Oakland’s Riley stirs it up
Activist/rapper wrote and is directing his first movie, “Sorry to Bother You”
A large, gangly papiermache horse and papiermache man stood on the sidewalk on Broadway in uptown Oakland on Friday, the faux man doing something to the faux horse that would make a real porn star blush.
It was a visual protest against corporate suits sticking it to the working stiffs, so to speak, and demonstrators gathered as cameras rolled.
Yet this wasn’t just another Oakland protest, at least not a real one. It was a movie in the making.
“Sorry to Bother You,” a dark comedy/political satire, marks the directorial and screenwriting debut of Oakland rapper/activist Boots Riley. With filming taking place in various locations around Oakland through July, “Bother” stars Lakeith Stanfield, Armie Hammer, Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick and Terry Crews. It’s backed by independent film companies including Cinereach and Forest Whitaker’s Significant Productions and is set to premiere at Sundance in 2018.
And it’s about … well, we’re not quite sure, especially after talking to Riley at Friday’s shoot.
“It’s an absurd and dark comedy with magical realism and science fiction,” says Riley, 46, declining even to suggest the desired audience take-away from the film. “There are a lot of things I want people to get from it. I don’t want to limit it to just one sound byte.”
It’s loosely based on his own job as a telephone salesman years ago, so it involves a black telemarketer, played by Stanfield, trying to make it in a white man’s world.
“The main character develops a way to have his voice overdubbed with a white man’s voice, which makes him successful,” says one of the film’s local producers, Jonathan Duffy. The character’s success then dovetails with his activist friends rising up against unjust labor practices. “And then comedy ensues,” Duffy says.
One thing’s for sure, when Riley calls for “action” on the set, it carries a deeper meaning.
The longtime frontman for the politically charged hip-hop group The Coup — which formed in 1991 and which Riley describes as a “punk-funk Communist revolution band” — grew up in Oakland and studied film at San Francisco State University. For decades, he’s been addressing issues such as community welfare, police brutality, racism and systemic inequality. He was a vocal organizer during the Occupy Oakland protests in 2011, and was recently part of a benefit concert for the Ghost Ship fire victims.
Perhaps his best-known controversy surrounded The Coup album “Party Music,” which delayed its September 2001 release because the original cover depicted Riley and band DJ Pam the Funkstress blowing up the World Trade Center (it was created before the 9/11 attacks).
Riley finished writing the screenplay for “Sorry to Bother You” in 2012, the same year The Coup released an album of the same name, considered a soundtrack for the film (a new soundtrack is in the works, he says). He is elated to see the film coming to fruition, thanks in part to a recent grant from the San Francisco Film Society and Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
Because of his firm Oakland roots, Riley has embraced various East Bay artists in the film, such as political artist Spy Emerson, who built the man/ horse sculpture.
And though not forthcoming on the plot, Riley at least admits there’s a strong social justice message involved.
“This comes from a similar place as all of my art, using the ridiculousness of interpersonal connections to talk about the ridiculousness in the world,” Riley said.