{"id":1923,"date":"2019-02-27T22:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T06:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2019-02-27T22:54:13","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T06:54:13","slug":"hollywoods-green-book-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/hollywoods-green-book-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood\u2019s Green Book Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a movie, Best Picture winner Green\nBook<\/em> was fine, I guess. It\u2019s certainly worth seeing for the\nperformances of Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in the lead roles, but the\nfact that Mortensen was considered the lead actor while Ali was the supporting\nactor is a clue to why this movie is problematic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

For those not in the know, Green\nBook<\/em> tells the story of real-life concert pianist Don Shirley (Ali)\non a concert tour through the Deep South in 1962. As an African-American man\ntraveling through the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s, Shirley hires\nCopacabana bouncer Frank \u201cTony Lip\u201d Vallelonga (Mortensen) as a driver and\nbodyguard. Along the way, they learn things about each other and about\nthemselves. Frank learns that racism is bad, and everyone hugs at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Green Book of the title was a guide for black\nAmericans traveling through the South, letting them know where it was safe to\nstay. It is certainly a fascinating topic for a film that film really wanted to\ndive into the subject. Sadly, I think that film is still waiting to be made.\nThis movie mostly glosses over the reality of the Green Book, using it as a throwaway\nprop more than an essential part of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This movie\u2019s problems probably started when Hollywood, in\nits infinite capacity for tone-deafness, decided to make a movie about a black\nmusician traveling through the Deep South of the Jim Crow era, and made the\n\u201cradical\u201d choice to tell that story from the perspective of the white guy in\nthe car. Yes, I\u2019m being sarcastic. Proving there\u2019s no problem that Hollywood\ncan\u2019t make worse, they made the even more \u201cradical\u201d decision to hire Peter Farrelly,\nthe white guy who directed There\u2019s Something About Mary<\/em>,\nto helm the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the film, Shirley is estranged from his brother. In\nreality, according to Shirley\u2019s family, they were not estranged. In the film, Shirley\nand Vallelonga become lifelong friends. In real life, maybe not so much. I\nrealize that it\u2019s common movie practice to fictionalize some aspects of a film story\nto create drama, but that gets dicey where you\u2019re dealing with real people who\nhave living relatives. I doubt Don Shirley\u2019s brother consented to the way he is\nportrayed in the film. Dragging a real person into your story, but completely\nfabricating their role in a negative light is not cool at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nick Vallelonga, Frank\u2019s son, insists that Don Shirley\ntold him not to contact his family when telling the story. First, it\u2019s very\nconvenient that Shirley isn\u2019t around to verify this, but even if this is true,\nit\u2019s a lame excuse. As soon as the story wandered into Shirley\u2019s relationship\nwith his brother, the filmmakers had an obligation to involve the family. The\nfurther claim that Vallelonga and others \u201cdidn\u2019t know\u201d that Shirley had any\nclose living relatives is equally feeble. They didn\u2019t have access to Google? A\nminimal amount of research could have cleared up that misunderstanding. Don Shirley\u2019s\nfamily wasn\u2019t involved because the filmmakers didn\u2019t even make a token effort,\nand the only reason you don\u2019t put in even the slightest effort is that you don\u2019t\ncare. I\u2019d have more respect for Farrelly, Vallelonga, and crew if they just admitted\nthis was the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overinflating Shirley and Vallelonga\u2019s friendship is more understandable\nin a film like this, as it is conventionally seen as necessary to make an\ninteresting movie. At least it does no real harm, unlike the thing with the\nbrother, although a film where they don\u2019t become friends at the end would be\nmore daring and unconventional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I don\u2019t think anyone involved in Green Book<\/em> had any bad intentions.\nEverything about the movie is so earnest that it just screams \u201ctraditionally\nwell-intentioned Oscar bait.\u201d Unfortunately, \u201cwell-intentioned\u201d is the\ncinematic equivalent of \u201cI guess it\u2019s the thought that counts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I certainly don\u2019t blame director Peter Farrelly for\nwanting to break out of the \u201cBen Stiller\u2019s Jism in Cameron Diaz\u2019s Hair\u201d school\nof comedy, and into something more substantive, but Green\nBook<\/em> has all the symptoms of trying too hard to be taken seriously.\nJust a little extra bit of self-awareness might have told Farrelly that, if he\nwanted to learn a new dance, it was probably best not to learn that dance in\nthe minefield of America\u2019s racial narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollywood enables this sort of behavior a little too\noften. For all the recent moves toward more diversity, the film industry is\nstill a mostly white and cloistered community, and a little too comfortable\nwith congratulating itself for its very conservative brand of liberalism. Yes,\nHollywood, you\u2019ve figured out that racism is bad, but you\u2019d already had that\nrevelation when Sidney Poitier was a young man. You can\u2019t keep returning to the\nsame well as In the Heat of the Night<\/em> and Guess\nWho\u2019s Coming to Dinner<\/em>, and act like you\u2019re still moving the\nconversation forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a great movie to be made in Green\nBook<\/em>, a movie where Don Shirley is the main character, we see the\nJim Crow South through his eyes, and we learn something about the real Green\nBook. Maybe that film would have genuinely deserved the Best Picture Oscar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a movie, Best Picture winner Green Book was fine, I guess. It\u2019s certainly worth seeing for the performances of Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in the lead roles, but the fact that Mortensen was considered the lead actor while Ali was the supporting actor is a clue to why this movie is problematic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[357,55],"tags":[365,364,367,366],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-venting","tag-academy-awards","tag-green-book","tag-jim-crow","tag-oscars"],"yoast_head":"\nHollywood\u2019s Green Book Problem - Paul McElligott Dot Com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Green Book would have seemed like a very progressive movie... in 1962. 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