Randall Park is fresh off his directorial debut.
The “Fresh Off the Boat” sitcom star and “Always Be My Maybe” actor directed the millennial coming-of-age “Shortcomings,” starring Justin H. Min. The film, written by Adrian Tomine and based on the graphic novel of the same name by Tomine from 2007, also stars Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Debby Ryan, Tavi Gevinson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jacob Batalon and Timothy Simons.
In “Shortcomings,” Ben (Min), a struggling director, lives in Berkeley, California with his girlfriend, Miko (Cola), who works for a local Asian-American film festival. When he’s not running an arthouse cinema as a day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs and eating out at restaurants with his best friend Alice (Maki), a queer student with an serial dating habit. . When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left on his own and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.
“Shortcomings” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and went on to screen at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Director Park told IndieWire at Sundance that the film adaptation had been in the works for 15 years since the graphic novel’s debut.
“I first fell in love with[the book]when it came out in 2007. And I’ve always wanted to see it as a movie,” Park said. “I was about the same age as Ben. And I was like, ‘Damn, I’d love to play Ben. Would be great.’ But at the time it would never have been made into a film. Over the years, I kept thinking about that book and then I found out that Adrian had written a script and they were looking for directors. I made a presentation because I was so passionate about the material and had thought of it as a film for so long that I came up with this elaborate presentation and joined the project and brought my production company with me. It felt like everything magically came together, lots of serendipity.
“Shortcomings” will premiere August 4 in the theaters of Sony Pictures Classics. Check out the trailer below.
