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The director of Green Book
Filmmaker Peter Farrelly, whose film won three Golden Globes last weekend, has admitted he’s “embarrassed” by his former actions.
Published by The Cut in 1998, the story – comprised of Newsweek excerpts – featured quotes from his colleagues, including Cameron Diaz , who said he liked to trick people into looking at his penis with help from his director brother, Bobby.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly directed hit comedies Dumb and Dumber , There’s Something About Mary and Shallow Hal .
The Green Book director and co-writer issued a statement through his publicists.
“I was an idiot,” he said. “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.”
Green Book stars Mahershala Ali as real-life African-American concert pianist Don Shirley and Viggo Mortensen as his Italian-American driver. The duo become unlikely friends when the latter accepts the role of Shirley’s personal chauffeur.
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Films to watch before you die Spirited Away (2001) Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's films delight kids with their bright colours, imaginative characters and plucky heroines (usually). But there's meat to their bones for adults to digest, especially in this towering fantasy epic. As young Chihiro takes a job in a mysterious bathhouse peopled by spirits in order to save her parents, viewers can explore everything from deeply rooted interpretations of traditional Japanese myth to Miyazaki's fascination with Western filmmaking and the Second World War. And visually it’s unparalleled. HO
Toho
Films to watch before you die Avengers (2012) Yes, but hear us out: Avengers is a grand experimental film. Marvel risked four popular franchises on this superhero throw of the dice, something never attempted in cinema history. They won, and made the fizzing chemistry of the unlikely gang who must save us from aliens look easy. But the failure of every Marvel imitator since makes clear how impressive this billion-dollar gamble really was, and how difficult it is to tell character-driven stories in blockbuster cinema on this scale. And as a bonus, it has a Hulk. HO
Marvel Studios
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Warner Bros/Hawk Films/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
Films to watch before you die Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) One of those remakes that justifies remakes, Philip Kaufman’s beautifully skilful spin on the McCarthy-era alien-clone thriller translates it wickedly to the psychobabble age of the 1970s, with a bit of post-Watergate panic thrown in. Donald Sutherland’s lugubrious health inspector is a nicely grumpy enemy of the pod people, and the hysteria ratchets up masterfully. PS
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Buena Vista Pictures
Films to watch before you die Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean’s First World War epic about TE Lawrence remains a filmmaking milestone, the movie that Steven Spielberg rewatches before starting each new film. Its genius is to combine huge scale battles – notably the attack on Aqaba – with psychological insight into the toll that the war took on Lawrence’s mind. The white-led casting of Arab characters is appalling to modern eyes, but with its daring, dazzling filmmaking it remains one to watch despite that. HO
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Miramax Films
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Paramount Pictures
Films to watch before you die Citizen Kane (1941) The problem with calling something “the greatest film ever made” is that it begins to sound like homework. Forget that: beyond all the technical dazzle and ground-breaking filmmaking Orson Welles’s masterpiece has red blood in its veins and a huge beating heart. What’s more, its portrait of a thrusting, occasionally demagogic tycoon and the hollowness at the heart of his success remains as relevant as it ever was, and the suggestion that America might be susceptible to media manipulation all too believable. HO
Films to watch before you die Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) Marcel Carné's immortal saga about a 19th-century Parisian theatre company – often called the French Gone with the Wind – has a swooning romanticism but majors in heartbreak, too. Among this ensemble, brilliantly played by some of the best Gallic actors of their day, hopes rise and are shattered, and jealousy mounts among all the acolytes of a courtesan called Garance. It looks back to mime and stagecraft as essential components in the prehistory of cinema, while also being great cinema.
Rex Features
Films to watch before you die Rear Window (1954) Whether you see it as Alfred Hitchcock’s celebration of voyeurism or simply one of the most nail-biting thrillers ever made, it’s a superb example of the Master of Suspense at work. James Stewart’s photographer, laid up with a broken leg, becomes obsessed with the lives of his neighbours and suspects one of murder. The unusually vulnerable hero – as in Vertigo – increases the stakes and ensures that simple brawn won’t save the day, while Hitchcock ratchets up the tension unbearably by putting Grace Kelly’s plucky girlfriend in the lion’s mouth. HO
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Kartemquin Films
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Paramount Pictures
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Filmways Pictures
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Moviestore/Rex
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20th Century Fox
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Films to watch before you die The General (1926) Orson Welles suggested that Buster Keaton’s silent Civil War comedy might be the greatest film ever made, and who are we to argue? Keaton’s Johnny Gray is a key figure on the railroads of the Confederacy, but he and his engine, The General, must go above and beyond to defeat a Union spy. Ignore the dodgy politics and focus on the sublime physical comedy of Keaton’s beautifully composed routines. You’ll come out wondering if movies even need sound. HO
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Films to watch before you die When Harry Met Sally (1989) Is it impossible for men and women to be purely platonic? It is according to Harry, in this beautiful, brainy comedy about two neurotic New Yorkers who become friends and then more. Directed by Rob Reiner and written by wonderful Nora Ephron, it's a paean of sorts to Woody Allen's early films, with razor-sharp observations about sex and dating ("I'll have what she's having"). It's still the pinnacle of both Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan's careers.
Columbia Pictures
Films to watch before you die Inside Out (2015) Toy Story revolutionised animation; Up and Wall-E vie for the best opening of any film this century, but for sheer audacity Pete Docter’s head-trip must prevail. As a little girl struggles to adapt following a family move across country, her emotions go on a madcap adventure through the mind itself. What’s dazzling here is that two completely separate films unfold at once. Kids watch brightly coloured sprites on a quest; adults watch a psychologically dense depiction of how we think and feel. It’s wonderful.
Getty
Films to watch before you die True Romance (1993) Disinterred from a script Tarantino wrote in the mid-Eighties called The Open Road – the same screenplay that also spawned Natural Born Killers – Tony Scott's True Romance is a pulpy, hyperviolent twist on a damsel-in-distress fairytale, with a plinky-plonky score that is based on Badlands. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are the lovers on the lam, chased by Christopher Walken's suave mafioso. Bombastic, brash – and totally brilliant.
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Since the film’s debut in the US, members of Shirley’s family have claimed that nobody was consulted during its development – something which prompted Ali to pick up the phone and apologise.
Shirley's family branded the film a "symphony of lies". It's released in the UK on 1 February.
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