Zach Braff Wants Your Money on Kickstarter...Should You Give It to Him?

Garden State is one of the most disappointing movies I have ever seen. I loved Zach Braff when it came out, I was in the perfect demographic for the movie (you know, in my 20's, white, vaguely anxious about everything) and I had been waiting for it with bated breath.

And it was so bad. The story was cliched, the images only mildly interesting, the entitlement palpable and the second half, from the moment the gang "screams into the void" until the classic airport chase-down, almost unwatchable. But it had a great soundtrack.

And now Zach Braff wants to make a sequel-type-thing called Wish I was Here. And he wants us to pay for it.

I'm not going to lie. My first reaction after seeing this video was: "F YOU ZACH BRAFF I DON'T WANT A SEQUEL and stop trying to win me over with the dreamy Chris Hardwick."

But since I went to meditation last night, I decided to become aware of my response and then actually listen to what he was saying.  Basically, it seems like Zach is suggesting that we change our model of movie funding from top down to bottom up. We stop letting some big studio dictate what we see and vote with our dollars for real, from the beginning, and not just at the box office. He got this idea from the Veronica Mars Kickstarter that just funded a movie of the show, and even if some parts of this whole process seem annoying (like do I really have to give money to the super-rich? If I do, will they pay at least a MONTH of my student loan debt?), the idea is kind of awesome. Like give-it-back-to-the-people free market art support.

I really, truly find Braff obnoxious and I will absolutely not support his movie Kickstarter but I guess that's the point...I don't have to! I didn't support the Veronica Mars Kickstarter either. I have supported things on Kickstarter though, for local comedians, my friend's band, things like that. It's interesting to note that arts funding in this country is so totally messed up, on every level, that the unknown, poor artists can't get money to do their thing and the well-known ones are forced to compromise their vision and do whatever their funders want them to. If Kickstarter is a way around this for both the known and the unknown then you know what? Let's do it. Maybe it won't fix the state of the arts in this country but at least, until the whole system implodes and we start turning to Scandinavia for all of our entertainment needs, it will keep artists in the US afloat and the rest of us engaged in the process of creation.

So, what do you think? Will you help Zach Braff fund Garden State 2.0? Should I go start a Kickstarter for my student loans?