Talk:Garden State (film)

Proofreading

Someone ought to get the slob who wrote this to proofread it and correct it. Myself I am sick and tired of cleaning up after these slobs.

I don't like the first couple of sentences. I think the blurb about New Jersey should be made its own paragraph, indented, italic. Most of the article is on the movie to begin with. Instead of making this a disambig an moving the majority of the article to Garden State (Movie), I suggest making the New Jersey blurb separate. LockeShocke 02:09, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Subjective Plot Summary

I'm really not sure if saying something like "(but considered by some to be slightly forced and melodramatic)" is appropriate for a NPOV plot summary in this article. I think the entire parenthetical should be taken out. If you want to write a review of the movie, write a review, but don't include it in the summary.

I agree, I've removed it. Neilc 05:20, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Such Great Heights

This article lists Such Great Heights, in the soundtrack, as made by Iron & Wine. It's really made by The Postal Service, is it not? --Spug 00:47, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I think so. I've never heard this song before The Postal Service edition and have never heard that it was a cover. I haven't seen the movie, but if I remember right, the trailer was using The Postal Service edition. I think it's a safe bet to change it. Cookiecaper 06:21, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I have the soundtrack, which lists the song as by Iron and Wine. That is consistent with information at, e.g., the amazon.com page for the soundtrack. I don't actually have the CD on me right now, but I'll double-check when I get home. Neilc 05:01, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

The Iron & Wine version is a cover of the original, which was indeed done by The Postal Service off their debut album "Give Up". Pwv1

The Iron & Wine version is both in the final movie and on the soundtrack. The full trailer uses The Postal Service original and another song left out of the movie/soundtrack. Viewdrix

The other song used in the trailer is Love Will Come Through by Travis. It may have also been picked out by Braff, as it fits in with the other songs in the film.

Talk:Silent velcro

Votes for deletion

This page was recently nominated for deletion, and the consensus decision was to keep it. The deletion debate is archived here. ugen64 03:58, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Um, you meant merge and redirect, at least, that's what it says. ed g2s • talk 01:11, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I find it confusing that "Silent velcro" redirects here, but when I search for "velcro" in the article text it doesn't find anything. --60.225.3.7 09:18, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

The issue is this: Imagine somebody sees the film, and then goes on Wikipedia to search for "silent velcro". They'll then see that this directs them to the Garden State article, meaning that silent velcro was simply something from Zach Braff's imagination. It doesn't matter that there isn't any more info on it (nor that it isn't even mentioned in the article), as there's nothing else to say about it. -- Kicking222 21:32, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Use In Film

The section of the film itself, that this page and or user refers to is a small piece that is not really worth mentioning. If someone develops a Trivia section or something similar to that on the Garden State page, then this should be put in their. Otherwise, it's really not that worthwhile. --Matt von Furrie 07:46, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Fountain of Youth

Searching for the fountain of youth? Based on the movie, I don't not believe this, but some sourcing for this comment would be nice, as it's not explicit in the movie itself. Ario 20:22, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

film format

should the process be Super 35 and not Super 3 as it currently shows?

Film Locations

It's probably just me, but as a resident of the locations which were used for filming in New Jersey (specifically South Orange and Maplewood), shouldn't Maplewood also be placed in the film location section? It's true, my experience is anecdotal, however I was able to pinpoint several spots throughout the movie which could be considered sections of Maplewood, and not just South Orange. For example, the drive-by past the high school (Columbia High School), which is officially in Maplewood, despite being a part of the combined Maplewood/South Orange School District.

That would be great if you could fix it up. Cvene64 22:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Spolier in opening paragraph?

"...when he accidentally brought about his mother's paraplegia". This text is in the opening paragraph. This is not made known to the viewer until a decent way into the movie, and therefore I think it should not be included in this section, but maybe in the one below it which has a spoiler warning. It seems like a bit of a spoiler to me.

It's not such an important factor of the movie, so I don't see why moving it to a spoiler would be neccesary. --Chitomcgee 05:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. That is definitely an important factor to understanding the protagonist and the build up of the viewer not knowing why Large has been on drugs, why he is estranged from his father, why he says his family is "way more fucked up" than Sam's is all crucial to the effect of the movie. It's also unnecessary in a general description of the movie. I'm getting rid of it. Dwinetsk 21:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The "Garden State would form a special relationship with Generation Y" should be deleted

for a number of reasons. First of all, it's logically impossible. You can't in an unobnoxious an unhyperbolic way claim any film forms a "special relationship" with any generation. And the "citation" that the line links to doesn't even state what the line says or even an acurate aproximation of what the line says.

AND MOST OF ALL IT WOULD BE A CRITICS POINT OF VIEW regardless. Not a fact.

Here's the part of this (universally agreed apon to be biased) overwhelmingly positive review:

As a director he has fashioned a mash note to love that will speak to Generation Y as powerfully as The Graduate did to the Boomers nearly forty years ago.

This entire profile has plenty of Garden State fan puffery, but this is what jumps out as the most indefensible. The line needs to go.

NPOV

This article seems like one person's interpretation of the film. Who decided the themes? By whom is this movie considered a major success? And who decided what points of the plot are important or not? Ohyeahmormons 03:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

"who decided what points of the plot are important or not?" By the looks of it, nobody. I just watched this movie and I'd be hard pressed to find a single thing that happened in the movie that wasn't in the plot summary. Not to discredit the amount of work that went into this section, but the plot summary would be more useful with less detail and more, you know, summary. 67.170.183.209 06:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Silly comment imo. Garden_State_(film)#Reception states how many awards it won, its popularity, the music, reviews and so on. Its harly an npov statement. The film was a success in terms of box-office/budget ratio as well. Braff has now also been given more films to direct and so on and so on. If you dont like the plot, the use the edit feature. The template in the themes section is fine until someone references it. Valet5 16:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

First of all, you should take down a tag when the problem is solved, not when you think it's solved.

I'm removing the themes section, because what one thinks of the film is not what Braff meant by the film. Ohyeahmormons 20:22, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

A simple search found thison themes. So its not completely original. It just needs expansion and a little tidy up. The section is very important, but it needs a little work. Valet5 16:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Themes

I have removed this for now. Its POV, and is not referenced. There is definantly room for a Themes section in the article, but it needs to be worked on here on the talk page, referenced properly and written in a neutral way. So i'm pasting this here, so not to lose it all, if someone wants to use it. Sunrise50 08:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The themes present in Garden State revolve around the development of Andrew Largeman. One of the recurring themes is that one only has one chance at life, and one must take that chance now in the present. The characters comment on this, the earliest example being when Sam tells Andrew to perform an original movement, even though at the time, Andrew did not fully believe in what she was saying.

Come the end of the film, Andrew's outlook on life has changed. After finally holding discussions with his father, Andrew expresses his desire to start living his life now, and asks his father to do the same, despite any problems that may be in their lives. For one of the first times in the film, Andrew makes a spontaneous decision to not get on a plane back to Los Angeles, and instead stay where he is, and live his life now, rather than trying to sort out whatever he needed to do in Los Angeles.

General Presentation of Article

I was curious about the film, having not seen it so I thought I'd read this article. I have to say that I think it is very sloppily written, but don't feel qualified to make any major alterations as I've not seen the film.

The grammar is quite poor in places and the punctuation (to my mind) makes some of the descriptions of events ambiguous.

ahpook 14:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Well certainly feel free to edit the page. I agree it could be written better, so please do help out if you think you can. Valet5 16:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Time for me to see it I guess ! ahpook 18:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

Two things:

• There's no need to describe the cast. They have their respective pages.
• Decreasing the plot would be good; it has everything but the kitchen sink. We don't need to know what every frame is like. It would be simpler if it were decreased. Ohyeahmormons 20:33, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Looking at promoted articles such as V_for_Vendetta_(film) and Blade Runner, it seems that shedding some light on the background of the actors is some what a good thing to do. I think the plot should definantly be decreased to about half of what it is now, and we should ditch all teh images except the rain one, because it shows all three main characters. Thoughts? Sunrise50 08:37, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Who keeps deleting my stuff?

Okay, if its a bit crap just say so or improve it, but don't just delete it! grr!

Hi there, I did not delete it, but if possible, you should be providing references/links wherever you can in the themes section. Most of what is written in the themes section is pretty ok, but wikipedia does not allow original research, so if you have any articles/interviews/etc to link in here, it would be great. But great job in adding to the article! Russel7 16:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I saw the movie and disagree

When Garden State came to one of the art house theaters in my area, I made it a point to go downtown and see it. Maybe "two thumbs up" (or was it "one thumb up") from Ebert & Roeper can be credited for my coming by to see it. So I guess I have standing to say I disagree with a huge, huge chunk of the main article. (But because someone obviously put a lot of time into writing all that junk, I wouldn't necessarily go and delete it, just for the heck of it, but I am motivated to say that I disagree with the whole thrust of the movie, and I'll leave it up to the guy who cares about this movie, to go and fix the main article.) The movie is really, really saturated with drug use; it's not just a minor part of it. That's the main thrust of the whole movie - that the 'mind' can be cultivated like a garden if you just keep fertilizing it with dope, pills, tobacco, and alcohol, and lots of liberal doses of therapy. The most important scenes in the movie are at the start, when the hero is pretending to have been suffering from headaches so he can get his dad's friend - a doctor who is full of it - to write him another prescription, and get him back on his feet with a 'connection' to live by. I kept expecting this guy to start selling his drugs on the street corner; after all, he's only one step away from a kind-hearted doctor who believes everybody should be taking some kind of a drug to live by. The next big scene in the movie is when he goes to a clinic, and he meets a girl who is (questionably) clinically insane. The third big scene is probably the cemetary scene, where his mom gets buried. Heck, I might watch the movie again if there is a director's commentary to go with the DVD - is there? - but if it means having to sit in a theater and endure it again that way, no way.

Maybe the main article could be improved by going through the whole movie's dialog, and lifting the single passage of dialog where the movie gets its title from, and sticking it into the main article. That way it would tell us how far into the movie we have to go, before we discover the reason for the movie's name.

Wow, this is kind of amazing. Why is this person so scared of drugs. Just because a movie has drug use in it, doesn't mean the whole movie is about drugs. The use of drugs in this movie is pretty clearly critical. It's about the way our generation tries to resolve our existential angst, and it is pretty unclear how this person got the idea that the movie is about "cultivating the mind" with "dope, pills, tobacco, and alcohol." There are only one or two scenes in the whole movie where someone smokes a cigarette. Were old movies in the fifties in which everyone was constantly smoking about how to solve problems with tobacco? I am especially interested in the part where this person says that it would be useful to extract the part of the dialog where the movie gets its title from. There is no such piece of dialog. It is assumed that most American viewers will no that New Jersey is the Garden State. Oh well. In any case, I did want to bring up the question of drug use, where the current article claims that the movie casts recreational drug use in a positive light and prescribed drug use in a negative light. Seems to me that this is POV, because I saw both kinds of substances as cast in a negative light by this movie. I would vote for removing that sentence or clarifying that it is controversial at least. All this stuff seems open to interpretation. And as clearly stated above, to misinterpretation Dwinetsk 21:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

First, it's movie, so everyone has their own interpretation. However, I have to question your interpretation that Large was faking headaches to get a prescription. Especially when he says he had been on the prescriptions for years, but decided to go off them and refused to get a new prescription from this doctor, leading to a re-awakening, in Braff's words (from his blog) after he stops taking the prescription medication. You seem to have thought the opposite. -- Viewdrix 21:37, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear the doctor was opening himself up to a huge malpractice suit when he wrote up a prescription for someone that was merely claiming to be suffering from headaches. If I am remembering this rightly, didn't he say that his headaches sort of came and went, more or less without any kind of regularity? We haven't seen anything objective to conclude he was suffering from anything at all. Maybe there are clinical methods for diagnosing migraines, fevers, sweats, chills, creepy-crawlies, shakes, swirls, jim-jams, tics and jerks, nummies and itches, or what have you, but we didn't get to see any of those things in this movie. All we had, was the word of some guy who didn't seem all that out of sorts that he couldn't manage by himself. Did you really believe him when he went to the doctor to get some drugs?

He couldn't find anything wrong to cause the headaches, and didn't try to write a prescription for them. After seeing the medical history, the doctor offered to write a prescription for the depression medication Braff's character left at home, not for the headaches. Go watch the movie. -- Viewdrix 14:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I already watched it once. Does the DVD version include a commentary or production featurette?

Themes

The Themes section has been removed because it was in violation of Wikipedia's no original research policy. Nothing in the section seemed to have come from any kind of source except the minds of editors, which is original research. To address the themes of this film, find reliable sources to cite so observations can be verified by other users. The fact that there is a dispute about the film's themes on the talk page with no source being discussed clearly indicates that this section was original research. --Erik (^talk/_contrib) @ 21:49, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Ricky Moody's 1992 novel!

It says on the Rick Moody (an author) page, that he wrote the novel of Garden State back in 1992, so this film is obviously based on that book...it even says it on the Rick Moody page, so I think that this article should mention it, although I'm not certain on whether it is true that this is based on the book, could someone please confirm that it is? RaptorRobot 13:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

There's no evidence that it is. More likely than anything, someone edited that page, which wouldn't be as popular as the article for a film of the same name, and no one noticed. Let me guess, it's not sourced? -- Viewdrix 14:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

"Garden State" is a term to describe the state of New Jersey; it's not necessarily a unique phrase. If you read about the book at Amazon.com, it doesn't sound very similar to the film. In addition, due to the lack of citation between this novel and the film, I removed the information. --Erik (^talk/_contrib) @ 15:25, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Availability of callsheets

Different movie projects have different kinds of callsheets. I've only been lucky enough to see one so far, from a Keanu Reeves movie. It usually lists the actors needed for the shots that are planned for that day, and who the supporting crew has to be. It usually starts with a reference to the weather forecast, and who needs transportation, and so on.

If you know someone connected with the project, maybe you could talk her into scanning it onto a disk so you could upload it here. If you could do that, it would make the main article much better than it is.