How did you convince Natalie Portman to come aboard?
I kept saying when we were in meetings: Let's find a Natalie Portman kind of girl. When we'd make a list of people who we thought were like Natalie Portman. Then we'd debate who could be a good Natalie Portman. Then I wrote her a letter. She read it and we met and had lunch. On her way home from lunch she called her agent and said, 'Yeah, I'll do it.' I was in shock.
Why her?
There a lot of actresses in Hollywood that are beautiful. There's a handful that are good actresses. There's a smaller group that are both. And of that group, there's a couple that have that X factor where you can't take your eyes off them. What is it about her? There's this charisma, this energy, this special thing that's very rare and she has it.
So, how much of Garden State is true to your life?
As far as what's real and what's not, about 75 percent is stuff that definitely happened, although not necessarily to me. I drew from a collection of stories, things that I read about or someone would tell me a story late night and I would write it down on a matchbook. I come from a family of storytellers. We'd sit around the table and try to crack each other up with funny stories.
Give us one of your tales that made it in the film.
The guy shooting the arrow in the air: I had a friend who thought that was the funniest thing in the world. He would shoot arrows in the air and make us all run around, terrified.
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A lot of the stuff the characters were going through is stuff I was going through in my 20s, and I'm still going through – I'm 29 now. I'd describe it as a lost malaise, a time post-college when people are getting married later and there's this period of self-exploration. And for me, a lost loneliness.
