Advance of Farrelly film offers local boost

While Peter Farrelly was debuting his first dramedy, “Green Book,” garnering honors in Boston and Toronto, his mother was setting up an early screening that’s happening Sunday at Regal Cinemas in Mashpee to benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Cape Cod.

In a phone call Thursday from New York, Farrelly said he’s thrilled about that.

“We try to raise some money for the causes we care about when the movies come out, and my mother, both my parents actually, have handled that. It’s just a little advance screening to raise a few bucks,” Farrelly said, “People get to see the movie a few days before it officially opens on Cape Wednesday.”

Mariann Farrelly is a longtime resident of New Seabury.

The Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, made 11 comedies together, including “Dumb & Dumber,” “Fever Pitch,” “Shallow Hal” and “Osmosis Jones.” Their 1998 release, “There’s Something About Mary,” was part of a Cape fundraiser that led to the opening of the Boys & Girls Club of Cape Cod in Mashpee.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft showed up with a surprise challenge donation. He gave $500,000, which the town agreed to match, to get the struggling club built and running. The club now serves 1,136 young people, said CEO Ruth Provost.

“Mariann and her late husband (Dr. Robert "Docky” Farrelly) have always been donors to the Boys & Girls Club,” Provost said, adding that the fundraiser comes at a particularly good time as the club tries to balance its year-end budget.

Tickets, at $30, include admission to the 3:30 p.m. screening and hors d’oeuvres (cash bar) at the nearby 99 Restaurant afterward. Call 508-477-8845 for tickets.

“Green Book” is the first movie Peter Farrelly has made without his brother and the first that is not purely comedy. It is the true story of gifted Carnegie Hall classical concert pianist Donald Shirley, a black man, and the white New York bouncer, Tony Lip, whom Shirley hired to drive him because he was worried about racism and violence when his record label booked him on a jazz tour of the South in 1962.

“The only problem was that Tony Lip was racist himself. But gradually, slowly, incrementally, they became friends. It’s kind of an odd-couple story, but it’s a good story for the times we are living in,” Farrelly said.

Farrelly wrote the “Green Book” script with Brian Hayes Currie and Lip’s son, Nick Vallelonga, based on letters Lip had sent home to his family during the Southern tour. At Shirley’s request, the movie was not made until after he died in April 2013. Lip died in January of that same year.

In “Green Book,” Mahershala Ali plays Shirley and Viggo Mortensen, Lip.

In the Copacabana scene, you’ll find Mariann Farrelly, who has had a small part in all of her sons’ movies. She said she attended a screening Sunday in Purchase, New York, and the audience was laughing and crying.

“With Peter, there’s always humor, But I never doubted he would do this movie,” Mariann Farrelly said of the second-oldest of her five children. “He’s always been the sensitive one. Growing up he would be the one to come tell me if one of the other kids was sick or sad.”

Peter Farrelly said, “I like getting her in the movies because she’s 85 years old and she’s only going to be around for another 30 or 40 years.”

“Green Book” won top awards at the Toronto and Boston film festivals, creating Oscar buzz.

“This is an unusual movie in that it’s for everybody,” Farrelly said of the PG-13 rated movie. “It doesn’t take sides. Whatever side of the aisle you’re on politically, this movie is for you. It will hopefully bring people together.”