Nick Vallelonga after Green Book won screenplay and best comedy Golden Globe awards.
By Eric Charbonneau.
Three days after the Hollywood Foreign Press bestowed its best-original-screenplay award on Green Book and its writers, Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, and Brian Currie, a tweet resurfaced that Vallelonga, the son of the film’s subject, Tony (“Lip”) Vallelonga, composed back in 2015, prompting immediate outrage.
The reinforcement of one of Donald Trump’s most controversial conspiracy theories—in which he claimed to have witnessed thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrate the attacks on 9/11—is especially hurtful to the Muslim community, of which Green Book’s star and recent Golden Globe winner, Mahershala Ali, is a member.
Soon after the tweet resurfaced, Vallelonga’s entire Twitter profile was deleted.
Calls by Vanity Fair to Universal (the studio behind Green Book) and Vallelonga have not yet been returned.
The news comes amid increased Oscar buzz for the period piece, which tracks the unlikely friendship between Dr. Don Shirley (Ali) and his Italian-American driver, Tony (Viggo Mortensen). Director and co-writer Farrelly just received a nomination from the Directors Guild for his work, and the Producers Guild recently named Green Book as one of its 10 best-picture nominees this year.
The film has also prompted outrage from the Shirley family, who called the depiction of pianist Don Shirley “a symphony of lies.”
Vallelonga’s tweet emerged a few hours after New York magazine’s The Cut republished excerpts from a 1998 Newsweek profile, where Farrelly admitted to pulling out his penis to people on several of his film sets, including to both studio executives, such as Tom Rothman, and actresses, like Cameron Diaz.
In a statement late Wednesday, Farrelly said: “True. I was an idiot. I did this decades ago and I thought I was being funny, and the truth is, I’m embarrassed and it makes me cringe now. I’m deeply sorry.”
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