With the world on fire and its people on edge, awards season has become particularly heated this year, and the outrage and smear campaigns are flying fast and furious. The narrative of late, appears to be film critics (myself included), perturbed that well-crafted, beloved films like “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Widows,” “Leave No Trace,” “First Reformed” and “Eighth Grade” are being overlooked while problematic populist fare, that tends to put conveniently revisionist spin on history, like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Green Book” are winning Golden Globes and eating up nomination in the Oscar-auguring guilds.
READ MORE: ‘Green Book’ Director Talks Harshest Criticisms: “I’m Afraid I’m Going To Have PTSD”
Are some of these gripes possibly just sour grapes that critical darlings are being dismissed? From some, it’s possible, for sure, but both ‘Rhapsody’ and “Green Book” are genuinely becoming embroiled in genuinely troubling controversy and for the latter Peter Farrelly-directed film, that movie has been routinely mocked on social media for “ending racism.”
“Green Book” which has faced charges from the African-American Shirley family that many of the stories in this movie—about an Italian-American bouncer Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (played by Viggo Mortensen) who served as a driver and bodyguard for famous African-American classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) are a “symphony of lies” and “100% wrong.” “Green Book” has not only been accused of sugar coating Shirley and Vallelonga’s relationship, while putting an innocuous spin on racism at the time, but fabricating elements of the story to give the bigot, Vallelonga, a more redeeming arc not unlike Jessica Tandy’s character in “Driving Miss Daisy” who heroically overcame her own prejudice in that Oscar-winning film.
READ MORE: Dr. Don Shirley’s Family Says ‘Green Book’ Is A “Symphony Of Lies” & “100% Wrong”
The conversation around the film has been heated, and tonight a THR story has further demonstrated the rift between the Shirley family and the filmmakers behind the film, director Peter Farrelly and writers Nick Vallelonga (Tony’s son) and Brian Hayes Currie.
READ MORE: Viggo Mortensen Defends ‘Green Book’ & Calls Shirley Family’s Comments “Unjustified”
“My hope,” Yvonne Shirley, Don’s great-niece, told THR of the filmmakers “is that at some point the writers and producers will abandon their defensive stance and reflect on why they made the choices they made. Why not apply the same care and curiosity to their research about Don Shirley as they did to Tony Lip?”
It gets much worse. Tonight, several eagle-eyed Twitter followers noted that Vallelonga has once tweeted in support of Donald Trump’s fabricated claim that Muslims were seen in Jersey City cheering on as the World Trade Center towers fell on 9/11—utterly false propaganda that has been disproven several times over. But in 2015, Vallelonga maintained he too saw the claim and even tweeted at Donald Trump in agreement.
Worse, as many have pointed out, Mahershela Ali, the star of the film is Muslim and evening while besieged with negative comments about his hateful 2015 tweet, Vallelonga quickly deleted his Twitter account. Universal Pictures or the writer have not yet released a statement, but assume one is coming as a form of damage control and this, as they say, is absolutely not a good look for Vallelonga or the film already under fire.
“Green Book” has faced a rocky awards road from the start. After winning the popular People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film’s campaign was briefly derailed when Viggo Mortensen dropped the n-word casually in a Q&A (Ali said he was “hurt” by his co-star’s words and Mortensen quickly apologized).
But the Shirleys have raised many objections about the film and the (white) filmmakers, and Mortensen, haven’t exactly helped their cause by acting like they’re actually listening to the family.
“For my family, this is not nor has it ever been a debate. It’s just about the truth. We know the truth of our loved one.” Yvonne Shirley told THR tonight, adding of the filmmakers: “They decided to make Don Shirley estranged from his black family, though that was not true. They decided to make him absurdly disconnected from black community and culture, though that was not true. They decided to depict him as having spent his formative years in Europe, though he spent them in the Deep South where he was born and raised. They decided to create a story of a white man’s redemption and self-realization using an extraordinary black life and a history of black oppression in this country as their backdrop. Many viewers are simply tired of that devaluing narrative.”
Is the “Green Book” campaign dead in the water? On paper, yes, but awards season is strange. More tomorrow when a follow-up statement—likely prepared and finessed tonight—arrives.
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