Zach Braff on His Gritty New Film and the Directing Project That Got Away

Zach Braff returns to the big screen this week -- sort of -- in the new drama The High Cost of Living. Technically it's a VOD release (premiering this week via Tribeca Film) that will make its way to select theaters next month, but that's all the better for audiences, really -- any opportunity to check out its dark, romantic, gritty charm is one worth taking advantage of.

High Cost features the ex-Scrubs star as Henry, an expat New Yorker-turned-drug dealer with a thriving business in Montreal. On his hyped-up rounds one winter night, he makes a wrong turn -- a really wrong turn, as it were -- colliding with the very pregnant, very panicky Nathalie (Isabelle Blais) as she waits for a cab to take her to the hospital. Fleeing the scene, Henry leaves behind a woman forced to to carry her dead child until she can withstand the surgery to remove it, as well a trail of guilt and deceit that finally bring him to Nathalie's door.

I know it's an awkward set-up on paper; even Braff wouldn't disagree. But writer-director Deborah Chow frames the ensuing relationship with such dignity, subtlety and genre-bending defiance that it's tough not to be invested. Braff and Blais deliver in front of the camera as well, developing a tender bond more fragile than either of them can anticipate. Movieline caught up with Braff to discuss his return to film, the long shadow of the TV comedy that made him famous, and what exactly is up with his dormant directing career since his Garden State triumph in 2004.

How did you get involved with The High Cost of Living?

I let my manager know I wanted to do something really different when Scrubs ended -- something that was dramatic and would challenge me and would show that I could do something else besides broad comedy. Even in the movies I'd done, they had dramatic elements, but they were funny. So I wanted to take on something really different. This arrived on her desk, and I thought it was exactly what I was looking for.

Why? What about Henry appealed to you?

It was really well-written and super-smart. I like movies where the lies aren't so clear or clean as to who's good and who's bad. Especially with such a flawed protagonist. I thought it was really impressive the way she wrote this character who could do something so horrible, but if you pulled it off, by the end of the movie, the audience would root for him. I just thought it was smart. It really respected the audience. It was challenging, and it was different.

His back story is alluded to in the film, but I'm curious about the specific things that got Henry to this point. What did you need to know or learn about Henry as you built this character?

We talked about why he's in Canada and stuff like that, but in terms of stuff that would make a difference and show up on screen, it was that he wasn't a bad person. He's not evil; he's not malicious. He's just tangled and trapped in the way his life's unraveled. I know people like this in real life: They're not bad people, they just can't get out of the rut they're in. It's like quicksand; the more action they take to get out of it, the deeper they go. That's kind of how he's fallen into drug dealing and being in Canada and taking the pills himself. The audience doesn't need to know how he got there, but what we do need to convey during the course of the movie is that you can be a person who's done some really horrible things in your life and not be a horrible person.

At heart he seems like a helper, for better or worse: He helps Nathalie out with food and shelter, but he also helps strung-out people get high. How does he reconciles the two?

I love to help people get high. No, I don't know. The challenge was for the audience not to just write him off. A female reporter said to me the other day, "I couldn't believe I was rooting for you guys to be together when in the first quarter of the movie I fucking hated you." And I said that's a testament to Deborah -- to her writing and directing -- that she pulled that off. So I don't know. I was just intrigued by a movie where the characters are so multidimensional. It's not like, "OK, for these two hours, I'm the good guy, you're the bad guy. We're gonna battle it out, and I'm gonna win in the end." Most movies can be reduced to that.

One of the things I most appreciated about this film was it's very subtle use of genre -- the psychological horror of carrying a dead child inside you, for example, or its mystery elements. It's even got kind of a sci-fi feel -- Montreal depicted as this cold, dark, alien culture with multiple foreign populations.

It's true. I hadn't heard that before.

Did that complexity appeal to you as well?

It did. I think the world is so surreal: Montreal in the winter. People are speaking French -- he doesn't know French. It is a little bit like he's on another planet. The way it's shot; most of it takes place at night. It's cold and isolated and lonely. I've never heard of it like that, but it is like this sci-fi setting.

He's got his car, which kind of looks like a low-flying spaceship.

He's like Kirk, who's lost on some weird island.

Exactly! What would that make Nathalie in this equation?

One of those blue aliens that Kirk always kisses. I don't know. Anyway. I digress.

The Slayer shirt that Henry loans to Nathalie was a deeply perverse touch.

I don't think that anyone intended it to have a double meaning, believe it or not. I think the idea was, "Wouldn't it be funny if it was a heavy metal shirt? Which ones can we clear?" Actually it says "Zlayer," because at the last second they couldn't clear "Slayer." But if you're implying there's a double meaning there, I'm pretty sure there wasn't.

[MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Without giving too much away about the ending, what do you think happens to Henry and Nathalie?

Part of the fun -- if you can call it fun -- or maybe part of the entertainment of the movie is filling in your own ending. And some movies do that at a point where it cuts off, and you're like, "Oh, fuck you! Why did you do that? Give us more!" I think this really does it in an elegant way. I think it depends what your particular viewpoint is on love and how cynical you are. I think he'll do a little time, but because she's not going to press charges, he probably won't do much. He'll probably do some because he's illegal in the country. But maybe there's some way for them to have a relationship. I'm not sure if it's romantic, or maybe it's a friendship, but I definitely see them in each others' lives.

[END SPOILERS]

To the extent you create a back story for some characters, do you ever create a front story afterward? Do you wonder where certain folks might be months or years after you've wrapped?

Well, sure. You always get asked about it. For Garden State, which a lot of people had a great response to, I was always asked, "All right: What happens to them?" But I'm a romantic. I like love working out in the movies. It so rarely works out in real life. I feel like we go to the movies for escapism. I'm very drawn to "true love saves all" as a logline, which is sort of what happens in the movie. Maybe not love, but companionship . What they find in each other is something that neither has. Whether it's love or not is up to you, but at the very least it's companionship. Like-mindedness -- a friend in a very desolate world.

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