MUSICIAN WANTS TO MAKE AMERICA THINK AGAIN
Writer/director of racial satire Sorry to Bother You always had a passion for film
Boots Riley, the Oakland, Calif., musician and activist turned filmmaker, has always prided himself on keeping up with current concerns. But he surprised himself with
Sorry to Bother You, his hit Sundance racial satire now opening in regular theatres. An early version of his screenplay used the phrase “Making America Great Again” as one of the mantras of a creepy corporation called Worry Free. This was at least two years before a certain carrot-topped reality TV star turned that into a winning presidential slogan.
“The story line is very connected to capitalism, so none of that stuff has changed,” Riley, 47, expounds during a recent Toronto promotional visit. He’s happy to have tapped into the rhetorical zeitgeist with his work, something he’s often done before as a rapper with the socially conscious hip-hop band the Coup.
Now he’s interested in seeing how his profiteer-poking ideas will go over as a movie, having already explored them as a 2012 album by the Coup and as a screenplay published in McSweeney’s literary journal in 2014.
The story concerns an impoverished Oakland telemarketer named Cassius “Cash” Green, played by Get Out’s Lakeith Stanfield, who grapples with the Faustian deal of choosing between success and money or the respect and allegiance of his friends and lover, a performance artist played by Westworld’s Tessa Thompson.
This barely describes what goes on in the film, which is exactly the plan of Riley, a man of wild hair and enthusiastic sideburns.
He tweeted out a message to film critics this past week asking them to avoid spoilers.
So he’s very careful during the interview not to give too much away.
How do you want us to describe Sorry to Bother You? Is it a comedy, a drama or some kind of hybrid?
I dunno. What’s your life? More of a comedy, or a drama? It’s like, it’s all mixed up!
Is it a spoiler to mention anything about the last third or so of the film?
Yeah, yeah, because I think part of it is at the beginning, the pace of it and the weird things that happen. You start realizing, “Wait, I don’t know what’s going to happen!”
And then you engage with it in a different way. Whereas, if you’re like, “Oh, I’ve heard these things happen in it,” then you engage with it in a way like, “OK, how are they going to get to this part?” And it’s a different feeling.
We know you best as a musician, but you’ve been interested in film for long time.
I started out in film school. And even before that, I was in theatre, because my grandmother ran the Oakland Ensemble Theatre.
I went into film school at a time when Spike Lee’s movies were (first) out there, so it kind of gave you this feeling like, “Oh, you can make something.” I’m glad that I didn’t make a film coming right out of film school. It would have been much different, because I think sometimes you’re like, “How can I make a movie? What are the things that will be accepted?” And because I’ve been doing music for 20 years, I was able to be like, “If I’m going to make a film, this is what it’s going to be.” Not like, “I just want to make a film.” I wasn’t trying to apply for a job as a filmmaker; I was making a film.
What prompted you to choose Lakeith Stanfield for the lead role of Cassius Green? Was it his performance last year in Get Out, whose writer/director Jordan Peele you had earlier considered for the gig?
No. When I cast him, there had been maybe one episode of
Atlanta (the TV series Stanfield stars in) and I had seen him in
Short Term 12 (a SXSW 2013 prize winner). He was also in
Dope. He’s definitely like an old soul, even though he’s only 26 right now. His performance is key to why everything works. His reactions are so natural. I could have a unicorn start flying through the telemarketing office, and you’d believe it, because his reactions would be the way a real person would react.
You’ve also got in your movie Tessa Thompson from Westworld and Dear White People, Steven Yeun from The Walking Dead and Omari Hardwick from Power. Are you finding that the best young talent now comes from television?
Yeah, I had to watch TV to find actors. Like, I only watched
Power because I was trying to see what Omari’s style was.
And I’m about to do a TV show. I have no doubt that I’ll make something that I like, but what I don’t like is the way people consume TV. It’s disposable.
There’s very few times where you’re going to be like, “I want to watch that episode — I want to watch Season 2, Episode 8 of such and such a show again.” You know what I’m saying? No matter how big it was, even something like Lost, it’s done and over with. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I mean, it’s like, you know, zen sand paintings or whatever you call it. But I want to make stuff that feels like an event.
You get laughs in Sorry to Bother You with the line, “Use your white voice.” Is this a concept that’s used a lot in telemarketing, or anywhere else?
Nobody discusses it. I think this is probably the first time it was talked about, but it’s something that you do, yeah.
That’s why somebody made a tweet: “You’re not supposed to tell them about the white voice!”