Randall Park was a struggling actor when he first encountered Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel “Shortcomings” in 2007. The story focused on a twentysomething Japanese American man named Ben, who is trying to find himself in the Bay Area along with his girlfriend Miko and best friend Alice, who is a lesbian. They are all flawed, complex and figuring things out, sometimes inelegantly. Park was obsessed.
“I remember thinking, gosh this would make an amazing movie,” Park said in an interview earlier this year during the Sundance Film Festival. “And in my dreams it was like, ‘Oh I’d love to play Ben.’”
