Cellist saw Green Book and saw red
Retired Toronto musician Richard Armin didn’t just dislike Green Book, the surprise Best Picture Oscar winner at last weekend’s Academy Awards.
He rejects it unreservedly, calling the film “a complete lie.”
“I feel betrayed,” says Armin, 74, in an interview in his Queen St. E. apartment. “It almost brought me to tears.”
For eight months in 1964-65, Armin worked with Don Shirley, the virtuoso Black pianist at the centre of the film. Armin, a cellist who would later find fame working with Toronto band Lighthouse and other Canadian rock acts, was just 20 when he signed on in September 1964 to work with the Don Shirley Trio, a concert ensemble then winning raves for its innovative approach to classical, folk and pop music.
The road trip included stops in racially divided U.S. southern states, as in Green Book, as well as a Canadian leg that took in Barrie, Kingston, Montreal and Sherbrooke, Que.
During the tour, Armin did double duty as Shirley’s driver. That’s why he feels able to weigh in on Green Book’s accuracy. The film, said to be based on a true story, tells the tale of Shirley, played by Mahershala Ali, and his white driver, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga, a racist New York bar bouncer played by Viggo Mortensen, as they tour the Deep South in 1962, an era when signs on washroom doors still read “Whites Only.”
Armin finds particular fault with the way Ali, who won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar Sunday for his role as Shirley, plays the concert pianist as a snobbish prima donna, so uptight and out of touch with popular culture that he’s barely aware of Black icons like Aretha Franklin and Little Richard.
Armin doesn’t recognize this portrayal of his former boss. Contrary to Green Book’s aloof and distant Shirley, which members of the pianist’s family have called “a symphony of lies,” Armin says the real thing loved to talk and he knew a lot about culture — Black, white and everything else.
“For me, I had never encountered anybody like this in terms of intellect and loquacity. He was a great talker, a beautiful talker. I could never tire of his talking and he talked incessantly. He read me the entire works of James Baldwin while we were driving. He was filled with beautiful accounts of Black history. He had been close friends with Baldwin before Baldwin moved to France.”
The pianist could, Armin allows, be “very strict” and occasionally nasty in his treat- ment of fellow musicians and employees, but he was also exceedingly encouraging and generous. He paid Armin $250 (U.S.) per week in cash — a handsome sum in those days — and also bought him a sharp new suit and winter coat.
“He wanted me to be presentable, and I was just out of school, so what did I know? I had Ban-Lon shirts and clip-on ties, and he would have none of that. He was a very classy guy.”
Spending many hours on the road with Shirley was a lifechanging experience for Armin, born into a Mennonite family in a small Manitoba town and barely finished with studying music at Indiana University stateside when a colleague there recommended him to Shirley.
He credits Shirley with teaching him how to be professional, including the importance of being on time. When Armin showed up late once for a gig, Shirley responded by buying him a nice Bulova wristwatch, which he stills wears.
Prior to meeting Shirley, Armin says he had very little knowledge of Black culture and the racial issues embroiling the U.S.
Shirley “educated me on Black culture and how the understanding of culture is limitless in terms of race,” Armin says. While driving Shirley in the southern U.S., he says they experienced no incidents of overt racism like those in the film. Although he and Shirley often stayed in different hotels or motels while touring, the two were frequently invited together to dinner at the homes of Black fans of the Don Shirley Trio, which actually was a quartet when Armin was with it.
Armin may not have witnessed acts of racism, but he was certainly aware of how race hatred permeated society. “I remember one of my cello teachers telling me, ‘Negroes can’t play the cello. They should not be in symphonies, they should not do classical music.’ That was the going thing in those days.”
Armin’s beefs with Green Book run deep. The film picked up another award at the 91st Oscars on Sunday for Best Original Screenplay, and Ar- min jokes that the “original” part is certainly appropriate.
“My biggest complaint is that there was no research done. There couldn’t have been. Whoever wrote this could not have known Don Shirley or even been in his presence.”
The screenplay is mainly credited to Nick Vallelonga, Tony’s son, who insists it’s based on his father’s real-life experiences with Shirley, who he says remained a family friend until Don and Tony died in 2013. ( Green Book director Peter Farrelly and writer/actor Brian Hayes Currie are credited as co-writers.)
Armin hadn’t seen the film before it won Best Picture. He knew what the movie was about — his ex-wife had told him about it — but he was immediately put off by the poster art showing Shirley in the back seat of a green Cadillac. He figured the film would be just another Hollywood reinvention of the truth.
Shirley “wouldn’t be caught dead in a green car, or in anything other than his leased black Lincoln Continental,” Armin says.
And what a car that Lincoln was: “My God, it was gorgeous,” Armin recalls. “I just loved driving that car. It had ample space in the back. It even had a keyboard in the back that Don could play.”
Armin finally watched Green Book on DVD the night before our interview this week and was shocked to find the factual liberties taken were far greater than he’d imagined. We watched a few scenes together, and Armin remarked at how Mortensen’s “thuggish” portrayal of Tony Vallelonga — whom Armin never met — further eroded reality.
“I can’t see Don having any patience with a man like that, any patience. He would not have tolerated the talkback.” You’d have every reason to think that, given Armin’s loyalty to his former boss, that the two remained on good terms ever after.
Yet the two parted on unhappy terms in the spring of 1965, just as that season’s tour of the Don Shirley Trio was wrapping up stateside. Armin failed to pick up Shirley for a post-concert party — he accepts the blame, but says he’d been given wrong info — and an enraged Shirley fired him on the spot. Armin was later forced to sign a termination agreement with a lawyer, where he received his final $250 cash payment.
“I was devastated,” Armin recalls of the firing. “But I learned how this (music) business is done. You screw up, and you’re done. And I have no hard feelings towards Don. My heart goes out to his family.”
“My biggest complaint is that there was no research done. There couldn’t have been. Whoever wrote this could not have known Don Shirley or even been in his presence.” RICHARD ARMIN FORMER SHIRLEY BANDMATE ABOUT THE FILM GREEN BOOK