Back to Home > Friday, Sep 15, 2006 Posted on Fri, Sep. 15, 2006 email this print this Movi... ‘Last Kiss’ star enjoys messy lo
Movie love involves adorable banter and problems of the they're-secretly-in-love-with-each-other-but-some-elaborate-misunderstanding-is-keeping-them-apart variety.
The actor, 31, had been feeling that no one was making real movies about real people - honest, messy films that people like himself would want to see.
"The subject matter has been dealt with in a glossed-over, studio-movie way," Braff said of real-life love. "This is a no-holds-barred, really-real look at relationships."
The star of NBC's "Scrubs" is funny and laid-back as he talks about his latest film - his first since he wrote, directed and starred in 2004's "Garden State."
"The Last Kiss," which opens today, chronicles five relationships - Braff's character's being the dominant one - in varying stages of decay, from the guy who can't get over the fact that he was dumped, to the couple whose long and placid marriage is finally roiled by a bitterness that has been simmering for years. And in life as in this movie, there is no easy way out.
Braff plays Michael, a guy with a good life, a good job and a good relationship with a good gal. Not much to complain about, really, until he realizes that he's headed down a road with no surprises, no unknown bends and no spontaneous left turns. He's kissing, he's horrified to discover, the last person he's ever going to kiss.
Of all the characters in the film, Braff says he identifies with Michael the most. Here's a guy who's asking himself all kinds of questions about the life he wants to live and who is just starting to truly live with the choices he's already made. Having turned 30 while making the movie, Braff said that's something he's feeling acutely.
"You can't help but look at yourself and think (‘What do I want?')," he said. "You can't kid yourself anymore once you're out of your 20s that you're still a kid."
For Braff's character, the pesky little sentiment popped up while at his first good-friend's-wedding, that late-20s/early-30s rite of self-evaluation where the girls start looking hard at their guys and the guys start looking hard for the door.
As Michael's fear of the utter predictability of his future with girlfriend Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) settles over him, he goes off in search of something simpler. Namely, someone simpler.
Rachel Bilson is Kim, a likable and free-spirited college girl who shows her affection by way of mix CDs, has university-grown ideas about the institution of marriage and looks totally hot in a miniskirt. To Michael, she's everything he's leaving behind.
"The world is moving so fast now that we start freaking out long before our parents did," she tells him, "because we don't ever stop to breathe anymore."
As Michael mourns the loss of his youth and freedom the hard way, the relationship clichés fall away as he fights with himself over which path to choose and, eventually, begins the new and perhaps more difficult battle to accept it.
One thing that came easier to Braff himself was producing the soundtrack to "The Last Kiss," another compilation of songs-you're-totally-listening-to-right-now that comes on the heels of the wildly popular, Grammy-winning, also-Braff-produced soundtrack to "Garden State."
Assembling "The Last Kiss" music was a no-process, no-pressure endeavor, Braff said. It's not that he's particularly encyclopedic about music, or even that his taste is particularly good. It's just that he likes sharing it with others.
"The trick is finding music that is very emotional but (doesn't upstage) what the actors are doing," he said. "What I love about people responding to this soundtrack is that they sought the soundtrack out because the songs as they were played in the movie did something to them emotionally."
As publicity for "The Last Kiss" kicked off, Braff announced that this will likely be his last season of "Scrubs." From here, the actor says he'd like to continue making movies and, yes, one day get married and have kids.
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