The Shins had no idea they’d actually be referenced in Garden State

Few scenes have immediately shifted the culture—or been as ruthlessly parodied—as Natalie Portman handing Zach Braff a pair of headphones in Garden State and telling him The Shins would change his life. In just one clip, the Scrubs actor kicked off an era of inescapable indie omnipresence (and snagged himself a Grammy Award-winning soundtrack to boot), loosed the Manic Pixie Dream Girl upon the world, and introduced a new cinematic tone that would inspire retrospectives and re-retrospectives for years and years to come. Love it or hate it, Garden State really did change all of our lives just a little bit—but perhaps no one’s more than the band that started it all. 

In a new oral history of the film to celebrate its 20th anniversary, The Shins frontman James Mercer told The Hollywood Reporter that he had no idea how much Garden State would alter his life when he was initially approached to participate. “[My label Sub Pop] said that the guy from Scrubs was making a movie of his own and that he wanted to have a couple Shins songs in it… it was so early on in the project; they didn’t say anything about Natalie Portman being in it, and I don’t even recall the detail of somebody putting on the headphones and listening and saying, “Oh, this will change your life,” or whatever,” Mercer said. “It was just kind of like, ‘Can they use these songs?’ We immediately were like, ‘Yeah, of course. That’s awesome. It’s like a free music video.’”

Everything changed once the film was released. “Friends of mine had seen [Garden State] and they told me, like, ‘Dude, do you know that your songs are not just in the movie? [The Shins] are kind of part of the movie.’ It was really exciting,” Mercer continued, reminiscing about his feelings seeing Natalie Portman’s character not only vibe to “New Slang,” but actually name-drop his band for the first time. The Shins had just released their second album, Chutes Too Narrow, a year prior, and Mercer now cites his residuals from Garden States’ best-selling soundtrack as “the first time I really started to make good money.” “Indie music started to be not just something you make fun of, and people kind of discovered there’s interesting stuff on these smaller labels,” he said. 

To be fair, Braff doesn’t want to take all the credit for this movement. “The Shins (who he first heard on the set of Scrubs) were on track to be huge. I think I just gave them a giant boost,” he told the outlet. The rest of that unforgettable soundtrack came together the same way as the rest of the film—through a hope and a prayer, with barely any money at all. “Every song on that soundtrack, other than the ones [from artists] who are my friends, I was told, ‘You’ll never get any of these; you’re making a mistake because you’re not going to get one of these songs. You think you’re going to get a Coldplay song? You think you’re going to get a Simon & Garfunkel song? We have no money. Are you nuts?’” Braff remembered. “It was a great lesson for me, and I always try and say it to young filmmakers, that of course you don’t know, but you just can’t give up until you’re out of time. Little by little, with one exception, we got every single song.”

Garden State fans can read the rest of the oral history—including stories about almost getting arrested for breaking into someone’s pool and teaching Jean Smart how to use a bong—at The Hollywood Reporter.