Exclusive Interview: Justin H. Min, Ally Maki, and Tavi Gevinson Discuss Shortcomings

Justin H. Min, Ally Maki, and Tavi Gevinson are three of the stars of Shortcomings.

Based on the graphic novel by Adrian Tomine and directed by Randall Park, Shortcomings tells the story of Ben (Justin H.Min), a struggling filmmaker who lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko (Ally Maki), who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Justin, Ally, and Tavi about the must-see film.

Please Note: This interview was filmed prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike at the Tribeca Film Festival. We stand in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, and will not be conducting further interviews until a fair deal is reached.

PC: Justin, you shared that for most of your career, the industry has wanted you to play one archetype but Ben was the opportunity to play someone who is flawed, contradictory, and three-dimensional, and you’ve brought so much nuance to his journey. This character and your performance feel so much bigger than art and entertainment and have the ability to open future doors for not only yourself but for the community. Did that bring a different weight to this project? How rewarding has this experience been for you creatively?
Justin: Wow, very humbled by that question. It was a lifelong dream of mine to be able to play a character with complexity and as you already said with contradictions. These are people I feel like I know in real life. I haven’t really had a chance to play a real three-dimensional human being. It was such an honor and joy to do that. I do believe this is such an exciting time for our community. I can’t wait to continue to see stories like this and characters like this portrayed on screen. We’ve said it time and time again: we are not a monolith of a community. It’s so exciting to see many different variations and iterations of our community represented on screen.

PC: Ally, you’ve said in the past five or ten years that working on a project with your community and friends would be a pipe dream. But here we are. You’ve played such an integral role in pushing this movement forward with the layered and nuanced characters that you’ve played and in forming the Asian American Girl Club. Have you had time to reflect on your contributions to this evolution? What does this moment and characters like Miko mean to you?
Ally: Oh my gosh. That’s so kind. Thank you so much. I’m truly humbled. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect as an adult. That was the impetus for the Asian American Girl Club. Because I reflected back on my fourteen-year-old self and I feel very sad that I’m just finding my own voice, self-worth, and confidence in my thirties. That’s my own unique path and journey. But I think about representation and what that would have done for fourteen-year-old me and that fuels the other things that I do with AAGC. It’s a culmination of all of that. We see how meaningful it is. It’s all worth it when you see a six-year-old who’s wearing the shirt and knowing that anything is possible.

PC: Tavi, you’ve worked on projects of all sizes. What is it about independent filmmaking that excites you as a creative? When you’re playing a character who’s so different from who you are, is that more or less challenging?
Tavi: Oh gosh, it’s a bit more challenging. But I felt like there were things that I could relate to with Autumn and being overly eager to share your work with people or overly confident…those sorts of things. [laughs] There were a lot of crew members from this who I had worked with on Gossip Girl, which is a big-budget TV show, so in some ways, it felt like going from one to the next with that sense of community.

PC: This is Randall’s directorial debut. Is the filming experience different when the person who’s at the helm also has experience in front of the camera? What was that collaboration like?
Justin: It’s amazing. There’s a vocabulary that actors understand. When you’re an actor, you appreciate when directors speak to you in a certain way. To try to distill it, it’s a lot more emotionally character based than it is result based. Randall always spoke to us in that way and always spoke in terms of the character and the emotions we were feeling. He was so collaborative. I love actor-directors. They’re some of the best people to work with. Randall, himself as a human being, is one of the kindest, most generous people you will ever meet. It was great.

Ally: I agree with all of that. Randall is all energy and all passion. The way that he directs is exactly what Justin just said. It’s rarely technical unless it’s something very specific. He always makes you feel like you’re in complete control and you’re in the driver’s seat of this character. But at the same time, he knows exactly what he wants. That’s something that’s harder to master as a director, but it came so naturally to Randall and I think a lot of that has to do with his background as an actor.

Make sure to follow Justin (Twitter/Instagram), Ally (Twitter/Instagram), and Tavi (Twitter/Instagram). Catch Shortcomings in theaters now.

Photo Credit: June Kim (Justin H. Min) // Ryan West (Ally Maki)