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Green Book premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2018 amid low expectations and received mixed reviews. Green Book becomes a surprise fan favorite In 2017, Oscar winner Mahershala Ali and Oscar nominee Viggo Mortensen agreed to play Shirley and Vallelonga, respectively. Nick Vallelonga then approached the screenwriter Brian Currie and director Peter Farrelly, who signed on to the project. Tony Vallelonga and Shirley died within five months of each other in 2013. Don ShirleyвЂ™s nephew Edwin Shirley later told TIME in an email: вЂњIt was maybe thirty-five years ago when he approached Uncle Donald the first time. According to an interview with Nick Vallelonga in TIME, Shirley gave his blessing-but told him to wait until he died. For reasons that are now contested, Shirley rebuffed these requests at the time.

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In the 1980s, VallelongaвЂ™s son, Nick, approached his father and Shirley about making a movie about their friendship. Vallelonga would later become an actor and land a recurring role on The Sopranos. The mismatched pair spent one and a half years together on the road-though itвЂ™s condensed to just a couple of months in the film- wriggling out of perilous situations and learning about each otherвЂ™s worlds. As an adult he worked as a bouncer, a maГ®tre dвЂ™ and and a chauffeur, and he was hired in 1962 to drive Shirley on a concert tour through the Jim Crow South. Vallelonga was born in 1930 to working-class Italian parents and grew up in the Bronx. (African Americans still only make up 1.8 percent of musicians playing in orchestras nationwide, according to a recent study.) But at a time when prominent black classical musicians were few and far between due to racist power structures, he never secured a spot in the upper echelons of the classical world. He went on to perform regularly at Carnegie Hall-right below his regal apartment-and work with many prestigious orchestras, like the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Shirley was born in 1927 and grew up in a well-off black family in Florida, where he emerged as a classical piano prodigy: he possessed virtuosic technique and a firm grasp of both classical and pop repertoire. Green Book is about the relationship between two real-life people: Donald Shirley and Tony вЂњLipвЂќ Vallelonga. Green Book focuses on an odd couple: Donald Shirley and Tony вЂњLipвЂќ Vallelonga

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