Zach Braff has a strong connection to his hometown of South Orange, New Jersey. The actor/writer/director made his directorial debut with a feature set and shot there (2004’s Garden State), and nearly 20 years later he’s made his second homecoming with his latest film, A Good Person. This time around, he brought the legendary, Oscar-winning talents of Morgan Freeman with him, and he shot scenes in some memory-filled places from his childhood – including the local park’s duck pond and the principal’s office in his alma mater high school.
I can personally relate to Braff’s hometown love because I grew up in South Orange’s sister town and graduated from the same high school. Watching the film, it’s wild to see Morgan Freeman in places I remember from growing up, and I told the filmmaker as much when I interviewed him last week during the virtual press day for A Good Person. I asked about the experience of shooting scenes with Freeman in his hometown and the reaction of locals to the beloved star, and Braff said,
It was really wonderfully surreal to bring Morgan Freeman back to our high school… I don't think people really knew. It was in COVID. We shot in the middle of the pandemic and people were masked up. Definitely there were a handful of people that did a double take seeing Morgan Freeman at the duck pond. But we were kind of stealth because we were all covered in masks and gear.
In A Good Person, Morgan Freeman plays Daniel, a former cop and recovering alcoholic who reconnects with his former daughter-in-law to be, star Florence Pugh’s Allison, when she shows up at one of his support group meetings. Their relationship is strained because she was in a car accident that killed Daniel’s daughter and son-in-law (she was driving and they were passengers). In the months that followed, she broke off her relationship with Daniel’s son and became addicted to opioids. The drama centers on their respective attempts to deal with the consequences of the life-shattering event.
As noted by the director, A Good Person was shot on location in his hometown, and Zach Braff says that choice was an extension of his vision as a creative. A common piece of advice shared among writers is to “write what you know,” and what Braff knows is South Orange, New Jersey. He explained,
[The locations are] important to me. And to be honest, when I was writing the film, when you picture a high school principal's office, you're thinking of your high school principal's office. When you're thinking of a pond with benches, you're thinking of your childhood pond with benches.
A Good Person is Zach Braff’s heaviest and most dramatic directorial effort to date, and in the challenge of taking it on, his connection to the location was his support system. He continued:
I was trying to write so honest and be vulnerable. And I almost felt like there was this safety net if I wrote really what I knew. I know what a New Jersey public high school looks like. I know what a dive bar in South Orange looks like. I felt like if I just was so authentic with the locations, that there was a bit of a safety net for then hopefully being really authentic with my direction of the performances.
Also starring Chinaza Uche, Molly Shannon, Celeste O’Connor, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Alex Wolfe, A Good Person is now playing in limited release. If it’s not currently playing in a theater near you (check local listings via Fandango), you can stream many Zach Braff movies online. To learn about all of the films coming out between now and the end of the year, check out our 2023 Movie Release Calendar.
