Morgan Freeman sees similarities between 'Driving Miss Daisy' and 'really terrific' 'Green Book'
History has a way of repeating itself … especially at the Oscars. Last Sunday, Green Book emerged from a contentious awards race as the controversial victor of the Best Picture statue, three decades after another drama that mixed race relations and road trips — 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy — won that prize. Here’s another similarity between the past and the present: both Driving Miss Daisy and Green Book beat out a pair of Spike Lee joints. Lee’s 1989 classic, Do the Right Thing, wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture, while his 2018 hit, BlacKkKlansman, lost that prize to Peter Farrelly’s film. In both cases, Lee was vocal in expressing his displeasure. “I’m snakebit,” he said after the Oscars. “Every time someone’s driving somebody, I lose.”
Driving Miss Daisy star Morgan Freeman also took noticed the spiritual connection between his movie and Green Book. But his take on this particular bit of historical repetition is more positive than Lee’s. “I thought Green Book was a really terrific movie,” the 81-year-old actor tells Yahoo Entertainment, adding that the role of Hoke Colburn remains of the favorite parts of his career. “It was very reminiscent of the kind of movie that Driving Miss Daisy was: sticking to the story of these two people and their growing friendship.”
Speaking of spirituality, Freeman’s National Geographic series, The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, is premiering its third season on March 5. The show follows the actor — who, let’s not forget, played God in the 2003 hit Bruce Almighty — on a global tour to speak with people of all different faiths and backgrounds. Despite the disparity in specific beliefs and customs, Freeman has noticed one universal truth in his study of religion. “My conclusion is that they’re all true. Whatever these disparate people around the world believes is fact. You can’t separate it from any other truth. Belief is fact: if you don’t believe in it, it’s not a fact for you.”
In the Season 3 premiere of The Story of God, Freeman goes on a search for the devil, exploring the different representations of evil incarnate around the world. This past week saw the emergence of one such demon: the so-called “Momo challenge” has sent Internet-wary parents into a frenzy of concern about what their children might be seeing on online platforms like YouTube. At the center of this debunked hoax is “Momo,” a bug-eyed creature who supposedly encourages children to hurt themselves. In actuality, Momo is Mother Bird, a 2016 sculpture made by Japanese artist Keisuke Aisawa that’s admittedly creepy-looking, but in no way dangerous.
Still, the show’s producer, James Younger, sees a connection between the collective contemporary freakout over Momo and historical fear of images of the devil. “You make God in your own image and you make the devil in the various images that resonate at the time,” he says. “One of the things we’ve done in this episode is show how the devil went from this amorphous adversary to one that actually materializes in the world. Obviously that has to change with the times.” Asked how Momo compares to some of the versions of the devil he researched for the episode, Younger notes a certain Buddhist bent in the character’s appearance. “It looks a bit more like the demons you’d see in Buddhism, which are more humanoid in form and represent the worst aspects of human nature, like selfishness and pride.”
Season 3 of The Search for God with Morgan Freeman premieres on March 5 at 9 p.m. on National Geographic.
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