Summary
Tony drives to Carnegie Hall to pick up Don and sees some men out front and bums a cigarette from one of them. They are Don's bandmates, Oleg, a cellist, and George, a bassist. "We're not a band, we're a trio," George says, as Don comes out of the concert venue and climbs in the backseat. Amit puts a blanket over Don's legs in the backseat and wishes him a good trip.
Looking down at Don's luggage, Amit gives a nonverbal hint that Tony ought to put it in the trunk, but Tony refuses, so Amit has to do it himself. They embark. In the car, Don tells Tony that he wants him to check the piano at the venue they are going to to make sure it's a Steinway, as Tony smokes and stuffs a sandwich in his mouth. Don then tells Tony that he wants a bottle of Cutty Stark in his room every night.
"Well if you ever need any help with that!" Tony jokes, but Don insists that he will not, before telling Tony to keep his hands on the wheel. Tony asks if they can leave early on December 24th, the morning after Don's last show in Birmingham, Alabama, so that they can get home for Christmas Eve, and Don simply says, "We'll see," before asking Tony to put out his cigarette.
Tony is indignant, saying, "What are you talking about? Smoke's going in my lungs. I'm doing all the work here." Don does not back down, so Tony throws the cigarette out the window, looks over at the sandwich that Dolores made for Don, and starts eating it himself.
Later in the drive, Oleg and George pull up alongside them, asking if everything is alright. In Russian, Oleg tells Don that they will meet them in Pittsburgh, then speed ahead. "You speak German, huh?" Tony asks, but Don clarifies that it was Russian. Tony tells Don that he was stationed in Germany in the Army, and adds, "Watch out for them krauts. They're all sneaks. Kennedy should've bombed them when he had the chance."
Don says "How about some quiet time?" and Tony is amused, launching into a monologue about the fact that his wife used to say that to him all the time. The scene shifts to the men eating at a diner. When Don asks Tony how his food is, Tony calls it "salty" and Don sarcastically suggests he should become a food critic. Tony insists, however, that making food salty is cheating, and that the key to good cooking is making something taste good without salt.
Tony tells Don he had a friend who called Pittsburgh, "Titsburgh" because allegedly all the women there had large breasts. "That's absurd," Don says, "Why would women in Pittsburgh have larger breasts than, say, women in New York?" Then, Tony tells Don that Dolores bought one of his records and describes it as the one about the orphans, with a cover image of a bunch of kids sitting around a campfire. Don corrects him that the record was "Orpheus in the underworld. It's based on a French opera. And those weren't children on the cover. Those were demons in the bowels of hell." "Must have been naughty kids," Tony replies.
On the road, Tony pulls over to pee on the side of the road, much to Don's shock and surprise. Before he gets out of the car, Tony takes his wallet with him.
In Pittsburgh, Tony settles into his hotel room, going out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette. Across the courtyard, he sees Don sitting on his balcony drinking whiskey alone in a smoking jacket.
The next day, Don meets Tony and gives him some money for incidentals. As they walk, Don tells Tony, "It is my feeling that your diction, however charming it may be in the tristate area, could use some finessing." Don offers to teach him some things, but Tony says, "People don't like the way I talk they can go take a shit." Don tells Tony that he thinks his last name is too long, so they should change it to "Valle" for short, but Tony doesn't like the idea.
Tony sits outside at a venue, as a wealthy Pittsburgh woman introduces Don, saying that he gave his first public performance at the age of three and holds doctorates in psychology, music, and the liturgical arts. Hearing the announcement, Tony goes over to the window to listen, as Don begins to play the piano with his trio. He is very good.
After the concert, Tony gambles outside, playing dice with the other workers. Don calls him over and tells him that gambling is beneath him. When Tony suggests that a bunch of the workers were playing, Don says, "They didn't have a choice whether to be in or to be out. You did."
They drive to Ohio. In the motel, Tony writes a letter to Dolores. It is clumsily written and he tells her that Don "don't play like a colored guy. He plays like Liberace, but better. He's like a genius, I think...But it don't look fun to be that smart."
In the car, Don asks who is playing on the radio and Tony tells him it's Little Richard. He then asks Tony how he got his nickname, "Lip," and Tony tells him that when he was a kid his friend said he was "the best bullshit artist in the Bronx." Don asks what the difference between being a bullshit artist and being a liar is, and Tony explains that he talks people into doing things they don't want to do, but he never lies.
As they continue to drive, Don does not know who any of the black R&B artists on the radio are, listing Aretha Franklin, Chubby Checker, Little Richard, and Sam Cooke. "These are your people," Tony says, and Don looks serious. They stop at a rest area and Tony walks over to a tent where gemstones are being sold. When he spots a jade stone on the ground, he pockets it and goes to buy some cigarettes and apples.
Don tells Tony that Oleg told him about the jade stone he stole, and insists that he show him the rock after Tony pretends that he just picked up a regular rock. "Pay for the stone, Tony. You'll feel better," Don says to Tony, insisting that Tony either pay for the rock or put it back.
In Hanover, Indiana, Tony looks at the piano that Don is supposed to play and finds that it is not up to snuff. He approaches a man who works at the venue and tells him that they need a Steinway, and the man tells him that it doesn't matter and that "these coons'll play on anything you put in front of them." Tony says that the piano is full of garbage and tells the man to find a Steinway. When the man suggests that there aren't any Steinways around, Tony slaps him hard. The scene shifts and we see Don playing on a Steinway at the concert that night.
Analysis
Even though Tony has softened to his new job, he still feels resentful of the fact that he is a white man working for a black man. This is typified by the moment that Don brings out his luggage and puts it beside the open trunk, expecting Tony to put it in himself. Tony smokes indignantly, crossing his arms and looking quizzically at the luggage as if he would never be caught dead doing such a menial task. His refusal to do this labor is symbolic of his disrespect for Don.
The contrasts in Don and Tony's personalities become glaring on the road. Tony is a loudmouth, who loves to chat, smoke, and eat voraciously. Contrastingly, Don is soft-spoken, reserved, and more invested in polite conversation than jokes and indiscriminate disclosure. They become a kind of "odd couple," one with a mouth and the other with a withering grimace, and as they progress in the journey we can see even more clearly that the difference between the men has not only to do with race, class, and education level, but also personality and temperament.
The film is about an unlikely dynamic between two men, and has a social bent, but it is also very much about music. Don Shirley was, after, a "virtuoso," (which Tony, humorously points out, is an Italian word that means "very good") and he plays the piano with a transcendent skill that lifts the film's narrative out of the circumstances and to a more visceral level. It is Don's skill that brings him so much money and economic privilege, and what allows him to occupy space in predominately white arenas.
Both of the men begin to teach each other different things on their journey. Ironically enough, the racist Tony teaches Don about popular black music by identifying artists on the radio. In turn, Don tries to teach the resistant Tony some lessons in morality. He encourages him not to gamble if he doesn't have to, and forbids him from stealing from a roadside store when he pockets a gemstone. Each of them has something to teach the other.
As he becomes more involved in Don Shirley's group and more invested in the musician's act, Tony also comes to see the ways that life for a prominent black musician is difficult. At the venue in Indiana, he becomes defensive about the fact that the piano that Don is going to play on is not a Steinway, and the man who works at the theater tries to share a conspiratorial racist moment about the fact that "coons will play on whatever you put in front of them." However, Tony is not so susceptible to prejudicial feelings as he once was, having gained an unexpected respect for his employer, and insists that the man find a Steinway. Even if he does still slap the man, exhibiting his regular coarse habits, Tony begins to feel newfound respect for his black employer, and the disrespect he endures.
