Green Book was the winner of Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards in 2019, a curious feat particularly because its director and co-writer, Peter Farrelly, had spent most of his career previously directing broad, gross-out romantic comedies such as There's Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber, and Shallow Hal. Many were surprised when Farrelly, who had never been nominated for an award, took one home for a feel-good redemption drama about race relations in 1960s America.
In addition to directing the film, Farrelly co-wrote the screenplay with Tony Vallelonga's son Nick Vallelonga and Brian Hayes Currie. Currie, a friend of Farrelly's, brought the premise to Farrelly and asked if he'd like to collaborate. "I was like, 'That's the best story I've ever heard! Can I write it with you?'" Farrelly told Newsweek. Filming took place in New Orleans in November 2017. Peter Farrelly fought against preconceptions about his work throughout production and marketing for the film, telling Newsweek, "People didn't know what I would do with this material. It was an uphill battle." Indeed, the studio and Farrelly were so worried about this misperception of Farrelly's style that they omitted his name from the initial trailer for the film.
In addition to fighting preconceptions about his relationship to genre, Farrelly faced a huge backlash after the release of the film from viewers who criticized its depiction of race relations, its recapitulation of the "white savior" trope, and even criticism from the real Don Shirley's family. In his review of the film, A.A. Dowd of AV Club wrote, "Intentionally or not, it flatters the delusion that racism, in its ugliest form, is more of a past-tense problem" and The New Yorker's Richard Brody wrote, "Humor... keeps the movie floating, weightlessly, above the appalling bedrock of its ponderous assumptions." Many felt that it flattened and anesthetized racial realities that were far more complicated than it acknowledged, and thus shirked responsibility for its historical background. Meanwhile, Don Shirley's family suggested that no such friendship existed between the two men, and called the film a "symphony of lies."
To counteract these criticisms, Farrelly revealed an audio recording from Lost Bohemia, a documentary in which Don Shirley says, "I trusted [Vallelonga] implicitly. See, Tony got to be, not only was he my driver, we never had an employer-employee relationship. We didn’t have time for that. My life was in this man’s hands. Do you understand me? So we got to be friendly with one another. I taught him things because he couldn’t talk, he was one of those Lower East Side Italians who had jowls like a bulldog.” In an interview with Vanity Fair, Farrelly said he tried to get in touch with Shirley's family, but adds, "I wish I could have talked to the family earlier...But I don’t think it would have changed the story, because we were talking about a two-month period [of Vallelonga and Shirley on the road together]. Those were the only people that were there. . . . I would have just let [the family] know as a courtesy that we are making this movie.”
