Peter Farrelly Returns To ‘Green Book’s Toronto Awards Launch Pad For ‘The Greatest Beer Run Ever’ With Zac Efron, Bill Murray & Russell Crowe: Q&A

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: For the first time since launching eventual Best Picture Oscar winner Green Book five years ago, writer/director Peter Farrelly returns to the Toronto Film Festival with another drama built around an obscure and difficult to be believed but fact-based road trip set in the turbulent ‘60s.The Greatest Beer Run Ever is the story of Chickie Donohue (Zac Efron), a patriotic longshoreman from New York who in the late ’60s is a gung ho supporter of the Vietnam War effort, and who essentially embraces a suggestion by the bartender at their local watering hole (an unrecognizable Bill Murray) to travel by boat to the jungles of ‘Nam to track down soldiers from the neighborhood and bring them cans of beer and show the boys they haven’t been forgotten back home.

This harebrained tour becomes a wakeup call to Donohue about the terrifying things that are really going on over there. Russell Crowe plays a war correspondent who helps Donohue, and exposes hard truths about the lies the U.S.

government are feeding to the American public about a fruitless war that is quickly spinning out of control and putting young men through the grinder.While Green Book was a crowd pleasing hit globally ($321 million worldwide on a $23 million budget) that won Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali, its release at a particularly heightened moment of sensitivity made it an unexpected ordeal for all involved.

This began the moment after it scored an upset win at the Golden Globes and emerged as a Best Picture threat. Old missteps were curiously unearthed and blasted by press and on social media.