Green Book Trivia
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48 free Green Book trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Green Book trivia quiz covers Peter Farrelly's 2018 Best Picture winner and the real 1962 road trip behind it. It follows Tony Lip and Don Shirley from the Copacabana to the Deep South: the Louisville bar, the letters home, the sundown-town arrest and the call to Robert F. Kennedy, the Birmingham country club, the blues club piano, the blizzard and the Christmas Eve dinner in the Bronx. Behind the scenes it covers Tony's son Nick Vallelonga co-writing the script from his father's stories, the 40 to 50 pounds Viggo Mortensen gained, Kris Bowers teaching Mahershala Ali piano, Robert Plant's YouTube song suggestions over dinner, Steven Spielberg watching the film five times, and the family cameos in the final scene. A separate round covers the real Don Shirley and Tony Lip, the guidebook the film is named after, the objections from Shirley's relatives, and the 91st Academy Awards, where a hostless ceremony crowned a Best Picture without a Best Director nomination. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Green Book?
Peter Farrelly
Peter Farrelly, who made his name with his brother Bobby on comedies such as Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary; Green Book was a drama he directed on his own.
Q 02Who plays Tony Lip in Green Book?
Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen. The director says he was the first actor who came to mind while writing the script, an unexpected choice for an Italian-American tough guy given his fame as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.
Q 03Who plays Don Shirley in Green Book?
Mahershala Ali
Mahershala Ali. When Shirley's relatives objected to the film's portrait of him, Ali phoned the pianist's nephew to apologise, saying he had not known there were close family he could have consulted.
Q 04In Green Book, what is Tony Lip's job when the story opens?
Bouncer at the Copacabana
Bouncer at the Copacabana. The nightclub shuts for renovations, leaving him short of work, which is why he agrees to drive a concert pianist he has never met.
Q 05In Green Book, Don Shirley lives in a lavish apartment above which New York concert hall?
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall. The real Shirley lived in the artists' studios above the auditorium for more than fifty years, until a long legal fight ended with the last tenants being moved out in 2010.
Q 06What was The Negro Motorist Green Book, which gives the film Green Book its title?
A travel guide listing safe businesses
A travel guide listing safe businesses. New York postal worker Victor Hugo Green launched it in 1936, and it ceased within a few years of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed the discrimination that had made it necessary.
Q 07Who gives Tony his copy of the Green Book?
Don's record label
Don's record label. Its executive pays Tony half his wage up front, warns that the rest depends on Don missing no shows, and hands over the book with the car keys.
Q 08In Green Book, in which city do white men beat Don in a bar before Tony rescues him?
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky. Afterwards Tony tells Don not to go anywhere without him for the rest of the tour; Shirley's brother later insisted that the real pianist was never beaten up.
Q 09In Green Book, what does Don help Tony to write during the tour?
Letters to his wife
Letters to his wife. The real Tony's letters home to Dolores survive, and their son drew on them, along with long interviews with his father, when he came to write the screenplay.
Q 10Who plays Dolores, Tony's wife, in Green Book?
Linda Cardellini
Linda Cardellini. Some of the in-laws around her at the family table are the real thing: several members of the Vallelonga and Venere families appear in the film as their own relatives.
Q 11In Green Book, how does Tony get Don out of trouble after the YMCA shower incident?
He bribes the police officers
He bribes the police officers. By the real Tony's account he handed two state troopers $200 and told them to buy themselves a couple of suits, and Shirley was angry with him for paying up.
Q 12In Green Book, whom does Don phone from a Mississippi jail cell to get himself and Tony released?
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy, then Attorney General. The real Shirley did make the call, though a year later than the film has it, only days before President Kennedy was assassinated.
Q 13What name was given to places like the Mississippi town in Green Book where Black people were barred after dark?
Q 21How did the real Tony, the driver in Green Book, come by his nickname 'Lip'?
By talking people into things
By talking people into things. Neither half was his first name: he was born Frank, 'Tony' came from his middle name, Anthony, and 'Lip' stuck from childhood.
Q 22Who coached the actor playing Don Shirley at the piano for Green Book and doubled for his hands in close-ups?
Kris Bowers
Kris Bowers, who also wrote the score. Still in his twenties, he says he had never heard of Don Shirley before joining the film and had to discover the pianist's music from scratch.
Q 23In which city was Green Book filmed?
New Orleans
Sundown towns
Sundown towns. The name came from signs ordering Black people to be gone by sunset; in the film a late-night traffic stop in one of them ends with Tony punching an officer and both men in a cell.
Q 14In Green Book, which city stages the last concert of Don's tour, where he is barred from the venue's own dining room?
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama. The film recalls why the date mattered: six years earlier Nat King Cole had been attacked on stage in the same city while singing to a white audience.
Q 15In Green Book, where do Tony and Don go instead of playing the final concert?
A Black blues club
A Black blues club. Don refuses to perform where he is not allowed to eat, so the two walk out, and at the club he ends up joining the house band on piano.
Q 16In Green Book, which make of piano does Don insist on at every venue of the tour?
Steinway
Steinway. The real Tony recalled finding a battered, rubbish-strewn piano waiting at one venue and refusing to let the show go on until a Steinway had been brought in from miles away.
Q 17In Green Book, why does an officer pull Tony and Don over in a blizzard on the way home?
A flat tyre
A flat tyre. Braced for a repeat of their arrest in Mississippi, the two are surprised when the officer has only stopped to warn them and then helps them fix it in the snow.
Q 18How does Green Book end?
Don joins Tony's family for Christmas dinner
Don joins Tony's family for Christmas dinner. He first turns the invitation down and goes home alone, then reappears at the door, having driven the exhausted Tony through the snow himself.
Q 19Who co-wrote Green Book's screenplay from his father's stories?
Nick Vallelonga
Nick Vallelonga. He spent years gathering his father's stories, and Shirley told him to put everything in but to wait until after his death before making the film.
Q 20In Green Book, which food does Tony coax a reluctant Don into eating with his fingers as they drive through the South?
Fried chicken
Fried chicken. Tony told the story himself in later interviews, but Shirley's brother Maurice bristled at the scene, insisting that nobody ever had to teach the pianist how to eat it.
New Orleans. Production was based in the city in late 2017, and the finished film came back the following autumn to open the New Orleans Film Festival.
Q 24Which rock star recommended obscure 1950s and 60s songs for Green Book's soundtrack over dinner?
Robert Plant
Robert Plant. The Led Zeppelin singer was dating a friend of the director's wife; while the two women stepped outside to smoke, he pulled up forgotten songs on YouTube and the director noted them down.
Q 25Which filmmaker reportedly watched Green Book five times in two weeks and helped it reach Universal?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg. The director's agent also represented him and sent the film over; Spielberg watched it at eight one morning, rang back by ten, and took it to his own company, which had a deal with Universal.
Q 26Which Oscar-winning actress served as an executive producer of Green Book?
Octavia Spencer
Octavia Spencer. The director says he sent her the script because no Black women had yet looked it over, and that she backed him whenever he doubted they were getting it right.
Q 27Which festival gave Green Book its premiere and its People's Choice Award?
Toronto
Toronto. Universal slid the film into the line-up, and winning the audience prize, long watched as the starting gun of the Oscar race, turned a comedy director's drama into a contender.
Q 28Green Book was the fifth Best Picture winner without a Best Director nomination; which film was the fourth?
Argo
Argo. Its director, Ben Affleck, was left off the Academy's directing shortlist in 2013, an omission that fellow nominees publicly called a snub, and the film won Best Picture anyway.
Q 29What was unusual about the 2019 Oscar ceremony at which Green Book won Best Picture?
It had no host
It had no host. Kevin Hart withdrew after old tweets of his resurfaced, and the Academy pressed on without a replacement, the first hostless ceremony in thirty years.
Q 30Green Book took Best Picture, but which film won the most Oscars that night, with four?
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody. Its four wins came despite a troubled shoot: the credited director was fired before filming finished, and a replacement had to be brought in to complete the picture.