"Green Book" was the big winner at the 2019 Academy Awards on Sunday night, taking the "Best Picture" category, but it was what the film's director said during his speech that has some Detroiters rolling their eyes.
Peter Farrelly, while giving his award acceptance speech on stage at the Oscars, gave a shoutout to Shinola.
"Tom Kartsotis and Shinola watches, they're unbelievable, they're saving Detroit," Farrelly proclaimed on stage.
Here was some of the reaction on social media:
That ridiculous remark by the ‘Green Book’ director about how Shinola is “saving Detroit” proves again how problematic that movie was about race in America. The people who made that movie are clueless.
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) February 25, 2019
“Shinola Watches are saving Detroit”
— Joel Kurth (@joeltkurth) February 25, 2019
That may be news to Detroit
Say what? Please stop with this disrespectful & hurtful narrative that we 1) need saving & 2) that billionaires are the ones to do it.
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) February 25, 2019
We just need the 1% to stop taking our land for nothing + shifting our tax dollars towards for-profit development that makes them richer. https://t.co/6pWYVCutI1
Narrator: Shinola watches were not, in fact, saving Detroit.
— Lady No-Kids (@Quemini) February 25, 2019
"Shinola watches....are saving Detroit?"
— Michael Proppe (@mikeproppe) February 25, 2019
-a man who has never been to Detroit but considers his $500 fashionable watch an act of charity
Greetings from suburban Detroit. Here to report that Detroit is being saved by many businesses, faithful people, intrepid millennials moving downtown, restaurants opening their doors. Shinola is part of the movement, but far from “saving Detroit.” #TheOscars
— Kerry Burke (@letsfunddetroit) February 25, 2019
Shinola released a statement after the speech:
“We’d like to congratulate Peter Farrelly on his Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture. Peter has been a friend of the brand for years and the Shinola shout-out during his speech was completely unplanned and unexpected. While we are so thankful for the love we did want to make it clear that without the city of Detroit, there would be no Shinola. The city gave our brand life and it’s something we will never take for granted.”
The segregation-era road-trip drama “Green Book” was crowned best picture at the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday, handing Hollywood’s top award to a film that some see as a feel-good throwback but that others ridicule as an outdated inversion of “Driving Miss Daisy.”
In a year when Hollywood could have made history by bestowing best picture on Netflix (“Roma”) or Marvel (“Black Panther”) for the first time, the motion picture academy instead threw its fullest support behind a traditional interracial buddy tale that proved as popular as it was divisive. But Peter Farrelly’s “Green Book” weathered criticism that it was retrograde and inauthentic to triumph over more acclaimed films and bigger box-office successes.
It was an unexpected finale to a brisk, hostless ceremony that was awash in historic wins for diversity, including Spike Lee’s first competitive Oscar. More women and more individual black nominees won than ever before.
The Oscars otherwise spread awards around for Ryan Coogler’s superhero sensation “Black Panther,” Alfonso Cuaron’s black-and-white personal epic “Roma” and the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”