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| Boots Riley: ‘In film, the more personal you get, the more universal you get’ | Boots Riley: ‘In film, the more personal you get, the more universal you get’ |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| By the time I meet him, Boots Riley has been promoting his movie Sorry to Bother You for the best part of nine months. It dropped with a splash at the Sundance film festival in January – but the veteran rapper and political organiser, now 47, is clearly still delighted to discuss his gleefully disruptive entrance into the world of film-making. “It’s all related to things I care about,” he says. | By the time I meet him, Boots Riley has been promoting his movie Sorry to Bother You for the best part of nine months. It dropped with a splash at the Sundance film festival in January – but the veteran rapper and political organiser, now 47, is clearly still delighted to discuss his gleefully disruptive entrance into the world of film-making. “It’s all related to things I care about,” he says. |
| Tracking the moral dilemmas of penniless Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield, who gave a standout performance in Get Out) as he rises through the ranks of a shady telemarketing firm, Sorry to Bother You reflects on the challenges of being black in America and gives Riley space to argue – in freakishly satirical terms – why it’s worth taking a stand against the predations of capitalism. | Tracking the moral dilemmas of penniless Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield, who gave a standout performance in Get Out) as he rises through the ranks of a shady telemarketing firm, Sorry to Bother You reflects on the challenges of being black in America and gives Riley space to argue – in freakishly satirical terms – why it’s worth taking a stand against the predations of capitalism. |
| Born in Chicago in 1971 and moving to the city of Oakland, California, six years later, Riley was steeped in politics from an early age. His parents were social justice organisers and their son followed suit, joining the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor party at 15. In 1991, he formed hip-hop collective the Coup and went on to release six politically charged albums, notably 1998’s acclaimed Steal This Album. | Born in Chicago in 1971 and moving to the city of Oakland, California, six years later, Riley was steeped in politics from an early age. His parents were social justice organisers and their son followed suit, joining the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor party at 15. In 1991, he formed hip-hop collective the Coup and went on to release six politically charged albums, notably 1998’s acclaimed Steal This Album. |
| Making movies was a long-held aspiration – Riley studied film at San Francisco State university and spent years honing the script for Sorry to Bother You. His persistence paid off: the film was described by the New Yorker as “a scintillating comedic outburst of political imagination and visionary fury”, while AO Scott in the New York Times wrote: “If you’re not bothered – also tickled, irked, mystified and provoked – [by Sorry to Bother You], then you’ve fallen asleep on the job.” | Making movies was a long-held aspiration – Riley studied film at San Francisco State university and spent years honing the script for Sorry to Bother You. His persistence paid off: the film was described by the New Yorker as “a scintillating comedic outburst of political imagination and visionary fury”, while AO Scott in the New York Times wrote: “If you’re not bothered – also tickled, irked, mystified and provoked – [by Sorry to Bother You], then you’ve fallen asleep on the job.” |
| Riley, who lives in Oakland with musician Gabby La La and their child, is a genial presence. Clad in a distinctive red-and-black check suit, he delivers carefully weighed answers in a deep, measured drawl, punctuated by the occasional wry chuckle. A large plate of cheese sits between us, untouched for the duration of the interview. | Riley, who lives in Oakland with musician Gabby La La and their child, is a genial presence. Clad in a distinctive red-and-black check suit, he delivers carefully weighed answers in a deep, measured drawl, punctuated by the occasional wry chuckle. A large plate of cheese sits between us, untouched for the duration of the interview. |
| Sorry to Bother You was gestating for a while: you released an album of the same name in 2012 and Dave Eggers published the unproduced script in 2014. What was the initial spark?I just knew I was going to write something set in the telemarketing world, where the main character has to decide which side of the struggle he is on. I knew the first scene, where Cassius Green tries to pass off a fake reference on his CV, because that’s how a friend of mine got all his jobs. I knew the compliment argument [where Green furiously trades compliments with his best friend] – that happened to my brother years ago. But I didn’t know it was going to be fantastical, that just came up logically when I was putting things into context. | Sorry to Bother You was gestating for a while: you released an album of the same name in 2012 and Dave Eggers published the unproduced script in 2014. What was the initial spark?I just knew I was going to write something set in the telemarketing world, where the main character has to decide which side of the struggle he is on. I knew the first scene, where Cassius Green tries to pass off a fake reference on his CV, because that’s how a friend of mine got all his jobs. I knew the compliment argument [where Green furiously trades compliments with his best friend] – that happened to my brother years ago. But I didn’t know it was going to be fantastical, that just came up logically when I was putting things into context. |
| Why telemarketing?I had done telemarketing a couple of times, once in college and again after our second album, when I had a 24-year-old midlife crisis. All of my heroes, like [Black Panther activist] Fred Hampton, had been revolutionaries when they were 19. I was like: “I’ve been wasting my whole adult life being an artist.” So I quit music and started an organisation called the Young Comrades with some friends. In order to get by, I would do telemarketing once every two weeks and make all the money I needed. | Why telemarketing?I had done telemarketing a couple of times, once in college and again after our second album, when I had a 24-year-old midlife crisis. All of my heroes, like [Black Panther activist] Fred Hampton, had been revolutionaries when they were 19. I was like: “I’ve been wasting my whole adult life being an artist.” So I quit music and started an organisation called the Young Comrades with some friends. In order to get by, I would do telemarketing once every two weeks and make all the money I needed. |
| You must have been pretty good at it…Yeah, I’m good at listening to people and figuring out what it is that they’re really saying. | You must have been pretty good at it…Yeah, I’m good at listening to people and figuring out what it is that they’re really saying. |
| In the film, Cassius hits the jackpot when he discovers his “white voice”. Was that a detail from your days in telemarketing?Yeah. Nobody ever talked about it, but you’d know what to do. You’d try to obscure the fact that you’re black, just on the very basic level of trying to make someone feel like you’re like them, and on the more racist level of someone being OK giving you their credit card information. | In the film, Cassius hits the jackpot when he discovers his “white voice”. Was that a detail from your days in telemarketing?Yeah. Nobody ever talked about it, but you’d know what to do. You’d try to obscure the fact that you’re black, just on the very basic level of trying to make someone feel like you’re like them, and on the more racist level of someone being OK giving you their credit card information. |
| When it came to funding the movie, was your background – as a musician, as a person of colour – a disadvantage?Definitely being a musician made people not necessarily want to read the script. They thought: ‘Oh, this is just a side project, maybe you have a clothing line too?’ Once I got David Cross and Patton Oswalt on board [they provide the “white voices” for Green and his black supervisor], a few people were like: “I guess maybe it’s funny or something.” And when Dave Eggers started going around saying: “This is one of the best unproduced screenplays,” then it made people be like: “Maybe I’ll click on the PDF.” | When it came to funding the movie, was your background – as a musician, as a person of colour – a disadvantage?Definitely being a musician made people not necessarily want to read the script. They thought: ‘Oh, this is just a side project, maybe you have a clothing line too?’ Once I got David Cross and Patton Oswalt on board [they provide the “white voices” for Green and his black supervisor], a few people were like: “I guess maybe it’s funny or something.” And when Dave Eggers started going around saying: “This is one of the best unproduced screenplays,” then it made people be like: “Maybe I’ll click on the PDF.” |
| How did you get into politics?When I was 14, a youth organiser came by my house with a van full of 14-year-old girls. They said: “Do you want to go to the beach?” I was like: “Hell yeah.” Then they said: “But first we’re going to go to the Watsonville cannery workers’ strike and support them.” I was like: “OK.” Through that, I became involved with summer projects that helped out farm workers. At the same time, I was involved with everything from sales and retail jobs to theatre to selling weed to music to throwing parties. | How did you get into politics?When I was 14, a youth organiser came by my house with a van full of 14-year-old girls. They said: “Do you want to go to the beach?” I was like: “Hell yeah.” Then they said: “But first we’re going to go to the Watsonville cannery workers’ strike and support them.” I was like: “OK.” Through that, I became involved with summer projects that helped out farm workers. At the same time, I was involved with everything from sales and retail jobs to theatre to selling weed to music to throwing parties. |
| You’ve continued to be politically engaged over the years…Yeah, when Occupy came around, I was working on the album that was to become Sorry to Bother You, the 2012 one, and I had to call up the label and say: “It’s going to be some more months, because this is what I’ve got to be doing.” | You’ve continued to be politically engaged over the years…Yeah, when Occupy came around, I was working on the album that was to become Sorry to Bother You, the 2012 one, and I had to call up the label and say: “It’s going to be some more months, because this is what I’ve got to be doing.” |
| You identify as a communist. What do you mean when you say you’re a communist?I think that the people should democratically control the wealth that we create with our labour. Whereas at this point, most of the value we produce is being hoarded and used as power over us. Most people will agree that we should democratically control the wealth that we create with our labour. The question is, how do we get there? How is that organised? I don’t claim to have the answers. A lot of people, especially on the left, will sit around arguing about what colour the buses should be when we have a world like that, but the real point is, that’s the world we need to be working towards. There are people who have said that they were working for that world, and some were being disingenuous, some were being sincere. All have made mistakes. Why? Because that’s what you do in life, is make mistakes. But that’s the world that we should be working for. We’re not going to get there without a struggle. It’s not going to get voted in. | You identify as a communist. What do you mean when you say you’re a communist?I think that the people should democratically control the wealth that we create with our labour. Whereas at this point, most of the value we produce is being hoarded and used as power over us. Most people will agree that we should democratically control the wealth that we create with our labour. The question is, how do we get there? How is that organised? I don’t claim to have the answers. A lot of people, especially on the left, will sit around arguing about what colour the buses should be when we have a world like that, but the real point is, that’s the world we need to be working towards. There are people who have said that they were working for that world, and some were being disingenuous, some were being sincere. All have made mistakes. Why? Because that’s what you do in life, is make mistakes. But that’s the world that we should be working for. We’re not going to get there without a struggle. It’s not going to get voted in. |
| As corporations get ever more powerful and inequality rises, is it hard to remain optimistic?My optimism doesn’t have to do with the scoreboard, it has to do with who’s up to bat. | As corporations get ever more powerful and inequality rises, is it hard to remain optimistic?My optimism doesn’t have to do with the scoreboard, it has to do with who’s up to bat. |
| In August, you criticised Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman on Twitter, calling the film, which is based on a memoir by retired black police officer Ron Stallworth, “a made-up story in which the false parts of it try to make a cop the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression”. What compelled you to speak out?I felt it was important. Spike Lee is a hero of mine, the person who compelled me to go to film school. But this film was putting out a certain idea of history in the time of Black Lives Matter and the rise of a new white supremacist movement, when the police are actually working with these white supremacist groups. | In August, you criticised Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman on Twitter, calling the film, which is based on a memoir by retired black police officer Ron Stallworth, “a made-up story in which the false parts of it try to make a cop the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression”. What compelled you to speak out?I felt it was important. Spike Lee is a hero of mine, the person who compelled me to go to film school. But this film was putting out a certain idea of history in the time of Black Lives Matter and the rise of a new white supremacist movement, when the police are actually working with these white supremacist groups. |
| Has Spike Lee responded to you directly?No. I got my information to him through Dave Chappelle, but I haven’t heard back. | Has Spike Lee responded to you directly?No. I got my information to him through Dave Chappelle, but I haven’t heard back. |
| Sorry to Bother You was set in Oakland. Was that important to you?It’s a case of writing what you know. If you make a film in Everyplace, then it becomes no place, nobody relates to it. I saw Fish Tank [Andrea Arnold’s film set in Essex]; I’d never been to a place like that, but I related to it because it had the details of the place in it. The more personal you get, the more universal you get. Also, as somebody who’s been really involved with Oakland in many different ways, I know everybody there. | Sorry to Bother You was set in Oakland. Was that important to you?It’s a case of writing what you know. If you make a film in Everyplace, then it becomes no place, nobody relates to it. I saw Fish Tank [Andrea Arnold’s film set in Essex]; I’d never been to a place like that, but I related to it because it had the details of the place in it. The more personal you get, the more universal you get. Also, as somebody who’s been really involved with Oakland in many different ways, I know everybody there. |
| Has it changed much over the years?Oh, definitely. It still feels like my home, but it also feels like a ghost town to a certain extent, even though it’s more developed than it’s ever been. When everyone was urging me to go to LA, I fought to stay in Oakland because that’s what grounds my art. But I needed to fight for everybody else to stay in Oakland too. That’s why I’m behind this rent control thing that’s happening right now. | Has it changed much over the years?Oh, definitely. It still feels like my home, but it also feels like a ghost town to a certain extent, even though it’s more developed than it’s ever been. When everyone was urging me to go to LA, I fought to stay in Oakland because that’s what grounds my art. But I needed to fight for everybody else to stay in Oakland too. That’s why I’m behind this rent control thing that’s happening right now. |
| Sorry to Bother You: why Boots Riley’s surreal race allegory is this year’s Get Out | Sorry to Bother You: why Boots Riley’s surreal race allegory is this year’s Get Out |
| Will you make more films?I have a deal with Michael Ellenberg, who brought Game of Thrones to HBO, and I’m doing my own TV series with him. I’m writing and directing an episode for Guillermo del Toro’s horror anthology series 10 After Midnight. And then I’m writing a couple of films. I’ve waited a long time, I’m 47, so I’ve got to get a lot of stuff done. | Will you make more films?I have a deal with Michael Ellenberg, who brought Game of Thrones to HBO, and I’m doing my own TV series with him. I’m writing and directing an episode for Guillermo del Toro’s horror anthology series 10 After Midnight. And then I’m writing a couple of films. I’ve waited a long time, I’m 47, so I’ve got to get a lot of stuff done. |
| Is music on the back burner?I mean, I like music, but I don’t like sitting in a van for 10 hours with other people arguing about the radio [laughs]. Now we’ll be able to perform when we want to perform rather than having to take it out there on tour. | Is music on the back burner?I mean, I like music, but I don’t like sitting in a van for 10 hours with other people arguing about the radio [laughs]. Now we’ll be able to perform when we want to perform rather than having to take it out there on tour. |
| Sorry to Bother You opens in the UK on 7 December | Sorry to Bother You opens in the UK on 7 December |
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