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[NYP] Asian American group says Cameron Crowe ‘whitewashed’ his new film

May 21, 2015

[NEW YORK POST]

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.

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