Licorice Pizza Director Paul Thomas Anderson Responds To Criticism Of Fake Asian Accent

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I’m a big Anderson fan, but as I’ve mentioned many times here on /Film, I also happen to live in Tokyo (where it’s not wall-to-wall white kids, but rather wall-to-wall Japanese folks. ) “Licorice Pizza” hasn’t opened in Japan yet, so the cinephile and Japanophile in me can only sit by and watch with trepidation as this controversy plays out in the media. All I have to go on is what I’ve heard from stateside sources, including The Hollywood Reporter’s detailed breakdown of the film’s “Japanese wife scenes.”

In the past, we’ve shared some of my own Japanese wife’s thoughts on Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation,” another well-regarded film that nevertheless has received criticism for its offhand treatment of the Japanese. Based on Anderson’s comments, it seems like he couldn’t even grasp where people were coming from when they questioned his platforming of biased humor through the mouthpiece of the Frick character (this, despite the fact that Anderson’s own mother-in-law is Kimiko Kasai, an accomplished Japanese jazz singer). He even flat-out said: “What is the problem?”

That’s a question that seems fairly ludicrous, given the real-world context of a country that has seen a meteoric rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. An NBC News report this week indicated that they were up 339 percent in the US last year.

One notable reaction to “Licorice Pizza” that I did catch was that of former /Film contributor David Chen, the co-host of The Filmcast, who tweeted:

“Picture this: You’re watching LICORICE PIZZA. It’s brilliant. Then, early on, a buffoonish character drops an Asian caricature. The (mostly white) audience laughs. And now, you gotta think about that laughter the rest of the film. […] LICORICE PIZZA is otherwise excellent. The dialogue is sharp. The cinematography is immaculate. I was so moved by the end. But the heartbreaking thing is me imagining an alternate version of this movie that didn’t have this s**tty moment, which added virtually nothing to it.”

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