A producer of Green Book, the feelgood race-relations drama that won the best picture Oscar, has sent angry emails to writers who have criticised the film.
Jenni Miller, a journalist at NBC, posted the text of an email sent to her by Charles B Wessler, one of the film’s credited producers, in response to a comment piece she posted on NBC News titled “‘The Green Book’ is a movie about racism, made by white people for white people. See the problem?”
here’s the email I received about Green Book from one of the producers. I censored the name of the editor he cc’d, which I guess was supposed to be a power move? anyone who has received something similar, feel free to reach out. pic.twitter.com/LIiV4CEp3Z
— Jenni Miller (@msjennimiller) February 25, 2019
In his email, Wessler claims that “African Americans for the most part LOVE this film,” and adds: “I will not go on and on about how wrong you are but you have a big ASS responsibility to write the TRUTH when you write for NBC. You on the other hand are writing like a FOX reporter.”
In her article, Miller wrote: “If Green Book wants to be taken seriously as a film against racism – which it has positioned itself to be – it has to confront the lived reality of racism and the people it most directly affected (and still affects) in a deeply honest way.”
Vanity Fair’s film critic, K Austin Collins, said he had also received a message from Wessler, after a piece on Green Book, that was “more finger-waggy and longer-winded” than the one sent to Miller.
Wessler’s email is the latest misstep for the team behind the Oscar-winning film. Writer and producer Nick Vallelonga, on whose father’s story the film was based, was forced to apologise after an anti-Muslim tweet from 2015, and director Peter Farrelly also had to apologise after accusations of past sexual misconduct. Green Book has been repeatedly criticised for its retrograde racial politics, most recently being described as “a major step backwards” by the Guardian’s Joseph Harker.
