Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga gives the black repairmen the fish-eye when they arrive at his Bronx home and stares warily at the glasses they drank from after his wife offers refreshments. When she isn’t looking, he drops the glasses in the trash. For Tony Lip, such intimate contact with African Americans is almost unthinkable, and yet, within weeks, he’s cooped up in a Cadillac with a black concert pianist on tour through the South.
“Inspired” by real events, Green Book is set in 1962 and based on a screenplay cowritten by Tony Lip’s son, Nick Vallelonga. The title refers to the era’s directory for black travelers in segregated states, listing “colored-only” accommodations. Racism was rank in those years, undisguised and pervasive. Tony (Viggo Mortensen) will learn a thing or two about the other—and his own otherness in others’ eyes—while working as the concert tour driver for Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a respected musician who puts himself out of his New York comfort zone by performing in Jim Crow country.
The set up by director Peter Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber) is comedic as two “fish out of water” swim the same treacherous current. Tony Lip thinks Atlantic City when told he’ll be working in the Deep South. A bouncer with Mob ties, he’s fast with his fists and his defiant pugilism will come in handy defending the pianist from the deplorables they encounter. Don—right, he prefers Dr. Shirley—is mortified when thrown into the boisterous company of Southern blacks and yet will never be fully accepted by many of the whites who applaud his performances. As for Tony Lip, in the eyes of rednecks, Italians are only one step up the ladder from blacks.
The South is Green Book’s primary setting, but Hollywood is seldom far from view. It’s a road picture and an odd-couple comedy as Tony Lip teaches Dr. Shirley how to eat fried chicken and the pianist helps the bouncer to pen eloquent love letters to his wife. The fastidious if not persnickety Dr. S. is a character seldom seen in American films. He’s an Africanist utterly divorced from African American culture and would rather be Arthur Rubinstein than Ray Charles. One intention behind Green Book is to show how individuals transcend stereotypes, however, Tony Lip and every one of his Italian cousins and in-laws fit perfectly into another set of stereotypes.
And yet, Green Book makes its point by reminding older viewers and showing younger ones how racial prejudice was once accepted in America as a fact of life. The problem is still with us, but nowadays, unapologetic racists—noisy as they may be—are no longer accepted, except online and in the White House.
