A young woman and an older man deal with the consequences of a tragic accident in Director Zach Braff’s drama, A Good Person.
Braff’s film tells the story of Allison, whose life falls apart following her involvement in a fatal accident. She is brought together with Daniel, a grief-stricken father who is also dealing with the aftermath of that incident.
On March 26, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Braff discussed the making of A Good Person during a Q&A moderated by Director Zoe Lister-Jones (How It Ends). During the conversation, Braff, revealed that the film was inspired by multiple personal losses of his own and his desire to add comic relief to the story.
“I wanted to make the movie I wanted to see. I knew it was going to break my heart but also make me laugh, so that’s what I set out to do. It all came from real life experiences.” He also spoke about working with his directorial team — UPM James Price, 1st AD Neil Daly and 2nd AD Nicolas Weigand-Suminski — on the logistics of the much discussed scene where actress Florence Pugh cuts her own hair, and the challenges of doing that during their tight schedule. “I went to my brilliant ADs and my line producer and we all huddled. They were all like, ‘Are you out of your mind?!’ This was in the fall of 2021, really in the thick of COVID-19, so we didn't have any wiggle room. But we figured out some tricks that didn’t involve wigs and we made it work. That is really her chopping her own hair off.”
Braff’s other directorial credits include the feature films Garden State, Wish I Was Here and Going in Style; the movies for television Self Promotion and Night Life; and episodes of the series Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Shrinking and Alex, Inc. and the mini-series Solos.
Braff has been a DGA member since 2004.