An Asian-American group is blasting “Jerry Maguire” director Cameron Crowe for having “whitewashed” Asian-Pacific Islanders out of his new film set in Hawaii.
A blistering press release from Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) charges that Crowe’s troubled new rom-com, “Aloha,” which opens next week, reserves virtually all of its prime roles for white actors — a stellar cast including Bradley Cooper, Bill Murray, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, Danny McBride and John Krasinski.
“Caucasians only make up 30 percent of the population [of Hawaii], but from watching this film, you’d think they made up 99 percent,” says MANAA’s Guy Aoki, a former resident of Hawaii.
“This comes in a long line of films — ‘The Descendants,’ ‘50 First Dates,’ ‘Blue Crush,’ ‘Pearl Harbor’ — that uses Hawaii for its exotic backdrop but goes out of its way to exclude the very people who live there. It’s an insult to the diverse culture and fabric of Hawaii.”
The group points out that minorities can be enthusiastic ticket buyers: The seventh installment of “The Fast and the Furious” has sold more than $300 million worth of tickets in North America — 75 percent of those to non-white fans.
The biggest roles for Asian-Pacific Islanders in the film, Aoki claims, are for “Indian pedestrian,” “upscale Japanese tourist” and “upscale restaurant guest.”
“They didn’t even have names,” Aoki adds. Referring to Crowe’s comment on social media that he wanted to play off the rich history of Hawaii, Aoki says, “How can you educate your audience to the ‘rich history’ of Hawaii by using mostly white people and excluding the majority of the people who live there and who helped build that history — APIs?”
“Aloha” didn’t need any more problems — the movie, originally planned for a Christmas 2014 release, is reputed to be a disaster.
Hacked Sony emails reveal that former studio chief Amy Pascal privately called the script “ridiculous” and said of the film, “It never, not even once, ever works.”
Sony has taken the highly unusual step of banning even journalists looking to do softball features on the actors from seeing the film at junkets until the last minute.
Critics aren’t invited until Tuesday night, and they’ve been ordered to keep their opinions under wraps until May 28 — just hours before the movie opens next Thursday. Early reaction from test audiences has reportedly been awful.
MANAA previously criticized Warner Bros. for distributing the film “Cloud Atlas,” in which non-Asian actors were made to appear Asian using what the group called “yellowface” makeup.
Sony Pictures hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.