The perils of a good trailer

Surfing around the web, I stumbled across this Heather Havrilesky interview with actor Zach Braff in Salon. Braff stars in Scrubs, which is currently the funniest (non-animated) show on network television, (admittedly not a difficult bar to reach). The interview was about Braff’s directorial debut, Garden State, opens today. At one point, they discussed the ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Surfing around the web, I stumbled across this Heather Havrilesky interview with actor Zach Braff in Salon. Braff stars in Scrubs, which is currently the funniest (non-animated) show on network television, (admittedly not a difficult bar to reach). The interview was about Braff's directorial debut, Garden State, opens today. At one point, they discussed the trailer of the move, and Braff said it was a big Internet hit:

Surfing around the web, I stumbled across this Heather Havrilesky interview with actor Zach Braff in Salon. Braff stars in Scrubs, which is currently the funniest (non-animated) show on network television, (admittedly not a difficult bar to reach). The interview was about Braff’s directorial debut, Garden State, opens today. At one point, they discussed the trailer of the move, and Braff said it was a big Internet hit:

We didn’t imagine that the trailer would become the hit on the Internet that it has. At IMDb there’s like this theory: People are like, “Yeah, I’m a ‘Garden State’ teaser-holic, I’ve watched it 30 times today.”

We here at danieldrezner.com pride ourselves on being up on this “Internet” trend, and felt chagrined at not having seen the online trailer. So we checked it out. The result? I’ve only checked it out only ten times in the past 24 hours, thank you very much — but’ it’s still pretty damn hypnotic. It’s as much a video for the Frou Frou song “Let Go” as it is a movie trailer, but I can’t get the song out of my head — in a good, not-going-crazy kind of way. Plus, it doesn’t reveal any crucual plot points, a rare trailer treat. Of course, this makes me even warier about seeing the actual movie. In my experience, there is often an inverse correlation between good trailers and good movies. The only trailers that ever made me want to see a movie I wouldn’t have been interested in anyway have been Throw Momma From the Train, Tim Burton’s Planet of The Apes, and The Triplets of Belleville. The last movie was great, but the first two sucked eggs. Fortunately, Garden State has a stellar cast (Peter Sarsgaard, Natalie Portman, Ian Holm) and has been receiving more promising reviews. Plus, Braff has a blog about the movie that gets more comments than yours truly. So maybe I’ll check it out. Maybe I’ll check out that trailer one more time….

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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