Actor Randall Park is making his feature debut as a director with the upcoming film, "Shortcomings," and spoke with Cheddar News about the movie. Other cast members also joined to talk about the film.

<div class="block">Actor Randall Park is making his feature debut as a director with the upcoming film, &quot;Shortcomings,&quot; and spoke with Cheddar News about the movie. Other cast members also joined to talk about the film.</div>

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Randall Park Speaks on New Film 'Shortcomings'

Actor, Randall Park is making his feature debut as a director with the new film shortcomings. It's a dark rom com steeped in cultural commentary. Our West Coast correspondent Asia Salino spoke with Park and the film stars take a look. New York is overrated. It's so gentrified. Now, how many times have you been there? Are we counting layovers? No shortcomings is an indie film centered on Ben, a struggling filmmaker. When his girlfriend, Miko moves to New York for an internship. Ben's forced to confront the ways his life hasn't gone. According to plan, the comedic drama is Randall Park's directorial debut starring Justin Hm and Ali Mackey. Before the sag strike. I spoke with them about the movie. Oh, gosh. Well, the shortcomings is based on the graphic novel written by Adrian Tomi who also wrote the script for the movie. And it's a graphic novel that came out in 2007. And that's when I first discovered it. Randall Park immediately connected with the story. But the film adaptation of shortcomings was 15 years in the making at the time I was a struggling actor and I wandered into a store called Giant Robot in L A and saw this book sitting there and it was just drawn to the cover and read the whole thing in the bookstore was obsessed with it, bought, it, took it home, read it again and just, I couldn't, I couldn't stop thinking about the book just, uh, over the years. And as I, you know, kind of continued on in my acting career, it just kind of kept coming back to me this book and why isn't anyone making anything out of this book, a movie or something? Park was drawn to the complexity of Ben, the protagonist played by Justin. Hm. What was really fun about playing Ben for shortcomings? Ben was so fun because he reminded me so much of people. I knew he also reminded me a lot of myself before therapy. So it was fun to sort of dive back into that guy that I once was. Ali. I also heard about the story about how shortcomings was pitched to you. What was it that really drew you to the film and the story? Oh, man, when I first read the script, I was just uh I, I was overwhelmed. I was so excited and I just, I, I felt like I needed to play this role. I didn't know about Adrian's graphic novel, which is crazy because, you know, we have very much the same family history. You know, I'm fourth generation Japanese American. He is as well. And so first of all just finding out about him, felt like such this exciting moment. Um And then to read these characters that felt very much like things I would say things I've done, you know, kind of my own identity in a sense was, was really exciting. So I, I just was like, I, I have to be in this film. It's really interesting because it's a mundane story. It's an everyday slice of life story. But at the same time, we haven't seen it with an all Asian cast with Asian faces before. So talk about your inspiration for a lot of the shots and the tone of the film, the tone is again, like the kinds of movies that I really love, the kind of these dramatic comedic dramas, these kind of everyday movies about real people in real places, going through real life things that approach to reality allows shortcomings to offer a different kind of representation. Each of these characters are flawed, you know, they're complicated. And I don't think we, we get to see that very often when it comes to Asian American portrayals, often it's like the the really good valiant hero type of characters. And then you get the really bad evil, you know, menacing type of characters. And here we have real human beings who are complicated, they have issues, they're dealing with them, they're trying their best. So to me, it feels like a very honest movie and, and that's what really excites me about it and you can check out shortcomings in theaters tomorrow. And of course, thanks to our West Coast correspondent. A Celestino.