Peter Farrelly’s Recipe for a Great Movie
“My wife just made bone broth.” Peter Farrelly tells me he is acclimatizing after his early morning interviews. We meet in the latter half of the afternoon in the LA office he shares with Larry David. His personal space is like a treasure trove of epic movie memorabilia and comedic brilliance. A scathing review of There’s Something About Mary hangs in a black frame behind his desk, next to a famous photorealistic painting of Woody Harrelson spilling Farrelly’s drink on Willie Nelson’s Maui poker table. “Willie was pissed,” he says. Original seats from Boston’s Fenway Park line his hallway—a gift after making Fever Pitch. A true sense of humor is everywhere.
Like dreams or folklores, Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s best-known movies grant viewers the safety and repose to momentarily consign to oblivion and just laugh–a lot. Green Book, Pete’s first solo project without his brother co-directing, is not that. It is a beautiful and riveting true story of friendship and the dangers of judgment, portrayed by two acclaimed actors (one Academy Award-winning and one nominated) and set in a tempestuous period of American history. Farrelly cannot easily disabuse people of the idea that he's on a new career trajectory. The film proves that his directorial genius knows no bounds, and many consider Green Book to be the year’s best picture.
In the height of awards season frenzy, Farrelly sat down with us to share his recipe for making a project into a heavy-hitting contender.
One Heaping Cup of Good Script
PETER FARRELLY: This started with a story that I’d heard. You know, normally we write our own stories and make them up. This, however, was a true story and we obviously changed a lot of the timeline facts because the film’s story actually took place over a year and a half so we focused on the first leg of it but took parts from all over and did it our way. The main ingredient for a great film is a great script. Period. Always.
TANYA AKIM: What attracted you to this? It’s so different from your past work.
PF: The story is based on my friend Nick Vallelonga’s father. I heard the story originally through Brian Hayes Currie and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was sort of in passing when we were saying what we were each up to. He’s an actor first, and he mentioned he was working on a screenplay about a black concert pianist touring through the Deep South and it captivated me.
I couldn’t get it out of my head so, two months later I asked him what was going on with his screenplay and he asked me which one. I reminded him and he said they hadn’t begun working on it so I said, ‘Can I write it with you?’ He said, ‘Sure’. And we started the next Monday – me, [Currie], and Nick [Vallelonga] and we just kicked it out.
TA: Were you surprised when you found out what the Green Book was?
PF: I had never heard of the Green Book and [Vallelonga] hadn’t either. The way we found it is because [Vallelonga] had audiotaped his father, Tony Lip, telling the story – which, thank God, we have like hours of tape of [Lip] talking about this trip. We probably listened to it five times before it had kicked in. He had said, "And then the record company gave us a book where the black people could stay," and I just let it go by and then finally by like, the fifth time I said, "What is he saying about a book?" So we Googled it and we found out about The Negro Motorist Green Book, which was an annual guide used from 1936-1966 in the US for black people traveling through the south and many other parts of the country. It detailed where to sleep, eat, get gas and do many other things safely. It described where to avoid “sundown towns"–towns where black people could be during the day and not after dark. One of the things that’s not in the movie but we learned is, when people or whole families were driving through the South at that time, “sundown towns” were clearly marked so they would pull over on the side of the road and sleep in the car. There would be lines of 10-12 cars all waiting for the sun to come up so they could pass through. It was horrible. [The book] saved lives.
Two Large Actors
PF: The sweetener, you know, the sugar of a movie is the actors. They make everything go down easier. They make it sweet and tasty, but you have to start with a story. I don’t care who the actors are: if you don’t have a story, it will not be good. Here, I had incredible actors to sweeten the story.
TA: Dr. Shirley felt out of his element going on tour in the South. Did you feel like you were out of your element going into a film that wasn’t the style you’re most known for?
PF: It didn’t feel that different to me, to be honest. It was in some ways easier because you don’t have to come up with jokes. That’s the hard part. All I had to do was basically tell the story and stick to the facts. We obviously took creative license, here and there, but it was a natural odd-couple story: a black concert pianist with multiple doctorates and a fifth-grade-educated, Italian-American bouncer. The natural humor was there but what we were very aware of in writing the script was not writing jokes. Let the humor come from the character and that’s what we were careful to do. In a lot of ways, it was easier, but not harder. I also started as a novelist and my books were humorous but they definitely had more depth so it didn’t feel unusual to do this.
TA: So, is this a direction you’re going to continue going in creatively?
PF: I am never writing a fucking comedy again for as long as I live–no, I’m kidding [laughs]. I definitely want to continue doing comedies here and there. I love it; it’s very fun. But I definitely want to continue doing this kind of movie more too. I hope to mix it up. I always felt it was a shame when great comedic actors have done amazing comedies and then switched to drama and never did comedy again.
TA: Let’s talk about the fried chicken.
PF: Let me tell you – that’s an interesting point. When Tony Lip offers him the chicken and Dr. Shirley says, “I’ve never had fried chicken,” he is essentially saying, “Do not stereotype me. I’m not that guy.” Of course, he’s had fried chicken--everyone’s had fried chicken--but his point is he won’t be identified by that. He wouldn’t allow that to happen because he was trying to teach Tony not to be stereotyping people, and that whole trip was them changing each other. That’s what I love about this story - is that they kept surprising each other with their abilities to change one another’s perspective.
TA: Did it taste as good as it looked? I consider myself a connoisseur.
I didn’t try the chicken but Viggo had about 15 pieces – Viggo gained 45lbs for the role and when we did the hotdog scene, he had 15-17 hot dogs, whole hot dogs. It was definitely good fried chicken. The whole thing was shot in New Orleans so the food was all incredible. We all gained weight, let’s put it that way.
One Tablespoon of Fearlessness
PF: I have a willingness to go for it in many ways, like certain kinds of humor, or I would touch a subject that people are afraid of, and people right now are really afraid of everything. I will take chances and go out there if I believe in it. If I think it’s for the right reason, I will go for anything.
A Pinch of Non-Actors
PF: I thought that having Nick [Vallelonga]’s family in it made it more authentic. These guys knew Tony Lip. It’s Tony Lip’s brother, Tony Lip’s brother-in-law, and both of Tony Lip’s sons were in the movie. To me it gave it a reality and they had the right accent so I didn’t have to work on that. I wanted that accent badly. If you look around, some of my favorite movies are guys making films with non-actors like last year’s The Florida Project and this year is The Rider. These are great movies made with non-actors but a director with a vision who knows how to push buttons and get people comfortable. Get them comfortable and then tweak them a little bit – push them in the right direction. It’s not that hard, so I wasn’t afraid of it.
Cook for Seven Weeks
PF: Normally I have a nine-to-ten week shoot. 45 to 50 days. This was my shortest shoot by far. I thought it was going to be a nightmare. Seven weeks, 35 days. I thought it was going to be hard because it’s a period piece and I had all the piano, but I’m convinced that if they said five weeks we could’ve done it. It’s about mind-set. When you know you need to do it in a time frame, you do. There’s something liberating about a shorter shoot. I can’t imagine these guys that do nine-month shoots. Seven weeks is kind of ideal.
TA: When the Golden Globe nominations came out, did someone call you or did you check yourself?
PF: I’m a really good sleeper, and once I get to sleep I could easily go late. I work late but I knew the announcement was at 5am, so at 5am of course, somehow, I’m up and think, ‘fuck’. There was no way I was turning the TV on because it’s like when I’m watching football and I need my team to get a touchdown, I can’t watch the game or else they won’t score. I walk out of the room. Then, I’ll check later and they score. That’s why I didn’t go online or anything. Then I got nervous because I was lying there at 5:30am thinking they’ve already announced but I didn’t know TV goes first. All of a sudden my phone started blowing up and I wanted to go back to sleep. Truly, all of my best work happens late at night.
At the time of printing, Green Book has been nominated for five Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and seven Critics’ Choice Awards.
