He let people make their own decisions, but he led them to their decisions. I know it’s pathetic, but one of my favorite shows of all time is The Andy Griffith Show. So Brian, Nick, and I had to find a way to make it Doc Shirley’s decision, allowing Tony to piggyback on it, to show they’re both in sync at the end. He didn’t learn anything through all this time. What he’s saying is exactly correct.” It was never a debate.īut that created another problem: If it’s all Doc Shirley, then you look at Tony and go, What an asshole. Doc Shirley wouldn’t play there.” When he brought it up, I immediately realized, “Oh, yeah, that is fucked up. Mahershala never used the term “white savior.” But he said, “This isn’t right.” He goes, “Tony can’t be the one. But the problem was, it was Tony’s decision and we didn’t want that. This is wrong.” And Doc Shirley smiles because he is proud of Tony. In that early draft, as Doc Shirley’s about to go onstage, Tony grabs him and says, “No, I don’t give a fuck. So he says, “Okay, all right, let’s play.” And Tony’s conscience hits him and he realizes what he’s doing is wrong. I’m gonna lose my back end.” And Doc Shirley is torn on it. Tony says, “Come on Doc.” He goes, “This is the last show. But then he realizes Tony is going to lose money and recognizes it. We had a draft early on where Doc Shirley is pissed that they won’t let him in the restaurant. In New Orleans, about six weeks before the cameras rolled, that was one scene we rewrote with Mahershala. So my co-writers, Brian Currie and Nick Vallelonga, and I went around and around in circles. That made it a difficult scene to do: to make sure that Doc Shirley made the decision while allowing Tony to save face and to show that Tony Lip has grown. But if Doc Shirley just insists they leave, they’re back where they started - he’s going against Tony. He says, “I’m not playing here unless I get to eat in this room.” And he’s not going back on that. On the other hand, we didn’t want Tony talking him out of it. So we were very clear that we were walking a tightrope there, because we didn’t want you to think Tony Lip hadn’t learned anything and that he would be okay with Doc playing there. And by the way, the white-savior trope is an easy trope to fall into if you take your eye off the ball. We discussed them at length with Mahershala Ali and Octavia Spencer - with everybody involved. I know there’s been a lot of discussion about the white savior and the magical negro, all these different tropes. But on the other hand, we can’t have Tony be the one to say, “No, you’re not going to play here if you can’t eat here.” But now he’s walked a couple of miles in Doc Shirley’s shoes and sees it from his point of view. At the beginning, Tony’s a guy who’s stealing hats for money. If this had happened earlier on in the movie, Tony wouldn’t have blinked. So when Doc’s told he can’t eat at this restaurant - even though he’s the guy everyone there has come to see - we wanted him to stand up and finally say, “That’s it!” And it was very complicated because there’s a lot going on. By then, he’s already been pushed around, arrested, treated poorly, and had this big come-to-Jesus moment in the rain and is talking about, “Who am I? What am I? And what do I stand for?” But it was also the scene where Doc Shirley has had enough. They just have to get through this last performance and Tony Lip gets paid his back-end salary. And by that point, the characters have bumped heads, they’ve had their ups and downs, and they’ve bonded. The scene is then excerpted below.Įarly on in the trip, the Christmas concert in Birmingham, Alabama, is set up as the final destination. Which pivotal sequence underwent the biggest transformation on the way from script to screen? Today, Green Book writer-director Peter Farrelly - who is nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay and whose film is up for a best picture Oscar - unpacks his difficulty plotting a key scene in which jazz/classical pianist Don “Doc” Shirley ( Mahershala Ali) is turned away from a whites-only hotel dining room, putting his driver-cum-bodyguard Tony “Lip” Vallelonga ( Viggo Mortensen ) in a tricky situation. Over the next few weeks, Vulture will speak to the screenwriters of 2018’s most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found hardest to crack. Mahershala Ali (left) and Viggo Mortensen in Green Book.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |