With eight seasons of Scrubs and the indie darling Garden State, Zach Braff has proven himself as both a successful actor and filmmaker. With the upcoming release of Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful (in cinemas Thursday, March 7th), we have a good yarn with the star about his involvement with the film.
FLICKS: Hi Zach. How are you?
ZACH BRAFF: I’m good buddy. I’m here in Sydney at the moment.
What’s the weather like? I hope it’s not disastrous.
Well, it’s kind of overcast and sad.
Well, at least you’re not amongst a flood, on top of a roof, floating downstream. Were you like me as a child, did you come completely wear out your parents’ VHS copy of The Wizard of Oz?
Well, we didn’t have VHS, but I would catch it when it came on TV. I read recently it’s the most-watched movie of all time.
I guess you were quite excited by the opportunity to play Finley.
Yeah, it’s a really cool thing to be a part of. Disney really assembled an amazing group with James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz, and all the amazing designers, including the production designer of Avatar. It’s a really, really lush beautiful 3D movie.
Did you get to visit any of those sets? Or were you just completely confined to the recording booth?
No, not at all. I was there on set every single day and interacting. The director, Sam Raimi, really wanted me there and acting with the actors and crouching down to be in the position that a monkey would be in. He wanted it to be free and improvisational at times, so I was there.
Oh, that’s fantastic because it’s total babe-central there with Kunis, Williams and Weisz on set. To be confined to a booth would have just been totally criminal.
Yeah, I got to look at the beautiful witches.
Exhibit A - Michelle Williams.
As you were voicing Finley with the other actors, did they occasionally use a puppet or maybe just a figure on a stick to imitate where the character would be at times while you were voicing?
Sam didn’t really want them staring at a stick, so there was a puppet that we used sometimes to get in the right position when they couldn’t, but as often as possible we tried to have me in the exact position I would be in.
Tell us about your character Finley.
This is a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, telling the origin story of Oz himself. We all know that in the movie, he’s the guy behind the curtain, well how did he get there?
The film introduces James Franco’s character as a travelling magician in a circus and I’m his assistant; I play myself as a human in Kansas. When Oz gets transplanted to this magical world, he stumbles across me and, if you recall from the original, Dorothy also flies and ends up in the land of the creatures. That’s kind of what happens to me as well. I become this flying monkey and it becomes his right-hand man and his little valet.
So when you get turned from Frank to Finley, did you have to manipulate your voice to sound like a flying monkey, however a flying monkey sounds like?
No, we wanted the audience to be able to tell that it was the same person, so I was doing the same voice for both characters.
What was it like working for Sam Raimi?
He’s a really great guy. He’s making this movie that’s so giant; there’s like 48 people on set. He’s steering a cruise ship and somehow found the time to give everyone the one-on-one time they needed. He’s very collaborative and inclusive. I really, really like him. We’ve become good friends.
Being quite a talented filmmaker yourself with ‘Garden State’, were you given the opportunity to have your own creative input?
Well, occasionally he would ask for my two cents but really for me it was like grad school. My movie was so small, and it was a chance for me as a filmmaker to see what a movie on this scale was like. So Sam was so generous and would always be explaining things. James was also into filmography and he too makes movies, so Sam was really great to both of us. He was like the ideal mentor.
You mentioned that you had quite a bit of interaction with the actors on screen. Who did you end up spending the most time with?
James, because of the buddy-buddy relationship between Oz and Finley, and the friendship that develops during the long quests on the Yellow Brick Road.
Is voice work something you would consider pursuing perhaps beyond the big screen?
Well, I’ve done a couple of ad campaigns in the States for things and I also did Chicken Little. I like doing it, it’s a lot of fun.
With a lot of animated characters in major films they sometimes model the character’s likeness after the actor that voices them. How would you feel about having your face on a flying CG monkey?
He didn’t look like me that much. I wish he did, but that would look kind of weird. He looked like a normal real monkey using my voice and my gestures. But he didn’t really look like me.
Share with us your fondest moments on set.
Oh, just being on these enormous sets they built. They’re like the size of football fields, dozens of them, and every time you walked on it you couldn’t believe it. Looking around and seeing munchkins, witches and all the creatures from the land of Oz, looking down and seeing my feet on the Yellow Brick Road was very, very surreal.
Oz: The Great and Powerful is in cinemas from March 7th in 2D and 3D.
