more is revealed about his past, especially the premature death of his mother. Bauman’s trauma over her loss influences his thinking and actions, and a possible connection between his current situation and his personal history broadens the scope of the plot.

There is plenty of creepiness to be found in the film, starting with the dark and decrepit nature of the hotel itself. Any building where a particular room is off-limits naturally inspires intrigue, and McCarthy does a solid job of building tension. That’s why it’s strange and disappointing that he gives in to the lamest of horror tropes - a sudden appearance by an odd-looking person accompanied by a big screeching noise - on multiple occasions.

The film is at its best when it features weird moments that are never or only slightly explained. A dead body in a rabbit suit is echoed by the unexplained broadcast from Bauman’s youth featuring a terrifying TV host with bulging eyes and rabbit ears. Bauman’s explorations take him into the hotel’s basement via a dumbwaiter, where he encounters all manner of strange things, including what seem to be witches. Because most of these things are left to the audience’s imagination, they hit harder in the moment.

Scott is known to be understated in his acting, and that skill works well in this particular role. Although he clearly plays Bauman as freaked out, he never indicates panic, and that level-headedness makes his character someone you want to follow no matter how dark the path might be. The mostly-Irish supporting cast is not well-known, but Wilmot and Florence Ordesh make the most of their short time on screen.

Hokum — a title that is also not explained — is a horror film that earns its bona fides through mood more than action. Even though not much of consequence happens throughout the film, it still keeps you on the edge of your seat trying to figure out what will happen next.

---

Hokum is now playing in theaters.

movies film