A ‘Last Kiss’ shared by friends

Zach Braff, the “Scrubs” star turned film wunderkind, went to college with three of his current best friends before he knew them, lives just minutes away from them in Los Angeles and now they work together too.

When Braff signed on to his latest movie, “The Last Kiss,” he passed along songs written by his friends Joshua Radin and Cary Brothers to director Tony Goldwyn, who said he immediately fell in love with them. Goldwyn put them on the film’s soundtrack, and on Sunday night at Privilege in Hollywood, it was the songwriters’ turn to take the spotlight.

As Radin and Brothers took the club’s stage, another friend, actor Michael Weston, started screaming, “Cary Brothers!” followed by a series of high-pitched cries that sounded much like the mating call of some rare Amazonian primate. Brothers, either unable to hear his friend’s shrieks or unfazed by them, just smiled, strapped on his guitar and began to sing his track from the film.

That kind of support has been a mainstay of the friendship. Northwestern alums Braff, Brothers, Radin and Weston, who acted in both “Last Kiss” and 2004’s “Garden State” with Braff, became best friends when their paths crossed in New York a few years after graduation.

When Radin wrote a screenplay, he shared it with Braff. Brothers frequently jams with Weston, who plays piano, and Braff directed both Radin’s and Brothers’ latest music videos, the latter of which was shown at Sunday night’s party.

As the sun began to set and the film’s stars -- Braff, Jacinda Barrett and Rachel Bilson -- emerged from their chauffeured cars to walk the (teeny tiny) red carpet, Radin and his girlfriend, Schuyler Fisk, hung back, finding their footing in an unfamiliar world.

For Radin, clad in cords, a vest and tie, it all seemed so sudden. He’d never seriously thought about writing music until watching Braff write, direct and star in “Garden State,” he said. His friend’s accomplishment inspired him.

Now here Radin was, two years later, with two songs on a major motion picture soundtrack: “Paperweight,” a duet written and sung with Fisk, and “Star Mile,” a song written especially for “The Last Kiss,” a remake of a 2001 Italian film that depicts the life of a man and his friends as they enter adulthood and grapple with the expectations and responsibilities that come with it.

Minutes later, the pair was singing inside the club on a stage drenched in purple light.

As his friends’ voices filled the hushed room, Weston became sentimental. The actor tapped his hand on his heart. “It’s like, thump, thump, you know?”