After much controversy was made of his Kickstarter campaign to part-fund last year’s Wish I Was Here, actor/writer/director Zach Braff has been speaking to an American podcast about his experiences with crowd-funding and whether he would do it again if a project required it.
Speaking on “Off Camera with Sam Jones” (via IndieWire), the Scrubs star has finally opened up about the whole experience with crowdfunding the film and how many commentators on the internet spoke negatively of him after he had decided to pursue the Kickstarter avenue.
On the show, which runs at around 85-minutes, Braff speaks out about the campaign and the film itself. He said: “I felt the whole thing and the giant cultural conversation around it that it started, was misunderstood. With some Monday morning quarterbacking , I really never ever thought it would be so controversial. I really just wanted to make something with my artistic integrity intact.”
Most detractors of the Braff experiment were easy to criticise the decision, despite the director only seeking part of the financing for the film, and only thought to use Kickstarter as an experiment “to remove the notes of a corporation, remove the changes of a fund, or a studio, or anyone corporate from the process entirely. And it’s something you could only do in 2013, at the time.”
Braff admitted that the whole process saw him act slightly naive and if he had been fully aware of what was ahead of him after he met his goal of $2 million he would thought twice about doing it, and he’s been so affected by it that he says he may stay away from making more personal films like Wish I Was Here and Garden State in the future.
His next film, Going In Style, sees Braff on board as director only, helming a script from Ted Melfi (St. Vincent) with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin starring in the May 2016 release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTcdL3-dh2c
Originally published July 17, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
